Totally Wicked Chocolate Mousse Cake.

I’ve recently been on a bit of a chocolate hiatus, not for dietary reasons or any such noble cause, more because I was scrolling through my posts on this blog and noticed that almost a third of them were labelled with chocolate!! And it seemed a tad over the top to me.

How wrong could I be?! After perhaps rashly commenting in a previous post that chocolate can be a bit boring, a few of you disagreed (I take it all back!!) and I then suffered the grumpy wrath of Mr. Colehill, (a self confessed chocoholic) who demanded that the next recipe I use be chocolate based, and kindly offered up a suggestion from my ‘Bake and Decorate’ book by Fiona Cairns. The suggestion, as you can see, is probably the most rich and indulgent chocolate desert in the world; completely wicked, and completely delicious!!

This is a bake-less desert and so is really very easy to prepare, however it does demand an overnight refrigeration, which was quite the challenge let me tell you! The base is chocolate tiffin cake, and the top a surprisingly light chocolate mousse which is then sprinkled with cocoa powder to decorate. Is that enough chocolate for you?!

The recipe for the base is:

Chocolate Tiffin

100g butter

80g shelled pistachios (I used almonds because we are an almond-loving lot at Colehill Kitchen!!)

1 tblsp golden syrup

100g dark chocolate

100g biscuits (I used digestives)

80g dried fruit (dates were my choice!!)

Melt the butter, syrup and chocolate in a bowl over simmering water.
Meanwhile, chop the nuts and dried fruit, and bash up the biscuits until they are a fine crumb. Mix the fruit and nuts into the crumbs, then add the chocolate and mix well.
Press into the bottom of a springform cake tin, and leave to chill in the fridge for a few hours.

Next make the mousse topping…I say topping, but really this is the body of the desert. That’s right; the body of the desert is chocolate mousse. Cream and chocolate. On a base of more chocolate. I’m warning you, you’ll feel your arteries clogging up just looking at it.

So, on with the recipe:

Chocolate Mousse
300g dark chocolate

500ml double cream

Cairns suggesting adding a tablespoon of Kirsch or Cointreau if you like, but I completely forgot!

Melt the chocolate in a bowl over simmering water and set aside to cool.
While it’s cooling, whip the cream to a soft peak.
The trick here is to have the chocolate and the cream at the same temperature before combining them, this will stop it seizing, going grainy, curdling…all those nasty things you don’t want to happen!!
Transfer a spoonful of the cream into the chocolate and combine, then another spoonful. As the chocolate loosens up from these additions, add the rest of the cream and fold in gently until completely combined.
Pour on to the tiffin base and leave to set overnight…if you can!

When ready to serve, run a hot knife around the edge of the tin and gently open it. It may help to put a disk of greaseproof paper on the bottom of the tin so that lifting slices out is easier, but if you have a greaseproof tin (which mine is) you shouldn’t have too much trouble.

I’m going to be honest here, this is way too rich for my taste. However it went down a storm with the chocoholics in my life, and because it’s so rich it lasts a fair few servings. The soft and light mousse is beautiful alongside the more solid texture of the tiffin, especially with the crunch of the almonds you discover as you take a bite. On top of this the almonds just look wonderful, their pure cream colour speckling the rich, dark brown of the chocolate. The dates hidden in the base also give it an extra and different sweetness which offsets that flavour of the dark chocolate really well, and keeps the base from being too hard and completely solid. They also contrast nicely against the almonds, the old fruit and nut combo is an oldie but a goodie, and all this enclosed in a chocolate-y casing is heaven on my plate!

Health Warning: I do not advise trying to consume a slice this size, but hey, it’s fun trying!!