I love this chocolate mousse for cake (no gelatin or eggs)

My chocolate mousse contains melted dark chocolate, butter, sugar, and sour cream and is aerated with freshly whipped cream. The resulting mousse has a decadent chocolate flavor yet a light creamy texture and is stable enough to fill cakes.

Here are the ingredient amounts to make 4.5 cups of mousse (a 50% increase in the amount I showed in the video, which I explained at the very end.)

6 oz (170g) dark chocolate, chopped into small pieces
3 TB (42g) unsalted butter
a couple of big pinches of salt
1 1/2 cups (360g) heavy whipping cream, cold from the fridge
1/2 cup (120g) full-fat sour cream, cold from the fridge
3/4 cup (90g) powdered sugar

For the recipe with written instructions and all of my notes, you can go here:
www.sugarologie.com/recipes/chocolate-mousse

Here is the whipped cream recipe for the outside of the cake:
1 1/2 cups (340g) heavy whipping cream, cold
1/4 cup (25g) powdered sugar (or more to taste)
1/4-1/2 teaspoon Sahnesteif (also goes by Whip-it)
(Buy Sahnesteif at Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3A00Rcg)

If you’re interested in the chocolate chiffon cake, I’ve entered it into my Cakeculator.
To make this size of cake, you’ll need a recipe for TWO 8-inch layers, which you can then slice in half horizontally to make FOUR thinner layers.
Here’s my Cakecualtor:
https://cakeculator.sugarologie.com/

Here’s the vid on different stabilizers for whipped cream:

🌈 TOOLS USED IN THIS VIDEO:
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Revolving cake stand:
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Happy baking, friends ♥️
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Okay so here’s the dessert that I’m hoping to make today chocolate mousse cake so what I’m going to do is slice my cake rounds in half so that it gives me thin layers and so I’m going to have four thin layers of chocolate cake and in between those layers I’m going to put

A layer of chocolate mousse now cake of this size so let me show you this is an eight inch in diameter cake round I put a little over a cup of frost sometimes it’s frosting this time it’s going to be chocolate mousse or filling in between

The cake layers so that means I’m going to need at least three cups of chocolate mousse to make this cake on the outside is going to be a layer of plain whipped cream frosting and then on the top is going to have some sort of piping design hopefully much nicer than what I’ve

Drawn here okay the thing about chocolate mousse is that you you really want to use it right after you make it so I’m gonna have everything ready to go so that right after I make my chocolate mousse I can put this cake together okay now we’re going to start with the

Mousse and I’m making a dark chocolate mousse so I’m using dark chocolate I actually buy my chocolate from Trader Joe’s this is just the dark chocolate one but I also I want to show you that I also buy the other kinds if you wanted to make like a sweeter mousse you could

Use this milk chocolate one it just has a higher sugar content as well as usually milk and the ingredients whereas something that’s actually labeled like this 72 is going to have more cocoa solids and be a little bit more chocolate forward so a little bit less

Sweet and a little bit more bitter this dark chocolate one is kind of a middle of the road it’s definitely dark but it has a bit more sweetness than something like this so that’s what I’m going to be using that’s what I’m using right here

So I’m going to just chop it up into pieces and then add it to my microwave safe Bowl so I’ve got my butter in there already so this looks about right it doesn’t mean to be like super fine but you know chunks that’ll melt really easily

Um you can do this on top of a double boiler as well I’m just going to use the microwave big pinch of salt inches and into the microwave 20 second intervals on high power stirring between each interval okay this is after 20 seconds you can kind of see that it’s

Melty on the bottom the butter definitely melted but not all the chocolate so I’m just gonna Stir It okay back into the microwave another 20 seconds okay definitely melted now so we’re just gonna stir it until it’s nice and glossy and smooth see any lumps of chocolate so we’re good

So I’m just going to set this aside while we prepare the whipped cream okay so for any kind of whipped cream I always chill my bowl so this was in the freezer along with the Whisk attachment here for about five minutes heavy whipping cream contains a higher fat

