As I was growing up in France, we always had desserts at the end of our meals. During the week,  it was never fancy, the desserts could be a fruit, a flavored yogurt or a mousse whereas on the week-end we had one of those nice pastries or a home-made cake. That’s probably the reason why I am such a sweet tooth;-) I like to finish my meals with something sweet, and preferably chocolate…

But since I am watching my weight and don’t care to go up in sizes, I will only allow myself to have desserts on the week-ends. Well yesterday being Saturday, I was on the prowl for a yummy dessert so I opened many of my chocolate cookbooks to find my object of my gourmandise. I found it in a cookbook I brought back from France called “Verrines Tout Chocolat” from the Marabout Editions.

Ingredients for 8 servings:

For the mousse: 3/4 cup of milk, 1 1/3 cup of cream, 1/3 cup of sugar, 6 egg yolks, 250 gr of chocolate

Place the milk and the cream in a small saucepan and bring to boil. In another bowl, beat the egg yolks with the sugar until they are well mixed, and add the warm milk. Mix well again, place back on the stove and cook until the cream is becoming thicker ( the cream should start sticking to the back of the spoon). But be careful not to overcook and to bring to boil or the cream will curdle. Pour the cream mixture over the chocolate and mix well. Set aside until you are ready to assemble your dessert.

For the crumble: 3/4 cup  of flour, 3/4 cup  of sugar, 3 1/2 tbsp of powder cocoa, 1/2 cup and 2 tbsp of hazelnut mill, 9 tbsp of butter at room temperature.

In a bowl, place all the ingredients and mix well using your hands. Once you have made “crumbles”, place in the fridge for about 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, place the crumbles on a flexipan and cook for about 5 minutes in a warm oven of 350. Set aside.

Icing: 1/3 cup of heavy cream, 1/2 cup of water, 1 1/4 cup of sugar, 1/3 cup of powder cocoa, 4 sheet of gelatin.

In a small saucepan, put the water, and the sugar and bring to boil until it is becoming a syrup. Place the gelatin in a small bowl and cover with about 3 tbsp of water. Add the cocoa powder to the syrup and cook for a few minutes. In another saucepan, warm up the cream and when it is hot, empty the warm cream in the syrup. Mix well and cook for 5 minutes. Remove the saucepan from the stove, and add the softened gelatin. Mix well and set aside.

To prepare the individual serving, use some fancy glasses. Fill up each glass with the cream to 2/3 of the glass. Place in the fridge to cool. After 1 hour, take the glasses back out of the fridge and pour 1 to 2 tbsp of the icing on the top of the cream. Then sprinkle some crumbles on top of the icing, and sprinkle some more powder cocoa. Et voila… Time to devour… YUM!!!

Bon Appetit and Happy Cooking!!!