Daring Bakers - Chocolate Marquise on Meringue

Does that look like a super-galactic space monster to you? 
The May 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Emma of CookCraftGrow and Jenny of Purple House Dirt. They chose to challenge everyone to make a Chocolate Marquise. The inspiration for this recipe comes from a dessert they prepared at a restaurant in Seattle.

This was certainly an interesting challenge - squares of mousse rolled in cocoa, sitting atop a throne of meringue, and accented by brandy caramel and spiced nuts - crazy huh? I enjoyed each of the elements except for the meringue, which was created boiled stylee, and was supposed to be smudged raw on the plate then torched.  As I didn't have a kitchen torch,  I baked mine for half an hour, which coloured them and made them firm enough to transport to work.  However, the meringue was kind of rubbery and strange - not like a usual meringue at all, and wasn't my favourite part of this.

The mousse was - well, mousse.  I actually enjoyed it while it was still partially frozen - it is kind of like a chocolate Paddlepop without the stick.

However, I adored the caramel and the spiced nuts.  These components weren't compulsory and I was going to skip them, but chnaged my mind at the last minute - and I am glad that I did.  At work, people were pinching the spiced nuts off the plates, so I put out the leftover ones for people to go for it.  The nuts are coated in a mixture of egg whites, cayenne and cinnamon before being baked until the coating has set.  The leftover spicy but sweet caramel (it contains cayenne) was perfect on icecream.  As mentioned above, instead of using tequila in my caramel, as suggested by the original recipe, I used btandy, primarily because I had btrandy in the house and I couldn't buy a nip bottle of tequila.

Thanks to our hosts, Emma and Jenny, for introducing me to something totally new.  They will have the recipe on their respective sites. To check out the infinite variations by the Daring Bakers, visit the Daring Bakers website.