This is the creamiest, the dreamiest low carb dessert ever. Sugar-free chocolate mousse in a grain-free chocolate cookie crust. It’s no bake and so easy to make!
For a recipe developer, there are some recipes that bring with them that AHA moment. That “Aha, this method/ingredient/recipe is so perfect, so right, so easy, I need to remember this for future use”. I find that those moments stick with me, and I can call them up at will. It’s amazing, really, since I can’t remember what day it is half the time, or what I walked into that room to get. My life is busy and my brain is over-cluttered, and I lose my keys and my phone (and my mind!) constantly. But those little recipe AHA moments seemingly get filed away in some very organized brain-space and then are put on lockdown, awaiting the moment I need them. It certainly makes my job easier that I don’t have to struggle to recall those important bits and pieces.
And in this particular case, that little bit of recipe information didn’t have to wait long to be recalled. When I created my Easy Blender Chocolate Mousse, I was most eager to put that sucker to use again. It’s such a good recipe on its own, of course, but my brain instantly recognized that it would also be great as a component of other recipes. Cakes, tarts, pies, fillings for cookies maybe, oh, how about in pavlova? The possibilities are endless. I have plans for this stuff. Important, chocolate-filled plans.
Plan Numero Uno has already been executed. A super easy, no bake tart with a chocolate crust, chocolate mousse filling, and a whipped cream topping. An impressive low carb dessert that looks and tastes like you put some serious elbow grease into it, but that honestly only takes 30 minutes to whip up. It does need to set for while, but this is one dessert you can make a few hours in advance of guests arriving, all without turning on the oven. Just press that crust into place, blend the filling ingredients, pour in and let set. Then spread some lightly sweetened whipped cream, shave a little dark chocolate and you’re done. No fuss and minimal muss.
And mind-glowingly chocolate-y deliciousness ensues. This was so, SO good that I’ve been dreaming about it ever since. Plan Number One of Operation Blender Mousse is a resounding success.
No Bake Chocolate Mousse Tart
Ingredients
Crust:
- 1 1/4 cups almond flour
- 1/4 cup cocoa powder
- 1/4 cup powdered Swerve Sweetener
- 5 tbsp butter, melted
Chocolate Mousse Filling:
- 3/4 cup whipping cream
- 3/4 cup unsweetened nut milk
- 1/4 cup butter
- 3 ounces good quality unsweetened dark chocolate, chopped (do not use sweetened chocolate here, as your mousse may not set properly)
- 3 tbsp cocoa powder
- 6 tbsp powdered Swerve Sweetener
- 1/2 tsp espresso powder, optional, boosts chocolate flavour
- 3 large eggs*
Topping:
- 1 cup whipping cream
- 2 tbsp powdered Swerve Sweetener
- 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 ounce dark sugar-free chocolate
Instructions
Crust:
- Lightly grease a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the almond flour, cocoa powder, and sweetener. Add melted butter and stir until the mixture clumps together.
- Press firmly and evenly into bottom and up sides of prepared tart pan. Refrigerate until filling is ready.
Chocolate Mousse:
- In a small pan, combine cream, almond or cashew milk, and butter. Bring to a full boil and then remove from heat.
- In a blender, combine unsweetened chocolate, cocoa powder, sweetener, and espresso powder. Pour in scalded cream mixture and blend until smooth.
- Add eggs and blend again until smooth (*if you are concerned about the eggs, use pasteurized shell eggs such as Safest Choice). Pour into chilled crust and chill until firm, at least 1 hour. Gently press the tart pan from the bottom to remove the sides and place on a serving platter.
Topping:
- Beat whipping cream with sweetener and vanilla until it holds stiff peaks. Spread over mousse to the edges of the tart.
- Using a cheese grater, shave the dark chocolate over the whipping cream. Let set a bit in the refrigerator before serving.
Notes
Total fat: 33.46g
Calories from fat: 301
Cholesterol: 122mg
Carbohydrate: 7.95g
Total dietary fiber: 4.04g
Protein: 6.64g
Nutrition
Nutritional Disclaimer
Please note that I am not a medical or nutritional professional. I am simply recounting and sharing my own experiences on this blog. Nothing I express here should be taken as medical advice and you should consult with your doctor before starting any diet or exercise program. I provide nutritional information for my recipes simply as a courtesy to my readers. It is calculated using MacGourmet software and I remove erythritol from the final carb count and net carb count, as it does not affect my own blood glucose levels. I do my best to be as accurate as possible but you should independently calculate nutritional information on your own before relying on them. I expressly disclaim any and all liability of any kind with respect to any act or omission wholly or in part in reliance on anything contained in this website.
