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 :)

Cookbook Case Study - Dal and Jaggery Payasam - Quick and Easy

I had to make a special trip to buy the mung dal (split mung bean) required for this recipe. A visit to Moshims made me yearn to live in a suburb like Newtown, with its rich cultural diversity and local ethnic grocery stores.

Some days later, while researching the cooking time for whole bkack gram (black lentils), I discovered that mung dal comes in two forms: split, or split and skinned. The variety I had bought was not skinned - and though the recipe was non-specific, I suspected skinned mung dal was the intended type of dal for the recipe.


Split mung dal


Not worrying too much about it, I started cooking the dal. As soon as I mixed the boiling water with the soaked dal, many skins started to float to the surface. Seeing my opportunity, and not wanting to eat a dessert with mung bean skins scattered throughout, I took the dal off the stove and started to scoop out the skins with a tea strainer. I spent quite some time stirring the dal to agitate the skins into a swirling vortex, and scooping them out before they sunk to the surface of the dal again. Once there were so few skins that this task diminished in its returns, I put the dal back on the stove to continue cooking.


Mung dal with some skins removed


Jaggery, or palm sugar, I already had on hand from a recipe I'd made some time ago. This sugar comes in cake form - mine were so hard, perhaps from absorbing too much water in their long storage, that my small grinder struggled with them, and I decided to grate them by hand. (It turns out that this was probably unnecessary, if I had only managed to break them into chunks, the moisture from the dal and coconut milk would have dissolved them with little effort.)


Piles of grated jaggery



Grinding cardamom seeds



Putting it all together


After grinding some cardamom seeds, I mixed all the ingredients together, and heated for a few minutes. Expecting a thick, semolina-like consistency, I was surprised that the dessert was more like a thin porridge. The taste was very sweet, with a hint of cardamom - but the coconut cream taste was disguised by the sweetness of the jaggery. The recipe called for a cup of jaggery, or to taste. I think next time I make this dessert, I would use between 1/2 and 3/4 of a cup to make the dessert slightly less syrupy. Next time, also, I would prefer to use split skinned mung beans, though the skins did not bother me while eating the dessert - and I do have a few cups of mung dal left in the pantry.


Dal and Jaggery Payasam



Same payasam, different angle!


I had enough leftover to last me another couple of days. The dal was good as a dessert or sweet breakfast. I liked it best served over chopped banana, and with a drizzle of extra coconut cream over the top.


Dal and jaggery payasam with banana and coconut cream

Recipe Rescue: Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake Crumble

Not wanting to waste the lemon and poppy seed fail cake, I thought of options for rescuing the cake. Due to the incredibly crumbly nature of the cake, I thought that it would make a suitable crumble topping - with the addition of a bunch of sugar, that is.

I made an apple and rhubarb crumble with repurposed lemon and poppy seed cake topping.

I bake crumbles in individual serves. It takes no extra effort (except for the dishes-doer; but that's not me!), it makes it easier to control portion sizes (it's SO easy to grab a second helping from a large crumble...), and it's really quite satisfying to eat a crumble straight out of the oven dish (wrapped in a tea towel to avoid burnination).


Apple and rhubarb in single-serve baking dishes


For each serve of crumble, I used a slice of cake about an inch thick, and an abundantly heaped dessert spoon on brown sugar. The cake contained almonds and plenty of lemony flavour, so I didn't think any additional spices were required.


Cake and sugar


The crumble came out darker than usual after 15 minutes. It makes sense, considering the topping was already cooked, and the amount of sugar I added.


Darkly done crumble topping


It was tasty, though. Very very good. There was certainly a lot more sugar than required, so for the individual serves I made up for the freezer, I used about half as much sugar. However, there were no complaints, from myself or Neil. The topping was good and crispy, too. I'd never had a lemon flavoured crumble topping before, and it was divine.


This picture makes me drool


I'd even consider making the cake again just for the crumble topping it makes! (Though, regular crumble topping is easier - so perhaps I'd be better working on a crumble mix that isn't a cake first!)