The photo of the mousse in a champagne glass is not my photo. Alas. This professional photo shows the PINNACLE of chocolate mousse in a cup. A chocolate mousse Everest, if you will.
However, the other photos – my actual photos – are what I like to think of as base camps on the way to the summit. The point is, dear younger self, it can be necessary to explore AS MANY base camps AS POSSIBLE before tackling Everest 😂.
I’m not going to pretend I’m the Edmund Hillary of chocolate mousses, hence no recipe. But, as usual, I’ve fallen down internet holes writing this post. It’s curious to see how many methods there are out there for reaching the summit.
“Mousse” is French for froth or foam or bubbles. The best mousses are light and foamy, melting so quickly on the tongue, you’d wonder if you had dessert at all, except for the lingering smell and taste of rich, dark chocolate.
Traditional French mousses use raw eggs (which I read some of you in the world prefer not to use any more because of salmonella risks??). Influencing the texture, specifically the aeration part, is the order of assembly, and amount of cream.
- Mix yolks with whipped cream
- Fold still-warm but cooled melted chocolate/butter into the egg/cream mix
- Fold in beaten egg whites/sugar.
Another method from Donna Hay – which is the recipe I now use:
- Yolks go in with still-warm melted chocolate/butter
- Then add the whipped cream
- Fold in the beaten egg whites/sugar.
Both those recipes call for cream whipped to soft peaks, but I’ve used others using just thickened cream that hasn’t been whipped, like this one👇.
And then there’s this from Michelin-starred chef Michel Roux Jr with NO CREAM at all:
- Whisk yolks into slightly cooled melted chocolate/butter
- Fold egg whites into chocolate mixture.
Yay, history
The thickened-cream-recipes are more like the hundreds-year old recipes where aeration happened at the end. I like this food historian who traces what we think of as chocolate mousse back to 1768, when it didn’t contain eggs. Then, it was just whisked to a foam after all the ingredients were incorporated. Less than 50 years later, eggs were combined to get that custardy feel.
I also see a lot of recipes using icing/powdered sugar. No, no, no. This tastes fake to me. I much prefer caster (superfine) sugar.
And the most important thing – excellent chocolate!! That, more than anything, will get you to Everest! ❤️
“I mean, she can’t cook at all. She made chocolate mousse. An antler got stuck in my throat.”
– Rodney Dangerfield, Comedian
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