Content than just whipping cream or like half and half about 36 percent of this is fat and the fat is what stabilizes the air in whipped cream so higher fat content is good this chocolate mousse also has sour cream in it so full fat sour cream some chocolate mousse recipes

Use eggs egg products egg whites to lighten the mixture egg yolks to make the mousse a little bit more creamy I have done that before but I find that it’s just easier not to use eggs it’s not really necessary for the filling of the cake you’re going to see that it

Firms up quite nicely so we’re going to whip that up foreign once it’s kind of thick like that I think it probably has a consistency of like a melted milkshake maybe that’s when I add the sugar so I’m just gonna put the scale back under I do everything uh primarily by weight it’s

Just much more precise and so all of my recipes are are written written written written in gram measurements especially something like powdered sugar and cocoa powder those things are just a pain to measure using cups and tablespoons now we’re going to whip until we get soft

Peaks so show you what that looks like You can tell that it’s thickening but it’s not yet holding any type of shape let’s go a little bit further and at this point sometimes I even use a hand whisk because it moves very quickly from liquid to soft peaks to stiff peaks and you can overbeat your whipped cream

Very easily it’s never a problem when you do because you just add a little bit more cream and that usually softens everything up but sometimes I just do it manually because I don’t you don’t really need much more like a soft Peak so you see that

It’s a nice soft Peak okay so I’ve got my whipped cream here and then I have my chocolate here now we have to combine these two things and the tricky part is that if this is too cold it’ll set up really fast and you’ll get little bits

Of chocolate in here so we want to make sure that this is still warm from our previous melting stuff and I can kind of tell that it’s cooled down a little bit it’s not falling off the spatula as easily so what I’m going to do is put it

Back in the microwave for about 10 seconds and then we’ll mix it into here okay I did 10 seconds then I stirred it and I did another 10 seconds and we’re just gonna pour it in right over the top like that and I’m gonna mix it in here

So I’m kind of doing a little bit of a folding where I’m pulling through the middle turning the bowl moving very quickly and eventually it’ll turn all chocolate colored can you see that go there is the chocolate mousse I’ll take a spatula kind of clean up the edges and catch the

Stuff on the bottom that I might not have gotten and mixed that in foreign scrape the bottom scrape the sides oops you missed a little bit there now you can check the texture of this it’s a little bit soft right now because we just added warm chocolate to it so

While we get everything set up for the cake assembly I’m gonna put this in the fridge really no more than five minutes I just want to keep it chilled kind of clean myself up while I get the the chocolate cake stuff ready okay the mousse has been sitting in the fridge

For about five minutes it’s not completely hard enough but it’s definitely a little bit more firm it’s going to be easier to fill the cake so I’ve got my chiffon cake layers on the side over here so this is oh I’m getting crumbs everywhere this is the top so typically I don’t

Start with the top I’ll start with the bottom of another piece so I’m going to make sure it’s nice and centered I use a scooper to add buttercream or whatever as fillings because it’s just easier for me to measure it out one of these Scoops is about three tablespoons so to put

Approximately one cup I’ll need between five or six of these scoops on here so let’s see what five looks like five times three is fifteen tablespoons 16 tablespoons is one cup so a little bit under a cup here so I’m gonna add one more I’m afraid that we’re not going to have

A rest enough for the rest of the cake so flat spatula we’re just gonna smooth it there we go one layer of mousse we’re gonna put another layer of cake on top foreign Into the fridge it goes okay the cake is still in my fridge I had to feed my kids lunch and it’s been in there for about half an hour but I’m ready to proceed with the rest of my cake and so I’m going to make the

Whipped cream to go on the outside of the cake so I chilled my bowl it was in the freezer for about five minutes along with the Whisk attachment and we’re just going to make some whipped cream freshly whipped cream and typically I like to use stabilizers whenever I frost a cake

My favorite way to stabilize a cake is to use Greek yogurt but I felt like the tanginess might be a little bit too much because the inside of the cake also used sour cream so I didn’t want that kind of overwhelmingly kind of like acidic profile for this cake so I’m just gonna

