Raspberry Mousse

[Matthew Grant]

3 stage question:

Anybody got a raspberry mousse recipe. (I can manage this)

How would I go about coating my raspberry mousse in a Chocolate coating? (I imagine I can manage this if I've got the equipment)

How do I make the chocolate coating shine (I might be struggling here, I think its something to do with temperature of the chocolate when it is melted but what sort of mixture will I need to use)

[Jon Tseng]

How would I go about coating my raspberry mousse in a Chocolate coating? (I imagine I can manage this if I've got the equipment)

Could you try freezing the mousse in balls and then dipping in chocolate? I've done this successfully with raspberry coulis; dunno how mousse reacts to freezing - would depend on the recipe.

Actually given the contents of the average frozen desert cabinet in the supermarket (mousse, pavolva, gateau etc.) I suspect frozen mousse would hold quite well

cheerio

J

[jackal10]

Raspberry mousse:

Depends on the effect you want

Start with raspberry coulis (3 c raspberries, 1/2c sugar, whizz together, sieve).

It's cheating use raspberry jam, but a bit of framboise eau-de-vie helps boost the aromatics.

a) set with a sheet of gelatine, then foam; or

b) Fold into whipped cream; or

c) Whipped Egg whites and sugar (Italian meringue) and whipped cream.

To coat in chocolate mould individual portions and freeze them first.

To get a shine see the thread on tempering chocolate.

Edited April 24, 2003 by jackal10 (log)

[Miss J]

Jon, how did you manage to freeze coulis in balls?

[Matthew Grant]

Ahhhhh! Great Idea with the frozen coulis John. Miss J I imagine he freezes it in batches and then scoops it into balls before coating in chocolate (please correct me if I'm wrong Jon)

Thanks for the tempering, for some bizarre reason I didn't think to search here. I'm not normally visiting this forum, Desserts and Pastry are my culinary weakness so perhaps I should spend some more time here! So much useful information!

[Steve Klc]

Matthew--are you trying to emulate something you've seen or had in a restaurant? If so, describe it or link to it. I'm all for experimenting, trying things, playing around, etc. And I don't want to hinder any of that. But then there's the pro side of me that reads this and wonders. So maybe I'll just share a few general things for you to chew on and see if it helps.

Jon's right, mousse and bavarian--especially the ones with a bit of gelatin--freeze very well.

Freezing anything and then dipping it in chocolate--tempered or otherwise--will not give you shine. Ever. The cold dulls the shine. In chocolate making--if your ganache is the least bit too cool--nowhere near as cool as the fridge--and you dip or coat in chocolate it will be dull, let alone anything coming out of the freezer. Dull and thick--the temp chills and thickens the chocolate immediately. How those commercial chocolate ice cream things deal with this is use a very thin chocolate coating--which is actually quite yucky, thinned with vegetable and palm oils. Anathema to us chocolate purists. (Try this sometime, pull off some of this shitty pseudo chocolate from a Dove bard or whatever you have in the UK--and then assess it as chocolate. Oily dreck.)

Jackal pretty much covered the raspberry mousse and bavarian options--all pretty straightforward. You can easily freeze your raspberry mousse/bavarian into shapes--molds like a demisphere--unmold and then glaze--either by pouring a glacage over them or by spraying them. You can also pour it out into a sheet, cut out shapes and spray them or use them in kind of a layered napoleon effect building up a dessert. Freezing the bavarian allows you to cut it easier. Well, it's not so easy for a home cook to do this--but as long as you're willing to experiment and are somewhat dexterous you can handle this. But it doesn't involve dipping.

Where I might just gently disagree with jackal is on how to get the shine on this molded mousse. It isn't going to happen by dipping in or pouring tempered chocolate over this really cold molded mousse.

What I guess you're talking about as far as chocolate coating is concerned is not dipped, instead it is either sprayed onto the molded desserts or sprayed into a mold first or poured onto the molded form a la a shiny glacage. (Fancy French term for glaze.) The spray is usually a mixture of chocolate couverture and cocoa butter and we've had threads and discussion about this chocolate spraying technique on this board before. We've also had some discussion of shiny dark chocolate glacage recipes--and Michael Laiskonis posted the one he's using currently, which came from Oliveir Bajard, one of the best French pastry chefs working today.

