I told you in my last article that I often revamped a recipe to finish the leftovers from the previous one. It didn't take me long to illustrate my point since today's recipe is a recycling of the pie dough from Christophe Felder's flan. Indeed, not having paid attention to the fact that the proportions were huge for a family flan, I ended up lining a 22 cm circle and another 20 cm one. Not wanting to make 2 flans, I kept the second dough for later.
Impossible to put a ganache on it, at 4.5 cm, that would have been far too heavy (even for me!). I then remembered a tart I had tasted at a trade show. Impossible to remember the brand (I think it's supposedly quite well-known). On the other hand, I remember this superb tart that mixed a mousy layer of chocolate with a crispy pie crust. A true revelation: since the dough took care of the structure, you could cover the top with a chocolate preparation that was completely melting and impossible to achieve on a cake you need to unmold!
The mousse: the texture I needed!
So I looked for a preparation that came as close as possible to the texture I love in barely cooked dough. After a quick look through my chocolate bible (Le gâteau au chocolat by Victoire Paluel-Marmont), I opted for "the mousse": like a cooked mousse, very airy and just barely cooked in the center, well balanced, with a real crust… according to its author.
Since Felder's dough was quite sweet and I wanted to emphasize the chocolate side, I reduced the amount of sugar a bit. Result: a success! The absence of flour indeed gives a very melting texture that doesn't hold at all (but that doesn't matter since the pie crust takes care of that). The dough also brings a crispy side. After a night in the fridge, the mousse gains a truffle-like, chocolatey side and is topped with a crackling dome… A real treat!
