We had a super quiet Thanksgiving, which was wonderful. It was just the 4 of us and I kept the meal very simple. Around 4 pm we sat down to a dinner of delicious turkey (roasted by my darling husband, a man of many talents), brussel sprouts with chestnuts, cranberry sauce and gravy.
We ate for about half an hour, then my husband and I did the dishes, while the children squabbled. After that we all played cards and I thought about how thankful I am to be with them. I’m not sure what I did to end up with 3 such phenomenal people. Each of them is incredibly fun, interesting, and genuinely kind. I am truly blessed on a daily basis. Even though I hadn’t planned to downsize our Thanksgiving consciously, I was happy that I ended up really simplifying the holiday this year, so that I could spend the day enjoying the blessings in my life.
After teaching me how to play hearts, my husband retired to his office to watch some football and the boys and I played rotating scrabble. I took turns being on each of their teams. Between scrabble turns my older son and I worked on making truffles (we are inherent multi-taskers), which accidentally turned into an unforeseen mousse.
When I mentioned this to my husband all he could say was –Sarah Palin. Those two words, “unforeseen” and “mousse” added up to only one thing in his politically overactive mind. He claimed that “Sarah Palin Mousse” would be a great name for this dish, though as you can see, I begged to differ and stuck with my own name for this super rich, easy to make Vegan Mocha Mousse.
As we all know, sometimes the best dishes aren’t the ones we intend to make.
Accidental Mocha Mousse
Ingredients
- ½ cup chocolate chips
- ½ cup full fat coconut milk
- 1 tablespoon organic decaf coffee beans, espresso grind
- ¼ cup hot water
- 1 tablespoon agave nectar or honey
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon almond extract
Instructions
- In a medium pot, melt chocolate into coconut milk over very low heat
- Place ground coffee beans in a melita filter and pour ¼ cup hot water over them
- Stir coffee into chocolate mixture, discarding grounds
- Stir in agave, then vanilla and almond extracts
- Spoon mousse into half-cup ramekins
- Refrigerate 2-3 hours, until firm
- Serve
Equipment
My husband and I shared one of these little dishes of paleo vegan chocolate mousse for dessert. This mousse is very rich so be careful, don’t eat too much. In terms of substitutions, I imagine there are many different ways that you could make this. Feel free to let loose and experiment with your own flavors and alternative ingredients.
I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving! Now that it’s over, what dishes would you like to see during the upcoming month? Desserts? Salads? Entrees? Something else? Leave a comment with your request!
Here are some of my other paleo vegan dessert recipes:
Caroline says
The mousse recipe is printed and I’m ready to try it out. I never thought mousse was possible with an eggfree diet. I’m really looking forward to trying this recipe!
Elana says
Thanks Caroline!
Sophie Ramsey says
Am I the only one that this didn’t set for? The top was set but the bottom was still liquid, even though it was in the fridge for longer than the alloted time. So not sure what went wrong? Still was tasty though, even if it was more like a chocolate milkshake :9
Elana says
Sophie, this generally happens when a lite coconut milk is used rather than the full fat coconut milk called for in the recipe :-)
loligoss says
I meant to comment last Sunday…
Saturday we had visitors over and I wanted to serve after a meat meal something without dairy.
I have been looking at this recipe for a while and thought this is the best occasion. I did make hubby taste before I served everyone else to make sure it was OK. It was amazing.
I used coconut cream that had been lying on it’s side in my fridge for a while so it was nice and de-liquefied.
We can’t get the coconut sugar so I used 1 tbs of maple syrup and 1 tbs of agave I did add pure chocolate extract as I didn’t have any other extract. Used my organic freshly made espresso for the coffee. It was set after a couple of hours and had I not been serving kids I would have added some coffee liquor. I’m going to make it again as the kids loved it even though they usually hate anything that has coconut in it.
I doubled the recipe and it made 6 nicely sized portion.
Elana says
Loligoss, thanks for letting us know this was amazing!