To make this emulsion light and fluffy, This applies the same principles as whipping cold cream. His recipe requires whisking the melted chocolate and water over an ice bath to create air bubbles, all the while trapping them within the fat particles in the cocoa butter that solidify as the temperature drops. This causes the mixture to lighten in color while becoming airy and mousse-like without any eggs or cream.
Messing up and troubleshooting Chantilly chocolate
This explains three ways you might mess up chocolate Chantilly, but worry not, they are all fixable. If your melted chocolate and water mixture doesn’t contain enough fat, it will be too liquid and struggle to hold its shape. In this case, simply add more chocolate and melt it again before whisking over the ice bath.
The mousse can also struggle to take shape if the melted chocolate is too thick and there isn’t enough water to create the air bubbles. You can fix this by melting it again, adding a little more water, then whisking until it’s the right consistency.
Lastly, if you over-whisk, the mousse can become grainy, but this too can be fixed by repeating the melt-and-whisk process. All in all, This’s recipe is a foolproof method to make a chocolate mousse that also happens to be egg-free, cream-free, and (as long as you’re working with dairy-free chocolate) totally vegan.
How to modify Chantilly chocolate to your taste
This’s recipe, although groundbreaking, is just a start. There’s plenty of room to get creative, especially when it comes to melting the chocolate. Instead of using water, you can use tea, coffee, or even some juice (I recommend trying orange or passionfruit). Or you can add a touch of something boozy like rum, whiskey, Kahlúa, or cherry liqueur. I tested his recipe with white chocolate too, which, unfortunately, turned out to be a little too sweet. Because white chocolate is all cocoa butter and sugar with none of the bitter cacao particles to tame the sweetness, it doesn’t work quite as well as dark or milk chocolate does.
But before you get creative, give the straightforward dark chocolate version a try. This recipe stays true to This’s original method but brings in complementary toppings like maple syrup sweetened whipped cream (which you can avoid if you’d like to keep it vegan), toasted hazelnuts, and a sprinkle of flaky salt. This’s chocolate mousse is best enjoyed right away—refrigerating it makes it lose its fluffy texture. You can melt and re-whisk it back to its mousse-like form, but at that point, you might as well start from scratch. Topped with toasted nuts, dried fruit, or coconut flakes, it’s a fabulous dessert on its own, but it can also be an excellent dairy-free, egg-free filling for cakes, profiteroles, and tarts.