Water Mousse

My newborn son seems to have a dairy protein intolerance, which means that I have to cut all dairy out of my diet until he grows out of it! This is a scary prospect for someone who is a strict proponent of real butter, never shortening, in my baking (not to mention a huge cheese fan), but it's also an opportunity to experiment.

Our go-to mousse recipe has been Albert's Mousse, from (what else?) Alice Medrich's Bittersweet. (If you are new to this blog, this is my chocolate bible.) Now, Albert is the author's dairy-intolerant brother, so already this mousse is done in the classic French style of nothing but dark chocolate, sugar, eggs, and water, so it would be fine (and trust me, it is more than fine).

But a few months ago, I was led to this recipe using nothing but chocolate and water. We definitely wanted to try this!

It's as easy as it sounds - boil water, melt chocolate, whip. We used Valor mint-flavored 70% bars that we bought at Whole Foods. Note that there is no added sugar in this recipe, so whatever chocolate you use is what you get!

Unfortunately, I overwhipped it (using an electric beater because we don't have a whisk right now). My advice to avoid this: At first, it will seem like nothing is happening, so, like me, you'll probably turn your beater up to high. That's fine, but as soon as it does start to thicken turn it back down to med or low. Then, the instant that it looks like "thick whipped cream," stop! I kept going maybe another 20 seconds, and while it tastes lovely, the texture was not at all mousse-like. It crumbles like wet, clay-y dirt, but was smooth and soft in your mouth. Definitely not unpleasant, but not mousse.

You can see, this texture is not as pictured on the recipe page:





The end result was tasty enough, though, that I think this solves a problem for me. I've been wondering what could possibly be a dairy-free substitute for ganache, particularly in truffles. Taste and texture wise, I think this would be excellent! The only question is how to assemble them - I don't think that this form would pipe well, and I think it would be too delicate too roll into balls. And unlike ganache, I don't think you can pipe this while it's more liquid and let it set up - it depends on the whipping for stiffness. But I'm sure I can come up with something. And the end result would be surprisingly delicious vegan truffles!

UPDATE: We tried it again, this time with a bar of 70% Ghirardelli. We stopped mixing much sooner, but to our surprise it kept firming up after we stopped! The difference was that we could get it into the pretty glasses while it was still shaped like mousse instead of having to scoop lumps into the glasses. :) This is good news, though, as it means that piping it into molds for truffles while it's still soft should work beautifully!

Moser Roth 70%

We were surprised to find nice chocolate at discount grocer Aldi, of all places. They actually have two "store brands" - Moser Roth and Choceur. Moser Roth is definitely the better of the two, and is made in Germany.

The 70% has a lot going for it, though not everyone will like it. The flavors are very subtle, none of the obvious fruitiness that a lot of better dark chocolates have. Because of that, some people will probably find it bland. I quite liked it, though - it's not as bitter as many 70%s while also not being sweeter than you'd expect, and the predominant flavor seems to be pure cocoa. It's nice and crisp, a lovely texture.

After just eating it, we also tried baking with it. We tried making a flourless chocolate cake using this recipe, and the massive amounts of butter and egg just totally overpowered the subtle flavor of the chocolate. The recipe needs something bolder and a bit lower-percentage, while the chocolate needs to be used only in recipes that really let it shine rather than burying it. Perhaps in Alice Medrich's "Albert's Mousse" from Bittersweet.

Overall, at $1.30 for a 4.4-oz bar, this is a great deal for good 70% chocolate. It's clearly not as good as bars that cost 4 times that, but it's at least as good as many that cost twice that. There is also an 85% available, milk chocolate with toffee, and a few other varieties.