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Chocolate Mousse - stand alone or for Chocolate Cream Pie filling

Mili Takashima
Chocolate Mousse is a delightful dessert that can be enjoyed alone, as a cake filling, or as the filling for chocolate cream pie. It's an easy 3-step process that is about timing and combining the right rations to put three wonderful things together: chocolate, custard and whipped cream.
This is a double-recipe to make enough to fill a cake. You can cut this in half to make a smaller, single batch.
Once made, you can cover with plastic wrap, and seal in a container to refrigerate for up to four days.
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Ingredients
  

custard

  • 1 and 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
  • 8 egg yolks
  • 1/3 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/3 cup corn starch
  • 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

tempered chocolate

  • 2 cups chocolate chips I use two cups dark chocolate and a half cup semi-sweet. You can use any combination you choose. Any chocolate-based chip will work, including milk chocolate.

whipped cream

  • 2 and 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream

Instructions
 

  • If you can manage, have someone help you with the chocolate tempering while you make the custard. Otherwise, you'll have to juggle a little bit. Let's get started.

Custard

  • Take a larger saucepan and warm the 1 and 1/2 cups of of heavy whipping cream and warm at medium heat until scalding. Steam will rise up from the middle and you may have some tiny bubbles around the edge of the milk. Once this happens. Remove it from heat and allow it to cool for 10 minutes.
  • In a mixing bowl, whisk 8 egg yolks, 1/3 cup granulated sugar and 1/3 cup corn starch. Once your scalded milk is done with the 10 minute waiting period, pour that milk into this bowl and whisk all of this together. Next, pour these combined ingredients into the saucepan.
  • Whisk at medium-high heat until a hand-held thermometer reaches 170 degrees. Remove from heat. Whisk in the two teaspoons of pure vanilla extract. Allow to rest for 10 minutes.

Tempered/Melted Chocolate

  • While you are working on scalding the milk, you can heat your chocolate and allow it to cool for 10 minutes as well, so that it will be ready to mix with your prepared custard. Temper the two cups of chocolate in a double broiler. Put a small amount of water (1 inch) in a saucepan and place a glass bowl or metal mixing bowl on top of the saucepan, without the water touching the bottom of the bowl. Put on medium heat. Pour in chocolate. Without having the water come to a boil, melt all of the chocolate chips until smooth. Set aside and allow to cool for 10 minutes.
    An alternative to melting your chocolate with a double-broiler method, is to place the chocolate chips into a glass bowl and heat in the microwave for 30 seconds at a time, mixing as you go, until completely melted.
  • This is what (a half-batch mousse recipe) microwave-melted choclate looks like, just before combining with the custard.
  • This is the cooled/set chocolate custard, ready to mix into the prepared whipped cream. My rule of thumb for cooling is set a timer for 10 minutes.

Whipped Cream goes into the Chocolate Custard to make Chocolate Mousse

  • If your custard and tempered chocolate have both cooled for 10 minutes, you will now combine them, and make chocolate custard.
  • In a standing mixer with a whisk attachment, take 2 and 1/2 cups of cold heavy whipping cream and whisk until it peaks.
  • Whisk this into the chocolate custard and you have Chocolate Mousse. You can plop and spread or use a pastry bag to pipe into a pie. I also use this as cake or cream puff filling or topping.