With the prospect of 18 eggs a week on the not-too-distant horizon, we’re scouting around for ways we can make good use of them ourselves. The alternative is to give them away to family and friends, and while we will be doing a fair bit of that we’d like the opportunity to enjoy them ourselves, too.
So last night we made chocolate mousse. Lots of it. What follows will fill eight small or six regular ramekins. The results are rich and decadent and I’d challenge anyone to eat more than one in a single sitting.
Ingredients
300g dark chocolate
6 eggs
15ml rum
(optional: 150g caster sugar)
Method
Break your chocolate into a small bowl. Place this over a pan of hot water until the chocolate has melted, avoiding the temptation to stir it until the very end.
Meanwhile, separate your eggs, putting the whites into a large bowl and the yolks to one side. Use an electric whisk or mixer to fluff up the whites for about 10 minutes until they are full of air and bubbles. The more air you get into your mix at this stage, the lighter and fluffier your mousse will be, so you really can’t expect to do this by hand without your arm dropping off.
Once they are like fine frothy bath foam and can support their own weight as peaks, put them to one side for a moment. Check that your chocolate has melted and stir it into the yolks, along with the rum. If you are using a bitter, unsweetened chocolate with a very high cocoa content, you may also want to add 150g of caster sugar here, but for sweetened chocolate such as Cadbury’s Bourneville it’s unnecessary.
Use your mixer to blend together the yolks, chocolate, and rum (and sugar if you’re using it) and when they’re all well mixed, use a spatula to fold them into the whites. This will be tricky as the consistency or the yolks and whites is very different by this stage, but do try to fold in a figure-8 motion rather that mixing, or you risk losing all of the air from your mixture and ending up with a heavy, dense result.
Once it is well enough mixed that you can’t see any variation in the colour, spoon it into ramekins and put into the fridge for at least three hours.
These mousses are best eaten on the day they are made, but will keep for a few days. Remember, though, that they contain raw egg and so should not be kept for long enough for the eggs to go off. Neither should they be eaten by anyone carrying a baby, or who has been advised to avoid raw egg.
Related posts:
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
YOU CANNOT MAKE A MOUSSE WITHOUT DOUBLE CREAM, YOU IDIOT! AND WHY PUT RUM, WE ARE NOT ALL ALCOHOLICS!
Have you actually tried making this mousse? You don’t need to use cream at all.
As for the rum, well, putting a little bit of alcohol into something doesn’t turn you into an alcoholic. If you don’t want to use the rum, then by all means leave it out. It’s a free world.
First off: Grace – first ever mousse-troll, or just plain idiot? Who can tell?
Second: I can’t stress enough how important the use of extra sugar is when using unsweetened chocolate, as mentioned in the recipe. Unless (like me) you’re a cacao fiend!
Third, and most important: This recipe works like a charm and a big thank-you for posting such a simple mousse recipe.
I personally added a tiny amount of dried chillies to the melting chocolate and garnished with a tiny bit of ginger when serving. If you’re VERY careful and use TINY amounts of both they add a really nice kick to the mousse!