Vegan Dark Chocolate Mousse

Vegan Chocolate Mousse - with what I call "midnight snack" lighting... ^_^



One of my favourite time wasters fillers is to browse through TasteSpotting, 'starring' recipes that I want to adapt or try to make. Recently, there was a yummy-looking post for chocolate mousse made with silken tofu. Despite an interest in vegan cooking, I'd never really used silken tofu in desserts before. I usually use firm tofu in stir fries, and once used silken tofu in place of paneer in a curry, but never as a dairy alternative in desserts...

The recipe looked easy, was described as decadent and 'you would never know there's tofu in it', and would meet my recent craving for dessert, but with fewer unnecessary calories... However, it must be warned that this is not for the mild sweet tooth - this is probably the richest chocolate mousse I have ever had in the sense of chocolatey sweetness. You could tone it down a notch by leaving out some of the additional cocoa and sugar, and I don't think it would suffer for it. I served mine with banana, which actually cut through the sweetness!

The recipe I was following is here. I made a few minor adaptations to the recipe to suit what I had on hand, and translated to metric. Here's my version:



Spoon full of chocolate...



Vegan Dark Chocolate Mousse

Ingredients

300g silken tofu
100g dark chocolate (I used 80% - check chocolate is dairy free)
1/4 c cocoa powder
1/4 c water
1 Tbsp rice milk (or other non dairy milk)
2 Tbsp butterscotch schnapps*
1/2 c sugar


* actually I assume this is vegan! The prenzel website doesn't say (link). I used this instead of port or brandy, so use whatever you are comfortable with.


Instructions

Blend silken tofu in a food processor or blender until completely smooth.

In a bowl on top of a pot of barely simmering water, mix chocolate, cocoa, water, milk, and schnapps, and stir until the chocolate has completely melted.

Remove from heat and add the sugar. Mix until smooth and sugar has dissolved.

Pour or spoon into serving bowls, and refrigerate for at least an hour before serving.

Serve with your choice of chopped fruit, vegan cream, as is, or whatever tickles your fancy.

Try not to fall into a sugar coma :)

Homemade Chocolate Syrup from Small Notebook

I came across this recipe for homemade chocolate syrup on Rachel's Small Notebook blog, one of my favourite home management blogs in the 'lifestyle' section of my Google Reader.

Making a recipe within hours of stumbling across if is some kind of record for me - I have hundreds of delicious recipes bookmarked that I never quite get around to making! In fact, the main reason I made this so soon is that I was waiting for Neil to get home with the groceries I needed in order to make the bread and cookies I had planned to. I guess he was working a few more hours than expected - I hope coming home to fresh chocolate syrup made up for that a wee bit! The other reason I could make this syrup, of course, was that it is incredibly simple and uses only ingredients we always have!

I won't repost the recipe - you can find it here, and at the same time check out one of my current sources of inspiration for trying to get my life tidy and together!

I might have splashed a little too much vanilla essence in there (Measuring spoons? Psh! - actually, mine were in the dishwasher...), but the syrup is still tasty as. I poured it into an old tomato passata jar, not exactly as fancy as Rachel did it, but functional. (My original idea, an old gin bottle, would be too small to hold two cups of syrup.)


Chocolate Syrup in Passata Jar