Tippy decided to be a dessert-mistress for a farewell retirement party at work. In other words, I’ll be acting as the assistant chef in the kitchen.

For one of the desserts, we decided to make a white chocolate mousse topped with mango sorbet. We’ve never really contemplated a mousse before, and had only a vague sense of the procedures from being food network junkies. But alas, we trudged forward using a rather simple recipe.

Chocolate mousse is a mixture of cream, gelatin, eggs, and chocolate. The result should be a light and airy chocolate concoction that is well suited for many dessert applications.

From our first mousse making experience, we found that there are two tricky points. The first is the whipping of the cream to form soft peaks. The stages of whipping heavy cream are: soft peaks, whipped cream, and butter. It’s really easy to miss the soft peak stage and head directly into whipped cream. This is not what we want for our mousse. The soft peak stage is really where all the air and lightness comes from. The picture on the right is what the peaks should look like. When lifting the hand mixer, soft peaks should form on the mixing blade. The peaks should be stiff enough to stand on their own.

If you end up going too far, you might as well make honey butter. Drizzle some honey on the cream, and keep mixing until the desired butter consistency is reached. This is perfect on warm biscuits or muffins for breakfast.

The second tricky point is to make sure not to overchill the chocolate before being introduced to the cream. This can result in making the mousse too heavy. The correct consistency should be thick, but not so thick that it won’t drip off your spoon.

The following recipe is adapted from the Surreal Gourmet

Ingredients
3/4 tsp unflavored gelatin
8 oz baker’s chocolate, chopped into teeny weenie bits
1 1/2 cups cold heavy cream, divided
1 tsp vanilla extract

Procedure
In a small bowl, add 3 tablespoons water. Sprinkle gelatin over the top and let stand for 5 minutes.

In a medium heatproof bowl, add chocolate.

In a small pot, bring 1/2 cup of the cream to a boil. Add gelatin and vanilla and stir for 30 seconds. Pour cream over chocolate and whisk until smooth. Refrigerate for 30 minutes, or until chocolate thickens, but still falls off a spoon.

In a stand mixer or large bowl, whip remaining 1-cup cream until it can form stiff peaks. Using a rubber spatula, gently but thoroughly fold whipped cream into chocolate mixture. Return to refrigerator for 2 hours, or until it has set.

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