Excuse me, Waiter? I Didn?t Order Chocolate Chip Mousse.

Hey, wait a minute! I thought mousse was supposed to be smooth and creamy and poofy. What's with those antlers? (Photo attribution at end of post).

First, I must start with an Apology.  Friend Freckles asked about how to keep mousse from getting all crunchy when you start folding the chocolate into the rest of the ingredients.  She asked this a Very Long Time ago.  I had every intention of writing an Amazing Post to answer her question, but then it fell out of my brain completely.  My brain is Very Small and Cramped.  Anyway, rather than Berating me and calling me mean names because I didn’t do what I said I was gonna do,  she instead employed the You Catch More Flies With Honey Than With Vinegar approach and left another comment the other day, ending with a friendly, “by the way–how’s that chocolate mousse coming?”  Non-threatening and honey-esque, yes?  Of course, my first thought was, “What is she talking about?” See, I told you my brain is small and cramped.  At any rate, I did finally remember the question,  so here I am to answer her Excellent Question to the best of my ability.  Sorry for the tardiness, Freckles, but thanks for being nice!

Okay, so what do we know about chocolate?  Chocolate is an emulsion–wee dry particles of cocoa liqueur suspended in the bunch of different fats that make up cocoa butteYou’ve heard of chocolate’s seizing, right?  Well, that’s because you’re accidentally introducing just a Tiny Amount of liquid into the now-melted emulsion.  Do you think the liquid is going to mix with the dry particles or the fat?  I’ll give you a moment.  Insert Jeopardy Theme Song here.  The dry, you say?  You are correct!  Water is hardly going to play nicely with the fat.   So now what has happened is that this Tiny Amount of water has stodged together the dry particles.  The only way to unstodge them is to add enough liquid that the particles can freely slide past each other as opposed to clumping up.  Ever added just a few drops of water to a big old pot of sugar, maybe in preparation for making caramel or something?  The sugar just clumps up and gets stupid.  Keep adding water, though, and eventually you’ll be able to stir it freely and the sugar will even dissolve.  Lovely.  Same principle applies to chocolate.

Here’s another thing we know about chocolate:  you put it in the fridge, and it gets hard.  The fats firm up to the point of Rock Hard.  So, if you start mixing melted chocolate together with some crazy cold cream, it’ll get all chippy on you.

To fool melted chocolate into playing nicely with water-based and cold  ingredients, you’ve got to take both Things We Know About Chocolate into account.  As far as the emulsion deal, you’ll want to fold in the ingredient that has more water in it first.  And that’s egg whites.  Plus, egg whites whip best at room-ish temperature,  so you won’t have to really worry about the cold factor coming into play.  As far as the cream goes, you want to make sure that it’s not crazy cold.  Yes, they always tell you to make sure the cream is as cold as possible and to stash your bowl and beater over at the local Cryogenics Lab alongside Walt Disney before whipping.  But, here’s the thing, if your cream is too cold, you’re running the risk of chipping up your chocolate.  Besides, when it comes to making mousse, I advise only whipping until barely soft peaks.  You’ll continue to “whip” the cream as you fold everything together.  If you whip to medium or stiff peaks, you run the risk of overwhipping during the folding process and ending up with grainy mousse at best and chunky buttery mousse at worst.  Yum.

To avoid Unfortunate Chippage, fold in almost-all-fat yolks first, then fold in the whites.  These have enough water in them to keep the cocoa solids from clumping up, ‘member?  Last, fold in your slightly under-whipped and decidedly-cool-but-not-Arctic cream at the end.

And that’s pretty much that, I think.  Any of you guys have any tricks for avoiding Unfortunate Mousse Chippage?  If so, do tell.