November 21, 2014
Rob
4

Recipe: Chocolate mousse (with pâte à bombe)

Reminder: mousses are airy desserts made of chocolate or fruits, whipped egg yolks or egg whites or both and often whipped cream.

The web is full of chocolate mousse recipes!

Often these recipes involve using raw egg yolks because the average home baker doesn’t have a thermometer at home. Unfortunately this results in a potentially hazardous dessert (since raw eggs have a higher chance of containing dangerous bacteria).

To overcome this problem, though, the pâte à bombe was invented! Yay! 🙂

Recipe-Chocolate-mousse-06

Pâte à bombe is a way to pasteurise eggs (i.e. to kill all bacteria) and make a delicious chocolate mousse totally safe.

Recipe-Chocolate-mousse-04

But that’s not all! Pâte à bombe is the base of many other desserts like parfaits or French buttercream and gives a better structure and stability to the final dessert. And it can also be frozen without any problems!

Recipe-Chocolate-mousse-02

You can make a pâte à bombe in two ways: either by heating the eggs on a bain marie with a sugar syrup until they reach 74°C or by whipping the eggs at high speed and pouring a sugar syrup at around 120°C in it. For this recipe, taken from the book “On baking”, I used the first method, which is also the easiest, I think.

Recipe-Chocolate-mousse-09

Tip: you can adapt this recipe to chocolates of different intensity; for this recipe I used a 70% chocolate. For any 4% variation in cocoa mass, you can increase/decrease the quantity of sugar by 30 grams.

Tip 2: the mousse will taste better the day after it’s prepared; it can be stored refrigerated for 3-4 days.

 

Chocolate mousse (with pâte à bombe)

Print recipe

Ingredients

120gEgg yolks (~6 yolks)
60gGranulated sugar
40Water
200gDark couverture chocolate
400gHeavy cream

Directions

1
Bring the water and sugar to a boil for one minute on medium heat. Remove from the heat and let cool down.
2
Whip the cold cream to soft peaks at high speed, in a chilled bowl if possible. Stopping at the good moment before the cream forms stiff peaks is very important for the final texture of the mousse. Set aside and keep refrigerated.
3
Place the egg yolks with the room temperature sugar syrup in a bowl over a bain marie of simmering water and whisk constantly (the bowl should not touch the water).
4
When the mixture reaches 74°C, remove it from the bain marie and transfer into the bowl of a mixer and finish whipping at high speed for 10-15 minutes until it forms thick ribbons (this is called "pâte à bombe")
5
In the meantime, melt the chocolate over a bain marie
6
Incorporate one fifth of the whipped cream with the melted chocolate
7
Incorporate the whipped egg yolks gently into the cream and chocolate mixture
8
Finally incorporate the remaining whipped cream into the chocolate mixture with an upward movement, making sure not to let deflate the mousse
9
Fill in pots, bowls or glasses/verrines with the chocolate mousse. I like to use a piping bag fitted with a star tip to achieve a clean result.
10
Refrigerate for at least 2 hours and optionally decorate it with chocolate curls obtained with a potato peeler.

Note

  • It is very important that the chocolate be very warm (at 55°C) when you incorporate the cold whipped cream: a lower temperature would make the chocolate set too soon, giving the final mousse a grainy texture.
  • The egg yolks should then be whipped until they come back to room temperature after being removed from the bain marie.

More Posts Like This One