How to Make Vegan Chocolate Mousse Tart

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This Vegan Chocolate Mousse Tart is the easiest dessert to whip up, and is sure to impress any guest. Light, yet rich, this tart is smooth and creamy, but without all the indulgence! You do not often find a vegan tart that does not have coconut cream or tofu or soaked cashews. This tart contains none of the above, and therefore it is super cheap to make!

Why You’ll Love This Recipe:

• So simple to make: Only two steps are needed to make this creamy, luscious, decadent vegan chocolate tart. No separating of eggs, no beating of egg whites or cream. All you have to do is melt chocolate, whip aquafaba, and fold together. Simple!
• It requires only minimum ingredients, keeping your grocery bill low and the shop simple. It’s got to be the simplest vegan tart to whip up, ideal for when you have an irresistible craving!
• It’s sophisticated: who knew that a dessert so simple to make, requiring only two components, could be so rich and sophisticated. This luscious, decadent dessert is so appropriate for those intimate dinner parties – it’s sure to impress, and it didn’t require any stress to whip up!
• It’s free from dairy and added sugar: apart from that which is in the dark chocolate, this chocolate mousse tart contains no cream, butter, or sugar. This makes it safe for those with dairy intolerances.

Vegan Chocolate Mousse Tart Ingredients

Mousse without eggs or cream? Vegan tart without soaked cashews, coconut cream or tofu? What the heck can this mysterious Vegan Chocolate Mousse Tart be made of?

Because it does not use any weird or expensive ingredients, this is a recipe you can make time and time again. Here’s a list of these amazing ingredients:

For the Base:

• Oats – Ground to a fine flour, oats give the base that crumbly biscuity texture. Omitted, the coconut butter would set rock hard, almost like a fudge. The base is a much better texture with the oats, plus they add volume, meaning you can have a much thicker tart shell!
• Coconut – My all-time favourite ingredient is desiccated coconut, which is ground into butter in this recipe. Coconut Butter serves to bind the base ingredients. It acts like melted butter in a normal biscuit base – it glues the crumbs together and makes it set firm when chilled. Coconut butter also lends a touch of sweetness, plus it is a LOT cheaper than butter or coconut oil (if you buy it in the Desiccated Coconut form!)
• Cocoa – I like to have a chocolate base, and cocoa does the job nicely. However, if you wanted a pure vanilla base, you can simply omit the cocoa. I actually did this while recipe testing, and the vanilla base went really well with the rich chocolate mousse.
• Salt – please do not leave this ingredient out! It brings balance and enhances the sweetness of this base. You would definitely notice if it was missing.
• Vanilla – slosh in the vanilla, and try to be heavy handed. I do like Vanilla essence, which is an essential ingredient for all things chocolate. Sub it out for peppermint essence if you are in the mood for a choc-mint tart (that would actually be sublime!).
• Sweetener – I use Truvia. You only need a few tablespoons to sweeten this base crumb.

For the Chocolate Mousse Filling:

• Chocolate – The chocolate needs to be more than 50% cocoa solids. I have tried with milk chocolate, and the flavour was underwhelming. The chocolate needs to be dark, because you are thinning it out with quite a lot of aquafaba. You want that chocolate flavour to be deep and rich, and I find that 50-60% cocoa solids is the best – not too bitter yet it still delivers that intense chocolate flavour.
• Aquafaba – Aquafaba is the magic ingredient here. It whips up like fluffy egg whites, and gives the tart that mousse-like texture. Below I will extrapolate the topic of Aquafaba a bit more.
• Lemon Juice – Lemon Juice (or White Vinegar) is what will help to stabilise the aquafaba, so that it sets as it increases in volume. It’s amazing how much the aquafaba expands, and how it gets to the point where you can hold the bowl, upside down, over your head! This is a truly magical process, and one of my favourite things to do in cooking.

All your Aquafaba Questions Answered:

When everyone was experimenting with sourdough during the 2020 pandemic (I had already gotten on THAT bandwagon months before), I was spending my days whipping Aquafaba.

One thing my husband “stocked up” on when he was commissioned to go to the grocery store, was beans. He bought a whopping 4-litre tin of chickpeas.

Needless to say, we had a LOT of Aquafaba.

But I had a LOT of fun experimenting with different recipes, with some successes and lots of failures. I did get a bit sick of the stuff, but recently I have been enjoying using it in my Vegan Desserts, and am finding it wonderful to work with.

Here are some frequently asked questions (with some answers from what I have found to be true):

Do I Need to Whip Aquafaba?

Not all baking requires aquafaba to be whipped to fluffy clouds. This Vegan Zucchini Cake and these Pancakes, for example. In this recipe, the Aquafaba replaces raw egg and does not need to be whipped.

In uncooked vegan desserts, like this White Chocolate Mousse Tart, the aquafaba does need to be whipped. This is because the whipped aquafaba brings the stability, the volume and the fluffy, mousse-like texture to the dessert. The dessert would not set if the aquafaba was left runny.

Why is my aquafaba not whipping up?

In those lockdown whipping days, I had a lot of batches of Aquafaba that just did not whip.

The main reason was that I did not have an electric whisk. I did attempt to use a blender, but it just did not whip. I did do it by hand sometimes, but this took HOURS (I had a lot of time to kill) and STILL the blasted stuff did not whip. So if you want perfectly whipped aquafaba, you do need an electric whisk. I use one much like this one, which gives me beautiful fluffy Aquafaba every time.

The other key thing you need for whipped aquafaba is a dash of stabiliser. On it’s own. aquafaba will not whip up to those pillowy heights. For a stabiliser, you can use lemon juice, white vinegar, cream or tartar or cornflour (think, pavlova).

How long does it take to whisk aquafaba?

Like I said before, I did try whipping Aquafaba by hand, but I would not recommend this method, as you need the speed of an electric whisk to beat all that air into the Aquafaba!

Using an electric whisk and stabilising lemon juice, the aquafaba puffs up in no time, and will become nice and stiff within 10 minutes. I would say that if it hasn’t fluffed up by that time, it is never going to.

Is kidney bean juice aquafaba?

“Aquafaba” literally translates to “bean water”. “Aqua”, meaning water, and “faba”, meaning bean.

So any kind of brining liquid for any kind of bean can quite rightly be termed as Aquafaba. I have actually used all kinds of bean brine for my whipped Aquafaba – kidney beans, black beans, white beans, and of course, Chickpeas.

And they all work! However, if you are wanting the colour to stay nice and white, stick to the white beans or chickpeas. The black bean and kidney bean liquid tends to have a brown, purple or red tint to it, so best to steer clear of this one if you’re wanting to make meringues.

What does whipped aquafaba taste like?

Whipped Aquafaba is gross! Do not be seduced by those fluffy peaks – it does not taste like meringue at all (to be fair, whipped egg white only tastes good after all the sugar has been added!).

But the salty, briney taste of Aquafaba is so strong that I steer clear of licking the chocolate mousse mixing bowl. Yes, not even the chocolate can subdue the flavour (immediately, that is).

After a few hours in the fridge, the briney taste becomes imperceptible (but this is another reason to use a stronger flavoured chocolate!)

Serving Vegan Chocolate Mousse Tart:

This tart is sublime on it’s own. The creamy Chocolate Mousse Filling is punchy, and is garnished perfectly by the crunchy base.

However, if you wanted to dress it up for guests, then a sharp berry coulis would work well, paired with a dollop of whipped cream.