Raw Strawberry Mousse

I finally replaced my blender, with something significantly more powerful than the previous. While I would have loved to get a vitamix or a blendtech, I really could not justify spending that kind of money on a kitchen appliance, so settled on a 1200 watt sunbeam cafe series blender that I picked up for a ridiculously reduced price and seems to be doing the trick.

It's not as quiet as I like, but at least it doesn't sound like a pack of angry bikers doing laps in my kitchen like the old one did.

To christen it, I finally got around to making an attempt at a raw strawberry mousse. I've been wanting to try this since we visited a strawberry farm a few weeks back. I froze about a kilo of leftover berries ready to use when needed.



Raw Strawberry Mousse

• 200g soaked raw almonds, drained
• 500g of strawberries
• 1 cup of pomegranate juice (see note)
• 1/2 cup of cocoa butter
• 1/4 cup agave syrup (or to taste)

1. Grate or chop the cocoa butter into small pieces. The smaller it is the faster it will melt. Place the cocoa butter in a heat proof bowl. Leave bowl somewhere warm to allow the cocoa butter to slowly melt. I put mine in the sun on the side table. 
2. Place almonds in the blender or food processor and blend on highest speed till the almonds are as smooth as possible. If they are not blending well, add a little water to help them along.
3. Separate out as much of the remaining gritty almond meal as possible by pushing the almond mix through a strainer of some sort. I pushed mine through a regular mesh strainer, then through a fine tea strainer. (Don't throw out the almond grit! It makes a great face scrub.)
4. Place the almond milk in the blender, along with the strawberries, melted cocoa butter, agave and pomegranate juice. Blend at highest speed till combined and smooth.
5. Taste the mousse and if not sweet enough, add agave till you reach the desired sweetness. The strawberries I had were very sweet and the pomegranate not tart so I did not require any more than 1/4 cup.
6. Pour into serving bowls and chill in the fridge for several hours to set.

It set like a mousse consistency and I thought it turned out rather well. While Kev liked it also he said it reminded him more of a pot set strawberry yogurt than a mousse. Maybe mousse is a sweeter dish than I remember. The cocoa butter did give a mild chocolaty flavour that I thought was more mousse like, but it was too subtle for Kev. I think this would probably freeze well as an ice cream too.

This is the easiest way I have found to get juice out of a pomegranate with minimal bitterness from the seeds themselves.

• Peel the outside away in sections, gathering the fleshy seeds together into a zip lock bag as you go.
• Once you have all the seeds away from the pith, seal them into the bag, pushing as much air out as you can. 
• Put the bag in the freezer a few hours to freeze.
• Pull the bag out to thaw when you are ready to use the juice.
• When defrosted smoosh the seeds around in the bag. The freezing should have burst the seed membrane and with a little massaging you should have a bag of juice, pulp and seeds.
• Strain the seeds out and press the pulp to get any remaining juice.