This Easy Chocolate Mousse recipe is so creamy and deliciously rich. You can eat it all by itself, or layer it in a trifle or a cake… whatever you do, just don’t skip this no bake mousse!
The pictures and tips and tricks within the post for this recipe were updated in 2021. The recipe remains the same!
Homemade Chocolate Mousse
If you’re a chocolate dessert lover, this Chocolate Mousse recipe is absolutely going to make your day. Or your week. Possibly your year? I guess that last part depends on if you’re super obsessed with chocolate like I am… have I ever mentioned that I’m addicted to this Chocolate Pudding too?
At any rate, this easy mousse recipe came to be because I have been trying to develop it for years. Up until this point, the mousse-making-process has always ended in spoon throwing and tears, but no more! Today I’m sharing all the steps on how to get a perfectly creamy, thick-but-not-too-thick mousse that you will LOVE!
This homemade chocolate mousse is sweet, full of rich chocolate flavor, and a decadent but simple dessert that you can prepare for guests, if you want. Decorate it with fruit, sprinkles, and whatever other sweet treats you like!
What is Mousse?
Mousse is a French dessert that is kind of like pudding, but there are some key differences between the two. For one thing, mousse is airier and fluffier than pudding is. When the eggs in the mousse mixture are whipped together, air is incorporated, which makes the texture lighter.
Keep in mind, mousse should be served chilled for the best tasting experience!
Recipe Ingredients
I forgot to mention one of the best parts about making chocolate mousse… you only need 4 ingredients! Let’s get right into this very short list of essential ingredients:
- Eggs: If you’re concerned about using raw eggs, consider using pasteurized eggs instead.
- Sugar: Regular old granulated sugar works best for this recipe!
- Cream: Heavy whipping cream, specifically, is what you’ll need. Make sure it’s nice and cold before you start!
- Chocolate: I always use semi-sweet chocolate chips to make this mousse, but you can play around with different kinds of chocolate (like milk chocolate chips) if you want to.
How to Make Chocolate Mousse
This recipe has a few steps to it, but trust me when I tell you that none of them are that hard. Plus, they’ll only take you about 20 minutes to complete, so the hardest part of making this chocolate mousse is waiting for it to chill!
Beat the Eggs & Sugar: Do this with your mixer for about 3 minutes.
Heat the Whipping Cream: Heat 1 cup of heavy whipping cream in a small saucepan until just hot, not boiling. With the mixer on low, pour the hot cream into the egg mixture slowly until combined.
Heat the Whole Mixture: Next, add the egg/cream mixture back into the saucepan and over low heat, stir for five minutes constantly until thickened. Do not boil.
Add Chocolate & Chill: Remove from heat and stir in chocolate until melted. Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours, until chilled, stirring occasionally.
Whisk the Remaining Whipping Cream: When the mixture is completely chilled and firm use your whisk attachment on your stand mixer to whip the remaining heavy cream until stiff peaks form.
Put Everything Together: Remove the chocolate mixture from fridge and, using the paddle attachment or a spoon, fold/stir the whipped cream into the chocolate until incorporated and smooth. Serve immediately as-is, or refrigerate until ready to use.
Tips for Success
Looks delicious, right? And, like I said at the beginning, this is a great recipe to use for a number of other desserts if you don’t want to eat the mousse by itself. For example, chocolate mousse is stable enough to layer between cakes. (Personally, I’ll never turn down a nice cold bowl of mousse, but no judgement.)
Here are a couple of tips on how to get the best results with your chocolate mousse, for however you decide to use it:
- What Setting Should I Whip the Mousse on if I Use a Stand Mixer? I found using the paddle attachment on a low speed worked best. That way none of the dessert is lost to the walls or the counter!
- Use Real Chocolate: Chocolate substitutions just don’t taste as rich and delicious in this mousse – stick to semi-sweet chocolate chips or grated bars of baking chocolate for the best results.
