Cheat's chocolate mousse

Easy peasy chocolate mousse

While I do like to occasionally slog it out in the kitchen when it comes to certain recipes and dishes, for the most part of it, I like my desserts to be simple and as less time consuming as possible. I'd rather spend that extra time gobbling up another portion rather than slaving away for it. Most of my cravings come unannounced and come with a sense of urgency that only quick fix recipes can fix and here's one such recipe. This time's craving was dark chocolate mousse and even without the craving I wouldn't go through the traditional route of a mousse under normal circumstances and that's when my bookmarked Nigella's recipe came out. I am a big Nigella fan and her show is one of the first cookery shows I started watching and this has been on my to do list for a while now. This truly is an instant mousse recipe and so intensely rich and delicious that your mousse cravings will be well and truly satiated, as was mine. The trick here is mini marshmallows and it gives you the airy mousse like texture without slogging over the dish for hours.


I have halved the recipe and tweaked it a little to suit me. This recipe makes about 6 shot glasses worth of mousse, so if you have more mouths to feed, double the recipe.

Cheat's chocolate mousse/Instant chocolate mousse

Recipe courtesy: Nigella Lawson

Ingredients:

• 140 ml chilled double cream (Do not use the Amul cream you get in tetra packs, you need cream with high fat content. I use fresh full fat cream or the brand Milky Mist, it is the closest you'll get to double cream at supermarkets)
• 100 grams mini marshmallows. If you are using regular sized ones, chop them into tiny pieces to enable faster melting.
• 25 grams butter (softened)
• 130 grams dark chocolate buttons (Please use a really good quality chocolate, at least 70 per cent cocoa solids. I used Callebaut Dark Bittersweet 70%. You could use the same quality of chocolate in a slab form, but chop it into small pieces before melting)
• 30 ml hot water
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract or the seeds from one vanilla pod (split it and scrape out the seeds and use that)

Method:

• Place a bowl and your whisk in the freezer for about ten minutes or twenty minutes in the fridge before you proceed to step 2. 
• Place the mini marshmallows, chocolate, butter and hot water in a heavy-bottomed saucepan on low heat and keep stirring occasionally till everything melts. (Yes you can add water to chocolate, it doesn't seize though I was paranoid about trying this step since we've been told otherwise). Once it comes together as a cohesive chocolatey mixture, set aside to cool a little.
• Take your bowl out of the freezer/fridge and pour the chilled cream and the vanilla extract into it. Take the chilled whisk and beat till you get stiff peaks or till it is fairly thick.
• Fold the chocolate and marshmallow mixture into the cream gently, till just combined.
• Scoop into serving containers, sprinkle chocolate chips or any other topping you fancy and chill for about 20 minutes or longer, and dig in. 

Note: 

• This mousse is fairly bitter and dark, so add in some sugar while melting the chocolate and marshmallows after tasting the melted mixture if you like a sweeter mousse.
• If dark chocolate isn't your thing, you can substitute it with milk chocolate as well, no hard fast rules on that. it's up to your preference.

So until next time, go ahead, Get, Set, Bake!