Test Kitchen Confidential: Lightened Baked Chocolate Mousse
Here’s how our recipe doctors lightened a classic dessert—Baked Chocolate Mousse
Lighter Baked Chocolate Mousse
Baked mousse is a classic dessert whose precise origins are unclear. It’s one of those confounding dishes (like, for example,
the Japanese practice of putting crispy tempura into soup) in which a finished whipped mousse—cold, rich, a perfect balance
of density and airiness—is popped into the oven. What results is a marriage of traditional chilled mousse and a fudgy flourless
chocolate cake: silky smooth mousse texture with more substance in the mouthfeel and a ramped-up chocolate flavor.
These qualities are usually achieved with three key parts: a flavor agent (in this case chocolate), a meringue, and lots of
heavy cream. Basically, it’s a dance of sugar and fat, in fine balance—a good example of the chemistry and physics of baking.
Creating a light version was going to be tricky. We did it by “unpacking” the dessert and addressing each component separately.
View Recipe: Baked Chocolate Mousse
