Caramelised pumpkin cake with black cardamom mousse

In the last fall, have been airing masterchef australia season 3 in a Finnish tv channel, we became huge fans of the series and bought the book. Since we got it, we didn´t try any recipe, so yesterday we tried Kate Brack pumpkin cake. We have changed few ingredients, and the mouse flavor, so we can say that we used her recipe to create something, for our taste, better. 

Ingredients

Serving for 6-8.

 Cake

• 300g butternut pumpkin (to caramelize 50g butter and 2tbsp sugar)
• 125g butter
• 1dl sugar
• 2 eggs
• 4 dl plain flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 50g toasted hazelnuts
• For the caramelize  (1 tbsp maple syrup, 2dl water, 1dl sugar)

 Mousse

• 0,6dl milk
• 0,6dl double cream
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon 
• 4 eggs
• 3/4 tsp black cardamom 
• 2 1/2 tsp gelatine powder
• 200g cream fraîche 
• 1 dl sugar

Preparation

 Mousse

To make the mousse, we start with adding to a small pot or sauce pan the milk, double cream, cinnamon and the black cardamom, heating gently till it almost boils to infuse the flavours. Let it rest till it cools down.

Place 4 of the egg yolks in a heatproof bowl over a pot with water (water has to boil gently, prevent to touch the bowl) and add 0,5 dl sugar. With a electric beater, whisk it for 5-8 min till thickens.

Add the gelatine powder to the infused milk and mix, move the mixture to the egg yolks and then add the cream fraîche.

With the remaining 4 egg whites, in a separate bowl, whisk them till soft peaks, adding gradually 0,5dl sugar.

Fold the egg whites to the mixture and let it rest in the fridge for at least 1h.

 Cake

Start with peeling and cutting the pumpkin to dices, once done place them in a oven tray with baking paper and paint the pumpkin with a mixture of 50g of melted butter and 2 tbsp of sugar. Place it into a 180°C oven for 30min. After that let it cool down a bit and smash it till smooth.

In a bowl, add 125g of butter and 1dl sugar and mix it if an electric beater. Once homogeneous, add 2 eggs, one at a time without stopping the electric beater. Then add the pumpkin puree and once again without stopping mixing add the flour, the baking powder and the hazelnuts (previously chopped).

In a cake tray, cover with baking paper, and add the dought and flatten. Place into oven for 30 min at 180°C.

When it is almost ready, add 2dl water and 1 dl sugar in a saucepan and bring it to boil as to prepare a syrup. When the liquid thickens, add 1tbps of maple syrup.

Once the cake is ready, paint the top with the syrup and let it cool down.

Next step is to cut, serve and enjoy!

Conclusions we have get from this recipe; it is surprisingly good and not so complicated. The black cardamom mousse is something else! but if you don´t like it just change the cardamom with cinnamon or orange zest.

In the original masterchef, Kate´s cake was too dense, with the recipe we used it is fluffy, so don´t know if for the book they already changed the recipe.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xk69oc_masterchef-aus-3-episode-76-part-2_shortfilms&start=984

Hope you like it as much as we did!
Mr South & Ms North