Remember how I said that I found a chocolate mousse recipe for MM? Well, I have yet to perfect that recipe. In the meantime, I’ve found the perfect chocolate mousse recipe for me! 😀
French Chocolate Mousse
Equipment
- 2 Small saucepans
- Metal or glass bowl large enough to sit on top of the saucepan and NOT touch the bottom
- Stand mixer and whisk attachment
- large bowl
Ingredients
- 180 g chocolate 70% cacao or higher, chopped into small pieces
- 100 g heavy cream
- 6 eggs separated
- 60 g baker's sugar
Instructions
- In a small saucepan, heat approximately 1 inch of water to 20-25 °C. Place chocolate into bowl over heated water, making sure the water and bowl do not touch. Cover the bowl with a tea or kitchen towel. Allow to melt, which may take 15-30 minutes.
- In another small saucepan, heat the cream until just starting to bubble. Pour over melted chocolate, then add the egg yolks. Stir to combine thoroughly. Set aside.
- In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, add the egg whites. Whisk egg whites until starting to get foamy. Add sugar a tablespoon at a time, very slowly while continuing to whisk at a high speed until peaks start to foam.
- Pour chocolate into a large bowl, and carefully add about ⅓ of the egg white mixture to the chocolate. Gently fold 3 to 4 times. Continue to add the remaining merengue to the chocolate, folding very gently.
- Divide mousse into 6 serving bowls, and allow to set in the refrigerator for approximately 1 hour.
I still say the one I was making tastes good. I mean, who doesn’t like melted custard? MM is straight up telling me that he prefers the first version to anything else I’ve made. Still, I find myself a bit disappointed with that first recipe I tried, and I’m not sure I trust it fully. How was I going to perfect a mousse that didn’t include any kind of real stabilizing ingredient. It felt like cheating to consider putting cornstarch in it. That meant I needed to find a totally new path.
Enter a random day scrolling through YouTube. I happened to find a legit French baker who had made a simple video for authentic chocolate mousse, complete with a merengue – which I had never made before.
Bonus, no need to bring my fridge up to a ridiculous temperature as I try to cool a streaming hot custard. The longest I had to wait was for the chocolate to melt over a Bain Marie. (I’m not the most patient of people, lets be honest, so I may have turned up the heat a little bit more than I was supposed to… Oops!)
I also used the darkest chocolate I had – 72% – which resulted in a pretty rich chocolate taste. So, so good!
MM continues to prefer the first attempt (which I believe is an Americanized version of French mousse, the more I do research on it), but I’m hoping I can lighten this new version so that he’ll enjoy it a bit more. I’ll want to look up the best way to do that, as a chocolate that is lighter could change the thickness of the mousse. Also, ratios matter in baking, so I don’t think I should add more cream.
So, have any of you experimented with making mousse? What methods do you use? Any other flavors you’d suggest?
