Food, Home & Lifestyle
Chocolate Cake Base: Biscuit
Lesson time 13:23 min
A favorite of Chef Dominique's, biscuit is a French-style sponge cake that is light and gluten-free. Learn Chef’s tips for mixing, baking, and cutting perfect biscuit layers that will be used to build a delectable chocolate mousse cake.
Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars
Topics include: French Meringue • Baking the Biscuit • Cutting the Biscuit
Teaches French Pastry Fundamentals
James Beard Award-winning pastry chef Dominique Ansel teaches his essential techniques for making delicious pastries and desserts in his first-ever online class.
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This is a classic French sponge cake. I love this cake because it's flourless-- it's a lot lighter. It's different than any classical American cake. We are going to build our-- what we call our mini me cake-- mini me for miniature meringues. It's a little more intricate, it's a little bit more delicate, and I'm going to show you how to assemble everything together. I'm going to show you how to make our chocolate cake. It's one of the first cakes I actually made for the bakery when we opened seven years ago. So just a few ingredients. Once again, everything's prepared ahead of time. We have our yolks and sugar that we're going to mix into the mixer in very high speed to have something very light and fluffy. I'm going to bring this up and add the sugar little by little. So now we're done with our yolks and sugar. They've been whipping for a few minutes, and as you can see, they'll be like very light and fluffy and it'll be like almost like you're-- like a ribbon. So the texture should be pale, very pale. It goes from this dark yellow to this very pale yellow. And the reason why we're whipping so much is to make this biscuit, this sponge cake, very fluffy and very light. We'll then place this yolk mixture into a larger mixing bowl, which we'll use to mix the rest of the ingredients. So this is our first step. We're now going to make a meringue and then combine everything together. So we now have our clean mixing bowl. Very important-- really, really dry for the meringue. So the meringue is very, very delicate. Those egg whites and sugar-- two simple ingredients. We want to make sure everything is clean and dry before we start. We're going to start with just the egg whites. So make sure there's nothing inside-- no shell, no egg yolks, and you'll have a proper meringue that whips very well. So if there's just even like a tiny bit of water on the side, it won't whip very well. We're going to use a whisk. I always use a mixer-- I don't ever do it by hand. I'll get tired before I can even whip them. So just try to do the same at home. We're going to start with the egg whites with a whisk attachment, and then we'll start adding sugar only when the meringue gets light and fluffy-- when you start seeing this white, foamy texture on the surface. And that's very important, because if you add your sugar too early, the egg whites are going to be too heavy, and therefore you're not going to be able to whip it as well. It's when I start adding my sugar. So little by little. So our meringue is finished here, and what you're looking for is for something that is like very light and fluffy. I always compare it to a shaving foam, so a thick shaving foam-- that's what it should look like. Once you stop the meringue, make sure you don't stop at all. Keep on stirring. We want to prevent the meringue from setting. If you leave it in a bowl and you wait a few minutes, the meringue will be clumpy and will have pieces. So what I do-- I fold the meringue...
About the Instructor
Celebrated for his innovative twists on classic desserts, Cronut® creator and James Beard Award-winner Dominique Ansel has been called the “world’s best pastry chef.” In his MasterClass, Dominique teaches his essential techniques for perfect pastries. Learn baking and more with his precise methods, add classic recipes to your repertoire, and explore texture and flavor inspirations to delight friends and family with your own decadent desserts.
Featured MasterClass Instructor
Dominique Ansel
James Beard Award-winning pastry chef Dominique Ansel teaches his essential techniques for making delicious pastries and desserts in his first-ever online class.
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