This chocolate mousse is “mmm’, how to tell you: worth a trip to the fridge in the middle of the night, melty, luxious, tasty, addictive, …you get it?
On its own it is quite strong , served with a little nut crumble and fruit mix, it is perfect!
The recipe is very close to the French recipe for little pots of chocolate cream. I intend to serve it like this next time I make it.
It contains both eggs and cream and of course good quality chocolate. The recipe is extracted and adapted from Simply the Best by Valli Little.
Ingredients
55 g caster sugar
2 tbs brandy or liquor of your choice (omit if you want)
125 mL of water (1/2 cup)
200 g dark chocolate
3 eggwhites
185 mL (3/4 cup) thickened cream
Method
Break the chocolate in pieces and place in the food processor, blend into small pieces.
In a small saucepan, heat up the sugar, water and brandy to boiling.
With the blender’s motor running, add the hot liquid to the chocolate and blend until all melted and combined. Stop the blender.
Add at the same time the cream and egg whites. Blend 10 to 15 seconds (max) until just combined. Here you have to trust the recipe as it is so counter-intuitive for a mousse, but trust me it works. If you blend for too long (I did it once), your cream will not set properly.
Pour into a container, cover or close the container and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight.
To serve, warm up spoon with hot water, with the spoon, make a quenelle and place it on a plate.
Ideas for serving:
Instead of placing the cream in one container, divide it in small individual ramequins (small bowls). Serve with a dry biscuits.
This is a great dessert that can be done early and only requires last minute plating. The mousse is shiny and just exquisite!
Serves 6
All the ingredients can be prepared in advance and stored separately.
For the chocolate mousse
Ingredients
55 g caster sugar
2 tbs brandy or liquor of your choice (omit if you want)
125 mL of water (1/2 cup)
200 g dark chocolate
3 eggwhites
185 mL (3/4 cup) thickened cream
Method
Break the chocolate in pieces and place in the food processor, blend into small pieces.
In a small saucepan, heat up the sugar, water and brandy to boiling.
With the blender’s motor running, add the hot liquid to the chocolate and blend until all melted and combined. Stop the blender.
Add at the same time the cream and egg whites. Blend 10 to 15 seconds (max) until just combined. Here you have to trust the recipe as it is so counter-intuitive for a mousse, but trust me it works. If you blend for too long (I did it once), your cream will not set properly.
Pour into a container, cover or close the container and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight.
For the nut crumble
Ingredients:
10 macadamia raw
1 tbsp of brown soft sugar
2 tbsp of plain flour
15 g of soft butter
Method:
Place all the ingredients in a small food processor. Process until crumbly.
Place on a sheet of baking paper on a baking tray
Insert into the oven at 160°C, toast until golden
For the raspberry coulis
Ingredients:
3/4 cup of frozen raspberries
1/4 cup icing sugar
2 tbsp water
Method:
Blend the raspberries, water and sugar until smooth. Adjust the sweetness with more sugar if needed. I prefer not to add much sugar as there will already be some in the nut crumble and chocolate mousse.
To Serve
Use a warm spoon to scoop a clean quenelle of chocolate mousse, place the nut crumble soil, then the coulis.
The avocado chocolate mousse is often loved from vegan people or adept of the raw diet. Most of the recipes use raw cacao powder. This is where it gets confusing for the majority of us. See below for definitions.
A few definitions
In English language the words cacao and cocoa refer to two different products. Just reminding you here that in most Latin languages, the translation for “cocoa” is “cacao”!
Here are the adopted definitions (not by me, by all):
English Word
French word
Definition
Definition (francais)
Cacao
Cacao cru
Powder made from the bean of the cacao pod. The beans have not been roasted.
Cacao cru ou «non torréfié», la poudre resulte du broyage des feves de cacao (pas de fermentation, et torrefaction).
Cocoa
Cacao
Powder resulting from grinding cacao beans which have been roasted. Light brown colour. In Australia, this is the most used form of cocoa powder. In France and possibly some parts of Canada, dutch cocoa is mostly used.
