A mousse of a dessert

It's been busy around here. My best friend's wedding is next Saturday and there's many-a-thing for me to do. Yes, even little 'ol me. Certainly not as much as the bride. But as the Maid of Honor I am some responsibilities - some helping the bride and some the bride doesn't even know about. (Hmmm I doubt she'll have time to read my blog this week anyway.) But enough about that!

Chocolate Mousse Torte - it's SO rich

I somehow managed to squeeze in a dessert for a friend's get-together last Saturday night. I wracked my brain for a while on what to make. These friends know I bake pretty well, so I didn't want to show up with chocolate chip cookies!

Not a bad start, eh?

This is actually my cousin, Sue's recipe. It's a dessert she's become a little famous for making for our Thanksgivings each year. My brother always gets seconds, all the while exclaiming about how much "bad stuff" goes into it. I guess it's not enough to faze him.

Wow - lookie that melted butter...

Yup, chocolate chips work -- Whipping the cream -- Folding the cream into the choc

I could have gone way fancy and used an expensive semi-sweet chocolate. But Sue's recipe called for chocolate chips, so chocolate chips I used. Let me tell you - no one complained about the quality of the chocolate as they were digging in.

Fold, fold, fold = mousse!

Chocolate mousse - or mousse of any kind is really quite easy. You make the "flavor" (in this case a rich chocolate sauce; lemon mousse you'd start with a tangy lemon curd), whip up some cream and fold them together: MOUSSE!

Pour into crust and chill overnight

Ready to chill -------------- Ready to decorate -------------- Ready to pipe

Don't you hate it when this happens? You have a blank slate on which to decorate. You have no idea what you want to do; so you just start. And it's awful and ugly? And you can't really scrape it off and start again since you can now see remnants of the decorations? So you scrape it off anyway and just cover the entire top with whipping cream? Um, yea I don't know anything about that.

Just cover the whole top ------------- Ready to serve!

The nice thing about this dessert is that it's so rich, you only need to cut tiny slices. No one needs a huge wedge. So a little goes a long way. One homemade dessert for a group of ~25!

Can't you just tell it melts in your mouth?