Vegan chocolate mousse

This recipe is what you might call a basic. If in the omnivorous version, it can happen to break eggs and only use the yolks and want to recycle them, it’s still a lot rarer than opening a can of chickpeas or white or red beans.
This “recycling” recipe is very practical and quick to prepare, but there are, as always, a few subtleties of use that I’m going to remind you of here, to easily and simply make a vegan chocolate mousse worthy of this name.

What to prepare vegan chocolate mousse with?

For years, there have been plenty of chocolate mousse recipes made with silken tofu. I still don’t really understand how you can call it mousse, when it’s cream. It’s very dense, not at all light, in short, nothing to call it foam!

A few years ago, a discovery was made: the cooking juices of legumes have the capacity to abound like egg whites.
It was a real culinary revolution that gave birth to a whole bunch of recipes, but the best known is obviously that of chocolate mousse without eggs.

If the chickpea juice tenderly named “aquafaba” quickly imposed itself, I think it’s partly because it has a discreet egg flavor (we also use a lot of pea flour chickpeas in vegan quiches or omelettes). However, we can recover the precious cooking juice from more or less all the legumes, the problem being that the concentration is the right one.
It is for this reason that I am talking about juice from jars and boxes rather than homemade preparations; except in rare cases, we come across the right texture, which allows for an optimal protein concentration.

Chocolate to make a mousse

You can make mousse with just about any chocolate, but obviously the better the quality of the chocolate, the easier it will be.
You are going to say to me “but what does it have, the best quality chocolate that my dessert chocolate bar from the supermarket does not have? “. Well, a better level of cocoa butter, which gives it a fluidity that makes it easier to work with, but also a different texture for the mousse once finished.

You can also make this mousse with all colors of chocolate, but the result will vary. Generally, less white and milk chocolate is used than dark chocolate.

How to prepare your vegan chocolate mousse?

To begin with, you have to be patient to beat the “whites in snow” compared to the omnivorous version: it takes longer to get something tight.
If I told you about reducing the aquafaba for the meringues by evaporating it in a saucepan, I never do it for my mousses, which I find already firm enough like that.

I whip up my chickpea juice in my KitchenAid, so I have my hands free, you will need at least an electric whisk, because I think manually you will never get enough firmness! We are going to whip, without adding anything else, for about ten minutes, until the mixture is well whipped, very white, and that we can clearly distinguish the traces of the whip. If you have any doubts, prolong the work, you won’t risk seeding the aquafaba as you might risk with eggs.
If your aquafaba is not high enough, the mixture will make it go down completely and you will lose lightness.

Important point: if you have a can of chickpeas, prepared superb korma chickpeas (smooth transition), and you have kept the juice cool, remember to let it come to room temperature to prepare your mousse.

In baking, it’s all about temperature and texture. I talk about it in my baking ebookand really, it may be super silly to announce “we learn with experience” it’s true that we can still put warnings to avoid huge bullshit.
In this specific case, you are going to melt the chocolate, and it will therefore be hot.
If you toss this hot or even lukewarm chocolate into an ice-cold aquafaba mousse, it will freeze and you will have a mottled and not very homogeneous mousse. It can be a style but it will obviously make your work much more complicated and that’s not what you want when you prepare your first vegan chocolate mousse.

We will mix preferably with a spatula, to avoid breaking the bubbles of the foam too much. The idea will be to lift the material to incorporate the chocolate, little by little, and without insisting too much either because the aquafaba will, in fact, go down to the mixture.

It goes without saying that patience is required: the result just after working the foam is not the final result and it will have to be given a cool ride to obtain the much desired foam.

I don’t put sugar in my mousse because I find that chocolate already provides enough sugar on its own. But everyone has their own tastes, and if you want to add a little, incorporate it when whipping the aquafaba into snow.

Alternative to chickpea juice

If the idea of ​​pouring the juice from your can of chickpeas/other legumes away from the siphon in your sink puts you off, it is also possible to make mousse with whipped cream.

You can find a vegetable version in vegan stores, but also more easily on the internet. My favorite is the Flora, which dethrones all the others with its great neutrality of flavors and its light and foamy texture. Its only flaw is that it is sold in a one-litre carton, but it might be worth preparing a few desserts or logs that you can store in the freezer in advance! + not insignificant, it is also suitable for savory cuisine: by being well organized, you can spend your liter with quiches, pasta in sauce and vegan omelettes, and end up with a good dessert with whipped cream!

Pimp your chocolate mousse

Because chocolate mousse is good, making it a real pure dessert that throws it is even better.
Here are some ideas to enhance your beautiful vegan chocolate mousse:

• Add crunch: With a crumble or some crumbled cookies
• By flavoring the mousse: with a little aroma, a little cinnamon or tonka bean
• With fruit: a few raspberries (fresh or frozen depending on the season), a little orange or clementine or apples cooked in a little margarine…
• Serious topper: with chocolate chips, dried fruit, salted caramelmashed hazelnuts, almonds, pralinemeringues…