Poudre de cacao naturel ayant subi les procedes de fermentation et torrefaction. De couleur brun pâle. Ce cacao est plus acide et amère que la poudre de cacao alcalinisé. Son goût est par contre plus fruité. C'est la forme principalement utilise en recettes dans les pays anglophones.
Dutch cocoa (e.g. VanHouten, Blooker, Fry's)
Cacao hollandais ou cacao alcalinise
cocoa beans that have been washed with a potassium carbonate solution, to alkalise the pH and to neutralise their acidity. The powder is dark brown in colour.
Poudre de cacao naturel qui a subi une alcalinisation. Le cacao est moins acide et sa couleur plus foncee. En France, c'est le cacao le plus utilise dans les recettes.
Got it?
Ingredients:
2 large ripe avocados
1/2 cup of maple syrup
1 tsp of vanilla extract
1/2 cup of raw cacao
Note: if you prefer using a good quality chocolate, you will need close to 200 g, melted. You will end up with a higher volume of mousse. Note that couverture chocolate will harden, better stick to the 70% Nestle supermarket version. In that case, remove the maple syrup.
Method:
Place everything in the food processor and blend on high speed until processed and smooth. If you think the mousse is too thick, add a little water at the time.
Place in individual ramequins and refrigerate until use.
Note: this mousse can also be used to fill raw chocolate mousse tarts
Raw chocolate mousses, left one using a dark cooking chocolate, right one using cocoa powder (the one using raw cacao is not pictured here, it is similar to the right one, maybe a bit lighter in colour).
A real chocolate mousse is light and airy. The chocolate mousse is made only from eggs and good quality cooking chocolate. There is no sugar, no cream! Chocolate mousses for cakes are different and would include whipped cream. You will find this recipe with small variations on pretty much every French chef website.
Make it at least 4 hours before serving as it needs to set in the fridge. You can make it the day before if you want. You can put the mousse in individual ramequins or serve it as one dish to share.
200 g dark cooking chocolate (I like to use 70% but it may be a bit strong for children, use as a minimum a 50%+ chocolate)
6 large eggs separated
10 cl milk (preferred) or water
Method
Melt the chocolate with the method of your choice. For non-couverture chocolate, I would typically break the tablet in chunks in a bowl, add the milk or water and microwave for 2 minutes on 50 or 70% power depending on the strength of your microwave. It is important that the chocolate does not burn. Once melted, mix until silky smooth. If using couverture chocolate you will want to melt it in a bain Marie (once melted add the milk) and ensure your eggs are at room temperature. The role of the milk is to make it easier to mix in the egg whites.
Add one egg yolk at the time and mix well.
Beat the egg whites to snow quite firm and insert them by folding them into the chocolate slowly.
Transfer to a bowl or individual ramequins, cover with cell wrap and place in the fridge. The mousse will settle in the fridge.
Remove from the fridge 20-30 min before serving (in summer 10 min is enough), serve with a madeleine or other plain biscuit.
The recipe for this flourless raspberry, almond and chocolate cake was created out of a test I did one night some eight years ago. I had completely forgotten about it, until I visited the Orange Grove market a year ago where the same cakes in individual portions are sold.
When I first made this cake, we lived in Bondi Beach. I remember because it became the favourite after diner snack of a Swedish flatmate at the time, when she left, she specifically asked for the recipe (which I gave her).
Now, more important for some of you, this cake has no flour! If you run out of almond meal as happens to me from time to time, you can swap for hazelnut meal, I tried, it works!
Ingredients:
Makes a 20 cm ring cake.
40 g butter
2 tablespoon cocoa powder
100 g dark cooking chocolate
1/2 cup of buttermilk
2 eggs
50 g of caster sugar
75 g of almond meal
1 cup of frozen raspberries
Method:
Preheat oven to 160°C, line the bottom of a 20 cm diameter (or close to 20 cm) circular tin.
Melt the chocolate and butter together.
