Since I need to experiment with different types of cake for the wedding cakes I’ll be baking later this year, I decided to make a chocolate Génoise cake last weekend.

If you’re not familiar with Génoise, here’s what Wikipedia has to say: “A Génoise Cake is a sponge cake named after the city of Genoa and closely associated with French cuisine that does not use any chemical leavening, instead using air suspended in the batter during mixing to give volume to the cake.”

For my first attempt at Génoise, I think I did pretty well. I did overbake it slightly as the bottom of the cake was a little denser than it should have been. Despite this, it tasted like it should and I won’t overbake it next time.

The recipe I used for the Génoise is from Baking Illustrated. As usual, this recipe from Cook’s Illustrated turned out very well and the recipe was well written and straight forward.

I sliced the Génoise in half and filled it with chocolate mousse from Sherry Yard’s Desserts by the Yard. If you haven’t ever flipped through this cookbook, you should. It’s beautiful and everything I’ve baked from it has been perfect (or as nearly perfect as I can do).

The mousse recipe can be found here on the Los Angeles Times website. I didn’t really change the recipe at all. The recipe made more mousse than needed for the cake…fortunately having too much chocolate mousse is never going to cause any problems at my house.

I’d been hunting for a good (and easy) mousse recipe for a while and this recipe is it. I shall search no longer.

And finally (as if the chocolate Génoise and chocolate mousse weren’t enough), I topped the whole cake with chocolate ganache. The cake probably didn’t really need the ganache to taste great but it certainly made it look a little prettier. And shinier.

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