A Toast Before Baking

Midnight and everyone else had left the kitchen. The resounding voices and clanking of machinery during the daytime had fallen into absolute silence. All alone in a half-lit basement, I stared at what seemed an insurmountable obstacle: I had to glaze a frozen mousse cake.

The instructions were simple: gently warm up chocolate ganache and pour it over the cake until it formed an even, gleaming coat. No matter how hard I tried, it just didn’t work. If the glaze wasn’t heated up sufficiently, it would cool upon contact with the frozen mousse and the flow would slow like hardening lava before enveloping the entire cake. If it were heated up too long, the ganache would reduce and thicken, which would also inhibit its ability to smoothly drizzle over the cake. Each one of my attempts resulted in bubbles and ripples. And I knew when my chef surveyed it the next day, I would get reprimanded for the poor results.