Tag Archives: dessert recipe

Classic Chocolate Mousse

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© Johanna Kindvall

My grandmother always served chocolate coffee mousse for dessert and I loved it. But as a kid, I didn’t really like coffee on its own. The first time I ever drank coffee I kept adding sugar to make it taste better… it just made it worse and it took me years to recover. Today, now that I have learnt to love coffee (especially strong and black), I still can’t imagine drinking coffee with sugar.

Oh well, coffee in cakes, ice cream or chocolate mousse is a always a treat (and in my upcoming book which I co-authored together with Anna Brones, Fika – The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break we share a delicious Hazelnut Coffee Cake recipe). When I started to make chocolate mousse this winter I ended up not flavoring it at all. I just liked it as it was. Thick, chocolaty and totally comforty! The recipe I’m using, is an old classic formula which you can find in Elizabeth David’s book French Provincial Cooking. The recipe is simply described with a few words:

“4 yolks beaten into 4 oz. of melted bitter chocolate, and the 4 whipped whites folded in.”

Her recipe serves 4, which makes this a super clever recipe. You just need to count one egg and one ounce chocolate (about 30 grams) per person.

The illustrated recipe diagram above suggests adding one teaspoon of sugar per serving, which I learnt from Felicity Cloake’s How to make perfect chocolate mousse article in the Guardian.

And I’m sure a little bit of cold coffee, some drops of rum or juice of an orange will work fine to spice it up. As I said, I like it just plain or topped with star anise infused black berries.

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check also out these chocolate mousse links

Chocolate Mousse (coffee & dark rum) by David Lebovitz (adapted from Julia Childs recipe)
Spizy Boozy Mousse (coffee, cinnamon & ancho chili) by Sara Kate Gillingham @ theKitchn
Swedish Chef making Chocolate Moose – Muppet Show (video)

If you are afraid to get Salmonella by using raw eggs, you can pasteurize them. (I get fresh organic eggs that are free from hormones and antibiotics).

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Pear and Almond Tart

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pears

I didn’t have much candy or chocolate this Easter. Besides eating plenty of herring, eggs and lamb I had some lovely cakes… this one was crunchy and juicy at the same time.

crust
300 ml (1 ¼ cup) flour
100 g (3.5 oz) butter
2 tablespoon sucanat
3 table spoon cold water

filling
2 pears
4-5 tablespoons rum or juice from one lemon
100 g (3.5 oz) butter
4-6 table spoon sucanat
120 ml (½ cup) almonds

Mix the crust ingredients together and let them rest in the fridge for one hour. Place the crust in a greased 9” baking tin and trim to fit. Stick this shell a few times with a fork and pre-bake for 10 minutes at 200º (400F).

Peal and slice the pears thinly. Soak the pear pieces with rum or juice from a lemon. Roast the almonds at 200º (400 F) for about 8-10 minutes. When they have cooled down chop them into smaller pieces. Melt the butter and then add sucanat and the roasted almonds. Divide the soaked pears in the pre-baked shell and pour the filling on top. Bake in the oven at 200º (400F) for about 15-20 minutes. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

Hot Sauces for Ice Cream

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Nearly every Friday, our friend Andrea comes over to watch a movie with us. It’s a little like a ritual. We make some simple food and often Andrea brings dessert. Even if none of us are particularly bored, we nearly always fall asleep in front of the screen.

Andrea’s Chocolate Sauce with Blueberries

1 bar of bittersweet dark chocolate
some cream or milk
blueberries

Melt the chocolate over low heat in a saucepan and gradually add some cream. Stir continuously until the chocolate has melted.
Serve the hot chocolate sauce over vanilla ice cream and top with the fresh blueberries.

As I like hot sauces to ice cream, here are some more…

Rhubarb Sauce

about 3 sticks of rhubarb
sucanat
lime

Rinse the rhubarb and chop them into small pieces. Heat up some water and boil the rhubarb until its soft and falling apart. Add as much sucanat as you like and squeeze some lime into the mixture. Serve hot over vanilla ice cream.


Hot Peaches with Rum

two peaches
two or three cardamom capsules
sucanat
chopped almonds
rum

Cut the peaches in pieces (half moons). Heat them up with a little water and the cardamom. When the peaches start to get soft add as much rum and sucanat as you want. Lastly add the chopped almonds. Before serving take out the cardamom capsules, they are too ripe to bite! Serve with vanilla or even rum ‘n’ raisin icecream.

Almond Paste

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I could not find any almond paste in our local store so I did my own… I used some of it in whipped cream that I served together with a banana cake. Lovely!

almonds

450 ml (1 lb) blanched almonds
250 ml (1 cup) water
500 ml (2 cup) sucanat

Mill the almonds in a blender or a coffee grinder.
Heat up water and add the sucanat. Let it cook, while stirring, until the temperature has reach 390°C (240F). If you don’t have a thermometer, just look at it and it will be done when the sucanat get thicker and you can form soft balls. Add the almonds and stir it well. Let the paste get cool and knead until it is smooth.