This new year’s eve Anniken and I went to her friend Christine’s apartment for the last party of the year. We were kindly asked to bring something for dessert and since Anniken had to work during the day, I was put in charge of coming up with something. After browsing through tons and tons of recipes, I decided to try to make chocolate mousse with raspberry gel. The end result wasn’t all that bad, and if it sounds like something you’d like to try yourself, here’s the recipe.

Before we start, here’s a bit of a warning, though: The end result will not look anything like in the picture above - the picture is of an entirely different dessert because I couldn’t find a high quality one of this particular dessert. Anyway, here’s what you need to do to make six servings:

Raspberry gel

• 4 sheets gelatin

• 150 grams (1/3 pounds) frozen raspberries

• 1 dl (3.4 ounces) water

• 100 grams (1/4 pounds) sugar

• 1/4 dried vanilla fruit

  1. Soak the sheets of gelatin in cold water for half an hour
  2. Cut the vanilla fruit lengthwise and cut out the seeds with a small knife
  3. Put the vanilla seeds, the empty vanilla fruit, sugar and water in a small cocking pot and heat it until it boils
  4. Take the pot off the stove and let it cool for 10 minutes
  5. Squeeze the water from the gelatin sheets and put them, one by one, in the raspberry jam until they melt away in the mix
  6. Take half of the jam - now a bit more gel-like than before - and set it aside for use as garnish later
  7. Take the other half of the gel and pour it into six small bowls and put them in the refrigerator for at least two hours, or the freezer for at least one hour.

Chocolate mousse

• 2 sheets gelatin
• 100 grams (1/4 pounds) chocolate
• 1 dl (3.4 ounces) cream
• 1/2 del (1.7 ounces) egg white
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/4 dried vanilla fruit

1. Soak the sheets of gelatin in cold water for half an hour
2. Cut the vanilla fruit lengthwise and cut out the seeds with a small knife
3. Mix the vanilla seeds and sugar together and create vanilla sugar
4. Whip the egg whites for a while, add the vanilla sugar and continue to whip until you get a stiff, white foam
5. Melt the chocolate
6. Whip the cream into, you guessed it, whipped cream
7. Squeeze the water from the gelatin sheets and melt them in a cooking pot with 3 tablespoons of whipped cream
8. Mix the gelatin and whipped cream mix with the hot chocolate and whip it hard!
9. Add another 3 tablespoons of whipped cream and whip everything not so hard
10. Carefully add the remaining whipped cream and the whipped egg whites and vanilla sugar to the mix
11. Pour the mousse on top of the raspberry gel in the bowls
12. Place the bowls back in the fridge for another 3 hours or in the freezer for another hour
13. Carefully heat the remaining raspberry gel until it gets runny, but not hot
14. Pour it on top of the cold mousse and put the bowls back into the fridge until you plan to serve them
15. Before you serve the desserts, garnish with chocolate and fresh raspberries

All done. Bon appetite.