4 Expert Tips For The Richest Vegan Chocolate Mousse
Chocolate mousse is a dessert that's perfect in its simplicity, coming together with a few high-quality ingredients whisked and folded into a fluffy delight. The ingredients may be few, but most of them aren't vegan. Eggs and cream are both key components behind the flavor and the texture of a traditional chocolate mousse like the one used in this recipe for a dreamy decadent chocolate mousse cake. Finding vegan ingredients to recreate the airiness instilled by egg whites and whipped cream as well as the cohesion and richness of egg yolks is a tall order. And while we have some tips to avoid mistakes everyone makes with mousse, most of them revolve around dairy and eggs and how to incorporate them into melted chocolate. Considering chocolate and sugar are likely to be the only overlapping ingredients between a vegan and non-vegan mousse, many of those tips don't apply.
So we've consulted with a vegan expert to guide you through the ingredients and methodology needed for the richest vegan chocolate mousse. Tasting Table spoke with Nisha Vora, author of the New York Times best-selling cookbook "Big Vegan Flavor," who shared four expert tips to help you on your journey to create delicious vegan chocolate mousse.
Use a blend of chocolate products
Chocolate is the protagonist of chocolate mousse, so Nisha Vora suggests using a blend of chocolate to bring its flavor to the forefront. "For a rich flavor, use a combination of cocoa powder and dark chocolate bars. Cocoa powder alone makes for a nice chocolate mousse, but the addition of melted chocolate takes it over the top," she said.
While cocoa powder is dairy-free, chocolate bars often contain milk or whey for added richness. Not to be confused with snacking chocolate, baking chocolate is usually a safe bet because it tends to use cocoa butter as the fat, extracted directly from the cacao bean itself. Still, some bars may lack dairy but are processed in factories where dairy products are also made. So, be sure to look for plant-based or dairy-free dark chocolate brands like Ghirardelli non-dairy baking chocolate or this vegan dark chocolate from Yupik. Look for a 70% to 75% cacao dark chocolate bar to supplement the intense chocolate of pure cocoa powder.
Of course, there are different types of cocoa powder, and Vora has an opinion on the best type for vegan mousse. "I prefer Dutch process cocoa powder over natural cocoa powder. With the former, the acidic flavor from the cocoa beans is washed away, so you get a purer, richer chocolate flavor," she said. The top-ranking Dutch process cocoa powder on Amazon is a near tie between NuNaturals and Guittard Cocoa Rouge.
Swap dairy for tofu
Tofu isn't just a savory chameleon that substitutes for chicken in this baked General Tso's tofu recipe or pork in this recipe for shredded tofu tacos. You can extend its flavor-neutral profile to desserts, too. To that effect, Nisha Vora uses it as the secret ingredient behind the textural richness of chocolate mousse. "To mimic the luscious texture of chocolate mousse without using eggs or dairy, my chocolate mousse recipe relies on an unconventional ingredient: silken tofu," she said. "The tofu is soft, yet dense, which helps the mousse achieve a creamy texture without needing any stabilizers or thickeners. And since tofu has no real flavor of its own, all you taste is delicious chocolatey goodness."
This is one tip that we put to the test in our recipe for plant-based chocolate caramel tofu mousse. Silken tofu single-handedly delivers the thickness that cream and egg yolks bring to traditional chocolate mousse. And it's much easier to incorporate with the other mousse ingredients. We add silken tofu to a blender with cocoa powder, sugar, and vanilla extract, blending to combine. You can also add melted chocolate to the blender, per Vora's suggestion. While she asserts that tofu has no flavor, chilling the silken tofu mousse before serving it is a surefire way to eliminate even the slightest hint of soy tasting notes.
Bring depth of flavor and texture with dates
If two different types of chocolate aren't enough, you can add even more complexity by supplementing sugar with dates. Whether you're using granulated sugar or powdered sugar in your chocolate mousse, these ingredients are sweeteners that balance the bitterness of the chocolate bars and powders. Dates, on the other hand, have distinct tasting notes, acting as sweetener and flavor agent all in one. Nisha Vora said she loves them for their textural benefits as much as their flavor.
"I also like to add in a few Medjool dates, which are soft and sticky. When you blend them, they add great body (and sweetness) to chocolate mousse," she said. Of all the different types of date fruits, Medjools are some of the tastiest. What makes Medjool dates unique is their size, sweetness, and plump, gooey, and pillowy flesh. The sweetness of Medjool dates contains fruity and caramel notes to complement the chocolate while the soft, sticky flesh brings some density to vegan chocolate mousse. Try throwing two of these pitted Bard Valley Medjool dates into the blender with silken tofu and the rest of your ingredients. You can always add more if you want more decadence.
Swap egg whites for aquafaba
Now that Nisha Vora has accounted for the types of chocolate, dairy substitute, and sweet flavoring agents that'll elevate your vegan chocolate mousse, the piece de resistance is how to mimic the airy, cloud-like egg whites that make mousse so elegant. The answer is aquafaba. "If you want to have a lighter, fluffier consistency, you can try whipping some aquafaba (the liquid from a can of chickpeas) with cream of tartar until you get stiff peaks (10 to 15 minutes), then fold that into your melted chocolate and other ingredients," she said.
Just as whipped egg whites need cream of tartar to stabilize the peaks so they remain stiff, a few teaspoons of cream of tartar are also needed for stable aquafaba. Since 10 to 15 minutes is a long time to hand-whisk chickpea liquid, this is where an electric hand mixer would really come in handy. We use a standing mixer to whip aquafaba with sugar for this vegan-friendly tiramisu. Folding the aquafaba into the chocolate tofu mixture is key to incorporating the air you've spent 15 minutes creating. If you stir the aquafaba into the mousse vigorously, it'll deflate the aquafaba, and you'll be left with even more density. We have a guide on the right way to fold in egg-whites that you can apply to aquafaba. The result is the fluffiest vegan chocolate mousse.