Gluten-Free Vegan Chocolate Mousse Cake - Rhian's Recipes (2024)

FAQs

How do you keep gluten-free cake moist? ›

Add extra liquid: Gluten-free flours tend to absorb more liquid than regular flour, so you may need to add more liquid to your recipes to compensate. This can help to keep your baked goods moist and prevent them from becoming dry and crumbly.

A mousse cake has either a base of cake with mousse on top making up the bulk of the dessert or is cake layers with mousse as the filling. A mousse tart is a tart shell which is then filled with mousse. The shell is less like cake and more like a cookie or pie crust, depending on how it's made …

The Ingredients

Silken Tofu OR avocado: A single package of firm silken tofu is all you need for this creamy silken tofu chocolate mousse. Alternatively, you can make a creamy avocado chocolate mousse with 340g ripe avocado for a soy-free option. Don't worry, you won't taste avocado at all!

Moisture – for some reason gluten-free cakes tend to get a little dry. Any gluten-free cake will dry out super-fast and get hard on the outside if it's not properly refrigerated and covered. I swear by always using buttermilk and adding a little more fat into the batter to compensate for the dryness.

Adding sorghum or tapioca flour to a blend increases softness and absorbency, which is ideal for lighter cakes and pastries. Gluten-free oats and oat flours add texture, which works well in biscuits and breakfast muffins.

A simple yet elegant dessert. While it uses only a few ingredients, chocolate, eggs, butter, vanilla, and heavy cream, its chocolate flavor is rich and its texture is silky smooth and airy, almost foamy. And foamy is an apt description as "mousse" is French for 'froth' or 'foam'.

There are two types of Mousse: sweet and savory. Sweet Mousse is usually made with chocolate or fruit and served as a dessert. Savory Mousse can be meat-based or fish-based and served as an appetizer.

Check that the chocolate has cooled down sufficiently – it should not be warm to the touch or else chocolate is likely to seize and you will end up with grainy mousse.

Reading labels: Most mousses are not vegetarian friendly as they contain gelatine. Where once chocolate mousse was to be found on seemingly every upmarket restaurant menu in town, now it is not so common as more exotic flavours find favour.

Agar agar can be used as a substitute if you're trying to avoid gelatin, and it should be handled in the same way. Some recipes—usually, recipes that use chocolate as a base, because it thickens on its own under refrigeration—don't require a thickener at all.

How do you stiffen chocolate mousse? ›

You will need to add a thickening agent such as cornstarch or additional egg yolks, but be aware that it is very difficult to add just the right amount to thicken the mousse so it doesn't turn into a chocolate pudding. Don't overdo it when it comes to thickening.

Sweet mousses are typically made with whipped egg whites, whipped cream, or both, and flavored with one or more of chocolate, coffee, caramel, puréed fruits, or various herbs and spices, such as mint or vanilla.

Not fluffy enough, not chocolatey enough, too sweet, grainy, etc etc. Many “easy” chocolate mousse recipes tend to use too much cream so the end result is more like custard, rather than aerated like real chocolate mousse should be.

Gluten-free baked goods often benefit from extra liquid to hydrate the flour blends, eliminate grittiness, and achieve a less dense or dry texture. However, it's very important to drive off this extra moisture during baking, or you'll wind up with a gummy texture. The best way to do this? Longer baking times.

These ingredients take longer to set than regular gluten-containing flour, meaning they may remain slightly “gummy” or sticky until they have cooled. That's why when you test your gluten-free cakes with a toothpick, even if it looks done, your toothpick might not come out completely clean!

So, in order to prevent your gluten free bakes from crumbling away to nothing, you need to replace the gluten with an alternative binder – and in most cases, that binder will be XANTHAN GUM.