Making White Chocolate Mousse

I think of white chocolate mousse a medium for another flavor versus an end in itself. I mean honestly…is there anyone out there who’s really that into white chocolate? However we can use the cocoa butter that white chocolate contains to give an ethereal herbal flavor like mint a form and a texture. Since we only need the white chocolate for its foam-reinforcing cocoa butter, not its flavor, we can go lighter than we would with a chocolate mousse. I make mine with:

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On the James Beard Awards

I only just got around to checking the list of winners for the 2012 James Beard Awards (thanks to reader Mic for reminding me that they were even happening!). Congratulations to Jeni Britton Bauer of Jeni’s on her book award for Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home. I confess I haven’t seen it yet, the fall of the big box bookstores has made browsing the year’s cookbook titles a whole lot more difficult. But I can see it’s a book Mrs. Pastry will want to get her mits on and soon!

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What’s the relationship between bombes and pâte à bombe?

VERY perceptive question, reader Camille. Pâte à bombe is of course the delicious base of whipped egg yolks and sugar syrup that’s often used to make chocolate mousse. “Pâte” is variously translated as “dough”, “paste” or “mix.” And “bombe” as we’ve established pretty much just means bomb. I think the only possible explanation is that pâte à bombe is/was a base that’s employed in the making of dessert bombes.

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On the History of Chocolate Mousse

Reader Cora wants to know when chocolate mousse first showed up on the culinary stage. I’m not sure to be honest. However I do know that mousses have been with us since the eighteenth century (or the Century of Foams, as I like to think of it). That was the period when court chefs around Europe, especially in France, discovered the frothing power of eggs — and went wild with it. Those people made foams out of everything: vegetables, meats, fish, you name it.

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What’s a “bomb thrower”?

Reader Carlo, are you trying to get this blog investigated by the DHS? People use the word “bomb thrower” to describe anyone who’s style of political discourse is crude, demagogic or, er…”explosive.” But the term was originally coined in the 1880’s to describe anyone who was an anarchist, most especially an eastern European anarchist. In 1881 a group of Russian anarchists killed Czar Alexander II with a bomb. Just a few years later, in my old hometown of Chicago, the so-called Haymarket Affair occurred, in which anarchists threw a bomb at a group of police who were

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Bombin’ Bernie

Reader Carlo writes:

Here’s something I’ve wondered and I’ll bet you can tell me: why are bombs in cartoons always those round, black things with the fuse sticking out? If an ice cream bombe is supposed to look like one, somebody must have thrown those around at some point in history. Can you tell us when or where? This seems like your sort of question.

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MCA, R.I.P.

Considering how important music is and always has been to me, I don’t comment on it much here on joepastry.com. Today I will because MCA from the Beastie Boys died of cancer over the weekend.

I can’t say the Beastie Boys made a great first impression on me when I heard them in college back in 1986. The whole “Fight for Your Right to Party” thing irritated me. I considered myself both an intellectual and an artist then, an elevated sort of person. All that crass frat-kegger nonsense was beneath me. It wasn’t too many months after I’d graduated that I found myself wishing I’d spent a little more time enjoying my college experience and a little less time cultivating my own personal gravitas.

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