There’s an inherent pleasure in having something by heart. Poetry at school. Lines in plays. Song lyrics. The things that stick tend to be those that we had by rote when we were young. We get out of the habit, and our gears don’t move as smoothly.
When I was at pâtisserie school, we were expected to memorise countless different base recipes – crème pâtissière, brioche, pâte brisée, pâte sablé, pâte sucrée – and our termly theory exams required us to regurgitate these formulae. I spent hours learning the ratios and the quantities, the steps and techniques, convinced I would have them down pat for evermore. But, like the Spanish GCSE I took in six months, the Shakespeare quotations I learnt for finals, or instructions to repressurise my boiler, once the critical moment was over, they flew from my head.
That doesn’t stop me trying – it just means that getting something to stick requires true effort now. When you do successfully get recipes by heart, it frees you; you can get on with the pleasurable bit of cooking without constant nervous reference to books. This is just one of the reasons I love chocolate mousse. It is the simplest and most scalable of puddings. For each person, use one egg, 30g of dark chocolate and a teaspoon of sugar. Even I can remember that.
This chocolate mousse has other virtues, too. Recipe writers often pitch their dishes as being speedy, luring you in with promises of meals on the table in 30 minutes, or a five-minute cake baked in a mug. Most take five times longer than advertised. Well, I timed myself making this pudding. Including melting the chocolate and digging about in a cupboard to find a suitable receptacle, it took nine minutes from the very beginning to it being in the fridge. Nine minutes! I can’t think of another pudding I can prepare as quickly – even the most bog-standard crumble is 15 before I shove it in the oven.
There is one potential hurdle – isn’t there always? – in the assembly. If you’re making a classic chocolate mousse which folds whisked egg white into an egg yolk and chocolate emulsion, as we are here, you need to walk the tightrope of thoroughly combining the two without knocking all the air out of the damn thing. Too cautious and you’ll end up with pale little streaks of unincorporated egg white. Too robust and the result is dense, ganache-like – delicious, but not a mousse as we know it.
There are, thankfully, two easy solutions here. First of all, do not whip the egg whites beyond soft peaks. This keeps them pliable, not stiff, and much easier to incorporate. Secondly, once you have melted the chocolate, stir through three tablespoons of very hot water; it might look like the whole thing’s going to seize, but keep stirring and you’ll get a water ganache that is significantly easier to stir into the egg yolks. These two tricks then make that final, crucial folding stage child’s play.
Like all the best puddings, there is no end of ways to tweak or customise the dish to your particular fancies. A scant teaspoon of ground cardamom or a couple of shots of espresso or bourbon or dark rum will transform it. Crumbled halva or shards of honey-comb, finely diced crystallised ginger or smashed amaretti biscuits all bring contrasts of texture as well as flavour. Sometimes it’s hard to see beyond salted caramel – hot, drizzled from the pan, or cold, in big dollops. Hot-pink forced rhubarb, poached for as short a time as possible, is possibly the prettiest accompaniment. If you’re more chic than I am, then the only real answer is a drizzle of really good olive oil and a scattering of flaky salt. I served this iteration with softly whipped cream (truly, always a winner with chocolate mousse) and a generous spoonful of boozy morello cherries.
Including melting the chocolate and digging about for a receptacle, this mousse took nine minutes to make
However you choose to flavour or adorn your mousse, I’m going to insist on one thing: serve it family-style. I used to make mine in little individual ramekins that bumped up against each other in the fridge. But now I find myself reaching for a trifle bowl or a big serving dish. Big puddings are more inviting, they’re more fun; they whisper second helpings, and create a slower end to a meal. Chocolate mousse is a pudding over which everyone should linger.
Serves: 6
Hands-on time: 10 minutes
Chilling time: 4 hours
- 6 medium eggs
- 180g chocolate (at least 70 per cent cocoa)
- 30g dark brown sugar
- ½ tsp salt
- Melt the chocolate in a bain marie or in the microwave. Add three tablespoons of very hot water to the melted chocolate, and stir until it is incorporated – if it looks like the chocolate is seizing, just keep stirring.
- Separate the eggs carefully, and stir the yolks into the chocolate along with the salt. Whisk the egg whites until they reach soft peaks, then swiftly whisk in the sugar.
- Take a third of the whisked egg whites, and stir thoroughly into the chocolate mixture. Then take a second third of the egg whites and fold that gently in too; a large metal spoon or a very large spatula makes this much easier. Fold in the final third in the same manner.
- Spoon the mousse into a large serving bowl, smoothing the surface lightly. Refrigerate for four hours.
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