Chocolate mousse. Decadent. Rich yet light and airy. Bubbly yet smooth and melt in your mouth indulgence. Made from the drained liquid in a tin of chickpeas..wait, what?! Yup. Welcome to the magical world of aquafaba. The glorious vegan revolutionary ingredient that I’d been throwing down the sink for years! For anyone that’s missed the hype the past year about chickpea brine, basically it acts just like egg whites in cooking and has been used a replacement in a huge variety of dishes. Pavlova, meringues, macarons, ice cream, in butter, in baking cookies or cakes, icing, omelettes….the list goes on. But for today , I’m sharing what I think is the best chocolate mousse I’ve had since becoming vegan. Any others I’d tried usually involved avocado or banana, feeling gloopy and heavy, more like pudding than mousse. Until I discovered this wonderful recipe here which I then adapted with two of my favourite flavours, lemon zest and lavender. So simple and can be done in under half an hour for an impressive looking dessert that will have vegans and non vegans alike begging for seconds. Plus, one of my favourite qualities is that it utilises every part of the foodstuff, as you’ll notice a recurring theme in my recipes that I try to cut down on food waste.
Ingredients
drained liquid from one tin of chickpeas (around 125ml)
100g good quality dark chocolate
4 tsp icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla powder
pinch of salt
1-2 drops lavender essence
rind from one lemon, finely zested
Method
Gently melt the chocolate in a bowl placed over a pan of simmering water. Take the pan off the heat then remove the bowl and stir in the lavender, lemon zest and vanilla powder. Let it cool while you prepare the rest.
Using an electric whisk, beat the chickpea brine until it forms stiff peaks. Add the icing sugar and salt then beat for 20 seconds longer. Now start to gently fold in the cooled chocolate mixture by either spooning or gently pouring it in and stir it slightly with a spatula until just incorporated. Spoon into desired glasses or ramekins and chill until needed. How easy is that?! I’ll be posting other variations on this in the future so keep your eyes peeled, in the meantime, do what I do and find lots of excuses to eat chickpeas (or aquafaba by-product as they’re now known in our house). Hope you enjoy 🙂
Share this:
