Best Chocolate Mousse Recipe

Hey, I'm John Kanell. And today on Preppy Kitchen, we're making a dreamy and decadent chocolate mousse. So let's get started. First off, you wanna grab seven ounces of semi-sweet chocolate, and we're gonna give this a nice chop. One goes away for nibbling. We're gonna use the rest. Chocolate is, of course, the star ingredient of this recipe, so we do wanna use a nice chocolate that you really enjoy. Could you use chocolate chips for this? Yes. Could you use a better chocolate? Also yes. Chocolate bars also don't have the emulsifiers and stabilizers that some of the chocolate chips can have, so they melt more easily and have a beautiful texture. Okay, chop this finely. You just don't wanna have any large pieces that won't melt once everything else is melted. Once all your chocolate is nicely chopped, you can set this aside and grab a large bowl. Into the large bowl, we're gonna add three large egg yolks. The whites will go into the other bowl. This is like the part I always mess up. So, there's also little tools you can buy, but I find your clean hands are the best way to separate egg yolks from whites. If I'd been following best practices. Using best practices, we want three eggs separated, so into a small bowl, we will separate the whites and the yolks, and once you're sure the yolk has not broken, transfer it to a bowl, and the whites go into a separate bowl. Repeat this process two more times, and you'll have no issues if anything goes wrong. Two and two and three. We're gonna fluff the egg whites up, which will give us a lovely lightness, and the yolks are gonna get mixed with sugar for some rich custardy deliciousness. Three and three. It's so easy when you follow best practices. Nothing can go wrong. To the yolks, we're gonna add a third of a cup of sugar. That's 66 grams. Granulated, please. Using a large whisk, we're gonna whisk this up until it's light and velvety. Just like in the olden times, we'll do this by hand. Nice. It's thickened, it's velvety, and it's a light pastel color. Set both of these aside. Grab a small saucepan, and we're gonna add one and a quarter cups of heavy cream right inside. This needs to get warm and scalded. Pop this onto medium heat. You want it to be just steaming. It'll be about four minutes. Depending on your stove, it might be much faster than four minutes. This one is so hot. It'll be like a minute or less. Once it's steaming, we can take this off of heat. One more whisk. And you're gonna whisk this in while adding gradually, so just mix, mix, mix. Mix, mix, mix. And honestly, it's okay if it all goes in at the same time. So we're gonna stir this together until it's fully melted, which happens very quickly. Smooth as silk. Look at that. So this is nice and hot. My yolks are raw. Now, while whisking vigorously, you're gonna drizzle the melted chocolate in. It's really just the first bit where you have to be careful. Once you have a good amount of chocolate in, you're fairly safe. We don't want a concentration of proteins hitting that hot stuff. That would be bad. This is nice and smooth. No curdles. It's silky and perfect. We can set this aside while we deal with the mix-ins. I wanna have some meringue basically folded into here and some whipped cream. So one at a time, let's make that happen. This mixture is dangerously warm still, so set this aside for about 30 minutes until it's just warm to the touch. With a little bit of cleaning up in between and slow rolling your mixing, it'll be fine once the two mix-ins are ready. Just give it a stir occasionally. By the way, if you like my videos, hit that subscribe button. There's two new recipes every single week. Back to those egg whites. We're gonna froth these up on high for three to five minutes. You could use your stand mixer with a whisk or just do it with a hand mixer. These egg whites will inject a ton of volume into the mousse to lighten it up so it really just dissolves on your tongue in a chocolate cloud. You wanna beat these until you have nice, stiff peaks. If you check right now, the peaks are soft. They're flopping over. Not stiff yet. But we're getting close. I often have recipes that call for either just fluffed egg whites or a French meringue, which is a raw egg white that's been beaten up with sugar. If you don't like the idea of this, you can pasteurize your eggs really easily. I think there's instructions on the blog on how to pasteurize your eggs. Let's search it up. And it can be done in a few minutes. This looks nice and stiff. You can see that peak is not flopping over. It's good to go. We paused for a few minutes, so this is nice and cool already. Grab about a third of the egg white mixture. So beautiful. It's a literal cloud. And we're gonna fold that in until we only have a few streaks left over. These are sacrificial egg whites. Most of them are getting crushed so the air bubbles are going away. But a few remain and those will lighten our mixture up. Now we can grab the remaining egg whites, plop those in, and fold. You don't have to be super precious and fold these so carefully. You can use your spatula to break up the meringue a bit and then keep mixing. You'll notice the color changes and becomes lighter and the volume is of course increased as well. Okay, that looks nice. Set that aside. Back to our egg white bowl. We're gonna grab the remaining one cup of heavy cream and add it right in. And mix this up until you have nice, luscious peaks. It's a good idea to start on low, work your way up to high, and then just keep an eye on this. You don't wanna walk away, which is not an option if you're using a hand mixer. But if you're using a stand mixer, it's easy to get distracted to look at your phone or something. Then you look back at your whipped cream and it's turned to butter. Not great. I want these to be nice and stiff, but not curdled. So right on the edge. Okay. This is getting very close, so be careful not to over whip. In fact, you know what? Back to basics. The whipped cream is adding extra richness, but it's also lightening this up. And it just changes the way it dissolves on your tongue. It'll be so pleasant. There we go. Perfectly stiff, not curdled. Back to our chocolate mixture. Let's dump this all in and get to folding. And right now, this is a soupy mess. That will not change once you're done. It'll change with time in the refrigerator, because this needs just to settle down, cool down, and set. Fold that in. All right, as you fold in, you'll notice some annoying little blurps of cream and egg white. And you could fold forever. So even though every recipe will tell you to fold, and whisking is not folding, once you've done a lot of it, you can just give this a nice gentle whisk. And that'll break up the remaining little bits of egg white and cream. And you won't be here all day in the kitchen. Nobody wants to do that. That's frustrating. Gentle little whisks. And you can just take a look and see how beautiful that texture is now. It's velvety and homogenous. And today, we're making a classic, simple, elegant chocolate mousse. You could add so many flavors here. You could add a dash of the juice from Luxardo cherries. You could add a little bit of brandy or bourbon. Like, the list goes on for different flavors that you could add in here. And it'll be just that much more delicious. So make this recipe your own, and let me know in the comments what you're choosing to add in. This is ready to ladle into your containers. You can have a choice. You can do a little tiny lowball, a ramekin, or a cute little coupe like this. I'll do a combination of both, and you can see how easy they are to fill. You can transfer this mixture into a large pouring container or just ladle things in carefully. I will see how careful I can be, knowing as I am notoriously messy. There we go. These aren't baking. They're just chilling, so you can fill them up as high or low as you want. I always garnish mine with some whipped cream at the end, so I like to leave some room for the whipped cream. Once your containers are all filled, we're gonna pop this into the fridge for at least four hours to set or up to two days. If you're making this a couple days in advance, just loosely cover so this doesn't form a skin. Hmm, pray for me as I put this in with one hand. Once your chocolate mousse is set up, it is ready to enjoy, but how could you enjoy this without a little bit of a garnish? A beautiful and very large dollop of whipped cream right on top makes all the difference. And then for a little bit of contrast and some added richness, why not some shaped chocolate as well? Just grab a vegetable peeler. If your hands are warm, just use a spatula so that it doesn't melt the chocolate and sprinkle some right on top. And just like that, your chocolate mousse is ready to enjoy. It is a chocolate cloud in edible form. It straddles the line between being rich and decadent and so light it could float into your mouth. It's amazing and so easy to make. I hope you get a chance to make this delicious recipe and if you like my videos, hit that subscribe button and check out my chocolate playlist.