No mixing bowls, mixers, or other kitchen paraphrenalia were messed up in the making of my dessert. Total prep time: less than one minute. Calories: it’s the holidays; who cares?
Ingredients & props:
1 champagne glass (no particular reason, but it looks great)
semi-sweet choc. chips
marshmallows
(salted) cream cheese
microwave oven
The following serves one chocoholic:
Dump two handfuls of chips in the glass, filling it to roughly the halfway point. Add a heaping spoonful of cream cheese (rolling it around a bit and flipping it over to embed it with chips is optional, but well-advised). Add two marshmallows, tearing them in half first so that they will lay flatter in the glass (this is important if your microwave oven is small; you don’t want the marshmallows to puff so large they touch the roof of your oven).
Heat until you hear the cheese spitting (maybe ten seconds); give a quick stirring to roughly combine the softened and melting ingredients. Continue microwaving for ten or fifteen more seconds, then stir thoroughly and serve. Finished “mousse” (I dunno if these ingredients qualify this as a true mousse; hence the quote marks) should have a soothing warmth, a slightly rough, almost granular mouth feel, a rich, creamy chocolatey taste, and goes very well with add-ins like Maraschino cherries, stick pretzels, chopped walnuts, etc.