(I Said I Would Make The) Chocolate Mousse
This year I made our family’s traditional holiday chocolate mousse. Usually my mother makes it but she relinquished its preparation by saying, “it is too much trouble and besides you are making pie.” There is an old saying: pain is the first thing you forget. But even though an entire year has passed since my mother last made the mousse, she is still able to recall in vivid detail the anguish of its preparation.
Here’s what you need:
8 egg yolks
12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate
½ cup suagr
2 cups heavy cream
½ cup water
One week before: troll for bowls. Pursue bowls with the same feverish intensity that people who are about to move hunt for empty boxes. You will need a slew of bowls.
The recipe requires a total of 5 simple ingredients. And the upper arm strength of a kangaroo boxer because there is more folding involved in this recipe than in making an origami zoo. And please note: because you just separated eight eggs to get the yolks, you now have the collateral by-product of 8 egg whites collected in a bowl. Counting the other bowl that contains the yolks, you have already used 2 bowls.
Whip the heavy cream and set aside (Bowl #3—and make it a biggie because 2 cups of heavy cream whipped takes up a lot of real estate). Take care not to whip it into butter. This has happened to me before. And just so you know, even if it were possible to reverse the direction of the electric beaters you cannot rewind butter back into heavy cream.
Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. This sounds easy, does it not? It is if you can find your double boiler. You swear it was right here a week ago. Ask the only other person who lives in the house with you if they have seen the double boiler. No, the double boiler has not been seen by this sole co-habitant. This answer is followed by co-habitant’s inquiry of “what’s a double boiler?” which makes you think that a medium-sized stainless steel lipped bowl that perfectly fits over your medium–sized copper bottom cooking pot is attractive and could be used in a number of handy ways. You picture the double boiler in the shed filled with vermiculite or spare car parts. Instead of sending out a search party for your beloved double boiler (which, admittedly, you have a very fickle relationship with because you only love it and use it when you make mousse which has not been for a long time), you cleverly engineer one by balancing a stainless steel bowl (wer’re up to 4 bowls and counting) in the medium-sized cooking pot filled with water. When the water boils, put the chocolate to melt in the carefully balanced bowl.
Beat the egg yolks until creamy. It is about this time that you start to look around your kitchen to see what can be used as a bowl. Pondering this takes your mind off the fact that you have no idea what a creamy egg yolk looks like.
Boil the water and sugar together for 5 minutes at a moderate boil. You are making sugar water!
Add the hot sugar water to egg yolks slowly, beating constantly until cool. Realize that you should have used a larger bowl to capture the egg yolks at the get go because they get right frothy when you start mixing in the hot sugar water. Transfer yolks to Bowl #5 and keep going.
Fold melted chocolate into half of the cream that has been beaten.
But wait. The chocolate is not melting in your cleverly engineered double boiler. It’s just sitting there lumpy. How can this be? The water is boiling—yes, stick you finger in it and burn yourself just to make sure the boiling water is hot. Then stick your finger into the chocolate. It’s not hot. Weird. Maybe the pot is too small. Maybe the pot needs more surface area on the bottom to come in contact with the hot water so it can heat up better. So engineer another double boiler, this time with bigger pots. But no. Chocolate still no melt. As a matter of fact, it is turning into powder. Very weird. And unfortunate. Because it is late. And stores are closed. And you said you’d make the mousse. And chocolate is in the name of the recipe making substituions impossible. Maybe the chocolate is old? Check the bag. No expiration date is printed anywhere. Poke more at the non-melting chocolate. You want answers. Scream inside. Call co-habitant over to look at this odd unexpected phenomenon. Stare together at the chocolate dust. Make a third doule boiler out of a Pyrex bowl (Bowl #6) sitting in a big pot of boiling water. Watch the chocolate closely for any sign of change. Wait—is it glistening on the edges? No. It is still chocolate dust. Why is this happening to you? Chocolate melts in a car. It melts in your pocket. Make a mental list of all the circumstances in which chocolate melts when you don’t want it to. Then watch co-habitant run outside to shed—not to get the double boiler in a fit of recollection of its location but to instead retrieve the stainless steel dog bowl left behind by visiting family this summer who brought their dog, Dolce. Wash Dolce’s bowl (Bowl #7), fill it with the chocolate dust and place the bowl in the boiling water. No melting occurs. Crap. Hey, you know what might work? Pouring boiling water into the chocolate chalk. So that’s what you do. It’s midnight. And you still have a pie to make (that will feature meringue of cartoon proportions thanks to the 8 egg white sitting in Bowl #2). You stare in wide-eyed wonder when as you whip the boiling water into the chocolate powder it starts to look like melted chocolate--the way it should have looked 90 minutes ago. Cautiously you continue to pour boiling water into Dolce’s bowl a wee bit at a time. Yes! It’s a Christmas miracle! Now you can fold the melted chocolate into half of the beaten cream (we are up to eight bowls now).
With that crisis behind you, now you can fold the egg yolk mixutre into the chocolate-plus-half-the-beaten-cream mixture.
Now fold in the other half of the beaten cream.
Keep folding.
Keep folding.
Fold some more.
You should fold a little more until all those streaks of chocolate are gone.
Pour the whole thing into Bowl #9, chill overnight (in order to mitigate any strange retroactive chemical reaction having to do with turning chocolate dust into melted chocolate) and serve.
It’s really good. And worth the trouble to see everybody’s face when you tell them you used a dog bowl to make it.
