This smooth and creamy Strawberry Mousse is made with fresh strawberries, cream, gelatin, sugar, lemon juice and white chocolate. It’s the perfect make-ahead dessert!
Strawberry Mousse with White Chocolate
This strawberry mousse is fabulously cool, rich, and creamy with the strawberry and white chocolate combination, a perfect elegant dessert for entertaining!
We came across an intriguing recipe for strawberry mousse cake in Martha Stewart Living and decided to skip the cake part and just make the strawberry mousse with white chocolate. I’ve made some modifications to adapt the recipe for a standalone sophisticated dessert.
It’s delicious! And well worth the effort. Since the mousse requires several hours of chilling time, it’s an excellent dish if you are looking for a make-ahead dessert that will wow your guests.
Strawberry Mousse Ingredients
To make this show stopping strawberry mousse, we use:
- Fresh strawberries
- Lemon juice
- White chocolate
- Unflavored gelatin
- Heavy whipping cream
- Powdered sugar
How to make strawberry mousse
First we make a purée with about half of the fresh strawberries, and stir in some lemon juice to brighten their flavor.
Then we melt white chocolate and mix it with some gelatin that has been mixed with cream and powdered sugar. Why the gelatin? It will help give our strawberry mousse structure, enabling us to make the mousse several hours or even a day ahead.
Then we combine the chocolate mixture with the strawberry purée and whipped cream. We chill the mixture, and then stir in some fresh strawberries.
Chill for several hours and serve this strawberry white chocolate mousse with some remaining strawberry purée on top. The purée is not sweetened and adds a lovely mildly tart balance to the rich white chocolate.
More Easy Elegant Desserts to Try!
Strawberry Mousse with White Chocolate Recipe
- Prep time: 15 minutes
- Cook time: 45 minutes
- Chilling time: Several hours
- Yield: Serves 6-8
Ingredients
- 1 ½ pounds of strawberries
- 2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice, divided
- 8 ounces white chocolate, finely chopped
- 1 ¼ teaspoon unflavored gelatin (about half a small envelope)
- 2 cups heavy cream
- 2 Tbsp powdered (confectioner’s) sugar
Method
1 Make strawberry purée: Clean and hull the strawberries. Starting with about half of the strawberries (3/4 pound), quarter them and purée them in either a blender or food processor.
Press the purée mixture through a mesh sieve with the back of a spoon into a bowl. You want to end up with 1 cup of purée.
Stir in 1 Tbsp of the lemon juice and set aside.
2 Slice remaining berries: With the remaining 3/4 pound or so of berries, slice as many as to fill up 2 cups, and set aside.
3 Melt the white chocolate: Melt white chocolate in a double boiler, or a stainless steel bowl set over simmering water (make sure the simmering water doesn’t actually touch the bottom of the bowl.)
Stir until smooth, set aside.
4 Soften the gelatin: Put 1/4 cup of cold water into a small bowl. Sprinkle the gelatin powder over the water and let sit for 5 minutes.
5 Dissolve gelatin mixture into heated cream and powdered sugar: Put 1/4 cup of the cream into a small saucepan on medium heat. Whisk in 2 tablespoons of the powdered sugar and bring to a simmer. Stir in the water gelatin mixture until dissolved.
6 Combine with melted chocolate: Pour this mixture into the bowl with the melted white chocolate and whisk until smooth.
7 Stir in 3/4 cup of the puréed strawberries, reserving the remaining 1/4 cup.
8 Make whipped cream: Using an electric mixer with the whisk attachment, beat the remaining 1 3/4 cup of cream on medium-high speed until medium peaks form. (It helps if your cream is very cold.)
9 Incorporate whipped cream into mousse base, chill: Stir a third of the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture.
Using a large rubber spatula, gently fold the remaining whipped cream into the mixture.
Refrigerate for 1 hour.
10 Incorporate sliced strawberries into mousse: Stir the remaining 1 Tbsp of lemon juice into the reserved sliced berries. Fold the sliced berries into the mousse.
11 Spoon mousse into serving cups and refrigerate for at least another hour, preferably several hours, or even over night (cover with plastic wrap).
12 Top with reserved strawberry purée: When you are read to serve the mousse, pour a dollop of the reserved strawberry purée onto each serving. Add a few slices of strawberries as garnish.