Add one after the other one, mixing well in between: the sugar, cocoa powder, and buttermilk.
Now, add the egg yolks one at the time keeping the eggwhites in a separate bowl.
Add the almond meal.
Beat the egg white to snow and gently fold in.
Pour the batter in the tin and spread delicately the raspberries on top.
Bake until the centre is settled (no longer wobbly).For the baking the key is to cook slowly to prevent burning.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool down completely before removing the cake from the tin.
Am I the only one being tempted by a good bakery? I don’t think so. Here are a few words and recipes from a few tempting Sydney bakeries.
Today’s post is going to be challenging, first because of computer issues (mine is at the computer doctor) and also because I am missing a few photos because i could not complete a recipe… Not a complete disaster but well….I ran out of eggs ! I was making the first stage of a brioche dough which I will use to make small brioches for school (and me at work :-)) lunchboxes, when I realised the egg-situation. I was short of one egg! How could that be possible? There were two boxes of eggs in the fridge, but, as i found out, almost empty ones. No blame there on households habits! I should have known better, it is towards the end of the week.
I manage for my brioche dough, being one egg short but using some egg-wash from yesterday as a complement, however I did not get to prepare my gluten free raspberry chocolate fondant! You will understand the link in a moment.
Some bakeries I like in Sydney…
What do I like in a bakery? First I would have to like the products, maybe not all, but enough to come back (except if really outpriced!). Second, it is about the people and how the bakery comes through on the social plan.
Do you know that on weekends, you can make great bakeries discoveries when you wonder to some markets like the Paddington market, the Orange Grove market, the Carriage Works market, Pyrmont market (which I have never been to) and so on.
There are quite a number of good bakeries these days: Iggys, Bourke St bakery, Brickfield, Labancz, Grumpy baker, Zumbo, Bondi Organic Republic (thought I have not been there for ages, this is their new name), and plenty more. Let’s chat about Bourke St Bakery, Flour and Stone, and Brickfield Bakery.
Bourke St Bakery
Bourke St Bakery opened quite a while ago, initially in Surry Hills, they quickly became a reference bakery. The products are very good as you will first experience by the size of the queue, then directly trying not to buy too much! There are now a number of other shops, often easier to get to. Their bread is really good!
Bourke St Bakery, Surry Hills
Apart from their amazing bread, Bourke St bakery does a lot of small cakes and viennoiseries. They have a book on pretty much most of their products called “The ultimate baking companion”. I borrowed the book recently at our local library and have been trying a few recipes. I still have not returned the book, I would like to try some of the shortcrust pastries! I found that for a novice to bread making (I am not one of them) the bread recipes are a bit too technical or skipping a few explanation which would be very useful. For the other recipes, the recipes are great, beware of the quantities, they are designed for large volumes! Also beware that they use fresh yeast and not dry yeast. I did get caught on one recipe, I was furious with myself!
Tip: Rule of thumb: Dry yeast x 3 (in grams) = fresh yeast in grams
I tried a bread from that book, it was nice, oups, no photos. Otherwise, from that book:
The Dark Chocolate and Raspberry Muffins (CLICK CLICK FOR RECIPE). They are truly delicious, I highly recommend you do them. They please adults and children!
The chocolate prune brownie (CLICK CLICK !!!). I love the use of the soaked prune in that brownie, but it is very strong in chocolate (too much) and way too sweet for me. That said, I brought it to work, left it on the bench with a little note in the office shared kitchen and I could hear people coming back from the kitchen and their comments of appreciation (most had not even read to the bottom of the very short note to check who baked them!). Of course, there was no left overs. I also recommend respecting the cooking time, if the top seem stable, the bottom may be too gooey, decrease the oven and keep baking! I had to put mine straight back in the oven (the photo was taken when i first got it out).