This year I made our family’s traditional holiday chocolate mousse. Usually my mother makes it but she relinquished its preparation by saying, “it is too much trouble and besides you are making pie.” There is an old saying: pain is the first thing you forget. But even though an entire year has passed since my mother last made the mousse, she is still able to recall in vivid detail the anguish of its preparation.
Here’s what you need:
8 egg yolks
12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate
½ cup suagr
2 cups heavy cream
½ cup water
One week before: troll for bowls. Pursue bowls with the same feverish intensity that people who are about to move hunt for empty boxes. You will need a slew of bowls.
The recipe requires a total of 5 simple ingredients. And the upper arm strength of a kangaroo boxer because there is more folding involved in this recipe than in making an origami zoo. And please note: because you just separated eight eggs to get the yolks, you now have the collateral by-product of 8 egg whites collected in a bowl. Counting the other bowl that contains the yolks, you have already used 2 bowls.
Whip the heavy cream and set aside (Bowl #3—and make it a biggie because 2 cups of heavy cream whipped takes up a lot of real estate). Take care not to whip it into butter. This has happened to me before. And just so you know, even if it were possible to reverse the direction of the electric beaters you cannot rewind butter back into heavy cream.
Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. This sounds easy, does it not? It is if you can find your double boiler. You swear it was right here a week ago. Ask the only other person who lives in the house with you if they have seen the double boiler. No, the double boiler has not been seen by this sole co-habitant. This answer is followed by co-habitant’s inquiry of “what’s a double boiler?” which makes you think that a medium-sized stainless steel lipped bowl that perfectly fits over your medium–sized copper bottom cooking pot is attractive and could be used in a number of handy ways. You picture the double boiler in the shed filled with vermiculite or spare car parts. Instead of sending out a search party for your beloved double boiler (which, admittedly, you have a very fickle relationship with because you only love it and use it when you make mousse which has not been for a long time), you cleverly engineer one by balancing a stainless steel bowl (wer’re up to 4 bowls and counting) in the medium-sized cooking pot filled with water. When the water boils, put the chocolate to melt in the carefully balanced bowl.
Beat the egg yolks until creamy. It is about this time that you start to look around your kitchen to see what can be used as a bowl. Pondering this takes your mind off the fact that you have no idea what a creamy egg yolk looks like.
Boil the water and sugar together for 5 minutes at a moderate boil. You are making sugar water!
Add the hot sugar water to egg yolks slowly, beating constantly until cool. Realize that you should have used a larger bowl to capture the egg yolks at the get go because they get right frothy when you start mixing in the hot sugar water. Transfer yolks to Bowl #5 and keep going.
Fold melted chocolate into half of the cream that has been beaten.
But wait. The chocolate is not melting in your cleverly engineered double boiler. It’s just sitting there lumpy. How can this be? The water is boiling—yes, stick you finger in it and burn yourself just to make sure the boiling water is hot. Then stick your finger into the chocolate. It’s not hot. Weird. Maybe the pot is too small. Maybe the pot needs more surface area on the bottom to come in contact with the hot water so it can heat up better. So engineer another double boiler, this time with bigger pots. But no. Chocolate still no melt. As a matter of fact, it is turning into powder. Very weird. And unfortunate. Because it is late. And stores are closed. And you said you’d make the mousse. And chocolate is in the name of the recipe making substituions impossible. Maybe the chocolate is old? Check the bag. No expiration date is printed anywhere. Poke more at the non-melting chocolate. You want answers. Scream inside. Call co-habitant over to look at this odd unexpected phenomenon. Stare together at the chocolate dust. Make a third doule boiler out of a Pyrex bowl (Bowl #6) sitting in a big pot of boiling water. Watch the chocolate closely for any sign of change. Wait—is it glistening on the edges? No. It is still chocolate dust. Why is this happening to you? Chocolate melts in a car. It melts in your pocket. Make a mental list of all the circumstances in which chocolate melts when you don’t want it to. Then watch co-habitant run outside to shed—not to get the double boiler in a fit of recollection of its location but to instead retrieve the stainless steel dog bowl left behind by visiting family this summer who brought their dog, Dolce. Wash Dolce’s bowl (Bowl #7), fill it with the chocolate dust and place the bowl in the boiling water. No melting occurs. Crap. Hey, you know what might work? Pouring boiling water into the chocolate chalk. So that’s what you do. It’s midnight. And you still have a pie to make (that will feature meringue of cartoon proportions thanks to the 8 egg white sitting in Bowl #2). You stare in wide-eyed wonder when as you whip the boiling water into the chocolate powder it starts to look like melted chocolate--the way it should have looked 90 minutes ago. Cautiously you continue to pour boiling water into Dolce’s bowl a wee bit at a time. Yes! It’s a Christmas miracle! Now you can fold the melted chocolate into half of the beaten cream (we are up to eight bowls now).
With that crisis behind you, now you can fold the egg yolk mixutre into the chocolate-plus-half-the-beaten-cream mixture.
Now fold in the other half of the beaten cream.
Keep folding.
Keep folding.
Fold some more.
You should fold a little more until all those streaks of chocolate are gone.
Pour the whole thing into Bowl #9, chill overnight (in order to mitigate any strange retroactive chemical reaction having to do with turning chocolate dust into melted chocolate) and serve.
It’s really good. And worth the trouble to see everybody’s face when you tell them you used a dog bowl to make it.
