I was tagged on Twitter in a discussion about a chocolate mousse recipe that included Earl Grey tea, because unsurprisingly this is something I’m getting known for. The recipe itself is here, at Food52. Also unsurprising is the fact that I didn’t quite follow the instructions to the letter. First, I had no orange, so I decided to use French Earl Grey, on the basis that I have a lot and that it has a slightly more complex flavour, so the zest wouldn’t be missed. I also made half of the recipe, because it was just me home for the weekend. Perhaps more crucially – and I’m fully accepting blame here – where it calls for a blender, I used my food processor. Now, I don’t have a proper blender. It’s not something I’ve ever missed. I have a stick blender but I don’t think it would do the job required here any better than the food processor.
Using the food processor did mean a bit of splatter when blitzing the chocolate and the Earl Grey water. It wasn’t quite so bad when I added the egg white.
A number of the commenters on the site say they got ‘chocolate soup’. Mine wasn’t quite that bad but it certainly didn’t quite set as mousse-y as one might hope. I don’t know whether that’s the processor vs blender issue, or just the recipe not being great. It was tasty enough – I mean, I ate it; in fact I kinda ate both serves for one dessert… and I got the flavour of the French Earl Grey coming through, too; it wasn’t just chocolate. But I’m not in a hurry to use up chocolate for this recipe in future.
Acts of Kitchen 