Ⓥ Raw Chocolate Mousse - Adapted from Divine Vegan Desserts

I am having a mini spurt of cooking enthusiasm, so I thought I would have a go at a raw chocolate cake, from Divine Vegan Desserts, by Lisa Fabry. I am calling it a Raw Chocolate Mousse and not the actual recipe name of Black Forest Gateau, because I decided to be lazy and only make a basic version of the cake in the book.  My thought was, that I would do a basic version and try it, then if I liked it, I would do the luxury version at a later date, probably for a special occasion.

I thought I would show you the mess I created before showing you my raw dessert...

There are two parts to the Raw Chocolate Mousse: the fudge crumble base and the chocolate hazelnut mousse.

Ingredients

Base:

• 100g cashew nut
• 35g cacao powder
• seeds of 1 vanilla pod
• pinch of salt
• 70g dates
• 1 tablespoon agave nectar

Mousse:

• 140g hazelnuts, soaked
• 370g water
• 35g cacao powder
• seeds of 1 vanilla pod
• 100g dates
• 2 tablespoons of maple syrup
• pinch of salt
• tablespoon of soya lecithin
• 60ml coconut oil, melted
• 1 teaspoon of psyllium powder

Method

For the base, its very easy, all you have to do is blend everything together a bit at a time.  Press into the base of a dish - the dish I use measures 3.5cm in depth and 19.5cm in diameter.

The mousse is slightly more complicated, because you have to make hazelnut milk first.  It's straight forward  enough to do.  You just soak the nuts, blend them with a measured amount of water and then strain it through muslin and squeeze out as much milk as you can.  Put the cacao, vanilla seeds, dates, maple syrup and salt into a blender and add the hazelnut milk gradually as you blend.  When the mixture is smooth add the lecithin, coconut oil and psyllium powder with the blender running.   Pour the mousse into the dish and chill until set.

Differences from the book: I used cashews instead of macadamia, I didn't use the carob but added extra cacao, I used ordinary dates, not medjool and substituted the agave with maple syrup.  This was partly because I am a bit short of cash and also with the nuts, because I preferred to buy organic and could not find organic macadamia nuts.  Mind you, thinking about it, macadamia nuts are really expensive conventionally grown, so I shudder to think how expensive they would be organically grown.

So, all in all it was very easy to make, even without owning a proper food processor and having to make do with a hand blender.  I left it in the fridge over night to set and cut off a slice in the morning to try.

Wow! It's truly impressive, a creamy chocolatey mousse contrasted with the nutty base, it was far beyond my expectations, even with my few tweaks to the ingredients, so I imagine it would be even better with the macadamias etc.

 Divine Vegan Desserts