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beer and food

Dark chocolate mousse and Sam Smith's imperial stout

samsmithis2

I often like to have a dark chocolatey beer for dessert, but I’d always been a bit sceptical about matching beer with sweet treats, particularly after some unsuccessful attempts.  For example, Young’s double chocolate stout just tastes like a watery bitter ale if you drink it with real chocolate.

However, having tried a dark chocolate orange mousse with Sam Smith’s Imperial Stout, I think it can work beautifully when you have a full-bodied and bitter beer. In this particular case, the mousse did bring out the bitterness in the beer, but in a fabulous way. It made the stout taste like really dark, unsweetened chocolate (not unlike Yeti by Great Divide). It certainly works better with chocolate than with cheese.

Recipe for mousse after the jump.

Basic mousse recipe for two generous portions:

  • 100g nice dark chocolate, around 70% cocoa solids
  • 2 large eggs

Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over boiling water.  Separate the eggs and add the yolks to the chocolate.  At the point you can add some other flavours, like a couple of tablespoons or rum, strong espresso, amaretto, cointreau or other liqueur.  To get a good orange flavour, I added the zest of a tangerine, two tablespoons of freshly squeezed orange juice and a few drops of some orange-flavoured vodka that I had in the cupboard from my days living in Poland.

Beat the egg whites to soft peaks in another bowl, fold into the chocolate mix, pour into ramekins (or la-di-da espresso cups) and chill for a few hours.

Boak

4 replies on “Dark chocolate mousse and Sam Smith's imperial stout”

This sounds great and such an easy recipe/dessert to put together! Nice one!

Good chocolate and dark beer matches can be excellent, but it can be fairly difficult to get really great ones – strong coffee stout can be great with milk choc, it’s that whole roasted bitter thing that works. My favourite recent chocolate pairing was Old Engine Oil with milk chocolate covered raisins! Yum!

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