Avocado Chocolate Mousse

Ages and ages ago, Skye (who is now gone!) made an avocado chocolate mousse on Masterchef. And of course me being me, immediately decided I had to make it. So a couple of days ago, I finally got around to making it. It's taken me a while, considering we are now down to the top 10 contestants, and this mousse popped up during the qualifying rounds. But nonetheless, the mere sound of it is so weird that I thought it would be something worth blogging about :)

Basically it's a vegan chocolate mousse. So there's no cream or eggs or *shock! horror!* chocolate. Well sort of... there's cocoa powder. The cream and eggs are replaced with avocado. It's also really really easy to make. Much easier than a normal mousse.

Here are the ingredients: (I know, I couldn't resist)

- 4 avocados
- 1 cup cocoa powder
- 1 cup syrup (eg. maple syrup - I just used normal syrup)
- 1 tsp vanilla

And then you chuck it all in a food processor... yum!

Pulse it till it's smooth...

And voila!

As I said, it's super duper easy, involves no cooking whatsoever, and took me maybe 20ish minutes, and only because I was taking photos at the same time (much to my mother's chagrin).

So how did it taste? Ahem, let me put on my Matt Preston cravat for a moment. It has a very creamy texture but is very, and I mean very, dense. It's very rich, very chocolate-y but not in the way you expect it to be. The cocoa powder is raw so it leaves an almost dry sensation in your mouth despite the creaminess of the avocado and being raw, the chocolate taste is very different to the not-so-vegan chocolate we're used to. One of the good things about it is that it's not very sweet, and you can adjust the syrup to your liking. I started with a little less than a cup, but I reckon I ended up putting it all in. However you can't eat too much at once, and coming from me that's a big thing to say. Because it's so dense, not light like normal mousse, it's very filling and the chocolate is very strong.

All up? I like it. It's a little weird, but it's entertaining. And it's healthy! Okay, okay, Her-cules, there's lots of fat in avocado and a whole cup of syrup! But I think relatively, it is pretty healthy. My brother didn't like it though - the raw cocoa taste was too dry for him and it didn't taste like chocolate, which it doesn't. I also took it to uni for some mass taste-testing, and pretty much everyone liked it - M*A*S*H, Jester and Lizzie all really liked it! So if you're thinking of taking a spin on the vego-side, it's nice to know you won't miss out on chocolate mousse! Woopee!

As for the next Masterchef, experiment... I just finished the Blackforest Cake at 11pm last night for my mother's birthday. Literally the most difficult cake I have ever attempted. But just for the blog, watch out for 5 minute chocolate cake in a mug!

c.c.