Dark rich chocolate mousse with raspberries – healthy and vegan

This dark rich chocolate mousse with raspberries is surprisingly healthy and vegan too.  It comes with fresh raspberries at the bottom and is finished with more raspberries.

Desserts that promise to be healthy raise my suspicions.  They seem too good to be true.  I prefer to have pudding infrequently and so like them amazingly delicious and rich and therefore they tend to be rather bad for me!  This mousse flies in the face of all that.  It’s made by taking dark chocolate, or whatever sort of chocolate you love, melting and mixing it with silken tofu.  “What, tofu in a pudding?”, I hear you cry. “That’s going to taste appalling. Tofu should be in a stir fry.”  Silken tofu has the consistency of panna cotta, or crème caramel.  You can slice through it and it holds its shape, but whizzes up beautifully with melted chocolate and then sets well.  It has a subtle taste and so is ideal for using in this mousse.

I first ate this mousse at a friends’ house a few years ago.  The party included vegans and a chocolate mousse appeared.  I remember taking a spoonful and, intrigued asking what was in it.  I couldn’t think what was giving the mousse that beautiful texture, tasting so good and yet was also vegan.  Eventually they told me.  I couldn’t believe that rather than eating raw eggs the standard ingredient for chocolate mousse, we were eating tofu which is high in protein, low in fat and stores for ages in the cupboard.  Ideal!

In this dark rich chocolate mousse with raspberries, the fruit berries are put beneath and on top of the mousse.  They are a lovely surprise when you reach them.  The sweet raspberries and the dark rich chocolate work beautifully together.  I can’t seem to get enough of raspberries at the moment.

A few weeks ago we had family coming for food on Thursday night and then friends coming to stay for the weekend.  Friday and Saturday were going to be busy.  So on Thursday I made enough for two nights. I wanted a fun and posh looking pudding.  And this one can be made a few days in advance and taken out of the fridge 30 minutes before you need it.