Life of Wry

Dining Divas was a French-themed dinner tonight so I’d decided (weeks ago) to make chocolate mousse.. and not just any chocolate mousse: Julia Child’s version. I’m probably only going to make mousse once in my life because I’m not really a mousse eater, so I wanted to make a real one.

Let me preface this by also saying, today’s mousse making had to be extremely efficient and tightly choreographed because I was flying in from Portland and had very little time to make the thing and get it sufficiently chilled before taking off for Madeline’s house. I bought all the ingredients before leaving for Oregon so I was ready to hit the ground running. I had no time to waste. I arrived home and went straight to the kitchen.. no unpacking, no settling in, no nothing. And.. because it’s Julia, the recipe is fussy, and it’s also my first mousse, so: extra pressure (if we can really call it that.. I mean.. it’s just the Dining Divas).

Anyway, that’s the set up.

Quoting myself on Facebook: “So I separate eggs, beat the yolks with sugar, then beat them again over hot water, then beat them again over cold water, then mix them with some melted chocolate and strong coffee, then add butter to that, then beat the egg whites until soft peaks form, then add sugar and beat until the whites are stiff, then delicately fold into the egg yolk thing… then… I look over the counter to make sure I used everything I was supposed to use (so nervously measured earlier because: proportions!), to discover I’d forgotten to add the Kahlua way back at the yolk beating phase. Sh*%#*t!! So… just mixed it in. What the heck. Only Julia knows how they’ll turn out.”

Here are a few pics:

Beating yolks and sugar:

Beating yolks and sugar over hot water (and then again over cold water to cool it down):

Adding chocolate, melted with strong coffee and then some added butter:

Beating and then folding in whipped egg whites:

Pouring into ramekins and chilling:

You already know, from above, that the Kahlua was to have been added during the egg yolk part. I added it just before the ramekin part, which I think, actually, had no effect on the final product. But as they were chilling, I was grabbing a digital copy of the recipe to send to the Divas (sharing recipes is what we do). The one I chose to send was the same, but had some additional (very helpful) detail.

Like, for example, the old recipe listed butter in the ingredients list as “6 oz of butter.” The new recipe added the clarification that 6 oz of butter is 1 1/2 sticks. In my haste, I’d portioned out 6 Tablespoons instead (which is 3/4 of a stick of butter — half of what was required. This resulted in a mousse that was more like thick pudding instead of something dense and creamy.

I decided I couldn’t serve them, so I ended up going to Nugget and buying an assortment of marcarons. I did take one ramekin and let everyone sample it. Tasted good, just wasn’t mousse. The macarons were great, though!

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It was also an extremely dish-intensive dessert to make!