The croissants and pains au chocolat. They were extra! Since we cannot eat 24 croissants and 24 pains au chocolat upfront, I froze the croissants and pains au chocolat just after making them (uncooked, before the last rising). I take them out the evening before breakfast, egg-wash them and let them on the kitchen bench on the tray i will bake them in, i cover them with a large humidified plastic box and bake in the morning. In terms of aesthetics, it does the trick, but i find they do not taste as good as when not frozen. I am not placing the recipe here, if you want it, contact me.
The rest very soon! I need to do my raspberry chocolate cake before speaking of Flour and Stone and it is getting late for today.
This chocolate prune brownie is a recipe from Bourke St bakery (the Ultimate Baking Companion). the brownie is deliciously moist. if you have a very sweet taste and love very strong chocolate brownie, keep the recipe as such. Otherwise , use half to 2/3 of the sugar and only 200 g of chocolate.
A couple important comments :
Respect the cooking time
You may have to decrease the oven if the brownie starts to darken on the top for the last 1/2 h or so.
Serves 32 (because it is so sweet and so strong in chocolate!)
A recipe from Bourke Street Bakery.
Ingredients
300 g pitted prunes, halved
200 ml brandy, cognac or hot black tea
55 g plain flour
40 g unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
300 g good-quality dark chocolate (55% cocoa)
80 g unsalted butter
300 g caster (superfine) sugar
4 eggs
100 g sour cream
145 g dark chocolate melts (buttons) (55% cocoa)
Method
1. Place the prunes in a bowl and pour over the brandy, cognac or tea. Cover and set aside to soak for 3 days.
2. Preheat the oven to 170°C (325F/Gas 3). Grease a 20 x 30 x 4cm rectangular cake tin and line the base and sides with baking paper.
3. Put the chocolate, butter and sugar into a stainless steel bowl and sit over a saucepan of simmering water – making sure the base of the bowl does not touch the water. Stir for 10 minutes, or until the chocolate has melted. Allow to cool.
4. Sift the flour, cocoa, salt and baking powder into a separate bowl.
5. Transfer chocolate mixture to the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Mix on medium speed and add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
6. Add the flour mixture, mix to combine, then add the sour cream, chocolate melts and prunes with the remaining soaking liquid and mix until just combined.
7. Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and bake in the oven for 1 hour, or until just set. Place your hand on top of the brownie in the centre and wobble to feel if it is set.
8. Allow to cool completely before turning out of the tin. Use a hot knife to cut into squares.
The brownies can be wrapped in plastic wrap and stored for up to 4 days at room temperature.
Happy Easter! Do you need a little something to bring to an Easter party? Try these chocolate truffles, they are easy to make and very delicious!
All you need is a good quality chocolate, cream, butter and cocoa.
This recipe makes about 50 truffles. We made some this week, I brought one box at work and my daughter one box at school for an Show and Tell on “How you celebrate Easter” (just good timing!), they are delicious.
Ingredients:
330 g of dark chocolate 70% cocoa
25 cl (250 ml) of cream
50 g of good quality soft butter (real butter please, no substitute here)
Cocoa for rolling (I like using dutch cocoa)
Method
Cut the chocolate in small pieces with a large knife, place in a bowl.
Boil the cream in a saucepan
Pour the cream on top of the chocolate, cover for one minute then mix well until all the chocolate is melted.
Add the butter, mix well. Place in a shallow container and refrigerate for 2 hours minimum until firm.
When ready to shape the truffles, put a tablespoon of cocoa in a soup plate or large bottom bowl. With a teaspoon, scoop out the equivalent of a macadamia nut (for those who don’t know macadamia, it is between a walnut and an hazelnut). Roll in your hands to form a ball, then place in the cocoa and move the bowl around or roll the truffles with your finger tips.
Transfer to a serving plate or storage container.
This recipe of truffles does not have eggs, it will keep in the fridge for over a week. You may find they disappear before!
Tip: If you are using couverture chocolate, you need to be a bit more careful when doing the ganache to prevent splitting when adding the butter. you may want to melt 2/3 of the chocolate first, then the next 1/3 to the mix. If the ganache splits, warm it up slowly mixing until it comes back together.
Gateau Mozart (Pierre Herme) is a cake for celebration days!
