Another week of culinary experiments – it is good to have the leisure with lock-down.
Firstly, I’m proud to report that the sous chef’s panettoni was magnificent on the second try and made full use of the faffing candied Seville orange peel from a few weeks ago.
But it did produce spare egg whites and I’d already done macaroons last time. I made up this chocolate mousse dessert with what was to hand including some rather mature 70% cocoa solids chocolate that had developed a bloom (not mould but just the surface discolouring). I used cream to replace the egg yolks and, only having single cream, three threw in some milk powder. Thanks to a super American cup measure, it is easy for me to put the ingredients together when using American measures in recipes:
200g dark chocolate.
1 cup single cream.
1/3 cup milk powder.
3 egg whites.
Very gently heat the chocolate, cream and milk powder in a pan until the chocolate has melted and all the ingredients can be mixed together. Allow to cool.
Whisk the egg whites to stiff peak.
Place a quarter of the egg whites in a bowl and fold in the chocolate mix.
Add a further quarter of the egg whites and fold in. Repeat twice.
Place the mousse mix in containers and chill for at least 12 hours.
I made four huge servings – these amounts would really do 6-8 of normal size.
I wanted to use more of the spare single cream so knocked up some very simple egg custards to turn in to crème brulée using the trusty sous-vide.
2 eggs.
¼ cup sugar.
1 cup single cream.
1/3 cup milk powder.
½ teaspoon vanilla bean paste.
Small pinch salt.
Place all the ingredients in a jug and whizz with a wand-blender for one minute.
Pour the mix in to bottling jars (the sort with rubber seals and clips or screw tops).
Place in a sous-vide water bath, covered with water and cook at 81.5C for an hour.
Chill and turn out on to a plate.
Top with a little caster sugar and caramelise with a blowtorch (others with no sight like me may care to entrust this bit to the sous chef).
Serve with some fresh fruit to pretend it is healthy.
These quantities made 4 servings (normal size!) but we ate them before remembering to take a picture.