So you have to decide if you want this mousse inside a very thin shell of really shiny firm chocolate (so you have to crunch through this thin chocolate outer layer to get the mousse) or you want a shiny "glaze" on the outside that isn't pure chocolate--that isn't hard but instead soft. The latter is easier to do at home. The former requires a bit of skill and a trip to Home Depot--or the UK equivalent--to buy a paint sprayer.

And Miss J--as long as couli doesn't have too much sugar added to it, it freezes just like anything else. Most frozen fruit purees are shipped frozen. Some even make very nice granites scraped right out of the package. Though most are a little too sweet--with 10 to 20% added sugar already.

[Matthew Grant]

Thanks for the info Steve. Its nothng I've seen or tasted before (although I'm sure somebody somewhere has done this), I was just running through possibilities for Raspberry desserts and thought of mousse and wanted to make it a little different. I really don't want to buy a paint sprayer so I'm left with your second option with soft chocolate although for a first try I might be tempted to cover it in chocolate whilst frozen and forego the shine.

Any other suggestions for Raspberry desserts? I am an able cook but please remember that desserts are not my forte (except for pannacotta, sorbets, coulis, souffle and ice cream and probably a few other things that I forget)

This pastry board is a whole different world!

Edited April 24, 2003 by Matthew Grant (log)

[Steve Klc]

My recommendation would be for you to try the mousse just like you're planning to.

Taste it and then figure out what else might go well with it--what other tastes, textures?

Consider 1) Something more fruity--because the mousse will be diluted. Maybe turn some of that puree into a more concentrated gelee. That's easy. Maybe add a few fresh berries. What about crunch? Dried raspberries are nice, light and very concentrated. Maybe hide them inside the mousse as it sets--meaning push them in the bottom when it is semi-set up--or sprinkle some of the dried raspberry powder over the dessert when you are done to layer the flavor.

2) Consider something creamy or eggy--like a creme brulee or panna cotta to pair with the raspberry mousse as a contrast. Or something dark chocolaty, or white chocolaty, a mousse or cream, as a contrast.

3) Then ask yourself what glaze or covering or sauce would go well with that. Would dark chocolate? It might end up being white chocolate, right? If you go dark, look for Michael Laiskonis's glaze. I just don't think tempered chocolate is going to work or "eat" as well as you think it might. There's nothing as icky as those thick solid chocolate shells or containers in desserts--and to think, some pastry chefs still use them!

By the way, there's a very nice, very traditional white chocolate/raspberry dome with raspberry parfait in the great "Michel Roux Finest Desserts" book which may be the kind of thing you're looking to do. It might be instructive for you to compare that with Roux's "Cardinal Gateau" in the same book for contrast. One white, one dark. Check them out and report back. Good instructions for a fruit glaze, several mousses, one frozen-one not, and you can see how one pro approaches raspberry as a flavor. Note that in the Cardinal he doesn't try to glaze the whole thing--just the top. At home, this might be the way to go.

[Jon Tseng]

Jon, how did you manage to freeze coulis in balls? 

Very much the hard method - put a couple of teaspoons of coulis on a small piece of clingfilm; wrapped it up tight like a beggers purse to the liquid coulis was squeezed into a ball; tied the top off with one of those wire tie things you get with sandwich bags. Yes freezes fine - sometimes a bit fudgy but solid enough to dip.

Process works the same with just about any liquid (have done it with OJ too). I think I was trying to figure out how to make liquid centre liquer chocolates at the time (later found out it was something to do with moulds, crystallising and lots of cornflour which I never quite figured out)

Mousse of course holds its shape so much less hassle!

Maybe another suggestion for a smooth coating would be to double dip - ie once when its frozen, then again when the centre has thawed out. Of course you'd then end up with a battle-tank like chocolate layer outside, but maybe this could be livened up (eg dip in white first then dark, or embed it with bits of nut to add to the inevitable crunch...)

If you don't want a mousse maybe try a raspberry cream (folding coulis into whipped cream to taste). There's some good ones in Gordon Ramsay's Desert book.

