Mocha Mascarpone Mousse
We all have our food indulgences. For Paul, it is a perfectly seared steak. For me, it is a custardy coffee dessert. This incredibly easy mousse recipe adapted from Gordon Ramsey, uses mascarpone cheese as a brilliant shortcut to avoid messing with egg whites. Somewhere between a classic mousse and an airy cheesecake, this Mocha Mascarpone Mousse is a crowd favorite. If you find the coffee and chocolate combination stuck on the brain, check out two of our other favorites: Mexican Chocolate Custard Cake & Black Fudge Pudding Cakes.
Yield: Serves 4
Ingredients:
- 4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips
- 5 tablespoons cooled espresso/strong coffee
- 3 tablespoons powdered sugar
- 1/2 cup mascarpone
- 2/3 cup whipping cream
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
- Pinch of kosher salt
Steps:
- In a stand-mixer or hand-held mixer, whip the cream until stiff peaks form. Transfer the whipped cream to a large mixing bowl and clean the mixer/beater for reuse. Set aside the whipped cream for latter use.
- Melt the chocolate, you can use a double boiler on the stove or just microwave for about 1 minute and stir to melt.
- Add the melted chocolate to the empty stand-mixer bowl, add the espresso, sugar, mascarpone, vanilla, and salt. Whisk for 1-2 minutes until the ingredients are well combined and the mixture has a nice sheen.
- Gently fold the whipped cream into the mascarpone mixture, until no more unmixed white pockets of cream remain.
- Pour into individual serving dishes, refrigerate covered. Allow to set for a few hours for optimal texture. Serve cold with extra whipped cream.
Notes:
Look for mascarpone near the refrigerated imported cheese section of your grocery. Once opened, I find it doesn’t keep long, add it to rice puddings or homemade whipped cream.
Basil Yogurt Panna Cotta with Blueberries
Panna Cottas are a custard made with cream and gelatin. Panna cottas are deceptively easy and one of our favorite dishes to make for guests throughout the year using different flavorings and variations. Basil Yogurt Panna Cotta with Blueberries is our summer version, one we have made a little tangy with the addition of Greek yogurt and lemon. We originally created this basil Panna cotta as a dessert to bring to a dinner at our friends' house who loves all things Italian and basil. We loved it and have been making it ever since!
If you are in the Pittsburgh area, come down to the Pittsburgh Public Market this Saturday (August 16) between 12-2 pm try a free sample of our Basil Yogurt Panna Cotta with Blueberries and say hi!
Chocolate Maple Granola with Quinoa and Cranberries
This week I took a stand against the breakfast industrial complex. Sunday for breakfast, I thought I’d go carnivorous, and ate a plate heaped high with Amish summer sausage. In honor of meatless Monday, I thought I’d swing vegetarian, and polished off a bowl of leftover garlicky lentil salad with goat cheese. Tuesday at 6am, I started to worry that I might not be getting my daily serving of fruits and vegetables, and munched away on snow peas, carrots, and bell peppers while I was getting ready for work. Don’t worry, I also ate string cheese for protein! This morning I was out of time and thinking that I might want to dip towards the sweet side, unfortunately things got a bit sticky when I tried to juggle spoonful’s of Nutella while driving. Paul, no stranger to my breakfast rebellions, calmly continued eating his grape nuts. Now that I’ve gotten that all out of system, I am ready for a spiffed-up breakfast classic. So when I got home from work today, I made a big batch of Chocolate Maple Granola with Quinoa and Cranberries. This chocolaty, crunchy granola is somewhere between breakfast and dessert, a good place to be in my mind, and with the combination of nuts, oats, and quinoa, provides a complete protein rich meal that keeps me energized through the whole day.
Mexican Chocolate Custard Cake
Mexican Chocolate Custard Cake is our favorite chocolate cake. This fabulous cake is flourless, supremely decadent, dead simple to make, and perfectly balances the subtle spiciness of ancho and cinnamon with a dark fudgy texture. But perhaps the most eloquent endorsement: an enormous bite mark and accompanying slobber stains across the recipe from our sleepy greyhound Leo, who, apparently knows a good recipe when he sees one! While you may be wondering about the wisdom of making a spectacularly sumptuous, rich, pudding-like chocolate cake smack dab in the middle of the holidays, don’t. Dig deep people, this one is worth it! Or, as one of our dessert tasters muttered under his chocolate-laced breath; “You’ve got to be dead not to like this.” Eat on.
Black Fudge Pudding Cakes
For Paul, hot fudge pudding cakes evoke memories of childhood birthdays in Tanzania and this sweet treat that is both cake and pudding in one. Somewhere between a fudge brownie and a custard, there is not much to improve in this sumptuous chocolate dessert. If you are a hot fudge pudding cake novice, it is an easy, quick, and guest impressing dessert that assembles like a science project. In our version, Black Fudge Pudding Cakes, we deepen the flavor with rich black cocoa powder, espresso, and dark chocolate chips. This week we made one batch to serve eight... and found that it only served two, delicious!
Three Layer Parsnip Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
We are celebrating our one year blog anniversary with cake. We wanted an extraordinary cake for the occasion, one with a funky twist, moist flavor and sumptuous icing. Three Layer Parsnip Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting is our adaptation of the wonderful Diane Morgan's recipe. This fantastic, vegetable loaded cake mimics the spice and texture of a carrot cake, adding a mysterious subtle sweetness with the nutty flavor of grated parsnips. Since we discovered this parsnip cake a year ago, carrot cake just doesn't do it for us anymore.
