Pud in a cup

I adore chocolate and have never ever made a mousse though I have longed to. They are so easy but for some unknown reason I just haven’t made one. I very rarely eat the sweet things I make, I of course taste them but usually they are made to bring to work or for a dinner party. With so many new books in my collection, I woke up this morning and decided to try something from each book. I compiled my shopping lists and trundled off to the shops. I took a detour to go to the library. If any of you can remember, I borrowed books a long while back (august). Well I never returned them! I am wearing a horrifying look of shame as I mention this. I renewed them online once or twice and then when the puppy ate one of them, I kept renewing them so to avoid what may happen when they were actually returned. I went in and told them I had a confession. I don’t think they quite believed me but hey, they said the book was still usable so all that worry and delay was for nothing. Phew!

Back to the point. I wanted to make Lilly Higgins’ vegan chocolate mousse. I bought all the ingredients, which quite frankly wasn’t much and trundled home in the awesome wind and started to make the mousse. I have to say it wasn’t as easy as I anticipated as I used the wrong machinery, my bad! And in fact I had to adapt the recipe as I wasn’t quite to my taste. Have you ever blitzed avocado? In my mind you pop in the blender and whiz. Hmmm it doesn’t really whiz, it’s more like a growl and then nothing happens. Several attempts and I gave up and emptied the blender and mashed it with my hand held stick blender, and If I had read the recipe properly, then I would have done this from the start. Then I chose to add the other ingredients as per the recipe and blend with a hand held blender. Much easier! Then I tasted it. Another hmmm, it just wasn’t creamy enough and sooo not sweet enough, in fact it wasn’t sweet at all. So the vegan chocolate mousse became the not so vegan chocolate mousse with the addition of some cream and a little more honey for the sweet. Voila, something I wanted to actually serve. This is a great alternative for those who can’t have dairy. It was quite earthy in taste, (in a good way) but it is quite different from your usual chocolate mousse. So here it is…

THE NOT SO VEGAN CHOCOLATE MOUSSE

Adapted from Lilly Higgins’ ‘Dream Deli’

I will be attempting other mousses in time but I did say I would blog the good and the bad and the in-between. Maybe it was just an off day for me today, but I had to adapt the ingredient list for my taste.

• 4 perfectly ripe avocados, pitted
• 140 g cocao powder
• 4-5 tbsp honey
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 tbsp cream (optional)
• pinch of salt
• toasted hazelnuts to sprinkle on top

THE HOW

Put the avocado in a bowl and blend with a hand held blender or in a food processor. Do NOT use a blender (the type you liquidize in). Duh silly me…

Add all the other ingredients bar the nuts and blend again until creamy, spoon into little bowls or cups and sprinkle with the nuts. Chill if not eating immediately and remove from the fridge 20 minutes before serving.

We liked this mousse. It took a little while to get used to the flavours as our minds were expecting something different from a visual point of view. It;s not your typical chocolate mousse but the avocado grew on us. And I would make this for my friends.