vegan chocolate mousse (and cake)

For Food & Fitness class we had to do a project on a healthy cookbook of our choice. I chose 500 Vegan Recipes because they had a recipe for chocolate mousse that I found intriguing.

It involved avocado (ripe, 1), tofu (firm, 1 pound) and agave syrup (1/4 cup).



I pureed the tofu and agave syrup first, then added melted chocolate (dark, 2 cups). It was a little grainy, but I think it would've worked if the tofu was the soft kind. I wanted to try without avocado because Whole Food's vegan chocolate mousse is really good and all it is is chocolate, tofu and brown rice syrup.



After I added the avocado the mixture became smoother/creamier.



I wanted to serve samples to the class, so I made a vegan chocolate cake to accompany the mousse. This was my first foray into vegan baking and I had no idea to expect. The cake came out dark and dense, like bread almost. Besides having no egg, no dairy, it also didn't have sugar. The only sweetness was from the non-dairy yogurt and applesauce that I put in.

The cake by itself didn't taste very good, although it did have the texture/chewiness of a regular chocolate cake.



Thankfully it tasted better with the mousse. I cut the cake into little squares and placed them in little sample cups, then piped mousse over.



The mousse actually set at room temperature, to a ganache-like consistency. Definitely didn't expect that. Also the dark chocolate taste was too strong (and I'm speaking as someone who loves dark chocolate). If I were to make this again I would use a milk/dark chocolate mixture, and/or cut down the amount of chocolate in the recipe.

If anyone has any vegan dessert recipes to share, please let me know! I'd love to try other stuff.