Mousse di riccotta al cioccolato fondente e pere

I feel like utter crap. Sorry.

I have a serious headcold and a cough, and I had to go to a wedding today – beautiful wedding, and I had a lovely time, but now that I am home… Let’s just say I am writing this from my deathbed.

Since I have been at a wedding, here we go with another Valentine’s meal post. This time I want to tell you about the dessert, which I also took to my MIL and which was a huge hit… but I also want to tell you about the dumbass mistake I made in making it.

You see, this pudding requires melted chocolate, and it requires good scotch whisky. The thing is, if you add alcohol directly to melted chocolate, it seizes into useless lumps. Anyone who regularly makes sweets probably knows that. Dumbass here didn’t 🙂

Lucky I bought extra chocolate.

You will need (makes 4 LARGE portions)

400g of fresh ricotta
200g of dark chocolate
2 shots of scotch whisky
150g sugar
2 ripe pears, peeled and cored
2 shortbread fingers

1. Chop the pears into small chunks and place them in a pan with 1 cup of water, 1 shot of whisky and 100g of sugar. Bring to the boil and allow to simmer. You want a syrup to form around the pears.

2. Melt the chocolate in a bain marie above some hot water.

3. Whip the chocolate, ricotta and remaining sugar into a soft, fluffy mousse. THEN add the whisky – NOT BEFORE! 😀

4. Crumble the  biscuits. Place half the crumbs in the bottom of 4 glasses.

5. Spoon most of the pears into the glass on top of the biscuit base.

6. Spoon the ricotta mix into the glasses

7. Top with the remaining pears and biscuit, adding some chocolate shavings if you wish.

Easy peasy, and looks and sounds dinner party impressive. I also saw a version with white chocolate and amaretto, although rather than pears I would use apricots… any other combos strike your fancy, let me know – I may just give it a go!

Now I’m off to have a hot cupof tea and collapse in bed.

With love (and snot), from Italy