Chocolate mousse

For a small amount of mousse

* A couple eggs, two or three

* three or four ounces dark chocolate

* 1/4 Cup sugar, there about

* 3 oz. butter exactly, not one gram more or less. Just kidding.

* pinch of salt

* whatever other flavor your heart desires, or whatever you can beg or steal.

Separate the eggs and whip the whites. Melt the chocolate and the butter. Remove from heat, a bowl over shallow steaming water, or pulses in the microwave,  then add the egg yolks and sugar and stir.  The carry over heat will cook the eggs and dissolve the sugar.  It thickens.  And if it doesn't thicken, then you've done something horribly, irreparably, irreversibly, irredeemably wrong, and a puppy somewhere dies.

Blend 1/3 the beaten egg whites into the thick chocolate mixture. Fold the lightened but still thick mixture into the remaining 2/3 egg white. Be thorough about it but gentile. Use some common sense here, you don't want to deflate the egg whites.

This mousse mixture can be very effectively layered with cake or cookies soaked with liquor and topped with whipped cream, flavored however you wish, and fruit to any extravagance. If you're hosting, then naturally, you'd be interested in whatever is in season, or whatever looked good to you, or whatever was on sale. Or, you can be a swine with no class, like myself, and eat it unadorned straight from a cup or a glass as I intend to do.

At some point give it a sprinkle of salt. Salt does wonders for sweet things.

With fresh ingredients, it's hard to go wrong. Even if something does go wrong, you can pretend like you meant to happen, whatever it was that failed, or claim you invented something new.

Chocolate, eggs, butter, sugar -- it's really hard to totally mess that up.

Oh great! I just now dripped some on my shirt. Now I have to change it already, and the week hasn't even started.