Chocolate Mousse

For her birthday, my friend requested a chocolate cake filled with chocolate mousse. I had never made chocolate mousse before so I was excited to try it out. I watched a couple of videos on youtube and found a recipe with good reviews and actually got it right on the first time. So it's pretty easy. It's basically a fluffy chocolate pudding. Here's the recipe I used. It has egg yolks in it so I recommend buying fresh eggs even if you already have eggs from last week in the fridge.

Heavenly Chocolate Mousse
By Christy Freeman

8 oz. semisweet chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup water, divided
2 TBS butter
3 egg yolks
2 TBS sugar
1 1/4 cup whipping cream, whipped

• In a microwave or double broiler, heat chocolate, 1/4 cup water, and butter until the chocolate and butter are melted. Cool for 10 minutes.
• In a small saucepan, whisk egg yolks, sugar, and remaining water. Cook and stir over low heat until mixture reaches 160 degrees F, about 1-2 minutes.
• Remove from heat and whisk in chocolate mixture.
• Set saucepan in ice and stir until cool, about 5-10 minutes.
• Fold in whipped cream.
• Spoon into dessert dishes and refrigerate 4 hours or overnight.

I like this recipe because the egg yolks are heated to kill off bacteria. Which was probably negated when I added the whipped egg whites. I didn't want to waste perfectly good egg whites so I whipped them to the soft peak stage and added a TBS of sugar even though the recipe didn't call for them. I folded them in like the whipped cream and it gave the mousse a little more volume. If you want your mousse a little denser then don't bother with the egg whites. To whip the cream, it helps if the bowl is chilled so just stick it in the freezer for a few minutes. I also didn't bother to cool the mixture in an ice bath since that sounded like too much work. I just let it cool on its own while I whipped the cream and egg whites.

Here's the link to the recipe:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Heavenly-Chocolate-Mousse/Detail.aspx

And here's a video demonstrating how to make mousse in general:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqDa7sdEcGs

Categories: chocolate cake