The Gateau Mozart is a Pierre Hermé’s chocolate mousse cake combining chocolate, a subtle cinnamon flavour and cooked apples (in butter!). This recipe is part of Le Larousse du Chocolat. The cake consists of three thin and very friable disks of sweet cinnamon shortcrust pastry with layers of chocolate mousse and cooked apples. The recipe is rather easy, the difficulty is in making the thin circles without breaking them.
In my version, I wanted a cake higher than 4 centimetres, so I doubled the quantity for the mousse and apples (here I am giving the original recipe). I find that that the dough pastry makes 4 circles rather than 3 (one spare one just in case)!
Serves 6-8.
Sweet shortcrust cinnamon pastry
180 g butter, at room temperature and diced
40 g icing sugar
35 g almond meal
8 g ground cinnamon
2 hard-boiled egg yolks, thinly passed through a sieve
1 cl dark rum
Pinch of salt (except if using salted butter)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder (1/2 sachet)
200 g flour
In a bowl place the butter and work it with a spatula, add the icing sugar, the almond meal, ground cinnamon, salt, flour, egg yolks, baking powder and rum. Do not work the dough too much, it is very friable.
Rest for 4 hours cell-wrapped in the fridge.
Roll the dough between 2 sheets of baking paper to 2 mm thick and make 4 disks of 21 cm diameter. Watch out for creases. Place the disks flat in the fridge for half an hour. You may want to take only 1/3 of the dough each time and do one disk at the time. I find that 4 disks can be made.
In the meanwhile, preheat the oven at 180ºC.
Bake each disk for 18-20 minutes then cool down on a cooling rack (bake each disk on the baking paper you rolled it on).
Apple chocolate mousse
100 g Granny Smith apples – I like to double almost double the quantity of apple.
10 g butter
1 g cinnamon
35 g caster sugar
6 cl cream
2 cl of dark rum
1 small cinnamon stick broken
165 g dark chocolate 70% cocoa
120 g egg white
Peel the apples and cut in cubes. Cook in a fry-pan for 3-4 minutes with the butter, 10 g of the sugar and the cinnamon powder.
Add the rum and flambe.
Set aside to cool to room temperature
Bring to the boil the cream with the cinnamon stick, filter. Melt the chocolate in a bain-marie. Mix the cinnamon cream and chocolate together to obtain a ganache.
Beat the whites to snow with the remaining 25 g sugar, incorporate 1/3 to the chocolate, then the rest folding gently, add the apples and fold again gently.
Assemblage
Place one disk at the bottom of a 21 cm springform tin, cover with half of the mousse, now, gently add a second disk, cover with the remaining mousse. Place the third disk.
Refrigerate for a minimum of 30-45 minutes.
Run a knife between the wall of the tin and the cake. Remove the outer circle and base and slide on the serving plate.
You can now decorate the side with broken chocolate curls (or large pieces grated chocolate), you can also decorate the top with a little cocoa powder, cinnamon sticks and sliced apples.
This pear and chocolate tart is a beautiful desert, it is light, fresh and delicious. Nobody at the table will know what that chocolate is hiding! This pear and chocolate tart combines the delicateness of the pears and of melted chocolate. You will need ripe pears, you may want to plan ahead if your grocer only sells hard stone pears.
This desert does not need to be placed in the fridge, except if the weather is very hot, or the chocolate-butter cover will sweat like on the photo here when taken out of the fridge. This results in a photo not quite so perfect unfortunately!
Pear chocolate tart, out of the fridge (due to the heat) and having a sweat. I would not put it in the fridge normally.
