Maida Heatter made her chocolate mousse torte 20 times before she deemed it appropriate to be posted in The New York Times in May 1972.
At the time, Heather, who died Thursday at her home in Miami Beach at age 102, was no longer the successful cookbook writer she could soon become. Her toil was properly worth the trouble: Readers called and wrote letters to the editor, eager to get their arms on a recipe for the dreamy chocolate dessert they had heard about or tasted at so-and-so’s the weekend earlier. It was later pronounced that the torte had been the newspaper’s most-asked dessert recipe of the year.
The Times published numerous of Heatter’s recipes, including the East 62nd Street lemon cake, a tender lemon Bundt cake; her 86-proof chocolate cake, a rich chocolate cake infused with bourbon; and her chocolate cheesecake brownies. But none ever handed the torte.
It’s now not hard to see why: It’s a groan-inducing glory of a dessert, with a thick chocolate base topped with frothy chocolate mousse and crowned with whipped cream. It becomes a clever trick that Heatter (whose complete name is pronounced MAY-da HEAT-er) landed upon at some stage in those recipe tryouts: Make a batch of chocolate mousse and bake half of it in a pie pan. Once it has cooled, the baked mousse sinks inside the center, reworking into a dense chocolate cake “crust” ideal for filling with the closing unbaked mousse.
In 1974, “Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Desserts” was published, and if you were a home baker in the Nineteen Seventies and ’80s, you probably had a canine-eared, butter-stained, flour-dusted replica on your kitchen shelf. Devotees nonetheless swear using her cookbooks, often scouring the internet to update their battle-worn editions; many Instagram-era chefs have by no means heard of the girl who wrote nine cookbooks, won three James Beard awards, and counted Martha Stewart and Nancy Silverton as fans. The latest release of “Happiness Is Baking” (Little, Brown, 2019), a set of her most famous recipes, can also introduce her to a new technology.
Heather had no aim of becoming a cookbook writer. In the early 1960s, she became a thriving jewelry dressmaker in Miami Beach. At the same time, she persuaded her 0.33 husband, Ralph Daniels, an airline pilot. He was frequently out of town to end his activity and open a restaurant, so he may want to assist her in caring for her ailing father, Gabriel Heatter, the Forties radio character. She made the cakes, which she developed and examined in her domestic kitchen, and soon, locals had lined up for them.
The torte — “a chunk of ingenuity with chocolate,” as Raymond A. Sokolov wrote in The Times in 1973 — is many of the 100 or so fastidiously tested and exquisitely precise recipes in “Happiness Is Baking.” Developed with the aid of Heatter, a self-professed” chocolate nut,” it’s miles the apex of chocolate desserts: simply wealthy enough, doubly chocolaty, and a dream to make in case you follow Heatter’s specific commands to the letter.
Maida Heatter’s Chocolate Mousse Torte
Serves: 6 to eight
Total time: 1 hour, plus at least three hours of chilling
Ingredients:
For the mousse:
225g – Semisweet bar chocolate (no longer chips), chopped
1 tbsp – instant espresso or coffee powder
1/four cup – Boiling water
eight large eggs, yolks, and whites separated
65g – Sugar
1 tsp – Vanilla extract
1/8 tsp – Fine sea salt
Unsalted butter for greasing the pan
Fine dry breadcrumbs or cocoa powder for dusting
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For the whipped cream:
360 ml – Heavy cream
40g – Powdered sugar
One-half tsp of vanilla extract
Grated semisweet chocolate for serving (non-compulsory)
Method:
* Set a rack in the center of the oven. Heat oven to 350 tiers. Butter a 9-inch glass pie plate. Dust it with breadcrumbs or cocoa powder. Set apart.
* Place the chopped chocolate within the top of a small double boiler over water over low heat. Could you bring it to a low simmer? Meanwhile, in a cup or small bowl, dissolve the coffee within the 1/four cup of boiling water and pour it over the chocolate. Cover and cook dinner over low warmth, whisking once in a while until the chocolate is melted.
* Remove from warmness and preserve to stir until clean. Let cool barely—alternatively, area chocolate in a medium microwave-secure bowl. Dissolve the espresso in the boiling water and pour it over the chocolate. Cover with a plate or kitchen towel and permit stand for five minutes. Vigorously whisk till the chocolate is melted and smooth. If there are still bits of unmelted chocolate, microwave in 15-2nd bursts, whisking among, until clean and completely melted.
* In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the yolks at excessive velocity until they are light, thick, and lemon-colored, about five minutes. Gradually add the sugar and retain to overcome at a high pace for 5 minutes until wide. Reduce speed to low, and add the vanilla and cooled chocolate, scraping the sides of the integration bowl as necessary. Transfer aggregate to a medium bowl. Wash the whisk attachment and combine the bowl.
* In the mixing bowl of the electric mixer outfitted with the whisk attachment, beat the egg whites with the salt until stiff and no longer dry. Gradually, in two or three small additions, lightly fold half of the egg whites into the chocolate, then fold the chocolate combination into the last ones until no whites show. Handling as low as feasible, lightly reserve approximately four cups of the mousse in a separate medium bowl; cowl and refrigerate.
*Transfer the rest of the mousse into the pie plate; it’ll barely attain the pinnacle. Gently level and bake for 25 mins. Please turn off the warmth, then stay inside the oven for five more minutes. Remove from oven and funky on a rack. The mousse will upward push during baking, and then, while cooling, it’ll sink in the middle, leaving an excessive rim. Wash the mixing bowl and whisk attachment and area inside the fridge or freezer to relax.
* Remove the reserved mousse from the fridge When the baked mousse is fantastic. Handling as low as viable, switch the chilled mousse to the middle of the baked mousse. Mound it slightly higher in the center, but address it as low as feasible, or it will lose the air beaten into it. Refrigerate for at least 2 to 3 hours.
* Make the whipped cream: In the chilled mixing bowl with the chilled whisk attachment, beat the cream, powdered sugar, and vanilla at excessive speed till it holds a described shape. Spread over the unbaked part of the mousse, apart from the rim; refrigerate. Another way of using the whipped cream: Use a pastry bag outfitted with a medium celebrity tube and piped a lattice sample over the pinnacle of the pie and a border around the brink. Coarsely grate a few semisweet chocolates over the top before serving, if desired. The torte is satisfactorily eaten the day it’s made but not terrible the following day.
