I don't care how 'sixties' it is, most of our friends go berserk for a serious chocolate mousse and many is the conversation that has gone "....and if you'll come over and assemble the new flat-pack furniture for me I'll make you a chocolate mousse". – It's absolutely top bribing material.
The standard recipe for chocolate mousse involves an egg per person and an ounce of chocolate per egg. All sorts of things can then be added, from alcohol to orange zest, but the two things that are of most importance are decent quality chocolate and air. I also tend to up the chocolate content, but then I'm like that. I'm a woman.
Accordingly...for you and five people who will shortly owe you favours:
Ingredients:
- 6 large eggs – not absolutely fresh, as the whites will whisk better if they're a few days old.
- 10oz plain chocolate, the higher the cocoa solids content the better, try for 70%.
- 3 oz caster sugar
- 1oz very strong coffee
- ½ pt double cream for topping the mousse (optional) but beaten with 2oz caster sugar and a teaspoon of real vanilla extract.
Method:
Melt the chocolate in a microwave or in a bowl over boiling water, but do it enough in advance so that the chocolate has cooled considerably before making the mousse. If you pour hot chocolate onto eggs it will seize and be almost impossible to mix.
Separate the eggs into two mixing bowls. First, beat the egg whites to a meringue, add half the caster sugar and beat again until thick and glossy. A good trick, once the egg whites have started foaming, is to hold the bowl and the whisk almost sideways, so that more air plays over the beaters – this will increase the volume quite considerably. Or use a hand whisk and a copper bowl if you are a shot-putter.
Then whisk the egg yolks and add the second half of the sugar, continuing to beat until very pale and thick.
Mix the two together gently and add the strong coffee. I use the coffee to knock off the sweetness of the sugar, but I find that adding the sugar helps with the volume of the eggs, so it's worth doing – you won't get a strong coffee flavour in the mousse. If you really don't like it, however, leave it out.
Once the two egg mixtures and the coffee have been combined, pour on the cooled but still-liquid chocolate and mix in gently.
Pour into a dish and refrigerate to set.
If you want, you can mask the mousse with lightly-sweetened, vanilla-scented double cream.
To the basic recipe above you can also add the zest of a couple of oranges, a sloosh of alcohol, you can scatter toasted, flaked almonds over the top of it – anything you fancy, really, but my own preference is for leaving anything extraneous out of it.
Think Homer Simpson: "Mmmmm...chocolate......".
