Jack Skellington White Chocolate Skull Bowls with Chocolate Mousse- Nightmare Before Christmas

Lucas picked some items from our Nightmare Before Christmas cookbook as his reward meal for summer chores, and these Jack Skellington White Chocolate Skull Bowls with Chocolate Mousse were one of them. These were a bit of a challenge, so I wanted to document some things here if we ever try to attempt them again.

Image from the cookbook

Jack Skellington White Chocolate Skull Bowls with Chocolate Mousse

Ingredients- Skull Bowls:

• 1 cup white chocolate chips
• 1 Tbl shortening
• 6 small balloons
• 2 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped

Ingredients- Chocolate Mousse:

• 10 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• whipped cream and 6 whole strawberries for garnish (Santa hats)

Directions:

• Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, waxed paper or a nonstick mat. Place in refrigerator to chill.
• To make white chocolate bowls: Microwave white chocolate and shortening for short intervals (30 seconds or less), stirring between each heating, until fully melted and combined. Let mixture cool until barely warm, about 10 minutes.
• Blow up six small balloons and knot each end. Grease the lower half of each balloon for easier releasing of the chocolate later, if desired. (Do not use non-stick spray or chocolate won't stick.)
• Remove baking try from refrigerator. Dip each balloon into melted chocolate, covering about 3 inches up the side. Gentle place on cooled baking sheet, bottom of the balloon down, holding for a second or two to make sure it doesn't tip over. Repeat process for all balloon.
• To make your Jack faces: Melt 2 oz of bittersweet chocolate in the microwave, let cool, and place in a piping bag. Snip the end of the bag at the very tip and use the chocolate to draw the face on your white chocolate balloon bowl. Place back in the refrigerator to harden.
• Once your bowls are completely cooled and hard, pop the balloon and remove from the chocolate. Return the bowls to the refrigerator until ready to serve.
• To make mousse: Bring 1-inch of water in a small pan to a simmer over medium-low heat. Put 10 oz. chopped bittersweet chocolate and 1/2 cup heavy cream into a metal bowl large enough to put over your simmering water without touching the water (making a double boiler). Heat chocolate in this manner, stirring frequently, until smooth and combined. Let cool completely (To speed cooling, nestle the bowl of chocolate in a larger bowl filled with ice-cold water and stir until the chocolate is room temperature.)
• In another bowl, combine the remaining heavy cream, powdered sugar and vanilla. Beat with an electric mixer on high speed until firm peaks form. 
• Scoop about 1/3 of the whipped cream mixture on top of the cooled chocolate and whisk gently until blended smooth. Using a rubber spatula, gently fold the remaining whipped cream into the chocolate until just combined. Do not overwork or you will deflate the mousse.
• Spoon mouse into each of your white chocolate bowls. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
• Just before serving, top each cup with whipped cream, 1 strawberry large end down with a small blob of whipped cream on the tip, making a Santa hat in each cup.

Here I am decorating the faces. You have to hold on by the balloon so you don't melt the chocolate bowl. I felt like the melted semisweet chocolate didn't make for very fine lines and wanted to run a bunch, so it was fiddly to work with. I think it would have been easier to draw a face on the bowls with some black edible writing gel (the kind used for writing on birthday cakes) instead. Something to try for another time.

Opening the fridge to see all these Jack faces looking out at me was super funny.

Our mousse.

Done! I think next time we would blow up the balloons a little less because it made for bowls that were so big we couldn't fill them up to the top with mousse, so our Santa hats look kind of silly, small and not proportionate.

Another note, we tried to spray the balloons with nonstick spray because that sounded easier and less messy than trying to grease them with shortening, but that didn't work at all. The white chocolate simply would NOT stick to the balloon, so we had to wash it and start over. So then we opted to not grease them at all, and the chocolate stuck much better, however, when we tried to release the bowls from the balloons, each one stuck on the bottom, breaking and making a hole. You can't see it in the picture, and in the end, it didn't really matter, but I would try some shortening just on the bottoms the next time and see if the chocolate will initially stick while still releasing later. Otherwise, I would maybe melt a little more white chocolate, and once the bowls were on their serving plates, I could put some more in the bottom to patch them up and then put them back in the fridge to harden. I also don't know if we had just waiting a little longer for the chocolate to completely harden (even though I thought we had) that maybe they would have held together better. Who knows!

With all the cooling time, this entire thing was a LONG process. We started after  lunch and barely had them done and set by dinner. So I would either start in the morning, or else make the bowls the day before and make the mousse the day of.

Also, I read the recipe wrong when making the mousse and added 1/3 of the chocolate into the cold whipped cream (instead of adding 1/3 of the whipped cream into the room temperature chocolate) and so that portion of the chocolate seized up when mixed with the cold whipped cream. In the end, the rest of it mixed together fairly well, so it wasn't any kind of disaster, but next time you really DO need to make sure you add part of the whipped cream to the chocolate to temper the chocolate and not the other way around.