Chocolate Orange Mousse
As young newlyweds in the seventies, we often hosted dinner parties for family and friends. They were simple, casual and good fun. Entertaining business associates and their spouses on the other hand was nerve racking. It was all about making a good impression. The house would be cleaned from top to toe, the table set with the best china and crystal, the food designed to impress. French onion soup and individual beef Wellingtons followed by pots of chocolate orange mousse was a my go-to winter menu one year. I groan at the thought of all that rich food now, especially as elaborate canapes would have preceded the main event and petit fours concluded it.
I like to think I was food service savvy even then. I planned each course so that minimum effort was required at the dinner hour. The soup simply needed reheating, the beef to be baked and as for dessert, it was chilled in individual serving bowls with the garnish already in place.
These days I rarely eat dessert, and if I do, I prefer vanilla and fruity flavour profiles to chocolate, but as the ever diminishing bag of Lindt bittersweet chocolate will attest, someone in my household can’t get enough. It’s probably 20 years since I last made chocolate mousse, I’m not sure why it went out of fashion, but it deserves a reprise. This mousse is light in texture but intensely flavoured. It would be perfect with a glass of Cointreau.
200g chocolate (70% cacao)
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon castor sugar
1 tablespoon finely grated orange zest
3 medium eggs separated
Melt chocolate sugar and water together over a low heat. Cool.
Whisk the egg whites into soft peaks.
Stir the egg yolks into chocolate, then fold in whites, 1/3 at a time.
Spoon into pretty dessert bowls.
Chill for 4 hrs before serving garnished with orange zest.
Serves 6
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20 comments on “Chocolate Orange Mousse”
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Creative Commons Copyright Licence
Please Pass the Recipe by Sandra Gay is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Please Pass the Recipe 
Good recipe for chocolate mousse. I like to replace the water with amaretto for additional flavor, and when I saw your title I thought you were going to use orange juice. Not sure if that would work though (acids interfering with the egg whites?).
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Thanks Stefan. The little bit of water in the mousse not only helps the texture stay light, but it also restrains the flavours just a tad so it’s not too cloying. I’d omit the orange element if you make the mousse with amaretto. Enjoy..
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It never went out of fashion I don’t think. I have taught my granddaughter to make it- after spending a few months in France with her a couple of years ago. although I also find it too rich, I still whip them up on occasion. I love that touch of orange.
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I made this mousse with my grand daughter during the school hols, it’s definitely having a worthwhile revival in this house, though a teaspoonful in enough for me. The orange makes a big difference
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OMG – I was a decade before you and in business and having dinner parties at least twice or thrice a week! And that menu sounds SO terribly familiar 🙂 ! And all else. And it was kind’of fun at the end of the night!!!!! My biggest ooh-aah: having a huge pot of moules mariniere steaming and none of the mussel shells opening . . . me getting rather frantic and madly shaking the heavy pot to find I could actually serve the wine-ridden beasties . . . yes, well, all that shaking had rid all their grit right into the delicious wine sauce . . . as you can see I still remember . . . 🙂 !!
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Ha, I had to laugh!! The pressure we put ourselves under was enormous, for what? A whole lot of laughs…
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NOW, when we are kind’of ‘grown up’ 🙂 !
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Love your reprisal of an old school classic and your dinner party reminiscing. Think I may go with this for my next dinner party! (It also reminded me of the thin after dinner mints and choc orange slices that my parents served with dessert at their crazy dinner parties back in the day…)
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Oh I loved those after dinner mints. Both orange and mint are perfect with chocolate, but i enjoy chocolate a lot more if it’s not preceded by a huge meal!
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Yum! Been too long since I’ve eaten chocolate mousse…if memory serves it was a firm favourite for us on special occasions, even as kids, back in the day xxx
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I never really valued how good this recipe is until the recent remake xx
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Oh I don’t know I would love to rock up to someone’s house and have that menu served to me. You’re right though chocolate mousse deserves a revival.
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Oh Nancy you’re too kind. I could handle one of these courses, but all three in one meal, no way! Yes chocolate mousse is simple to make and quite a treat..
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Individual beef wellingtons and chocolate mousse. Brings back old times for me too, Sandra. I’ve always melted chocolate in a saucepan over water, your recipe adds it to the mix. I thought water did strange things to melting chocolate.
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No, choc melts beautifully in water! The trick is never to let chocolate get too hot
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Chocolate heaven! I had to laugh at your reflections on menu of past dinner parties. I can say I am also guilty of presenting artery-clogging food – hubris of youth, I think, combined with past food fashion and the desire to impress. Small pots of chocolate mousse every once in a while can’t be all that bad…can it?
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No, an elixir for the soul, definitely!
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great photos by the way
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chocolate mousse and Cointreau never goes out of fashion. It just doesnt get eaten as often as we get older and unfortunately can’t stomach rich delicious food night after night after night….
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We often have a quiet whinge to ourselves about our inability to gourmandise like we used to, but then, it’s better to continue to enjoy a little.. Glad you liked the pics, it was a tricky thing to capture, I took a heap of shots.
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