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Perfect Chocolate Mousse?

savvopoulos

Hi there,

In the last few weeks, I have been trying to get a perfect chocolate mousse.

I have gotten very close but one thing is still eluding me.

As you can see in my photo, there's chocolate-y bits. Whatever I do, I never seem to be able to

perfectly incorporate those into the beaten egg whites.

Any tips, please? (my recipe is below)

6 eggs250g dark chocolate / couverture50g butter50g sugarvanilla/cointreau (optional)a lemon

Melt the chocolate in a bain-marie/sous-vide (55ºC).Remove the chocolate and incorporate the butter (which cools down the mix).Separate the eggs (keep 4 yolks and all 6 whites.)Whisk the 6 egg whites with a squeeze of lemon; add the sugar in the end to firm them. You should be able to inverse the bowl without losing the content!Add the yolks to the melted chocolate and mix immediately. The result should be smooth and shiny.Add a part of the egg whites to the chocolate mixture.Incorporate delicately by plunging the spatula and lifting the mixture without breaking the bubbles.Add the chocolate mixture to the rest of the egg whites.Continue incorporating delicately.

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Comments

Matt_67991

Have you tried something like Hervé This' chocolate mousse? It's way easier, and super good. Less aeration, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

savvopoulos

This looks interesting! It's not what I was looking for here (it's probably a completely different result).

That said I'm curious to try it.

For the mousse with the eggs,

what I will try next is to always incorporate the meringue into

the chocolate and never the other way round.

Matt_67991

I'd honestly just look up a bunch of different recipes and try them to see what you like! There are others that fold a sabayon into chocolate, some that use whipped cream, some that use egg whites, and all sorts of other combinations. Chefsteps even has a warm chocolate mousse recipe in their whipping siphons class.

savvopoulos

+1, I really like this style of cooking -- do one thing in all possible variations till you master it!

Pepijn_31744

@ChrisS, I usually prefer a combination of whipped cream and beaten egg whites. I don't use butter or egg yolks. Never had a problem with chunks of chocolate. As @Henri said try a few recipes and see which one you prefer.

BTW I'd say the chunks of chocolate are either caused by not incorporating the egg whites properly (check the CS molten chocolate soufflé for the technique) or the chocolate cooling down too much due to the butter. Phase changes, in this case going from solid to liquid state, take a surprising amount of energy.

Samuel_68313

I wouldn't personally waste too much time looking up chocolate mousse recipes, I did that years ago and it drove me insane, there are basically millions and most are pretty average at best. Years ago I must have tried 15 different recipes for chocolate mousse before finding a decent one.

If anyone wants to see Heston make the mousse @Henri mentioned:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g28-9NVUHj0

savvopoulos

The latest iteration turned out almost perfect ("almost" because I had to take it out of the fridge a bit early.)

@pepijn

Yes, that was exactly the problem. The chocolate-yolk mixture was cooling down too fast.

christopher_12897

you can do mousse by feel if you know what your doing

i like doing egg whites whipped and whipped cream always. creaminess from cream and stability from the whites

ususally temper choco with yolks and vanilla or flavoring and whites with some sugar also

theres kind of a color to look for and a set up to look for

to me theres a pretty perfect balance of richness and air

you can tell how good its going to be in the first 20 minutes of letting it chill

it cant be too loose and or poofey and it cant be to thick and fudgey

tricky part is making sure the chocolate doesnt seize (from heat and cold mixing) and there isnt too much yolk which can make it too much like pudding/fudge

whipping/dissolving sugar is important in both yolks and whites helps keep it from being grainy

its hard to fuck up after you get it wrong a couple of times

savvopoulos

Hi again,

The original recipe above, is still a favorite. A few times I managed to get it perfect, and life was good.

But oftentimes (and I seem to have hit a bad spell the last few times) it ends up being too fudgey and not light, airy and happy.

Do I need to add more of something? (I've experimented with more whites with little success.)

There's 6 ingredients, what happens if you increase some of them?

Am I getting some temperature wrong?

Other things I tried:

* I tried cream of tartar instead of lemon juice. The end result is not "runny" enough and you can immediately tell that it won't end up mousse-y.

* The Thijs water mousse (very interesting, though a bit flat of a flat taste; should be worth to try again with a fancier chocolate.)

* A variation on the above where I make the ganache with doublecream instead of butter; much easier to get the right consistency, but somehow not intense enough; I'd rather not have the milkiness.

* I tried to make it with white chocolate but it was a disaster. The white chocolate was way too sweet, and the butter seemed unnecessary when you already have so much fat.

Obsessively yours

-Chris