Moka Dupont: A French Icebox Cake
Updated May 6, 2020
- Total Time
- 30 minutes, plus at least 3 hours chilling
- Rating
- Comments
- Read comments
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Ingredients
- ½cup/115 grams unsalted butter (1 stick), at room temperature
- ½cup/100 grams plus 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
- 1large, very fresh egg (preferably organic, since it will not be cooked)
- 3ounces/85 grams bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled
- ½cup/120 milliliters hot espresso (made fresh or with instant espresso powder)
- 64Nabisco Social Tea Biscuits (from 1 12-ounce package), or other plain, preferably flat cookies
- Grated chocolate, for decoration
Nutritional analysis per serving (8 servings)
840 calories; 52 grams fat; 27 grams saturated fat; 0 grams trans fat; 15 grams monounsaturated fat; 6 grams polyunsaturated fat; 96 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram dietary fiber; 20 grams sugars; 9 grams protein; 449 milligrams sodium
Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
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Preparation
- Step 1
Before you start assembling the cake, decide on the size you want. I make a cake that’s 4 cookies wide, 4 cookies long and 4 layers high. Choose a plate to build and serve the cake.
- Step 2
Make the buttercream frosting: Put the butter in a small bowl, and beat it with a flexible spatula until smooth. Add ½ cup sugar, and beat again with the spatula until it’s thoroughly incorporated. Separate the egg, putting the yolk in a cup and the white in a small bowl. Whip the white until it holds soft peaks using a mixer or, for a short but strenuous exercise, a whisk. Give the yolk a quick whisk, just to break it up, then stir it into the white.
- Step 3
Add the egg to the bowl with the butter, and using the spatula, stir and fold until blended. Scrape in the melted chocolate, then stir and fold again until the frosting is homogeneous. (It won’t be perfectly smooth.) Taste the buttercream, and you’ll feel grains of sugar on your tongue — that’s the way it’s meant to be.
- Step 4
Pour the hot espresso into a wide, shallow bowl, and stir in the remaining 1 tablespoon sugar.
- Step 5
One by one, drop each cookie into the espresso, count 3 seconds, flip it over, count 3 seconds more, then place the espresso-soaked cookie on the serving plate. Continue until you have your first layer of cookies in place.
- Step 6
Using a small offset spatula or a table knife, spread a quarter of the buttercream over the cookies, working the cream to the edges of the cookies. Build 3 more layers of dunked cookies and smoothed buttercream. Top the last layer of buttercream with grated chocolate.
- Step 7
Refrigerate the cake until the frosting is set, at least 3 hours. The cake can be kept covered in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. (Once the frosting is set, the cake could also be wrapped airtight and frozen for up to 2 months. To serve, simply let it defrost, still wrapped, in the refrigerator for about 4 hours or at room temperature for about 1 hour.)
Private Notes
Comments
I plan to make this, as I've already approached parts of it on other occasions. Regarding the use of a raw egg - yes, I recommend not doing this, especially if one has older folks or kids in the house (especially vulnerable to salmonella, if I recall right). But more to the point, this buttercream has no butter, but it could. Better yet, why not use heavy cream in place of the egg. Just make a ganache - 2 parts chocolate to one part cream. Make more than you need, and store the rest.
Aquafaba (the liquid drained from a can of chickpeas) is a good substitute for the raw egg.
The Sri Lankan variation is called Chocolate Biscuit Pudding. It's made with Marie biscuits (another very plain cookie that can be found widely, sometimes called Maria biscuits), with the biscuits very briefly dipped in warm milk, and layered with either buttercream or ganache - ganache is much nicer! A few drops of rum or fruit liqueur in the ganache (we used arrack in Sri Lanka) makes it even better.
For me the 3 count for each side was too long and the tea biscuits dissolved at 2 so I did a count of drop 1, flip 2, remove 3. I ended up using a 2X4 pattern, my bottom layer being graham crackers (to make up for tea biscuit shortfall), stacked four high. I still made a full batch of butter-chocolate cream, each layer getting 87g. This is not my first time and my neighbors love when I share this cake. Thank you Dorie.
A wonderful dessert that is very light and doesn’t ask for much. Would be great snack on a spring picnic. I omitted the espresso for milk and it turned out great.
Although you mention that the egg should preferably be organic, since it will not be cooked, you could mention that in the USA, raw eggs have are considered to be unsafe, hence the SAFE HANDLING INSTRUCTIONS on raw shell-on egg packages. Salmonella, a known pathogen, is highly associated with raw eggs. In France, where this recipe hails from, eggs are not required to be refrigerated, as they are in the USA, because steps have been taken to mitigate the risk of salmonella contamination.
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