For other raspberry deserts sandwiching raspberries/raspberry cream between chocolate wafers is quick and easy - make the wafers marbled by spreading out some white chocolate first, letting set, spreading out dark on top. Providing its done on a smooth surface you get a wonderfully glossy/marbled effect (I think this is in the Michel Roux book)

cheerio

J

[nightscotsman]

Another raspberry idea: recently for a friend's birthday party I made small, paper thin chocolate bowls (made with small balloons dipped half-way into tempered chocolate) filled with layers of white chocolate cream (whipped white chocolate ganache) chocolate sponge sprinkled with framboise, and fresh raspberries, finished with some decoratively piped white chocolate mousse, some mint and more fresh raspberries. The flavors blended nicely and the chocolate bowl made for an easy, neat and impressive presentation.

[jackal10]

I'd follow Steve's advise.

Might be easiest to make (or buy) chocolate shells - pour tempered chocolate into moulds, let stand a bit then pour out. Then you can fill the shells with mousse at your leisure, por on a bit of chocolate to seal and hey presto.

You can get non-stick rubber chocolate moulds in a variety of shapes...including spheres and berries

[Jon Tseng]

filled with layers of white chocolate cream (whipped white chocolate ganache)

You can whip ganache?

sounds interesting

how does it work?

J

[nightscotsman]

filled with layers of white chocolate cream (whipped white chocolate ganache)

You can whip ganache?

sounds interesting

how does it work?

You use a higher proportion of cream to chocolate, chill thoroughly, then whip like whipped cream. The cocoabutter stablizes it so it doesn't water out. Different recipes I've seen use various proportions of cream and chocolate depending on how dense the final product desired. The white chocolate cream I did used 4 oz of white chocolate and 1-1/4 cups cream. Also, depending on how stiff you whip it, it can be firm enough to use as a cake filling, or light and soft to use as toping or garnish, or even as a dessert by itself with some berries (think super fast and easy mousse).

[chefette]

1- Night's chocolate bowl is one good option, and one frequently utilized in some fashion at restaurants although it seems that diners feequently fail to recognize and consume consumable conatiners (with the possible exception of tuile cups which are normally quite delcate and break when you are consuming the contents leading you to eat the cup. I expect many dishwashers could have huge collections of chocolate shells, cups, tubes, whatever... if they so chose (but who would?)

2- The sprayer option is probably the easiest and best way to get a thin edible coating of chocolate on the outside of your mousse, but not unless you get a paint sprayer and have cocoa butter on hand

3- One thing no one mentioned that you could try would be to use molds, mold the tempered white chocolate shell and allow it to set, unmold, fill with berries and mouuse and invert on the plate, or mold the chocolate, fill, chill and unmold. However, the filling will quickly cause the chocolate to bead with moisture.

As Steve mentioned, you can cut the mouuse into flat circles or other shapes and then place a thin flat piece of shiny chocolate onto the plated round of mouuse just prior to serving.

Oh, and about the whipped ganache, sometimes the ganache proportion is so heai;ly cream weighted that it is very liquid. We used to do a whipped ganache mousse that you had to allow to sit overnight then you whip and serve the next day, but you have to be very careful about overwhipping since the chocolate triples the sensitivity of the cream to overwhipping resulting in a grainy unpleasant mousse.

[elyse]

3- One thing no one mentioned that you could try would be to use molds, mold the tempered white chocolate shell and allow it to set, unmold, fill with berries and mouuse and invert on the plate, or mold the chocolate, fill, chill and unmold.  However, the filling will quickly cause the chocolate to bead with moisture.

I was gonna, but Jackal beat me to it.

[jackal10]

Why would the chocolate bead? Its not like the filling has to be cold. You can use the mousse at room temperature.

Fill with a straight coulis even, if you seal the shell with a bit of melted chocolate after.

Are these deserts or chocolates?

[chefette]

Moisture would not bead on the chocolate if you fill and serve ala minute, however, if you do fill and chill, you will get moisture.

[kitwilliams]

This is all too late I'm sure but I still have a photo and recipe cut out of (I think) an issue of Chocolatier Magazine sometime in the mid-80s. As I recall, it was from a restaurant somewhere in Napa and they made chocolate "brown paper bags" and then filled them with fresh raspberry milkshakes. A couple of straws and some more fresh raspberries tossed on top. Awesome. I have yet to make it but it is one of those pictures and ideas that has stuck with me!