Light Christmas Chocolate Mousse Recipe With Cardamom & Orange

This Light Christmas Chocolate Mousse recipe is the dessert your Christmas table didn’t know it needed.

Cardamom and orange give this mousse a properly festive, slightly grown-up edge, while clocking in at just 93 calories per serving means you can have your dessert and a second helping too.

It serves six, takes 15 minutes to prepare and sets beautifully overnight.

Why Cardamom & Orange Is The Perfect Festive Flavour Pairing

Cardamom has long been a staple of Scandinavian and Middle Eastern Christmas baking, and paired with orange it brings a warm, fragrant lift to dark chocolate that feels festive.

This isn’t your standard chocolate mousse – the cardamom adds a gentle citrussy spice that lingers beautifully, making it feel like a proper restaurant-style dessert rather than something whipped up at home.

And at under 100 calories a serving, it’s an easy way to add something a little different to your Christmas dinner.

What You’ll Need for Light Christmas Chocolate Mousse recipe (Serves 6)

Prep time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 5 minutes
Chilling time: at least 2 hours, ideally overnight
Calories per serving: 93 calories / 5g total fat / 3g saturated fat / 6g sugar

Ingredients:

• 1 sheet of gelatine, broken into small pieces
• 50g dark chocolate (70% cocoa or above), broken into small pieces
• 4 cardamom pods, crushed, seeds removed and reserved
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• Zest of 1 orange, plus juice of half (extra zest reserved for decoration, optional)
• 2 large egg whites
• ½ tbsp Canderel Sugarly
• 125g quark (half a 250g pot)
• 100g half-fat crème fraîche
• 1 tsp dark cocoa powder, for dusting

You’ll need six small ramekins or glass serving dishes.

🔗 Set of 6 Glass Ramekins — Amazon UK

🔗 Vegetarian Gelatine Sheets — Amazon UK

How To Make Light Spiced Chocolate Mousse — Step By Step

1. Sit the gelatine in a small bowl and cover with cold water, and leave to soften.
2. Put the chocolate pieces in a heatproof bowl and sit it over a pan of barely simmering water, stirring occasionally until melted.
3. Remove from the hob and stir in the cardamom seeds, vanilla, orange zest/juice and 2 tbsp. boiling water and mix until smooth and leave to cool.  Then stir through the quark and crème fraiche, squeeze the water from the gelatine, return it to a clean bowl and pour in enough hot water to just cover, whisk with a fork, then add to the chocolate mix and stir, put the mixture to one side.
4. In another bowl, whisk the egg whites until they begin to peak, then whisk in the Canderel Sugarly and whisk again until thickened slightly.
5. Now fold half the egg whites into the chocolate using a metal spoon; when all combined, gently fold in the remaining. Spoon into the ramekins or glass dishes to chill for a couple of hours or overnight, dust with cocoa and top with orange zest if using before serving.

This Light Christmas Chocolate Mousse recipe proves a lighter dessert doesn’t mean a less impressive one.

Whether it’s the centrepiece of your Christmas dinner or a make-ahead treat for entertaining, it’s the kind of dessert that disappears fast.

For more festive recipes and information, visit www.canderel.co.uk

👉 Looking for more lighter festive desserts? Try our light Christmas tiramisu recipe — just 242 calories and ready in 30 minutes.