Hello folks,
Would you like an easy recipe for chocolate mousse that only involves three ingredients? Of course you sodding would; you’d be mad not to.
I’ve been meaning to get round to writing this up for about 11 million years, but I’ve been busy fannying about in central Europe eating suspicious deli meat and peeling garlic. But we’re here now. And by here I mean deliriously waiting for a coach in Split because my poor travel partner has contracted some sort of plague* which means neither of us are sleeping very well due to her having to cough up an alveoli or two every 11 minutes. Anyway. I promised you a chocolate mousse recipe, didn’t I.
The words ‘Chocolate Mousse’ come with overtones of obvious deliciousness, so I don’t need to harp on about how rich and silky and luxurious this pudding is. What I will harp on about though, is that many chocolate mousse recipes leave you with leftover egg yolks, slopping around like weird yellow jellyfish in a bowl in the fridge, but this recipe is not one of them. It uses the whole egg – so no more weird fridge-skin-cold-egg-yolks for you, my friend. This recipe also feeds 6 quite happily and is accidentally gluten-free if that’s a thing you have to be at all worried about.
Speaking of going without things, if you have an electric whisk to whip the egg white with, then lucky you. The first time I made this, I didn’t even have a manual balloon whisk to the whites with – or a bowl in fact. I did it in a saucepan with a fork (it was in a woefully equipped AirBnB; I’m not a masochist usually), so there you have it. Absolutely no excuses for not being able to make this due to lack of equipment. Oh, and it takes like 15 minutes, tops.
So, to make your whole-egg choccy mousse, you’ll need:
- 5 large or 6 medium egg
- 300g of chocolate. I used 200g of milk and 100g dark, but you choose what suits you.
- 50ml of milk, which can be plant-based if you need
Meth-odd.
What you do is separate the eggs, and I don’t just mean put half of them in the living room to watch Pointless while the rest vibe on a spin cycle in the washing machine. I mean separating the yolks from the whites, by any means possible. I do this over the two sides of the shell but you can be a madman and use your fingers to scoop up the yolk from a bowl. Either way, be really careful not to spill yolk in the white because then they won’t whip up properly and you’ll have Chocolate Loose, not Chocolate Mousse.
Once your egg-bits are sufficiently divorced, whip the whites until they form floppy peaks – you’ll get it up to stiff peaks later on so don’t overwhip them now. This will take you 5 minutes with an electric whisk, 10 with a manual balloon whisk or around 6 months with just a fork and a saucepan. Leave them aside for a bit while you fiddle with your chocolate.
What you want to do with the chocolate is to melt it. You can do this either in a bowl over a pan of simmering water, or use my prefered method which is 30 second bursts in the microwave. Whichever method you choose, make sure you stir it well and ensure everything is smooth. Then, once it’s cooled down to a little below body temperature, you can add an egg yolk at a time, stirring after each addition. At this point, you may have your chocolate seize on you – which means it goes grainy and lumpy, but worry not. This is where the milk comes in. Heat the milk in the microwave (or a pan) until it’s just simmering, then add a tablespoon at a time to the chocolate and egg yolks, whisking as you go. This should have the effect of bringing the chocolate back together with the egg yolk and you’ll get a glossy paste. You don’t have to add all of the milk, by the way, just enough until it goes all smooth again. And if you’re lucky enough to have hit on smooth, glossy chocolate first time, then congratulations – you only need 2 ingredients for your chocolate mousse. The reason the milk is in the list at all is that it’s more likely to seize than not, in my experience.
Next, give your egg whites an extra minute’s beating until you get stiff peaks. Then, fold two heaped tablespoons of your whites into the chocolate mixture, then fold that back into the pure whites. (What you’ve just done there is ‘slacken’ the chocolate with the egg whites so everything incorporates more evenly.)
Fold everything together very carefully, doing your best not to let any air pockets escape – not least if you’ve just spent 6 months beating your egg whites. When there are no streaks of white remaining, you can pour the mix evenly into 6 teacups or old Gu pots and let them set in the fridge for a few hours before serving. If you’re making this in a bit of a rush, then let it be known that 45 minutes in the freezer does a grand job, as long as you take them out 15 minutes before you’re due to serve them.
I like to serve this with some shortbread biscuits and a sauce made from a handful of frozen berries zapped in the microwave with a tablespoon of sugar. An alternative suggestion is to use up that half jar of marmalade you’ve left sitting in the fridge: melt it in the microwave for 30 seconds, pour into the bottom of the ramekins, then top with the chocolate mousse. That’s a proper jaffa-cake dinner-party dessert, innit.
*Don’t worry, it’s not that plague.
Student Cuisine for the Gloomy Teen 