The other evening Carol served up a fabulous chocolate mousse. Now, I’m generally known as the Butter Fat King at home. Give me ice cream, give me whipped cream, give me toast slathered in butter, and I’m in pig heaven.
My other not-so-secret obsession is chocolate. This is purely for medicinal reasons, of course. Everybody knows about the antioxidants in dark chocolate. I keep a desk drawer full of the stuff for emergencies.
You can imagine my delight when she took the neat custard cups out of the fridge and sprinkled slivers of chocolate on the velvety mousse.
“It’s really easy to make,” she said, “You’ll never guess what the secret ingredient is.”
To guess at a secret like that, you have to do some very serious eating. I could taste the chocolate and some cinnamon. Of course there were all those egg yolks and that cream (let’s not talk about the cholesterol), but what indeed was the secret?
Licking the last of the chocolate off the spoon, I said, “I give up. What is it?”
“Tofu,” she said, “it’s all made from tofu. No cream, no butter, no egg yolks. This has got to be the most healthy dessert you’ve ever eaten.”
I was dumbfounded, to say the least, and wondered if my taste buds had gone on a vacation. The next day, in fact, I found one more cup in the fridge and tried it. Alas, ignorance in this case proved to be bliss. With full knowledge of the ingredients, the mousse wasn’t quite as rich or satisfying. Whoever said, “What you don’t know can’t hurt you?” What I just ate was a truly healthy dessert by Mark Bittman.
I pass it on with full disclosure. You can decide if you want to keep the secret or not. And thanks to Carol for keeping her family healthy!
Rick Hamlin is the executive editor at GUIDEPOSTS.
