Rich, Creamy Chocolate Mousse for Your Valentine

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This is the richest, creamiest, most luscious chocolate mousse I have ever eaten. You might want to make this for a special someone, or just for yourself. Or tuck the recipe away for the next time you need an elegant desert when effort spent and calories ingested are not at the forefront of your concerns.

The main ingredients are chocolate, eggs, cream, and sugar. You can use chocolate chips or break up some bars of baking chocolate. Just remember that better-quality chocolate makes better mousse. You can use heavy cream or whipping cream, but I’d advise against trying to use half-and-half. Then you’ll need some coffee, a liqueur or spirits, and vanilla. You can play with the spirits by using rum, or bourbon, or orange or coffee liqueur according to what you have on hand and what flavors you think you’ll enjoy. I used rum but wished I had an orange liqueur (and that sent me looking for a do-it-yourself recipe for imitation Triple Sec or Cointreau, but more on that some other time.)

The original recipe that this is a riff on says that it makes eight servings but I think it is so groaningly rich that you can easily satisfy up to twelve. Halve it for more modest sized gatherings.

In assembling the mousse, I managed to dirty up every third pan and bowl in the house. Lots of bowl, beater, and spoon licking ensued. It was wonderful.

Rich, Creamy Chocolate Mousse
Serves: 8-12
 
Ingredients
  • 1 ½ pounds of semi-sweet chocolate (bits or bars)
  • ½ cup brewed coffee
  • ½ cup rum or orange or coffee liqueur
  • 5 eggs separated
  • 1 cup cream
  • ¼ cup granulated sugar
Instructions
  1. Melt the chocolate in a heavy saucepan over a low heat, stirring gently.
  2. Stir in the coffee then the rum or liqueur. Let cool.
  3. Beat the egg yolks one at a time into chocolate mixture.
  4. In a bowl, beat the cup of cream until it is foamy, then gradually add the sugar; beat until the whipped cream is stiff.
  5. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until they are stiff. Then fold the whites into the beaten cream.
  6. Add about a third of the cream and egg white mixture to the chocolate mixture and stir together to lighten the chocolate.
  7. Add the rest of the cream and egg whites to the chocolate, folding them together gently.
  8. Spoon into individual dishes or put into a presentation bowl. Refrigerate.
  9. To serve, you may wish to beat another cup of cream with a teaspoon of vanilla added until stiff and top each serving with it.

 

Sandy Oliver

About Sandy Oliver

Sandy Oliver Sandy is a freelance food writer with the column Taste Buds appearing weekly since 2006 in the Bangor Daily News, and regular columns in Maine Boats, Homes, and Harbors magazine and The Working Waterfront. Besides freelance food writing, she is a pioneering food historian beginning her work in 1971 at Mystic Seaport Museum, where she developed a fireplace cooking program in an 1830s house. After moving to Maine in 1988, Sandy wrote, Saltwater Foodways: New Englanders and Their Foods at Sea and Ashore in the 19th Century published in 1995. She is the author of The Food of Colonial and Federal America published in fall of 2005, and Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving History and Recipes from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie which she co-authored with Kathleen Curtin. She often speaks to historical organizations and food professional groups around the country, organizes historical dinners, and conducts classes and workshops in food history and in sustainable gardening and cooking. Sandy lives on Islesboro, an island in Penobscot where she gardens, preserves, cooks and teaches sustainable lifeways.