I had some extra heavy cream in the refrigerator and started thinking about how I could use it up. So I was mulling it over and looking for ideas online. I'm craving chocolate. What else is new. So I figured how about chocolate mousse - plenty of chocolate and it's eaten cold, which is very nice since it's been very hot around here lately, with some days hitting the 100 degree mark. Oh, and I can put a nice big dollop of cold whipped cream on top.
I found a recipe from Dorie Greenspan that caught my eye. It's dubbed "Top-Secret Chocolate Mousse" or what appears to be the French ladies' (I'm sure it could be French gentleman's too) "secret" chocolate mousse recipe. Sounds interesting, right? Do you remember when I made a French yogurt cake and mentioned I'd read that it's one of only a few sweets a French household will make since there are so many amazing patisseries to shop from? Apparently, Dorie says the two other desserts they will make at home are mousse and rice pudding. And it took her a while to finally get this "secret" recipe for their delicious chocolate mousse and as it turns out, it comes from the back of a Nestlé chocolate bar! Well, it sounds very interesting but the thing that really grabbed my attention was that it takes less than five ingredients to whip this up. I was game; let's try it!
The good news is the chocolate mousse turned out utterly delicious. It is smooth, silky, and light, with a serious chocolate flavor that is balanced out by the whipped cream topping. As my husband said, it's rich but light at the same time. It turned out much better than I thought it would when I was making it. In fact, I wasn't sure I was doing it right (did I mention I never made mousse before?). I'll get into the details later but suffice it to say that when I was adding the egg yolks to the chocolate, the mixture became very thick. I just kept plowing along and I'm glad I didn't give up because the final product tasted awesome.
A word of warning though. This mousse contains raw eggs. In fact, the eggs and chocolate are the two essential ingredients. In many other recipes, you'll see whipped cream (rather than egg whites) being used to lighten the mousse. It's also a bit of an unusual recipe with no butter here at all. I think this is part of the reason why the chocolate mixture became so thick when the egg yolks were added. I'm not totally sure if that was supposed to happen and I have a couple of ideas to mitigate this next time but I'm very happy with the end result.
A word of warning though. This mousse contains raw eggs. In fact, the eggs and chocolate are the two essential ingredients. In many other recipes, you'll see whipped cream (rather than egg whites) being used to lighten the mousse. It's also a bit of an unusual recipe with no butter here at all. I think this is part of the reason why the chocolate mixture became so thick when the egg yolks were added. I'm not totally sure if that was supposed to happen and I have a couple of ideas to mitigate this next time but I'm very happy with the end result.
