Chocolate Liqueur Mousse
This rich chocolate mousse serves 6 easily.
Ingredients
- ¼ cup sugar
- ½ cup water
- 150 to 200 grams dark chocolate
- 2 eggs
- 1-2 tablespoons brandy
- 1-2 tablespoons Tia Maria or Kahlua
- 1 cup cream
- Optional: about ¼ of a sachet of gelatine powder.
Method
Chop, smash or otherwise break your chocolate. I used 1 ½ packs of Lindt 70%, and smashed with a meat mallet. The smaller the pieces the easier it will be later.
Combine the sugar and water, then heat, stirring, until the sugar is dissolved. Bring to the boil, and remove from the heat. If you have any concerns about this setting, stir in the gelatine powder at this point. It’s normally not needed, but can be used for extra insurance.
Put the chocolate and the eggs in a blender. Don’t follow my example – make sure the chocolate is broken into smaller pieces.
Add some of the boiling syrup – about 10%, and give a brief blend at the lowest speed. Then add more syrup, a little at a time, blending between additions. The chocolate needs to melt. Once about ½ the syrup has been added and blended, the mix can be added from the blender to the syrup saucepan, and stirred well to make sure all the chocolate has melted. A little more heat can be used if needed.
Don’t worry if it does not look fabulous at this point!
Add your liqueurs, and taste to check how much you need. Remember the cream will knock back some of the flavour, so a little extra is probably better.
Take the saucepan with the chocolate / syrup / liqueur mix, and allow it to cool. Cooling quickly is easy if you put the pan in a kitchen sink with a couple of inches of water in. Don’t get the water into the pan though!
While the mix is cooling, whip the cream. It should be very stiff.
Once the chocolate mix has cooled, fold the cream into it. A whisk, used gently, can help this, but try not to knock too much air out of the cream. The mix at this stage will be fairly thin.
Pour into serving dishes. In the interests of being retro, I used red wine glasses but anything suitable will do.
Hint: to get a good pour without it making globs of splot everywhere, pour down something – place a spoon on the side of the pan when you pour so that the liquid runs over and down the spoon. No mess!
Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, and it should be nicely set.
And a warning: a 70% chocolate makes this very rich indeed. If unsure, back off the amount of chocolate a little, or use one with a slightly lower cocoa content.
This looks fabulous, but also a bit difficult to get really right.
Would it be good with Irish Cream?
It is a bit difficult to get right. Cheat and use a tiny bit of gelatine.
It is very rich, I’m not sure that Irish Cream is such a good idea.
I have another recipe which combines melted chocolate with egg yolks. You then whisk the whites into a meringue (optional sugar) and fold the chocolate/yolk mix into the whites. It always seems to work okay. I usually ‘feed’ the liqueur of choice into the mousse by making a few cocktail stick sized holes and dripping the booze in.
Ah, smashing chocolate must be the ultimate stress reliever!
…I have a really simple mousse recipe too, that, unofficially has been called ‘Sexual Chocolate’. If I’m feeling generous, I might share it….
This looks totally exquisite. When I try it I will be sure to have a few guests over so I don’t eat it all myself.