Sour Cream Is The Ingredient You Need For A Delicious Airy Mousse

Classic recipes for mousse desserts typically utilize eggs, heavy cream, and sugar. After the eggs are separated, the yolks are gently cooked with the sugar; the whites are beaten until they form stiff peaks. The cream is also whipped, helping to give the dish its trademark airy quality. All in all, making mousse can be a labor-intensive process. Other versions of this dessert use gelatin, which acts as a stabilizer to help the mousse hold its shape and stay light.

But there's another way to tackle making this beloved dessert, and it involves something you may already have in your fridge: sour cream. Sour cream is already a popular addition to baked goods since it helps keep them moist. However, using it when making mousse can simplify the whole process. Beyond making the process simpler, sour cream will also give the mousse a subtle tang, which can provide a nice contrast to the overall sweetness of the dish.

Sour cream is a natural choice for a mousse since it's an altered version of cream, which is one key ingredient in the traditional method of creating this dish. Sour cream starts as light cream and then is cultured using lactic acid bacteria. The lactic acid is what gives this cream product its distinctive tanginess. This ingredient is naturally lighter than heavy cream: Heavy cream contains approximately 36 grams of fat per 100 grams, and sour cream contains 19 grams of fat in the same serving size.

If you're curious to try it yourself, there are many ways to use sour cream in mousse. In some recipes, the sour cream takes the place of eggs. Depending on the recipe, sour cream is sometimes paired with cream cheese to bulk up the sour cream and prevent it from separating. You can even use sour cream in conjunction with the regular cream in a mousse recipe. Try dividing the heavy cream your recipe calls for in half and adding equal parts of cream and sour cream to your dish; even this partial usage of sour cream will produce a lighter final result. 

Since the flavor of sour cream is pretty neutral, this ingredient pairs well with many popular types of mousse. For instance, it adds complexity to chocolate or lemon mousse. Sour cream also boosts the taste of your favorite berries, so consider trying it with a strawberry or blueberry mousse. You could also make a sour cream mousse, which could work as a filling for a cake, trifle, or parfait. Plus, this ingredient can help dial down the sweetness of other dessert elements, such as fruit compote.

As you experiment, you might want to work with different forms of sour cream. Full-fat sour cream has a thicker consistency than light or reduced-fat versions, so using the lighter types of sour cream may reduce the overall richness of your mousse. However, using fat-free sour cream may be more of a gamble; it usually contains stabilizers to make up for the lack of fat. While these stabilizers may help your mousse hold together, the absence of fat may affect the overall taste of your finished dessert.