T'was the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stiring not even a mousse

Christmas dinner this year went pretty well I thought, as did my dining companion Rusty it would seem. I called the nice butchers over at Belmore Biodynamic meats and ordered a roast shoulder of pork, deboned and with the rind still attached so we’d have lots of crackling. I was looking forward to it for weeks, tender pork, crunchy crackling, a nice Madeira sauce to go with it and plenty of roast vegi’s, we even had Yorkshire puddings it was a feast. Though after putting all this thought into what we were going to have for dinner I had no idea what to do for dessert.

I didn’t want something to heavy because we were having a big dinner and I hate that Christmas tradition of eating rich and heavy food til you’re sick and I also didn’t want to have to put a heap of effort into cooking some kind of elaborate dessert either.
I’d done that last year making a double layer red velvet cake with Vanilla butter cream icing on Christmas day after returning from my Brother and Sister in laws in Gisbourne and then making a roast beef dinner with all the trimmings, which ended up leaving me exhausted and not really in the mood for Christmas.
As it was I came back from Gisbourne on Christmas Eve to give myself more time to prepare only to find out that the pilot light went out on my water heater while I was away, the water heater is about 20 feet off the ground on the outside of my building. I ended up calling the estate agent and my lovely Landlord came with a ladder and lit the pilot light on Christmas Morning, it was a Christmas Miracle, particularly considering that Christmas Day 2006 was one of the coldest in ages and I didn’t look forward to having a cold shower.
I got a lot of cooking related presents for Christmas this year and was able to use most of them with Christmas dinner, my brother got me a really schmick stainless steel copper based saucepan which I used to make the sauce and my sister got me a bottle of Cointreau which ended up giving me my idea for dessert. A few years back I found a recipe that the indefatigable Delia Smith had published for Chocolate Mousse, I have tried it a few times and it’s really really really easy and always turns out perfectly.
It basically tastes like airy chocolate without that fatty overly creamy thing that a lot of mousse recipes seem to have. Apart from being slightly allergic to the cream I find adding it diminishes the flavour of the chocolate.
To make it slightly more christmasy and grown up I decided to do a double layered mousse, one layer of dark chocolate one layer of white, both flavored with The Cointreau my sister got me, so you had a link between the flavours but two different characteristics. That and the fact that the recipe doesn’t need the oven at all, you just melt some chocolate beat some eggs with some sugar and that’s pretty much it.
Serve it in a nice glass or serving bowl and let it chill in the fridge for an hour or two.

Double Layer Cointreau Chocolate Mousse

Melt 200g of dark chocolate in a double boiler or a metal bowl over a saucepan over just simmering water. Separate 3 eggs reserving both the yokes and whites and beat the whites til stiff peaks form with 40grams of caster sugar.
Once the chocolate has melted stir in the egg yokes and add a dash of Cointreau to taste. Slowly begin folding in the beaten egg whites, be gentle at this stage because otherwise you just lose the air. Pour the dark chocolate mousse into martini glasses or just one serving dish and let set for about 20 mins in the fridge. While it’s setting melt 200g of white chocolate and follow the same steps to make your white chocolate mousse.
A couple of tips with this one, I find the eggs are easier to beat if they are at room temperature and I always make sure I wipe out the bowl that I’m going to be beating egg whites in with a slice of lemon. Grease will stop you getting as much lift out of your egg whites and the lemon removes any residual grease that might have been left over from the last time you used the bowl or your beater, even though its been washed sometimes a little film of grease can linger so the lemon trick is kinda handy. You’ll get about 5 individual serves of this or one largish one. Because there are raw eggs in this recipe you should be careful about giving it to pregnant women or little kids, damn them they ruin everything.