No-Bake Chocolate Marquise
An intense, moist chocolate dessert with a texture between a mousse and a cake. Five ingredients, no oven — the fridge does the rest.
The air comes from two directions and is brought together at the end: cream whipped to soft peaks and egg whites whipped stiff, both folded in with sweeping movements. Stir at that point instead of folding and everything collapses and you get a ganache — good, but not this.
⚠️ The eggs are not cooked in the base recipe. Use very fresh eggs and keep the marquise cold throughout.
If you want to pasteurise the eggs — for pregnant women, small children, older people or simply for peace of mind — the variation is below. It costs a thermometer and ten minutes more, and changes the result very little: the meringue comes out even more stable. The same logic sits behind the French-style chocolate mousse, where hot sugar syrup does that same job.
Ingredients
- 125 g butter
- 3 eggs
- 100 g caster sugar
- 250 g chocolate
- 100 ml pouring cream
Method
- 1
Beat the soft butter with the egg yolks and the sugar until creamy.
- 2
Stir in the melted chocolate, only just cooled. If it is hot, it curdles the yolks.
- 3
Fold in the cream whipped to soft peaks and then the stiffly whipped egg whites, one after the other and with sweeping movements — do not stir.
- 4
Pour into a mould and chill for at least 4 hours, better overnight.
- 5
Variation with pasteurised eggs (replaces steps 1 and 3). Yolks: bring the yolks and the sugar to 70 °C over a bain-marie, stirring without stopping — the sugar raises the coagulation temperature, which is why they do not set. Take the bowl off the water, beat until cool and only then work in the butter.
- 6
Variation, continued. Whites as a Swiss meringue: bring the whites with part of the sugar over a bain-marie to 60-65 °C, stirring, until the sugar has dissolved completely and the mixture no longer feels grainy between your fingers. Then whip cold to stiff peaks. Without a thermometer, the guide is: at 60 °C you can no longer hold a finger in it comfortably, but it does not burn.