blackberry mousse cake

My mom's company threw her a retirement party last fall, and when she brought home the leftovers of her retirement cake, which was a blackberry mousse cake, my brother texted me a picture of his slice and told me that I needed to recreate it because he liked it so much. So naturally, I attempted to recreate the cake for his birthday dinner last week!

I started with the chocolate crust. The retirement cake had a crunchy, chocolately crust, and the crunch reminded me a lot of these European wafer cookies that you see a lot during the holidays. So to make my crust, I used a food processor to grind up enough Oreos (with the filling removed) to make about a cup of crumbs, as well as a cup of crumbs from those European wafer cookies (good thing we still had an unopened box in our pantry from the holidays!)

Then I added a few tablespoons of sugar, and half stick of melted butter. I pressed the mixture into the bottom of a 9-inch springform pan, and baked it at 350F for about 10 minutes. Once cooled, I removed the springform sides of the pan, to reveal a crust which looked like this!

I put the springform sides back on the pan, and then got started on my filling. I decided to make a no-bake cheesecake filling for the middle layer, based on this recipe at Barbara Bakes. I let a packet of gelatin bloom in 3 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice, then added it to a whipped mixture of cream cheese, sugar, vanilla extract, and heavy whipping cream. Once everything was mixed and fluffy, I poured it into my springform pan on top of my chocolate crust, and smoothed it out with an offset spatula. Then I let it set in the fridge while I made my blackberry mousse layer.

First I pureed my blackberries in my food processor, and then strained out and discarded the seeds. I was left with a tart and luscious blackberry puree.

To that I added more gelatin bloomed in water, and then folded in a couple cups of freshly whipped cream.

Then I poured the blackberry mousse layer on top of my cheesecake layer, which by now had already set. After smoothing the top with an offset spatula, I placed it back in the fridge to set overnight.

When it was time to bring it to the party, I carefully unmolded it and decorated the top with fresh blackberries.

The combination of the lemony cheesecake with the tangy blackberry mousse turned out great, and the crust added just the right amount of chocolatey crunch. Although, I think next time I would use a higher ratio of European wafer cookies to Oreo cookies, just to up the crunch factor. :)

Happy 30th Birthday, Michael!