In this ask Barry episode, I get asked to try a 2 ingredient chocolate mousse, that you could argue is really just one ingredient. This involves using high quality dark chocolate and water. Sounds like a fail waiting to happen, see how I get on…. I also try out milk and white chocolate too!
Now first things first before you ask, this is not going to work with milk or white chocolate – I tried that in the video and life update: they never set.
So for this it is simple, but you literally have to eat it almost immediately. You have a few minutes where the texture is just right and mousse like – sort of airy and a pudding sort of consistency. It then seizes and goes to what I thought was mousse on my first attempt pretty quickly.
Boil your kettle with enough water and leave to stand whilst you chop the chocolate finely. Keep the water in the kettle to keep it warm. Add the water to the chocolate and mix together until the water has melted the chocolate. Make sure the water is nice and hot, just under boiling, with the chocolate cut nice and fine and you will be ok. It’ll turn into a chocoalate ganache type consistency pretty quickly!
Set the bowl into a larger bowl filled with some ice and water, keep mixing and you’ll see the texture change fairly quickly leaving trails in the chocolate. It is at this stage you have to work out when the consistency is right. Take it out the ice bath before too long or it’ll cool it too quick. Mix on your counter until still smooth but pudding like in texture – then serve immediately!!
I highly recommend setting up a ban marie (pan with a small amount of water simmering) and sticking the bowl on top for a minute then removing from the heat without the ice bath, as you see in the video this brought a really nice consistency to the mousse! But again, serve almost immediately!
Mix this up with some flavourings / extracts and play with it. It will get you out of jail if you want mousse in a hurry – but you also need to eat it in a hurry!