- Beating the Whipping Cream and Eggs: This occurs during the second step. You’ll want to fold the two mixtures together for the fluffiest results – beating longer results in a dense, thick mouse, and beating a little less results in a more creamy texture.
How to Store Mousse
Store this chocolate mousse in the refrigerator in a tightly-sealed container, or cover it with a couple layers of plastic wrap. Make sure to eat it within 2-3 days. I know, I know – what a difficult time constraint to deal with!
Enjoy!
Easy Chocolate Mousse
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Chill Time: 2 hours
- Total Time: 2 hours 15 minutes
- Yield: serves 8
- Category: Dessert
- Method: No Bake
- Cuisine: French
Description
This Easy Chocolate Mousse recipe is so creamy and deliciously rich. You can eat it all by itself, or layer it in a trifle or a cake… whatever you do, just don’t skip this no bake mousse!
Ingredients
- 2 eggs
- 1/4 cups granulated sugar
- 2 1/2 cups cold heavy whipping cream, divided
- 6 oz semi-sweet chocolate (about 1 cup semi-sweet chips)
Instructions
- Beat eggs and granulated sugar with your mixer for about 3 minutes.
- Meanwhile heat 1 cup heavy whipping cream in a small saucepan until just hot, not boiling. With mixer on low pour the hot cream into the egg mixture slowly until combined.
- Next, add the egg/cream mixture back into the saucepan and over low heat, stir for five minutes constantly until thickened. Do not boil.
- Remove from heat and stir in chocolate until melted. Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours, until chilled, stirring occasionally.
- When the mixture is completely chilled and firm use your whisk attachment on your stand mixer to whip the remaining heavy cream until stiff peaks form. Remove chocolate from fridge and using the paddle attachment or a spoon fold/stir the whipped cream into the chocolate until incorporated and smooth. I found using the paddle attachment on low speed worked best.
- Serve immediately as-is, or refrigerate until ready to use.
Notes
This mousse is perfect when served alone, or as a cake filling, a cupcake topping, or a layered dessert filling.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1/2 cup
- Calories: 401
- Sugar: 20.6 g
- Sodium: 37.9 mg
- Fat: 34.1 g
- Carbohydrates: 22 g
- Protein: 5.2 g
- Cholesterol: 130.5 mg
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More Chocolate Desserts to Try
Looking for more easy chocolate dessert ideas? You’re in the right place:
- Chocolate Poke Cake
- Chocolate Covered Cherries
- Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Chocolate Sugar Cookies
- Chocolate Pound Cake
Recipe calls for 2 eggs, but one of the tips says to beat egg WHITES until foamy. Which is it, 2 eggs or egg whites? Am hesitant to try it when seeing opposing /confusing directions.
Sorry that is a major typo! Recipe stands, 2 large eggs, no egg whites separated 🙂
Recipe is a good starting point but has some flaws. It’s clear that the basis is a classic french pastry cream recipe, but the temp and procedure is inaccurate, that explains why many are having thickness issues.
Egg yolks would be better than just whole eggs. The recipe should have a 50/50 blend of cornstarch and flour blended with the egg/sugar. At least 1 Tablespoon of each. The egg mixture should be whisked on high until smooth and creamy, not necessarily 3 minutes.
The warmed cream should be whisked on high speed, not slow, you need to make sure the cream blends quickly, small amounts at a time, until fully combined. This mixture should be run through a fine mesh sieve, then put back into the pot.
Now the critical part, the mixture must be heated on medium heat not low and continuously/vigorously whisked until very smooth. It’s ok for the mixture to bubble, you want that for perhaps 30 seconds. This is what will make the custard the proper thickness.
Put the custard in a bowl to chill, but make sure its covered on the surface with plastic wrap, otherwise a film will form!!! After several hours whip up the mix before folding in the stiff peak cream.
Looks like you need to develop your own recipe instead of telling them theirs is wrong. Sheesh.
