Chocolate mousse is not a dessert for the faint of heart or waistline. It involves copious amounts of chocolate, butter and raw eggs and has about a billion calories and grams of fat per serving. It is also impossibly creamy, melting in your mouth chocolately goodness. If you are going to splurge on a chocolate dessert, let this one be it.
A few weeks ago we had some friends over for dinner, friends who have been exceedingly kind in helping us move in the past, so I wanted to do something special for dessert (aka not something on the healthy dessert week list). The idea of chocolate mousse had been floating around in my head for some time so I decided to give it a go. I started searching for recipes online and found they seemed to fall into two general categories: those with whipped cream and those without. I was already leaning toward a cream-less recipe as I was worried about it weeping or separating when I came across David Liebowitz's version of Julia Child's classic recipe. After seeing Julia's kitchen in the American History Museum when my dad visited a few weeks ago, I felt I could not go wrong with one of her recipes.
I was right. The mousse was just what I had hoped for. Intensely chocolate yet not heavy which was nothing short of a miracle considering the amount of butter it contains. It was the perfect ending to the meal and since I made a full recipe for the four of us, Zach and I got to enjoy the leftovers for a few nights too.
David's version of the mousse recipe is so clear and I made so few changes to it (besides substituting orange rum in for dark rum as that's what I had on hand) that I'll leave you to him if you'd like to make it with two suggestions:
1) Ghiradelli makes very high quality chocolate chips that are much less expensive than comparable chocolate in bar form. Since the quality of the chocolate is very important in this recipe, you might want to think about chips as an alternative.
2) You can melt the chocolate and butter in the microwave instead of on a double boiler to save a little time and trouble.
3 comments:
I'm sad I can't see the picture (not sure if it's my computer or not...) but this mousse sounds awesome! I've never made mousse before either and always thought about it, maybe eventually!
Looks delicious, Jen! And the recipe seems like just the perfect one (honestly, I don't mind raw eggs :)
I love David Liebovitz's recipes! His ice cream book is the best. I have not tried a chocolate mousse in a long, long time so I may have to give this a try.
Post a Comment