I stumbled upon this recipe when I was in Florida this past Christmas. The day I was leaving there was issues with the plane flying back to New York and long story short I didn’t get home until 10pm instead of 12 noon. While I was waiting for my delayed flight, I was watching TV and found myself watching The Cooking Channel because I can only watch so much court shows on daytime TV.
The show that was on is called Against the Clock with Nigella Lawson. The show is basically the British version of 30 Minute Meals with Rachael Ray but with a more pleasing accent from the host and better recipes. The episode theme was making a 3 course meal for an unexpected dinner party. She started with the dessert; instant chocolate mousse using marshmallows instead of eggs. I have been eyeing this recipe on Nigella’s site for a few weeks now and this past weekend I decided to make this mousse since I was keeping a low-key weekend (also NYC got its first snowfall of the winter and I didn’t feel like going out).
Here is Nigella’s excerpt from the page with the recipe:
Normally you need to make chocolate mousse a good few hours, or better still a day, before you want to eat it so the egg yolk sets and the whisked whites permeate everything with air bubbles. Forget that: here we have no yolks, no whites, no whisking, no waiting. Lack of raw egg, incidentally, also means that you might be happier giving the mousse to small children, though I certainly feel they should not be the only beneficiaries.
Ingredients
- 3 cups mini marshmallows
- 1/2 stick unsalted butter, softened
- 9 ounces best quality semisweet chocolate, chopped into small pieces
- 1/4 cup hot water from a recently boiled kettle
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Put the marshmallows, butter, chocolate and water in a heavy-based saucepan.
Put the saucepan on the stove, over heat, though keep it fairly gentle, to melt, stirring every now and again. Remove from the heat.
Meanwhile whip the cream with the vanilla until thick and then fold into the cooling chocolate mixture until you have a smooth, cohesive mixture.
Mixture should be well blended.
Pour or scrape into 4 or 6 glasses or small dishes and chill until you want to eat. The sooner the better!
