Categories: dessert, not tried

Ingredients

• 3.5 oz vanilla sugar
• 5 oz water
• 6 egg yolks
• 17 oz dark chocolate, finely chopped (I like to use a blend of bittersweet & semisweet)
• pinch of instant coffee
• a dash or two of ground cinnamon
• 1 pint heavy cream

Directions

1. First things first, get your chocolate melting. In a heatproof bowl combine the chocolate along with instant coffee & cinnamon. (Those are optional flavors, but I, personally, feel they help to round out the flavor of the chocolate a bit more and make it all the more chocolate-y.) Find a pot that will allow the bowl to sit in it without touching the bottom. Fill the pot up with about an inch of water. Bring the water to a boil, turn off the heat and place your bowl of chocolate on top.

2. Now, take your yolks and put them in the bowl of a mixer. Use your whisk attachment. Put it all together, turn it on and turn it all the way up.

3. Finally, combine the water and the sugar together. Bring it to a boil (there shouldn’t be any sugar crystals left). Turn off the heat and turn the mixer down to medium. Slowly drizzle in the hot syrup between the whisk and the side of the bowl. Once it’s all in there, turn up the speed a little and then stir your chocolate. At this point, it should blend together and be fully melted…just make sure you have no lumps.

4. If you’re really talented and know you won’t make a mess, you can just go and add the melted chocolate to the running mixer. If you’re unsure, feel free to turn off the mixer, and adjust so that you have easier access to the bowl. Get all of the chocolate in and either use the mixer to whisk it all together or you can even just fold it all in by hand with a spatula. Empty the base mixture in a new bowl, making sure the sides are scraped down of any rogue bits of mousse base. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Let the base cool down to room temperature. Use this time to wash your whisk and bowl and then put them in the fridge or freezer (or if you’re lucky enough to have 2 bowls and 2 whisks, put 1 of each into the freezer…also, I’m jealous). It’s also wise to know what you’re going to do with your mousse. If you want it as a layer in a cake or pie or tart, make sure that’s ready to go. You can also find some dishes to put it all in. Basically, when it comes to mousse, you NEED to know what you’re doing with it because once you put your whipped cream in, it needs to set.

5. Alright, so now your base is cooled. Take out your chilled bowl and whisk. Get your mixer set up and then pour in your heavy cream (to the bowl, obviously). Whip until you’ve got whipped cream. This is one of those times where you don’t want really soft whipped cream. It should be fairly stiff. Also, the amount of cream is totally up to you. For this recipe, I ended up using exactly 1 pint of heavy cream. You can add more if you like or add less. It’s totally up to you. So just whip your cream, fold some into the mousse base and taste until you get the desired flavor/consistency that you want.

6. Once that’s all done spoon into your desired serving vessel. Then chill. I’d say at least an hour. Serve with anything you like…to add a little contrast, try and add something crunchy (banana chips, crumbled dry macaron shells, etc.) Any leftovers you can pop into the freezer…it won’t be ice cream…but it’ll still be delicious.

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