This is my favorite mousse recipe! I’ve used this recipe as written and also when I made it into a coffee mousse (white chocolate + espresso powder) and each time it has resulted in a fluffy and thick mousse.
I think where people are going wrong is they aren’t tempering the egg mixture and are not cooking it long enough on the stove. It will be thick like a custard (because it IS a custard).
Made this today. Turned out perfect. I went through all the comments and used some of the suggestions. I used 4 egg yolks instead of 2 whole eggs. I tempered the hot cream into the eggs. I used milk chocolate chips but added a TBS of hershey chocolate powder to the second heating of eggs and cream stirred it with a whisk. I also used cool whip in place of whipping my own whip cream. Turned out amazing.
Hi, this chocolate mousse recipe sounds delicious! Your instructions are very thorough and clear. I only have one question. On instruction # 1, what speed do we beat the eggs and sugar on? I don’t have any fancy mixer with a paddle attachment. I just have the old school, plain Jane, mixer. Thank you so much!
Beth
I had to do this recipe twice. First time it was runny and didn’t set. I realized on the second one that it takes longer than 5 minutes on low heat to thicken it before you add the chocolate. It came out perfect on the second try. I chilled it again after mixing in the whipped cream. Perfection!! Oh and I used Ghirardelli chocolate!
How long did you heat it for
Yes definitely takes more than the 5 mins to thicken, and for those asking how long, do it until it actually appears to have thickened and it will turn out wonderful! Best chocolate mousse ever!
I absolutely love the simplicity of this recipe I have a few doubts though,
1) I’m scared to pour the hot cream into the egg mixture, I’m worried it may cook. How hot does it have to be?
2) Also, can I chill it prior to layering it on a cake, a recipe I tried earlier called for layering and then chilling.
Thank you so much!
I did the recipe as written and it still turned out runny. Wondering what I did wrong? It just never seemed to thicken. The thickest part was the whipped cream I mixed into it at the end but it still didn’t help the overall dessert. 🙁
I’m having the same issue. Don’t know why.
The same happened to me as well. While my chocolate mixture was thick, it was still runny and nowhere close to a paste even after two hours in the fridge and another thirty minutes in the freezer. I am not sure what I did incorrectly as I followed the recipe.
Okay so I thought I would give some feedback to all the people who tried to make this recipe and ended up with chocolate runny goop instead of chocolate mousse. My husband and I looked up and read about some reasons for the chocolate goop mess. Two of the most common reasons we found were we needed more chocolate and we needed more egg yolk, both of which act as a thickeners. So we found another recipe that was VERY similar to this one except it worked. It was by Betty Crocker. When in doubt, go old school! It used 4 egg yolks instead of two whole eggs. It also had one difference when adding the heated cream to the egg and sugar mixture. It has you temper it. After you heat the cup of cream, instead of adding ALL the heated cream into the egg yolk and sugar, only add half, and do it very slowly. That’s it! Those were the only two differences. The rest of the Betty Crocker recipe is the same as this one.
Here are some extra tips and tricks that we stumbled across as we were reading about Chocolate Mousse “Trouble Shooting” that were not in the Betty Crocker recipe but may help:
*Use a double broiler when heating the cream/cream, egg and sugar mixture.
*Chill the bowl and whisk in the freezer for about 30 minutes before you whip the cream.
* We also added a TAD more chocolate. We used a heaping cup of chips instead of a level cup.
After we adjusted these few things, WE HAD WONDERFUL CHOCOLATE MOUSSE!!!!
For all the frustrated Chocolate Mousse makers out there… like me, I hope this was helpful.
Very helpful, Melissa. Thank you!!
Perfect recipe. Turned out delicious. I used dark chocolate instead of semi sweet and it was delicious. Definitely worth making it again.
So glad you liked it!!!
How early can I make this mousse and how long can it sit in my fridge before serving ? I need to make it for a Saturday so how early can this be done pls reply to me at your earliest
You can make this a day in advance and it will be fine!