Daring Baker April 2011: Maple Mousse in an Edible Container (Pretzel Bowls!)

The April 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Evelyne of the blog Cheap Ethnic Eatz. Evelyne chose to challenge everyone to make a maple mousse in an edible container. Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 27th to May 27th at http://thedaringkitchen.com!

Fortunately for me the host this month provided a both a Maple Mousse and a vegan Maple Mousse recipe. (Kudos Evelyne - It is appreciated!) She also provided recipes for bacon bowls (along with a link to a Tofu Bacon recipe), and nut bowls. I decided to take things a step further, and try to come up with my own sort of edible container. My idea: soft pretzel bowls.

I used the soft pretzel recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking (pg 174). These are a yeast- bread type of recipe, so rather than one of our usual after-work baking nights, I baked these on a weekend (ended up being Easter weekend, actually) and so I tackled this challenge alone. The yeast (proofed in sugar water) was added to flour, salt and oil. The dough was way too wet, and I ended up adding almost a full cup of additional flour. (I measured my original flour using my kitchen scale and the weight given in the recipe. I would be interested to see if my dough would have been better had I used the measuring cups, and not weight).

Once the dough stuck together, and not to the bowl or my hands, I transferred it to an oiled bowl, covered with plastic wrap and a damp towel, and put the whole thing in my dormant oven. While I waited for the dough to rise, I settled in to making the maple mousse.

Dough - pre-rise.

Dough - post-rise.

Ingredients for Vegan Maple Mousse.

The vegan Maple Mousse recipe called for maple syrup, soft silken tofu, and agar-agar. I still don't have agar-agar powder (or even flakes), and I ended up breaking up a full bar. A quick search on the Internet turned up this page, http://www.foodsubs.com/ThickenGelatins.html, which give the 2 teaspoon of agar powder as equivalent of 3 Tablespoons of agar flakes, or 1 kanten bar.

First I put the tofu in the food processor, and ran it until I got a nice creamy consistency. Next I flaked the kanten bar as best I could, and let it sit in the maple syrup for 5 minutes, then turned on the heat. After about 15 minutes on the stovetop it got thicker, though there were still harder bits of the agar from the seam area of the kanten bar. I added the thickened maple syrup to the tofu in the food processor, and blended it, then transferred it to a bowl and popped it in the fridge.

Agar in maple syrup ...

...after sitting for 5 minutes.

Agar and maple syrup over heat.

Agar/Maple syrup on blended tofu. Stringy.

Maple Mousse.

When it came time to check the dough, I was surprised at how much it had risen. I punched it
down, and separated it into 12 smaller dough balls. The recipe calls to let these sit for another 10 minutes, but due to a brief interlude for dinner, mine sat for about 30-40 minutes.

Dough balls - an even dozen to work with.

My idea was to make a woven bowl out of the pretzel dough. I rolled out traditional pretzel lengths from the separated dough, then rolled them a bit more to get more length. I wove the three thinner strands for the side of the bowl, and ended up making smaller strands to weave for the bottom.

Rolled out by hand.

Pretzel braid, and smaller pretzel weave for the bottom.

Foil to keep the pretzel bowls from sticking.

I put aluminum foil over the bottom of my (new) large-cup cupcake pan, and placed the woven bottom on, then wrapped the braided strands around the cup, pinching together where the dough met.

The pretzel recipe calls to dip the pretzels in a water/baking soda combo before placing them on the cookie sheet, and then sprinkling them with course salt. I did not dip my braids, rather, put them on the mold, and then brushed them with the water/baking soda combo. Since the bowls would be holding what I considered a desert, I sprinkled on a mixture of granulated sugar, large decorators sugar and ground cinnamon.

Uncooked pretzel cup.

The bowls "poofed", but that helped keep the bowls together.

The pretzel bowls baked for about 18 minutes. A few things I didn't count on: soft pretzels - as a yeast-based delight, poofed out when the baked; the weave on the bottom was thinner than the braid, and browned a lot more than the sides; the bottom also bowed out from the cupcake pan mold; and finally large-cup cupcake pans are huge as a mold.

Interior of pretzel bowl.

Pretzel bowl.

Maple Mousse in a pretzel bowl.

My husband helped me eat my model bowl with mousse. He liked the taste. I was surprised by the lightness of the pretzels, and a bit sad to find that the "seams" of the kanten bar left little hard chunks blended in the maple mousse. The cinnamon and sugar went well with the mousse, but overall I think my dessert ended up being a bit to *something* (sweet? too many flavors?) for my taste.

Et, voila.

I am interested in trying the soft pretzel recipe again, and in playing with the dough to see if I can make even more interesting shapes (or smaller edible containers). I also was interested in trying my hand at fillo (phyllo?) dough based bowls, if I can get my hands on shredded fillo dough.

New tools/ ingredients:  large-cup cupcake pan
Recipes used: Daring Baker provided Vegan Maple Mousse recipe; Soft Pretzels The Joy of Vegan Baking, page 174
Co-bakers:  Solo Mission
Date: April 24, 2011