Black Tie Mousse Cake – Olive Garden Copycat

Happy Boxing Day!

It is the day after Christmas which also means the day after Maddox’s birthday and Jesus’ birthday.  So we have a cake either way!  This year he (Maddox, not Jesus) requested Black Tie Mousse Cake from Olive Garden.  It runs about $10 per slice at the restaurant, but I just knew it would be in a “Top Secret Recipes” book – and it was!  I used Todd Wilbur’s recipe as a base.  I simplified this massive 4-part cake recipe which uses 6 major steps and put them into one cohesive — and sane — way to make something that tastes amazing.

Even I liked it!  And if you know me – you know I’m not a huge fan of chocolate.  So it’s gotta be amazing!  This might be almost as complicated as the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Devil’s Food Cheesecake made almost 10 years ago.  But we’ll get there – I promise!  It won’t be bad at all and it will taste like a $150 cake which is what this would yield since you can get about 15 slices out of it.  Olive Garden still sells this cake.  They do not sell the Lemon Crumb cake anymore though – bummer!

Update on Reading:  I finished “Project Hail Mary” by Andy Weir!  It was a prize after we completed the Gingerbread Cookie Escape room at the library…which was really just a Breakout Box that they called an escape room.  Sneaky library!

Update on Sourdough:  My sourdough starter is still alive 2 years later kicking and screaming.  He’s an active little guy and eats anything you give him …. as long as it’s unbleached all purpose flour.  I have updated my sourdough recipe to 227 grams of sourdough starter instead of 100 grams.  Increasing the baking time from 40 minutes total to 45 minutes (lid on) and 10 minutes (lid off) gave me a loaf that was cooked all the way through.  The top looked better as well!

Recipe:

I made this recipe over two days, but you could make it in one.  The cake was kept cold in the freezer until the ganache topping to make sure everything stayed put.  The white chocolate mousse is probably the least sturdy – yet delicious – part of the cake.  The alternative is to create a custard using egg yolks and cream and tempering the eggs….. The cake already had so many pieces I wanted something easier.  So I used the good ol’ Jello pudding trick on the fluffy white layer.  This is where you add less milk to the jello pudding to get a thicker consistency.

You will notice I didn’t put mini chips on the sides.  I thought the sides looked fabulous and didn’t want to cover them up.  I still have the mini chocolate chips to do this, and it is totally doable!

When trying to re-create the white lines on top, I tried to use white chocolate chips and butter.  This was a BAD idea!  The butter caused the white chocolate to seize, so I started over.  I used only white chocolate chips the second time (and the time I photographed this cake).  This did not work because the white chocolate solidified on the cake within seconds — even with warm ganache apparently.  So, I solved this problem with a tablespoon of cream in the white chocolate chips.

There are various ways to make chocolate mousse and white chocolate mousse from scratch.  These methods involve gelatin and whipping cream and all kinds of fun stuff.  But this stuff isn’t fun around birthday/travel/Christmas time.  So hence the shortcuts I made included using a box mix for the base instead of a homemade chocolate cake.  If you want homemade chocolate cake, we love this Chocolate Cake recipe using coffee instead of water for the liquid.  You will not taste the coffee, I promise.