Why is my chocolate mousse not mousse-y?

December 2, 2009 7:53 PM

What happened to my chocolate mousse? I followed a recipe by Alton Brown, but the resulting texture was very strange.

I've done this recipe before, but this time things got wonky. Recipe is here, but I'll summarize it if you don't feel like going to read it.

1. Melt chocolate in double boiler with butter, coffee and rum; remove and let cool
2. Put 1 tsp of gelatin in 1/4 cup heavy cream; let bloom for 10 minutes
3. Whip 1 1/2 cups heavy cream to stiff peaks
4. Heat gelatin over low heat by swirling pan over burner; do not let cream boil
5. Stir gelatin/cream mixture into chocolate
6. Fold whipped cream into chocolate
7. Refrigerate to chill

Usually this results in a dense but moist, very rich chocolate mousse. This time, however, the texture was more like chalk. It's very dry and crumbly, not crunchy but not very smooth. My wife and I can't really think of a comparison; it was "quite unique", in her words.

The only thing that's unclear in the recipe, and it drives me crazy every time I see it, is that the instructions for heating the gelatin and cream simply say to heat the cream and make sure it doesn't boil. There is no mention of what temperature to heat it to, or what to look for so you know it's done. I assumed it was done when the gelatin dissolved and the cream started to thicken. Did I overdo the gelatin or something? I'm stumped.

posted by starvingartist to Food & Drink (10 answers total)

Is there any possibility it froze, or got close to it?
posted by KathrynT at 8:03 PM on December 2, 2009

Sounds like your cream overheated or was cooked too long. This will cause the cream to curdle, separating into liquid and solids.

Other terms used to describe the results of overheating dairy products is "breaking" or "shattering".
posted by JujuB at 8:07 PM on December 2, 2009

You canwatch the episode again on YouTube. I was just poking around, but it looks like at 8:00 he shows an example of scorched chocolate. It gets grainy and dry.

Another way out there possibility, did you by chance get your chocolate in bulk from a whole foods store? The last time I bought some chocolate chips, I almost got carob chips on accident. These things do not taste or melt like chocolate.
posted by fontophilic at 8:13 PM on December 2, 2009

jujub may have it.

In answer to your question - low heat until the gelatin dissolves. LOW HEAT. Patience.

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At first blush, I guessed you whipped the whites (egg) to hard peak and not soft peak, THEN your melted choc curdled in colder cream/whites, thereby granulating the choc. Plus, whites to hard peak=dry whites. I forgot that recipe included gelatin.

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Any and all four/five of these together would produce "chalk."

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Yay mousse!
posted by jbenben at 8:14 PM on December 2, 2009

I suppose it's possible that I overheated the cream. There are absolutely no eggs in this recipe so that's not the issue. Oh well. Thanks!
posted by starvingartist at 8:16 PM on December 2, 2009

Oh, and no, I did not scorch the chocolate, nor did I use cheap bulk chocolate or carob. It was 11.5 oz of Ghirardelli 65% cocoa chocolate pieces, and 2 oz. of Ghirardelli 80% cocoa chocolate bar. I know what scorched chocolate looks like because just 15 minutes before making this batch I scorched an entire bag of chocolate chips and had to go buy more.
posted by starvingartist at 8:18 PM on December 2, 2009

I think the chocolate mixture was too cool when you folded in the whipped cream, chocolate and cream were not able to form a smooth, consistent matrix. Did you spend some extra time fussing with the cream/gelatin, or something like that; or maybe the ambient temperature in the room was cooler?
posted by halcyon_daze at 8:46 PM on December 2, 2009

Is it possible when you melted the chocolate you got accidentally got water in it? When my chocolate has granulated in the past this has been the cause.
posted by Jubey at 10:26 PM on December 2, 2009

Have you successfully done this recipe with that "dense" of chocolate before?
posted by gjc at 5:05 AM on December 3, 2009

Yeah, I was thinking what Jubey said - the chocolate seized. Seized chocolate has the texture you describe, and it can happen with just a tiny bit of water.
posted by biscotti at 7:27 AM on December 3, 2009