Traditional mousse uses whipped, uncooked egg whites to give the mousse its signature, airy texture. This is not a traditional mousse recipe, or at least not exactly.
There are lots of recipes for mousse that use just whipped cream for the airy texture, and they are both easy and taste wonderful. Straight from the refrigerator, they can have a mousse-like solidity to them, but they get squishy and more pudding-like after just a few minutes. Squishy doesn’t work for a cake layer.
Another traditional way to make a mousse uses whipped cream to add air to the mousse but stabalizes the mixture with egg yolks. This involves cooking the yokes to make a kind of thin custard called Creme Anglaise. That’s what this recipe does. For additional stablity, we add gelatin to the mix. Once chilled, it’s thick enough to give a cake with a mousse layer stability while still having a good mouth feel.
If I were making a parfait that used chocolate mousse, I’d probably use one of the easier recipes that just consist of chocolate and heavy cream, but this is the one for a mousse layer in a cake.
Chocolate Mousse
Ingredients
For the Creme Anglaise
- 3 tsp unflavored gelatin powder
- 3 tbps whole milk
- 2 yokes large egg yokes
- 2 tbsp granulated sugar
- 1/2 C whole milk
- 2/3 C Heavy whipping cream
For the Mousse
- 360 grams bittersweet chocolate (12.75 oz)
- 1 3/4 C Heavy whipping cream
- 1 tbsp powdered sugar
- 1 tbsp corn starch (optional)
Instructions
Make the Creme Anglaise
- Dissolve the gelatin in the 2 tbsp of milk and set aside
- place the chopped chocolate (or chocolate chips) in a small bowl and set aside.
- Chill a large mixing bowl and the whisk or beaters for your mixer in the refrigerator while you make the Creme Anglaise
- add the egg yolks and the sugar to a sauce pan and beat until combined
- add the 1/2 C milk and 2/3 C whipping cream to the pan and bring to a simmer over low heat while whisking the mixture. DO NOT BOIL.
- Let the mixture simmer while whisking until it thickens and covers the back of a wooden spoon–about 4 minutes. That's your Creme Anglaise.
- We're going to add the gelatin for extra stability, so remove the egg/milk mixture from heat and whisk in the gelatin. If the gelatin has solidified, melt melt in the microwave for a few seconds. Make sure all of the gelatin disolves in the egg mixture.
Making the Mousse
- While it's still hot, pour the Creme Anglaise/gelatin mixture over the chocolate and cover the bowl with a dish to hold the heat. Wait at least 45 seconds (or longer) for the chocolate to soften. If you're not sure you've completely dissolved the gelatin or if you've (heaven forbid!) partially cooked the eggs, you can strain the mixture as you pour it in.
- Starting in the middle with a whisk, swirl the chocolate and egg/milk/gelatin mixture. At first it will look like chocolate milk, but in no time you'll have a silky ganache.
- Retreive your mixing bowl and whisk from the refrigerator and add the 1.75 C of cold heavy cream to the bowl along with the powdered sugar and corn starch (if using)
- Whip the cream to SOFT peaks. Do not over-mix. Soft peaks means that they form and instantly slump when you pull the whisk from the mixture. At medium-high speed on stand mixer, this shouldn't take more than two minutes and probably less.
- By this time the temperature of the chocolate mixture should have reduced to roughly body temperature. It's ok for it to be warm, but if you let it cool too long or let the gelatin set up, it won't mix properly. If necessary, you can warm it for a few seconds in the microwave. Add one third of the whipped cream to the chocolate mixture and gently fold it in.
- Add the resulting cream/chocolate mixture to the big bowl with the rest of the whipped cream and gently fold it in until no streaks show. Be gentle–don't collapse the air you just whipped into the cream!
- You're not done yet! It will have a pudding-like texture at this point, and it needs to chill at least an hour or, preferably, overnight, in the refrigerator before you can use it on your cake. (If you're not making a cake but, say, a Parfait, then you can spoon it into molds or cups at this point, but the texture won't be mousse-like until it cools.
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