White Chocolate Mousse with Assorted Summer Fruit and Chocolate Star

How was your Memorial Week-end? fun??? I sure hope so… I had fun myself. We did not go out of town because we had family duty in town, but I will say that i was happy to just hang out and enjoy the tranquility of my backyard. I usually cook out on Memorial Monday, but since I am to depart soon for France for a wedding, I had much to do with packing and all the business that needs to be taken care of before. And instead of a large cook-out with friends, we decided to have a limited cook-out. On the menu, hot-dogs, assorted chips, baked beans and broccoli salad. Yum:-) What did you guys have???

Well for dessert, we did not have ice-cream, or cookies, or pie… we had White Chocolate Mousse with Assorted Summer Fruit. Much easier, and much lighter than any of the one mentioned above to make. As I was browsing through my cookbook to find a fun dessert with fruits, I came across a recipe in the Ghiradelli Chocolate Cookbook, entitled White Chocolate Mousse that inspired my mousse today. It is very similar from the original recipe except that I used cream and orange blossom extract instead of water and Grand Marnier mentioned in the recipe.

First you want to make the chocolate stars.

Ingredients: 3 oz of bittersweet chocolate chips, 3 oz of heavy cream.

Warm up the heavy cream in the microwave for 1 minute, and pour it on the chocolate. Stir quickly so that the chocolate will “melt” and you will have a “paste” free of lumps. With a spoon, fill up the openings of the star mold. Place the tray into the freezer to chill the stars.

Ingredients for 6 large / 12 small mousse: 8 oz of white chocolate chips ( guiradhelli), 1/4 cup of heavy cream for melting the chocolate, 1 tbsp of orange blossom extract, 1 1/4 cups of heavy cream, 2 large egg whites, assorted summer fruits of your choice.

Place the 1/4 cup of heavy cream in a small bowl and heat it up in the microwave for 1 minute. When it is hot, empty it on the white chocolate and stir rapidly. Add 1 tbsp of orange blossom extract and stir well. Set aside to let the mixture cool.

In a mixer, place the 1 1/4 cup of heavy cream and beat it up to make whipped cream. When the cream is making hard peaks, stop beating the cream and place it in a bowl. Set aside.

Clean up the mixer and add the 2 egg whites, whip them at high-speed so that they will make “meringue”, and will make soft peaks.

Fold the whipped cream into the cool chocolate mixture, then fold the beaten egg whites into the chocolate/ whipped cream mixture. Divide the mousse into 6 large glasses or 12 small glasses. Place them in the fridge to chill. Let them chill for at least an hour. Before serving, place a few assorted fruits on top of each mousse. Remove the stars from the star mold, make a small cut in each of them. And place the stars on the rim of each glass.