Good chocolate mousse is rare. At its best, it is delicate, intensely flavoured, and light on your tongue. At its worst, it’s nothing more than stodgy chocolate pudding from a box. Sometimes, it falls somewhere in between.
Like this recipe for classic chocolate mousse that comes from “The SoNo Baking Company Cookbook,” which I’ve already reviewed. (Follow these links for my posts on SoNo’s raspberry chocolate chip rugelach, and coconut chocolate chip bars).
It wasn’t overly sweet, as promised, because of the bittersweet chocolate. But it lacked the depth of flavour of the chocolate mousse I’ve tasted in France, even after I added the pure vanilla extract that was not listed in the ingredients (which included finely chopped bittersweet chocolate, eggs, sugar, pinch of coarse salt, and heavy cream).
Substitutions: No substitutions, but I added vanilla extract while whipping the mousse as I felt like it needed some extra oomph. In the future, I may add some liqueur or try semisweet chocolate instead.
Would I make this again? Yes, because I whipped it up in mere minutes while tap dancing to Lykke Li songs to keep my baby entertained in his high chair. Also yes because I left the individual portions of the mousse in my fridge for a couple of days and it tasted even better when I pulled it out then.
Grade: Four-and-a-half stars out of five. It may have gotten a perfect score if there were greater depth of flavour, but it scored high marks for being easy to make.