2011 Cooking Club Week 25: Simple Chocolate Mousse in Chocolate Cups

Toto Wolfcastle

Putting this up a day early as I wont be around tomorrow.

This mousse looks nice in the chocolate cups but obviously you could put it in little coffee cups or glasses or ramekins or whatever you have. If you use small dishes or chocolate cups you will get about 4. If you use bigger dishes or ramekins you will get 2-3. A small serving is nice for a bit of a cool chocolate hit.

Because there are raw eggs in the mousse you should obviously stay away from it if you are not supposed to eat raw eggs.

If you are going to make the chocolate cups make them first.

Chocolate Cups:

Ingredients:

(Makes 4 cups)

80g chocolate, milk, dark or white
4 silicone or foil cupcake cases



Method:

Melt the chocolate. For the cups I just do this in the microwave on a medium heat for a minute at a time. Keep an eye on it so that it doesn't burn.

Make sure that the cases are clean and dry. I use silicone cases that Mammy Bobblehead Panda bought for me in Dunnes.

Spoon a couple of teaspoons of melted chocolate into the cases.



Swirl the chocolate around to cover the entire case.



Use the back of the teaspoon to make sure the the inside of the case is completely covered.



Stick the cases into the fridge to set for about ten minutes. Remove them and add another layer of chocolate. You'll probably find that the bottom is thick enough so just make sure that the sides get an extra layer. It's better to use the teaspoon here rather than swirling the chocolate. Stick them back into the fridge for at least an hour or until you need them.

Remove the cups from the cases. If they are too thin they will break as soon as you try to remove them. If this happens just stop and add an extra layer of chocolate.

To remove them separate the top of the case from the chocolate a little bit at a time, working your way around the case so that the case comes away from the chocolate easily when you pull at it.



Hold onto two sides of the silicone case and gently pull it down so that the chocolate cup pops out. To help it along you can gently push up from the bottom.





Keep the cups in the fridge until you are ready to use them.

Lemsiper

cool, will try this one!

Toto Wolfcastle

Chocolate Mousse

Ingredients:

85g chocolate, dark, milk or white
1-2 tablespoons water or Tia Maria or rum or any other flavouring that you want to add (If it's very strong or if you use essence/extract just use 1)
10g unsalted butter at room temperature
3 large eggs, separated



Make sure that you use chocolate that you actually like to eat. There is no point in using 70% if you don't like it. There is no added sugar in this recipe so you will really taste the chocolate. The most important thing is that the chocolate melts well. I wouldn't use Dairy Milk or Bournville, for example, in this recipe. You want a nice runny chocolate when it's melted. I've used Divine, Lindt and M&S but there are loads of different types of chocolate available in supermarkets to suit your taste. I use 70% because I like the taste.

Make sure that the butter is at room temperature because cold butter will cause the chocolate to seize. If you have your butter out and at room temperature and someone decides that it should be thrown out because it hasn't been in the fridge (:mad:) then just soften it in the microwave. It's only a tiny bit of butter so it might melt a bit but don't worry about that. It will still work.

I've used medium eggs rather than large in the past and it has been fine so if you only have medium don't worry about it. Make sure the eggs are very fresh.

Method:

Put the chocolate and the alcohol/flavouring/water in a bowl and put it over a pot of hot water. Don't allow the bowl to touch the water. You don't want the chocolate to get too hot so just bring the water to a simmer, turn the hob off and put the bowl on the pot to allow it to melt slowly.

Do not stir the chocolate at any point during the melting process.

When the chocolate has melted remove the bowl from the pot. Do not stir! Add the butter. Now you can stir it gently until the ingredients are just incorporated. (In this photo clearly I have stirred it before I put the butter in. It was fine but it's better if you don't do that.)



Let it sit for a minute or two to cool it down a bit.

Add the egg yolks one at a time and stir them in gently. Again you want them to be just incorporated so don't go overboard with the stirring.



Beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks.



Stir a spoon of egg whites into the mix to loosen it up.

Fold the rest of the egg whites in a bit at a time. Be patient here, they will fold in eventually. You want to keep as much air in as possible.



Spoon the mixture into your chocolate cups/ramekins/whatever you want to use.



Leave in the fridge for at least 6 hours. I would actually recommend leaving them in over night to that the mousse is well set.

When you are ready to eat them it's nice to eat a bit of chocolate cup with a spoon of mousse.

Variations:

I don't like fruit that much but I'd say they'd be nice with a few raspberries at the bottom of the dish before you spoon the mousse in. You could also put a little bit of orange zest in for a chocolate and orange mousse.

Mine are still in the fridge setting but I will take a photo of the finished mousse when it's ready.

Faith

Out of curiosity, why can't you stir the chocolate? What will it do?

I'm not a big fan of mousse, but I love the idea of the chocolate cups! I'll definitely be trying them.

Toto Wolfcastle

The chocolate tends to seize a bit if you stir it with just the liquid. The butter helps keep it loose. It just makes it so much easier to fold the egg whites in.

The cups are great. They can be used for any dessert that needs to be in a dish.

Little Alex

Made these last night and they were pretty good!

The one at the front is chocolate mousse and the other one is peanut butter:

Toto Wolfcastle

Wow they look brilliant!

Tayla

Bobblehead Panda, those look gorgeous, I'm going to try them at the weekend. The little cups are so cute, great idea.

I couldn't get the cups right, and I think the chocolate "seized" as it looks nowhere near as runny as the pic with the egg whites

edit: So I went back and reheated the mix after adding in the egg yolks, then added in the remainder of the egg whites. Came out a lot better then. Setting in the fridge now but it looks right!

Star Lord

Only seeing these now! They look great!

Only question: Why add water? The water is what causes the chocolate to seize. In general, water should be kept away from chocolate, to the extent that even if you're adding flavourings, you should avoid using any that have water in them, and stick to the oil/essence type ones (though lots of these are even made with water.) Rum or other alcohols are fine to add in small quantities, they won't have the same effect.

toadfly

Def trying this with some Orange flavour. Thanks!