Spicy Chocolate Mousse for Valentine’s or any other day

I was inspired this morning when I read Susan’s Chocolate Mousse recipe at her blog Diamonds for Dessert. I had never made mousse with just chocolate and water before and I was intrigued. I had the essential ingredients so why not whip a quick batch for dessert?

Simply the recipe is 265 g of semi sweet chocolate, 240 ml (1 cup) of water, and optional tablespoon of sugar which I did not add, and spice if you so desired. Also, you will need three bowls. One for the chocolate mixture and one filled with ice and water, and another to chill over the ice water bath. It seemed like a pretty fool proof recipe. I like spicy chocolate. So I decided to add 1/2 teaspoon of chipotle chili powder and 1/2 teaspoon of adobe chili powder along with 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon. That’s what I do when I make hot chocolate so it seemed the perfect amount for this quantity of mousse.

Now. Measure out your ingredients. Chop you chocolate into small enough pieces so that it will melt quickly. Add the water, chocolate and spices along with the sugar if you decide to add it to a small sauce pan. Stir it together until the chocolate has completely melted. Once it has melted, pour the chocolate into the bowl over the ice bath bowl. To quote Susan: “Take your whisk and start mixing until the mixture starts thickening and resembling softly whipped cream.

Continue whisking until it thickens more and can be scooped up by the whisk. At this stage it is very easy to over-whip the mousse, so watch the texture carefully or else it will end up grainy.” (please note Susan had a video to view for this, find it at her blog)

Well, this is where I ran into problems. It never got fluffy. It turned into ganache. Yep, sweet, wonderful ganache. I put it all in the fridge to ponder my next move. After we returned from lunch, I decided the only way we could it this mixture as a mousse was to whip some cream and add it to the ganache. I needed to melt the ganache in order to add the whipped cream, however. So I add some very hot water to a bowl, placed another bowl over it and stirred it until it was creamy again. It took about 5 minutes of intermittent stirring.

While I waited for the ganache to warm I put some heavy cream in the mixing bowl and whipped it up. I did add a bit of sugar to the cream to sweeten it. And a splash of vanilla. Once the cream was whipped the ganache was ready to go. I reserved enough cream for a dollop on the top of the mousse for decoration, then added the ganache to the cream. Begin folding carefully the ganache over the cream and about 25 turns of a silicon spatula should mix it together without losing a lot of the air. Spoon the mousse into bowls. Add your whipped cream to the top and chill. Voila! Spicy chocolate mousse for dessert, albeit different from Susan’s version, still very good!