We had a simple pasta dinner for Valentine’s Day with a tomato sauce enriched by mushroom duxelles and creme fraiche over farfalle with a cloud of parmesan on top and some creamed spinach on the side.

The absence of a nice red wine to accompany our dinner necessitated another turn to dessert, which obviously had to be something chocolatey. After the previous success of the chocolate-avocado mousse, I decided to try my hand at the old molecular gastronomic trick of making a mousse out of chocolate and water.

The idea is simple – you melt some chocolate in water and then whisk it into a mousse while cooling the mixture in an ice bath.

 

 

Unfortunately (much like the layout of this post), there were a couple of problems with the dessert. I was so intrigued with how the watery chocolate whisked up into a mousse that I overwhipped the mixture, and it set up with too firm a texture. So I whisked in some more water, which seemed to work fine, but once we tasted the desserts, it was clear that I had added too much water and the balance was off. I still have a couple of ramekins of the mousse left so I’m going to add their contents to some melted chocolate and see if I can improve matters. Whatever happens, at some point I’ll try this idea again using a more cautious touch in just bringing the mixture up to the right texture.