Julia Child’s Chocolate Mousse
Adapted from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking via David Lebovitz Notes: I used Guittard Chocolate, 64% cacao. Lebovitz used Green and Black, 72% cacao. I mention this because I cut the sugar to ½ cup because I was worried ⅔ cup sugar might be too sweet — I made one chocolate mousse last week that was way too sweet. Also, the Bouchon recipe, which I loved, only called for 1 tablespoon of sugar in the whole recipe. Anyway, ½ cup of sugar was a perfect amount of sugar for me, but if you are using a darker chocolate, you might want to stick with the ⅔ cup sugar amount. What I love about this recipe is that there isn't any whipped cream. One recipe I tried this week tasted too much like chocolate-flavored whipped cream. This one has body with a nice lightness thanks to the whipped egg whites. The key, I think, to making this recipe successfully is getting those egg yolks to that pale yellow ribbon stage — see DL's photo for guidance. If you don't get that consistency in the yolks, the finished mousse will not have that nice chew.