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What would you use for unsweetened chocolate here in Australia? J looked in all supermarkets and coul not find unsweetened chocolate
This looks so amazing! I can’t wait to try it. One question – do you think I could swap coconut milk for the almond milk without any consistency issues?
Yup, that should be fine. Changes the carb count a bit though.
Can you sub the powdered sweetener with stevia?? Or do I need to buy that specific sweetened mentioned?
Thank you
Sarah
Swerve contains some fiber that will help the mousse set properly. If you want to use stevia, I recommend using a little xanthan gum (about 1/4 tsp) when you blend it, to help set the mousse.
This is a great dessert, but the chocolate mouse never sets the way it should. I have made it two times and both times the mouse has not set. The third time I have decided to leave out the milk and at the end I have dissolved some grass fed gelatine in it and add it to the mouse. This has helped it set nicely, so I looking forward to cut into it a bit later today.
I haven’t yet figured out why some people have trouble with it setting. I have made this countless times (just made it again for a new recipe) and it sets every time. Every TIME! The only time it didn’t set is when I used Lily’s dark chocolate instead of unsweetened chocolate. I am stumped because I’ve even made it dairy free and that sets perfectly too (coconut milk and coconut oil instead of cream and butter).
I am so thankful that you have tried it dairy free and put your substitutions. We are trying to switch my son to keto and it’s a struggle because so much uses cream, butter, and cheese. I’m hoping to make a spectacular dessert for Thanksgiving so we all have a dessert we can enjoy. And on a side note, I love this blog. <3
Thank you!
Hi! Can the topping be frozen too? The crust and mousse are in the freezer right now but i’m not sure I can make the topping in advance.
I read other comments where people say the mousse is more like pudding. I might try it with “real” chocolate mousse next time, which is only chocolate mixed with egg yolks and beaten egg whites.
Sure, you can freeze the whole thing.
Thanks, I didn’t know whipped cream could be frozen!
Tried it yesterday evening, this is the best cake ever, it’s amazing!! Thanks for this great recipe 😀
PS: english is not my first language, cake and tart just mean dessert to me 😉 so i say it again, it’s the best dessert 🙂
Got it! I still loved hearing it, thank you!
I would like to make this for my birthday this year, and after reading all the comments, am a bit worried that the cake won’t set for me, as I can’t buy swerve here in Australia. The only unsweetened chocolate I can buy here is 99% cacao chocolate by lindt. Can you suggest what I can do, as I don’t want to spend a lot of money for it to fail
2 ways to help it set: 1. if you can get xanthan gum, add 1/4 tsp of that to the blender along with the cocoa powder. 2. Or add another egg yolk and maybe another tbsp of cocoa powder. That should help thicken it too. Don’t do both of these things, just one of them.
I absolutely love you recipes. I have been low carbing for about a year and these are the best low carb recipes out there. Thank you for making this lifestyle so much easier and yummier for all of us. Keep up the good work!
Thank you, Kathy!
Oh my goodness. My daughter and I made this today and it is absolutely DELICIOUS!!! Thank you for these wonderful recipes!
I just made this. It’s delicious. Really really delicious. It’s way at the top of the list of my favorite low carb desserts.
My mousse set up fine, and I didn’t follow the recipe to the letter. I did however use a high speed blender (Vitamix). As someone else suggested above, I do wonder if it’s a blender issue for many people. It’s easy for me to imagine that running uncooked eggs through a high speed blender would result in a firmer final texture than running uncooked eggs through a regular blender. I blended for quite a long time as I adjusted the sweetness to my liking, and by the time I poured it into the pan I used, I had to use a spatula to get into the corners (I used a square 8X8 casserole dish because I don’t have a tart pan and I only have very small pie plates).
Here are the ways in which I did not follow the recipe exactly–I baked the crust (just because I really really like baked crusts made with almond flour and butter), to sweeten the filling I used powdered erythritol, stevia, and Just Like Sugar in fairly random amounts until I liked how it tasted, I sweeteend the crust using only stevia and Just Like Sugar, I used Scharffenberger unsweetened baking chocolate for the filling. Otherwise I followed the recipe. I think the key to the thickening for me was blending for a long time in a Vitamix.
