It wasn't so long ago that I suggested a recipe for vegan chickpea chocolate mousse. Yes, but here's the thing, Easter is coming soon, so we can never have too many chocolate recipes in stock. Plus chickpea juice doesn't necessarily appeal to everyone. This time I'm offering you an even simpler recipe but equally impressive. Indeed, this chocolate and tea mousse contains no eggs, no fat, no added sugar. In fact it contains only... chocolate and tea! But then how do you whip the mousse without eggs or an astronomical amount of butter? Well, let's see this together!
I got this recipe from Pascale Weeks' book: the dessert was (almost) perfect. The book as a whole is quite nice (I had told you about the brioche recipe) but I had particularly loved this water chocolate mousse recipe. No eggs, no butter, but how on earth can you manage to make a mousse bubble without these ingredients? I was really puzzled and couldn't wait to try it.
The principle of water chocolate mousse
It is to Hervé This, a reference in the field of molecular cuisine, that we owe this discovery. He realized (after some research anyway!) that you could incorporate air into a water-chocolate preparation just like you do in whipped cream. Except instead of incorporating air into the cream, you incorporate it into the cocoa butter of the chocolate. You simply need to whisk the preparation over an ice bath!
By beating the preparation, the cocoa butter will melt then crystallize (that is, harden as it cools). The air bubbles incorporated will swell and give a mousse-like consistency to the preparation. The texture is really interesting because it's compact but not heavy. Indeed, without the fat from the butter and eggs, the mousse is super light. You only taste the chocolate!
That's why I chose to use tea rather than pure water (because you do feel the water a little). Except I made tea as I usually drink it, that is black but not too strong. And the taste of tea was insufficient to exist in the face of dark chocolate. If you really want to feel the tea, make it very strong. I suggest a spiced tea, I'm sure that would do wonders with the chocolate.
Pascale recommends putting cinnamon in her recipe. I don't really like that, but I would gladly try it with powdered vanilla (it's great for replacing sugar in yogurts).
How to make chocolate and tea mousse at home?
It's child's play! First, melt the chocolate in a double boiler or in the microwave. Choose good dark chocolate but not too strong, because there will be no sugar to balance out the taste. I chose Caribbean at 66% from Valrhona for my part.
Next, steep your preferred tea long enough to make it nice and strong. Add it to the melted chocolate and mix until the preparation is homogeneous (I had always been told that water and chocolate don't mix well, but since the goal here is to break up the chocolate, no problem!).
Last step (yes, it's very very short!), put the tea-chocolate mixture over an ice bath and whisk. I don't have a photo of this step because it was a bit basic at my place, I didn't have the right bowl sizes for proper ice baths...
At first when you whisk nothing happens. And then gradually the whisk starts to leave marks in the chocolate. Finally you feel the preparation hardening then frothing!
The taste of chocolate is powerful: reserved for lovers then. By the way, I advise you to leave it overnight in the cool: the flavors have time to mix and it's divine! I haven't done the calorie comparison but we're clearly in a lighter recipe (and without added sugar) than the classic recipe!
Let me know what you think of this chocolate and tea mousse!
Chocolate and Tea Mousse
