Elaine: Mont Blanc

Some of you are avoiding this recipe as I have for the past month. However, just dive into this because its not as complicated as you might think. It's nice to challenge myself in the kitchen again. I've been in a rut the past couple weeks until today. I've really missed trying new recipes and techniques.

My favorite part of this recipe is by far the caramel colored nougatine mousse. I froze some extra nougatine mousse in its own ramekin. The pairing of espresso and the almond praline is definitely finger lickin' good . My sink is towering over with bowls, spatulas, whisk attachments and sticky piping bags. A freaking disaster area but this Mont Blanc is so worth the clean-up.

Tips for those of you who haven't gotten to this recipe yet:
1) Cream of Tartar definitely helped prevent crystalization of sugar during the browning of sugar for nougatine. It also helped during the sugar syrup for the egg white step.
2) The way I tell whether the syrup is thick enough for the egg white process is spooning a drop into a clear glass of water. If it forms a gelatinous string as it falls to the bottom of the glass.
3) I would set some mousse aside to cover the top of the hole that you create when you fill the mousse with praline filling.
4) I used instant espresso vs instant coffee because thats all I had in the pantry.
5) Some of my chunks of praline were too big and clogged up my piping tip. I would definitely just run it thru a food processor one more time. It became pretty messy every time I had to de-clog my piping bag. But I didn't mind licking the nougatine mousse off my hands.

The caramel colored ramekin is filled with the extra almond nougatine I had left. This recipe made 10 ramekins that will be waiting for us in the freezer whenever surprise guests come over. Hope you all enjoy this dessert as much as I did. Looking forward to the next recipe.