It’s Friday! Hoorah! I think we all deserve a bit of a treat don’t you? Today then I’m going to show you how to make a quick and easy chocolate mousse. (That’s the theory anyway).
Although I am no Nigella in the kitchen, Belle is really keen on baking, so I was happy to sign up for the Anchor cooking challenge. We were given vouchers for cream, butter and squirty cream, and keen to rise to the fat-laden challenge I looked for a recipe that involved all three!
I found this easy chocolate mousse recipe in Nigella Express. So, here’s what you need:
- 150 grams mini marshmallows. (We could only find normal size marshmallows so we just chopped them up a bit.)
- 50 grams butter (soft)
- 250 grams dark chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa solids) chopped into small pieces. (We used Dairy Milk as it was on offer in Sainsbury’s – three bars for a pound. Bargain!)
- 60 ml water (hot)
- 284 ml double cream
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Squirty cream and chocolate shavings for decoration. (We added this bit ourselves. Nigella doesn’t make a lot of use of squirty cream in her recipes as a rule.)
Method
- Put the marshmallows, butter, chocolate and water in a heavy-based saucepan. Pop any leftovers in your mouth for safe keeping.
- Put the saucepan on the hob, over heat, though keep it fairly gentle, to melt the contents, stirring every now and again. Remove from the heat.
- Meanwhile, whip the cream with the vanilla extract until thick, and then fold into the cooling chocolate mixture until you have a smooth, cohesive mixture.
This is where it all started to go wrong. When Nigella says ‘remove from heat’, what I think she really means is ‘leave to cool for ages’. We didn’t do this. When we added our cream to our chocolate mixture, the cream just melted. It became less a mousse and more of a drink. Still we persevered, hoping that if they spent a bit of time in the fridge they might mousse up a little bit.
- Pour or scrape into 4 glasses or ramekins, about 175ml each in capacity, or 6 smaller (125ml) ones, and chill until you want to eat. Instead of ramekins, we used our new Anchor silicone cup cake moulds, which I think makes them look very pretty indeed. However, this amount of mixture was more than enough to fill all 12 cup cake moulds, so Nigella must be serving big portions.
We popped them in the fridge and hoped for the best…
*an hour later*
…Success! Sort of. Our chocolate mousses (or should that be chocolate mice?) were definitely a lot firmer, so much so that Belle could finish them off with a squirt of Anchor. I don’t think you could call them mousse though. They were fairly thick and sticky. If I was a chain pub I would probably call them ‘Indulgent chocolate pots’ and charge £4.95 for them.
Warning: I have done a rough calculation and there is approximately one million calories per serving.
This is a sponsored post – I’m working with Anchor to promote their brand new rewards club. Pay them a visit now to find out how you can get some of their kitchenware as well as prizes.
One million calories? I’ll have two then please :) this looks marvellous and I bet my girls would love it too