Craft Night

This last Friday was our monthly Craft Club. It's kind of a stitch-n-bitch, but with a broad range of crafts. We've got the requisite knitters and crochet-ers, plus some sewing, quilting, cross-stitch, scrapbooking, card-making, and even a remote-control helicopter. Someone set up a project for her elementary-school level class at the natural science museum once. It's all friends from college, though it covers a broad range of ages, but we're all childless, which in some ways makes it easier to get together.

Anyway, this month we also did a dessert potluck. I made this recipe for Chocolate Mousse, which I love, though you do already have to kind of know what you're doing to follow the recipe. I don't bother with heating the egg whites because I don't worry about Salmonella, but I do heat the egg yolks and beat them until they "ribbon" (basically, you lift up the whisk, and the yolks should fall in a thick ribbon against the yolks still in the bowl before being reabsorbed). I figured out a way to use less bowls: beat the whipping cream in the bowl you beat the yolks in after folding the yolks into the whole mixture. I also melt the chocolate in the microwave, since I use semi-sweet chocolate (Callebaut, if you're interested) and it's less likely to burn.

I don't think this makes it into "my" recipe, which is why I linked to the real recipe. Clarification of directions isn't really changing the recipe, and I certainly didn't come up with the whole thing on my own. It's nearly impossible these days to credit the real original recipe for anything; everyone makes their own changes, albeit tiny, and then can call it their own. Of course, trying to protect "your" recipe is also impossible; cooking isn't about citing sources, it's about satisfying physical and/or emotional hunger. I recieved praise for the mousse even though it's not my recipe, because I took the time to make it.

And that's how it should be.