Red Velvet Tart with White Chocolate Cream Cheese Mousse, Apricot Strawberry Compote, Apricot Juice and Chocolate Ancho Ice Cream

This weekend we had a wedding at the restaurant and, as part of the package, we made their cake. For reasons I will never understand, they wanted a red velvet cake because what could make wedding better then if everybody’s teeth are red and they keep making jokes about animal  flesh. To get the proper sized cakes we ended up baking them in sheet trays which left a lot of excess on the sides. Instead of just throwing the scraps away I decided to save them to use in a Monday night special.

I began by drying out the leftover scraps under the oven, then I ground them up and used these crumbs as flour for a tart shell dough. Baked the tart shells still tasted like red velvet cake, but there were crispy and a little sandy. Red velvet cake is often served with a cream cheese icing and so I filled the tart shell with a cream cheese and white chocolate mousse.

The filled tart (as was the wedding cake) was served with a quenelle of chocolate ancho ice cream to enhance the chocolate flavor of the red velvet cake and a fruit compote of strawberries and apricots. The slight acidity of the compote and the apricot juice on top of the mousse helped to counterbalance the richness of the dish. I plated this dessert in a retro style because I wanted to keep with the theme of red velvet cake and the old-fashioned images associated with it.