National Chocolate Mousse Day

A mousse is a prepared food that incorporates air bubbles to give it a light and airy texture. It can range from light and fluffy to creamy and thick, depending on preparation techniques. Dessert mousses are typically made with whipped egg whites or whipped cream, and generally flavored with chocolate or puréed fruit.

Five Fun Facts:

Once only a specialty of French restaurants, chocolate mousse entered into American and English home cuisine in the 1960s.
The first written record of chocolate mousse in the United States comes from a Food Exposition held at Madison Square Garden in New York City in 1892.
A “Housekeeper’s Column” in the Boston Daily Globe of 1897 published one of the first recipes for chocolate mousse. This recipe produced a pudding-like dish very different from today’s stiffer, but still fluffy, mousse.
Mousse became as we know it with the introduction of egg whites, separated from the yolks.
When white chocolate became the chocolate choice in the 80s, food companies scrambled to devise new ways of using it in tandem with their own products. After chef Michel Fitoussi created a white chocolate mousse in New York City in 1977, people couldn’t get enough. Mousse was perhaps the most popular of the white chocolate desserts.

Five Mousse Recipes:

Chocolate Mousse– Chocolate mousse is a great dessert for entertaining because it looks pretty, everyone gets their own serving, and you can make it a day ahead of time. In fact, you do need to make it at least several hours ahead of time. I decided to prepare chocolate mousse using the darkest chocolate I could find (Trader Joe’s has some Belgian 70% cocoa 1 lb bricks). Chocolate mousse is a little bit tricky. If you incorporate the egg yolks when the chocolate is too warm, it will cook, if too cold, it will seize up when the other ingredients are added. If you stir and not fold the egg whites and whipped cream in, your mousse will not be fluffy, but dense.
Passover Chocolate Mousse with Extra Virgin Olive Oil– Don’t let the name put you off, the richness of high-quality chocolate is balanced by the fruitiness of the olive oil. This lush parve dessert is perfect for Passover or anytime.
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Mousse Pie – this dessert tastes like you spent hours perfecting it, when in reality it takes ten minutes to make!
Frozen Pumpkin Mousse Pie– This needs to be made ahead so it would really surprise the family for Shabbat lunch when this came out to the table.
Chocolate Peanut Butter Mousse Cake with Peanut Praline and Caramel Sauce – This GIANT cake will remind you of your favorite candy bar. It has chocolate, peanuts, peanut butter, and caramel all rolled into one. You could make two 2-layer cakes— eat one and freeze the other.