Thank you for your work! This is yet another keeper for me!
Oh! And I instead of cashew milk I used water blended (in a high speed blender) with several cashews. I wouldn’t try this with a regular blender, but it worked fine with a Vitamix and didn’t have any of those weird ingredients often added to nut milks.
Oh, actually the amount of erythritol I used was not random–it was 3 tablespoons, when swerve is the sweetener I almost always substitute with this formula–however much swerve was called for, I instead put in half that amount of erythritol and then add stevia and Just Like Sugar until I like it. I like erythritol a lot as long as I keep the total amount in a recipe fairly low. The amount of erythritol in Swerve is usually too much for me once it has made whatever I’m making sweet enough.
Um, OK maybe I’m obsessing on this a bit. I just google “blend raw eggs in vitamix” and found a bunch of people dumping raw eggs (and cream and maybe cheese) into a vitamix and ending up with scrambled eggs. (I am so going to try that in the morning.) So, maybe those of us with high speed blenders are cooking the eggs more than people with traditional blenders? This seems very possible to me even in a short period of time considering how hot the cream is when it goes into the blender. I really don’t think a traditional blender could cook an egg, but those of us with high spend blenders all know we can heat things up with them just from the friction caused by the speed of the blades. That might really make a difference for how firm this mousse gets!
Thanks for all of your input but I don’t think the blender is necessarily the issue here. I have a Blendtec, not a Vitamix. I have made this recipe multiple times and I don’t blend for very long. Certainly not long enough to cook an egg. 🙂 It is high powered but I think the issue has a lot more to do with the size of the eggs and/or the kind of sweetener or chocolate used.
I used coconut creme from the oriental market and stevia. It was more like a pudding. It was not a thick texture. It seemed to melt really quickly. Any tips or suggestions.
This recipe requires a powdered sweetener with bulk to set properly. So that’s your problem right there.
Hi! I tried making this tart today and faced the same issue many others did, the mousse does not set. I was wondering would it be because I’m reading the recipe wrong. In the part where you have blended chocolate, cocoa, sweetner etc. Should you pour the cream in to the blender or the chocolate into the pot and the cream?
You add the very hot cream to chocolate mixture. So I have to ask…what brand of chocolate did you use? What sweetener? I”ve made this recipe probably a dozen times and it works for me every time. I use Swerve sweetener, and Ghirardelli unsweetened chocolate.
I wonder if the blender makes a difference? I made this recipe using different sweetener (can’t remember if I made any other changes), but the mousse set perfectly. I have a Vitamix blender. Maybe the amount of blending makes all the difference?
Hi, I just made this for Thanksgiving. It did not firm up. Taste delicious more like a thun pudding. Any suggestions? Thank you
I am going to guess that you did not use the exact same ingredients as I did. What sweetener did you use?
Hmmm, I read all the reviews, hoping to see my question already addressed … I don’t have a tart pan. Though it might not look as lovely, would a regular pie pan be an alright substitute? Am I one of the very few that don’t own a tart pan? … based on the reviews, ya’ll own one! 🙂
Yes, a pie pan will be fine!
I made this delicious recipe last night and taste tested it today. However, for me a well, it did not setup completely. My eggs were organic large. The only thing I can think of is I used Truvia (because I have not swerve at this time). Next time I will use swerve. It was very tasty thou.
Thank you Carolyn!! Looking forward to a piece tomorrow with my coffee. 🙂
Hi I can’t wait to try this recipe. Could I replace the swerve with xylitol or would it have the same setting problems? Also we don’t like the taste of almond milk could I use more cream or pouring cream?
You can use milk or pouring cream (I assume you mean half and half?). But I don’t know how well xylitol will work, it’s a bit different than erythritol and may not set properly. However, if it doesn’t, you can always freeze it and eat it as a frozen chocolate pie!
OK — I used the link and bought the tart pan and it arrived last night. I also found Cashew Milk at Whole Foods last night — so I am definitely making this sweet treat this weekend. As I’ve already made the mousse and it turned out perfectly (and so yummy) – I can only imagine how fabulous this tart will be!! YAY — I’m so excited!!