Sweet Potato Mousse with Espresso Chocolate Sauce

This week's FoodieFights is Battle Sweet Potato and Coffee. It's a tough battle for me, because while I love sweet potatoes, I hate coffee. In fact, before creating this recipe, I've never even made a cup of coffee before. So my challenge today wasn't so much how to combine sweet potatoes with coffee (I immediately had several ideas) but how to combine them into something that I would actually eat. After considering several ideas, I decided to go with a dessert. After all, most new coffee drinkers drown their coffee with sugar and cream, right?

Sweet Potato Mousse

• 1 sweet potato (about 8 oz), peeled and diced
• 2 oz. cream cheese
• 1/2 c. powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp fresh ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp ground clove
• 1 cup heavy cream, very cold

Cook the sweet potato in salted boiling water, then drain well and chill. Once the potatoes are nice and cold, add the cream cheese, powdered sugar, vanilla, and spices. Beat on very low speed until combined, then ramp up the speed and beat until smooth and slightly fluffy.

Next, beat the heavy cream until it attains a medium firmness. If you overbeat here, then in the next step you will make sweet potato butter. It actually sounds like that might be tasty, but it's not what we're going for. Fold in about a third of your whipped cream with you sweet potato to lighten it up, then throw the sweet potato back into the whipped cream. Fold well, then whip again at medium speed until it attains a nice mousse-y firmness. Chill in the fridge while you make the...

Espresso Chocolate Sauce

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1 healthy pinch of salt
• 1 cup fresh hot espresso (or double-strength coffee)
• 1 tbsp coffee liqueur

In a small saucepan, whisk together the dry ingredients, then slowly whisk in the espresso and liqueur. I've found that if you whisk it into a paste then slowly add more liquid it keeps you from having chunks of undissolved bits of chocolate. Heat the mixture slowly. Boil for about a minute, then let cool. It should thicken as it cools, becoming the consistency of bottled chocolate syrup.


The Reveal

All you really need to serve this is a spoon for the mousse and a big bowl of sauce, but if you plan on serving this to someone instead of eating it all yourself, it's not hurt by a nice sprinkling of candied pecans:



The dessert as a whole is really quite a trip. You are immediately hit with the smokiness of the coffee, which I'm not supposed to like, but I'm surprised to find that I love it. Next comes the creaminess of the mousse with a delicate but definite hit of sweet potato, and it's rounded out with the deep, dark sweetness of chocolate.