I may have reached a point of maximum chocolate in my chocolate mousse pie
I've been making a wonderful chocolate mousse pie for several years now, and I've been wanting to elevate the level of chocolate taste in it. The problem is that you can't just add more chocolate chips to it or you muck up the ratios and risk epic fail. The recipe uses 5 ounces of dark chocolate melted in a double broiler with a few ounces of heavy cream, to which I add chili powder and vanilla extract. While that's cooling I beat egg whites that are very ill behaved and deserve it, then I whip more heavy cream and everything gets folded together and poured in to an Oreo chocolate pie crust.
I had an idea for increasing the chocolate level: add cocoa powder! The sensible place to add it would be in the initial chocolate melt, so I added it to the heavy cream that's whipped in the third stage as the melted chocolate was cooling. I was immediately struck by a heavy paranoid vibe: I only had enough heavy cream for one pie, and I'd just added a tablespoon of cocoa powder to the cream. Can't exactly take it out: what if it doesn't whip? Well, my fears were unfounded and it whipped immediately, in fact, much faster than it normally does. However, it didn't really increase much in volume. When it came to folding the three parts together, the final total volume didn't fill the pie shell as much as it normally does.
Now, that's not much of a problem as I've always wanted a slightly denser mousse pie. The original recipe called for three egg whites to be whipped, I changed that to two to increase the density in exchange for a slight loss of volume. Still not quite where I wanted it, but one egg white was non-viable.
My next trial may be along these lines. Add one tablespoon cocoa powder to the melt. Increase the amount of heavy cream to be whipped, add one TBS cocoa powder to it. If it doesn't whip immediately, add another. And add a third egg white to the whip. See what kind of volume and density that produces. Also, I lost the chili kick, so I need to increase the chili powder amount slightly.
The end goal is somewhat complex. There's a local diner that was the only restaurant open until 9:00, now there's a second. They have a chocolate mousse pie available for dessert, and one day I tried it. It has a whipped cream topping that was appalling and best discarded, which I do. The mousse itself wasn't that impressive and didn't have nearly enough chocolate flavor. But it had one amazing thing going for it: underneath the mousse was a flourless chocolate cake! And that cake was very good. I've had better, but all thing considered, it was good.
So now I need to work on a flourless chocolate cake recipe, which is not an easy thing. First off, it's a different cooking process, involving a spring pan (which we have) and a water bath, which I've never worked with. It's an EIGHT EGG recipe! And it calls for coffee, which we don't drink at home, or coffee liquor, which we have a bottle of Kahlua, so OK there. Second, baking at 9,000' is not easy. But since it's flourless and doesn't use baking soda or powder, it's not going to rise, so that shouldn't be a worry.
Should be an interesting experiment! The mousse I'm not too worried about, the cake could be a challenge. I have a recipe from America's Test Kitchen, which is always an excellent place to start.
If you're interested in the mousse pie recipe, click on the recipe tag link and scroll down a little. This is the original with my alterations, not including what is discussed above, and it is good.
This entry was originally posted at https://thewayne.dreamwidth.org/1034271.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
I had an idea for increasing the chocolate level: add cocoa powder! The sensible place to add it would be in the initial chocolate melt, so I added it to the heavy cream that's whipped in the third stage as the melted chocolate was cooling. I was immediately struck by a heavy paranoid vibe: I only had enough heavy cream for one pie, and I'd just added a tablespoon of cocoa powder to the cream. Can't exactly take it out: what if it doesn't whip? Well, my fears were unfounded and it whipped immediately, in fact, much faster than it normally does. However, it didn't really increase much in volume. When it came to folding the three parts together, the final total volume didn't fill the pie shell as much as it normally does.
Now, that's not much of a problem as I've always wanted a slightly denser mousse pie. The original recipe called for three egg whites to be whipped, I changed that to two to increase the density in exchange for a slight loss of volume. Still not quite where I wanted it, but one egg white was non-viable.
My next trial may be along these lines. Add one tablespoon cocoa powder to the melt. Increase the amount of heavy cream to be whipped, add one TBS cocoa powder to it. If it doesn't whip immediately, add another. And add a third egg white to the whip. See what kind of volume and density that produces. Also, I lost the chili kick, so I need to increase the chili powder amount slightly.
The end goal is somewhat complex. There's a local diner that was the only restaurant open until 9:00, now there's a second. They have a chocolate mousse pie available for dessert, and one day I tried it. It has a whipped cream topping that was appalling and best discarded, which I do. The mousse itself wasn't that impressive and didn't have nearly enough chocolate flavor. But it had one amazing thing going for it: underneath the mousse was a flourless chocolate cake! And that cake was very good. I've had better, but all thing considered, it was good.
So now I need to work on a flourless chocolate cake recipe, which is not an easy thing. First off, it's a different cooking process, involving a spring pan (which we have) and a water bath, which I've never worked with. It's an EIGHT EGG recipe! And it calls for coffee, which we don't drink at home, or coffee liquor, which we have a bottle of Kahlua, so OK there. Second, baking at 9,000' is not easy. But since it's flourless and doesn't use baking soda or powder, it's not going to rise, so that shouldn't be a worry.
Should be an interesting experiment! The mousse I'm not too worried about, the cake could be a challenge. I have a recipe from America's Test Kitchen, which is always an excellent place to start.
If you're interested in the mousse pie recipe, click on the recipe tag link and scroll down a little. This is the original with my alterations, not including what is discussed above, and it is good.
This entry was originally posted at https://thewayne.dreamwidth.org/1034271.html. Please comment there using OpenID.