Sunday is cake’s day, I usually make a cake for the rest of the week. This weekend was the time for a cake with mousses. I am a big sucker for mousses, any type of mousse will do, but of course the chocolate one is on top of my list. So I started trying out different recipes. Usually I go for mousse recipe including raw eggs, but since I didn’t have any fresh eggs, I tried two new recipes.
First, I went for a regular mousse consisting of hwhipped cream (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHYYkZpZGjo&feature=related) and melted chocolate.
The recipe is straight forward : Hwhip some cream, about 300 ml, melt some chocolate (milk, white, dark, extra dark, whatever you prefer) let it cool down for a bit.Then gentely incorporate the chocolate into the hwipped cream. And there you have it, smooth, silky chocolate mousse. 
Second trial – Heston Blumenthal’s mousse. He says he got the idea from a French culinary scientist called Hervé This. I found it slightly hard to belive that you can get a mousse out of chocolate and water, but Heston gave a scientific explanation to go with it. If there is a scientific explanation for it, the geek in me falls for it. 
Therefore, I started my little experiment by melting 270 gr chocolate into 230 ml of water in a mixing bowl. For this recipe you need the best chocolate you can get – I used some dark Lindt chocolate. When the chocolate is melted, put the mixing bowl on top of a pan containing some ice cubes and whisk continuously, just like Heston is showing in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g28-9NVUHj0
By the time I was done with the second mousse, half of it was gone. It is smooth, full of flavour, the taste of the chocolate stays strong – oh yeah it is simply great. At the end I just mixed both of them and got a nice delicious chocolate mousse. And because there was a great sunny day I started playing with different types of presentations:
summer fruit + chocolate mousse
brownie soil + chocolate mousse + edible pansies
Rumor has it – the brownie combination with chocolate mousse and the summer fruits is simply the best, it balances great flavours and tastes :-).
La Bonne Bouche 
You have a beautiful blog! I love your experiments and your photography. Keep it up!
Thank you, thank you, thank you. BTW: did I mention that you are my hero? 😛 I love your blog and all your gorgeous recipes. Thanks for visiting my blog.
I love your detailed description of your mousse experiments. They both look delicious.
Thanks, indeed the mousses were delicious. All gone now…
I am absolutely positive you’ve got your spoons the wrong way round on your photos. However, now I’m convalescing after a nasty bout of tonsilitis, I crave chocolate mousse!
Deanna, maybe a mousse diet will help recovering faster after the tonsilitis :-). Hope you will recover soon. Hehe, in the first picture I have the mousses in the right order, in the second and the third I reversed them just for the sake of contrast….good observation skills
How fun for you. When I get frustrated in the kitchen, I’ll remember this post and remember that I am enjoying learning to cook and how to photograph food. There are so many things that I want to cook!
oh my gosh, that’s just adorable. can’t wait to try. saving to cookmarked.com until then. reminds me of “dirt” that we used to eat as kids. 🙂
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Hi all,
just a quick note.. I was curious to see if milk chocolate would work as well but alas: I tried it and it failed. A very unpleasant texture and it doesn’t really set the way dark choc makes it set.
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How do you the brownie soil? Great blog post btw!!!