Brie Pear Mousse Napoleon

This is truly my own invention. When Carolyn heard that she gave me the skeptical eye. However, upon masticating this tower her eyes lit up. Bob and I had seconds, to my later regret - this is a very rich dessert. And it is so easy to make.

Serves 4

dessert on a plate with a tower of sponge cake, pear, brie, and chocolate mousse or ganache

More super recipes!

First, some notes.

The chocolate: it has to be good stuff. This is a major component of the flavor. If you cheat and get crummy chocolate, then don't even make this. Use Hershey's or Guittard dark.
The brie: high fat content is key; you'll want the brie and mousse to melt together in your mouth. Low fat cheese won't do this. One way to find high fat cheese is to look at the U.S. nutrition label. Find out how many calories in a one ounce serving come from fat. Take the brie with the highest count.
The pears: Any pear will do, but ripe ones are best and they cannot be hard. The pear should dissolve on your palate with the other flavors. I wouldn't do this with a hard Anjou pear.

A.	pound cake	1 loaf	You can use a nice frozen pound cake for this. Sara Lee works.
		Set it out to defrost for one hour.

Semi Sweet Chocolate

12 ounces

Chopped up.

heavy cream

8 ounces

Heat the cream in a heavy pot over moderately high heat. Stir occasionally and bring it just up to a boil. Remove from the heat.

Add the chopped chocolate and stir a lot until the chocolate is mixed in completely.

Use an electric mixer or Kitchen Aid to whip the mixture into a froth. As it cools the mixture will tighten up.

Bartlett pears

brie cheese

6 ounces

room temperature

Slice the pears in half and remove the stems. Slice the pears thinly. (You'll see in the picture above that I cut the pear into one quarter inch thick slices. I regret this now.)

Slice the pound cake into quarter inch thick slices.

Put the chocolate mousse into a pastry bag with a large tip. Or into a zip lock bag and cut off one corner.

On a plate assemble two pieces of pound cake side by side. On top of this arrange 1/4 of the pear slices. Add an eighth inch thick slice (or spoonful) of the brie. Top this off with a healthy serving of chocolate mousse.

Serve immediately. (Ok I lied, you have lots of mousse left over. So what?)

Some things I wish to try next time:

Top it all off with two raspberries.
Maybe a little Pear William in the mousse?
This was lovely when cut down the middle. I wonder if I could assemble it in a plastic coated loaf pan, freeze it, cut it and thaw it. It just might look dramatic.