Chocolate mousse help please!

[E_M]

I want to make chocolate mousse for a dinner party tomorrow. I was going to use Julia's recipe, but after cooking and cleaning am too tired to deal with the pot tango. On epicurious, I found this recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/foo.... It looks much easier, but I would like to add a raspberry liquor and coffee. If I add them to this recipe, will I need to add more butter and sugar to minimize the liquidity? In other words, make the proportions like Julia's.

Alternatively, can I combine Julia's steps 1 and 2 and melt the chocolate into the egg mixture, the way epicurious does, and omit the beating over cold water step?

Many many thanks,

-E

[WCchopper]

Espresso powder instead of brewed coffee wouldn't add liquid. And what they said about too many flavors at once.

[E_M]

Upon reading more closely, I can substitute the 1/4 water for 1/4 liquor, and the 4 tbps of coffee will hopefully not make it too liquid-y.

[sunshine842]

go for one or the other -- but adding 4 Tbsp of coffee effectively doubles the amount of liquid (1/4 cup is 4 Tbsp) in the mix, and is quite likely to make it too loose and too weak to hold the air.

And if you have chocolate AND raspberry AND coffee, you go from a delicious interplay of flavors to a high risk of muddled confusion.

[hotoynoodle]

you could offer a raspberry sauce for garnish, but i would not add it in.

[Island]

Agree one or the other flavor, but I'd probably go with hotoynoodle's suggestion or serve with some fresh berries.