Mom and mousse cake and me

May 3rd, 2017 | Published in What we savor

The writer as a child, licking the spoon after her mother, who took this photo, made chocolate mousse cake.

By Nina Friend

We crush the Oreos with the Cuisinart that Mom got for her wedding. I stand next to her, my forehead peeking over the white, marble-topped island in the center of our Chicago kitchen. As the blade spins, the round sandwich cookies turn to chocolate dust. Mom tells me about the time she licked off an Oreo’s filling and replaced it with cream cheese to prank Uncle Bobby.

She transfers the crumbs to a giant stainless steel mixing bowl and drizzles the butter over them, then plunges my fingers inside and says, “Your hands are the most important tool in the kitchen.” The butter feels warm. I open and close my palms around the crumbs as though squeezing a stress ball. They stick to each other and wedge underneath my fingernails.

Nana first saw the cake on the December 1980 cover of Bon Appétit. That June, she doubled the recipe and made a giant chocolate mousse birthday cake for Papa’s 48^th. She doesn’t remember when or why, but at some point she added that cake to her annual Thanksgiving menu, subbing out banal pumpkin pie or store-bought apple crisp. About fifteen years ago, her daughter, my mother, took over the mousse cake duties so that Nana didn’t have to do as much cooking. Then, when I was eight or nine, my mom taught me.

We press the Oreo crumbs into the bottom and sides of a cold spring form pan. While the crust sets in the freezer, Mom whips heavy cream with our hand beater until soft peaks form. “Stop before it turns to butter,” she says, and I think about Laura Ingalls Wilder in the “Little House on the Prairie” picture book and how she had to stand over a wooden churn stirring for pages and pages. “Use some elbow grease,” Mom tells me, noticing my forearm droop.

Chocolate mousse cake with Oreo crust, whipped cream topping, and chocolate leaves. Photo: Nina Friend.

In the car, I’m squeezed between my two brothers because if they sit next to each other they’ll fight. Mom carefully sets the mousse cake on top of a baking sheet on top of my legs. It feels damp against my navy velvet dress, a dress that was my aunt’s and then my mom’s and then mine. That dress still hangs in the closet at Nana’s house, in a plastic garment bag big enough to enclose at least thirty hangers dangling with doll-sized clothes. Dad puts James Taylor on, “Carolina in My Mind,” and the three of us in the back fall asleep as skyscrapers vanish, alleyways turn to yards, and streets become wide and quiet. We ride along Lake Shore Drive, a stretch that connects Lincoln Park to Glencoe. I wake up upon feeling the cake swerve backward as Dad pulls the car up Nana and Papa’s driveway.

I walk up to the white-painted, black-shuttered house, careful not to drop the pan or trip. Nana greets us with her silver hair twisted around chopsticks – an homage to what she says is the first rule of being in the kitchen, even before washing your hands. She takes the cake from my trembling arms and I follow her inside.

In the kitchen, two baking sheets piled with toasted stuffing rest on the granite counter. I pop a cube of challah into my mouth and look around for the turkey. But there could just as well not be any turkey tonight and it would still feel like Thanksgiving. I had made mousse cake with Mom. That was all that mattered.

Ten years later, I was 800 miles away, in college, and a campus group I was part of had a Thanksgiving potluck on the Monday before everyone went home to celebrate the holiday. I knew exactly what I wanted to bring. Chocolate mousse cake made an appearance at all of my Thanksgivings. This one was no exception. The only difference was that I would be making it by myself.

The kitchen I shared with two others girls could fit one cook at a time. Ali’s Magic Bullet blender, caked with banana from her morning smoothie, was the best option for crushing the Oreos, which I then pressed into a fresh-from-Amazon spring form pan. To make some room in our freezer, I moved Val’s bags of salmon and the icy handle of Banker’s Club Vodka.

Everything was fine until I started to fold the whisked eggs and whipped cream into the melted chocolate. The mixture started to curdle. Chocolate congealed into chunks around my spatula. A silent panic overcame me as I glanced at the microwave clock. I leaned against the counter and FaceTimed Mom, pointing the camera toward the bowl. She told me to “get a grip,” put what I have into the crust, and let it set. In the freezer, the mousse would thicken. The lumps would harden and act as chocolate chips, like they were placed there intentionally.

“How does it taste?” she asked. I dipped my finger into the gritty mousse and licked. It tasted just like hers.