As for the level of difficulty, it is easy to medium, you will need to make the pastry, precook it and then cook it again until set. Serves 8
Ingredients:
For the pastry:
50 g of butter softened
100 g of plain flour
some cold water (about 1/4 glass – see recipe)
For the filling:
3 large ripe pear (Williams or Packham variety) cored, peeled and mashed up (use the electric mixer)
2 tablespoons of flour
4 eggs
60 g caster sugar
50 ml of cream
For the chocolate cover:
70 g dark cooking chocolate
40 g butter
Method
Prepare the pastry: in a bowl rub the soft butter and the flour together until all of the butter sticks to the flour. Add water little at the time to obtain an homogenized ball. Rest for at least half an hour at room temperature.Tip: if your butter is hard (from the fridge), cut the butter in small cubes and let to soften on top of the flour.
Tip: you can prepare the pastry ahead of time, wrap it and place in the fridge. Remove from the fridge 1/2 h to an hour before using.
Preheat oven to 180 º Celsius. Using a rolling pin, roll the pastry on a pastry mat or sheet of baking paper. Transfer to the dish and trim the edges. With a fork, make small holes at the bottom of the tart to prevent the formation of bubbles during the blind bake.
Bake for 15-20 min or until light brown. Remove from he oven.
Prepare the mix by adding to the pear puree, the eggs, sugar, cream and flour. Mix well. Place in the tart leaving 0.5 cm height at the top. Put back into the oven and cook until set. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.
Melt the butter and chocolate and spread over the top of the tart. Leave aside and allow the chocolate topping to set.
This pear of chocolate flan is a crowd pleaser. I made it for morning teas at the office in the past and for desserts: children and adults love it.
In terms of difficulty level, it goes in the super easy basket. I get my children involved in the preparation. Today, I lost them when it came to put the pieces of pear in the mix, they were too busy leaking off the remaining chocolate from the wooden spoon and empty bowl.
Ingredients
150 g of dark cooking chocolate
90 g of white sugar
50 g of plain flour
4 eggs
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/4 L milk
a nut of butter for the dish
2 pears
Method
Pre-heat oven at 180°C
Butter a roasting dish (capacity of about 1 litre)
Melt the chocolate.
Add in the sugar, then the egg one at the time.
Add the flour then the cinnamon and milk.
Place the mix in the roasting dish, peel and cut the pears. You can cut in thin slices or in cubes. Place over the chocolate (they will mostly sink in).
This hazelnut chocolate cake is soft, rich in chocolate and will get you going for more. This recipe contains mascarpone and hazelnuts. I love the taste of the roasted hazelnuts in it.
This recipe is from Frank Camorra and was published in Good Food. The cake is beautiful. In terms of difficulty, it goes into the easy basket.
Ingredients
150 g hazelnuts, toasted and skinned -see tip
100 g ground almonds
100 g dried breadcrumbs -see tip
300 g good cooking chocolate
165 g butter, softened
150 g caster sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
150 g mascarpone cheese
Tip on toasted and skinned hazelnuts: Place the hazelnuts on a single level under the grill, shake from time to time. When toasted, place the hazelnut into a tea-towel, close the towel and rub the fabric and nuts. The skins will peel off.
Tip on making your own bread crumbs: toast a few pieces of bread until quite coloured but not burned. Use the rolling pin and roll over the tasted bread. Toast again if necessary. You will not manage to get the whole slice into crumbs. Repeat the process until you have the quantity sought. To make the crumbs finer, whiz in a little food processor.
Method
Preheat the oven to 160°C and line a 24 centimetre spring-form pan with baking paper.
Whiz the hazelnuts in a food processor until they are finely and evenly ground, then add the ground almonds and breadcrumbs and pulse the processor a few times to mix. Remove from the processor and reserve in a bowl.
Break up the chocolate into a heatproof bowl, place over a pot of simmering water (the bowl should not touch the water) and stir until melted. With a whisk or in the food processor, whiz the butter and sugar until well mixed, then add the eggs.
Add the vanilla, ground nuts, chocolate and mascarpone and mix together well.
Pour into the spring-form pan and bake for about 40-45 minutes (the surface of the cake usually cracks in a ring).
Cool slightly before serving. You can, once cold enough, dust with icing sugar.
Serving suggestions:
Top with roasted strawberries and some sauce and/or add a dollop of creme fraiche or whipped cream.