Use just heavy whipping cream with a little bit of sugar and then I’m going to use a type of stabilizer that doesn’t actually impart any flavor in the whipped cream and this one is called Azana stiff and it’s it contains a motto fried corn starch and it’s modified not

In the sense I guess most people are used to you know modified when they hear like genetically modified that’s not what that means in this case it just means that the cornstarch is treated in a certain way so that it breaks down more easily without heating so it’s a

Starch molecule that expands when it gets exposed to liquid and makes mixtures thick regular cornstarch requires heating this type of cornstarch or modified corn starch can be added to cold liquids such as whipped cream to make it thick okay so now I’m just gonna whip this up very lightly until it’s

Nice and thick and then I’ll add the powdered sugar Okay it’s definitely a little bit thicker the reason that I like to wait before adding the sugar you could definitely add it in the beginning I feel like letting it foam up a little bit allows it to get some structure before we change things around by adding sugar listen

Okay that looks good it’s still pretty drippy the thing is is that when you add this in you can actually you have to you have to mix it more so you’re going to whip it up a little bit more and so you like to kind of go under a little bit

Before you add the whip it and the secret to this stuff is that it’s very very potent so a little bit goes a long way the instructions on the back always tell you to add too much which is why I have a container here because I never

Use the whole packet at once and so for this amount of whipped cream you probably won’t need more than one-fourth to one this is dangerous but let’s see if I can do it one half teaspoon so I’m starting with one fourth of a teaspoon and I’m just going to sprinkle it over

The top like this I’ll sprinkle that all over the top now we’re gonna mix it in low speed you can even do this by hand which will give you greater control just like that or with the manual whisk but let’s go on low speed I think that’ll be good for the cake I

Often find that people over whip their whipped creams for cakes and then so you get the surface it’s not very smooth it’s like a very grainy this because you over whipped the cream but I like to air on the side of under whipping just a touch I find that you really don’t need

You know to go too far to get coverage on the cake okay so we’re done here and let me go grab the cake okay here is the chilled cake like I said it was probably in the fridge for at least half an hour so the mousse on the inside is actually

Quite firm the the cocoa powder and the cocoa butter firms up the whipped cream quite a bit so you don’t really need any additional stabilizers so long as you keep the mousse chilled so we’re gonna do a very minor crumb coat to kind of like lock everything in and then a

Second coat just gonna put ripped all on the top so now we’re just going to smooth it all out kind of smash it down a little bit not smash it but kind of push very gently until it’s like super smooth and so now I’m gonna start applying whipped cream

On the sides now I’m gonna go and clear the sides off or the the bottom I’m just holding it flat against the this is an acrylic disc okay so now we’re gonna do more cream all the way around and now I’m going to smooth it and then

Sometimes I like to use a bigger spatula I actually ordered one that was like way too big look at this thing it’s like big it goes across the entire length of the top of the cake so I’m going to be able to get it a lot smoother I’m just doing

A super thick coating on the sides now if there are any kind of big holes I’ll go and Patch them up like that’s a big hole that seems to be a little bit off when I finish off I like to use a bench scraper so I’m going to smooth it out I

Am right handed so I have to do it on this side but essentially what I’m doing is holding it parallel with the side of the cake and that’s going to smooth it out and then there’s not too much of an edge on the top of the cake usually that

Doesn’t bother me too much but if you want it to be really perfect okay you can pull this towards the center this is a taco 806. that looks so bad okay so um I’m gonna make this look a little bit better okay I found these I went in I grabbed some I

Wish I had mint but I don’t have it right now this is thyme it definitely has a smell to it so if you don’t like it don’t use this I would probably suggest mint here’s the finished cake I really loved the final texture of everything the chiffon had a fine and delicate crumb

The chocolate mousse although it did have a very strong chocolate flavor because of the dark chocolate that I used it was still very light and Airy there is one thing that I would change this is a mousse cake so I really wanted the mousse to be the star of the cake

The amount that I made was probably enough for a six inch cake but not so much an eight inch cake for that effect so I’m gonna go ahead and write up a recipe that makes four and a half cups of chocolate mousse that’s a 50 increase

Than what you see here that’s going to give you a more substantial mousse filling for this cake