Mousse - a sweet light food

A mousse is a soft prepared food that incorporates air bubbles to give it a light and airy texture composed of a puréed chief ingredient mixed with stiffly beaten egg whites, whipped cream, or both. Depending on preparation techniques, it can range from light and fluffy to creamy and thick. A mousse may be sweet or savory.

The base can be a whole host of things: melted chocolate, puréed fruit, fruit curd, or a prepared custard (like pudding or crème anglaise, a "vanilla sauce" of dairy base and thickened with egg yolks made on the stovetop). Mousses are almost always cold dishes, and sweet mousses are sometimes served frozen.

The French, lovers of culinary wonder, were first to discover mousse. It is actually a French word meaning “froth” or “foam.” “Mousse au chocolat” is French for chocolate mousse.

The United States first became acquainted with chocolate mousse at a Food Exposition held at Madison Square Garden in New York City in 1892.

Sweet mousses are usually made with whipped egg whites or whipped cream, and they come in numerous flavors such as chocolate, vanilla, strawberry.or various herbs and spices, such as mint or vanilla.

In the case of some chocolate mousses, egg yolks are often stirred into melted chocolate to give the final product a richer mouthfeel. Although it isn't known who the inventor of the dish is, the first recipe for chocolate mousse is believed to date from the second half of the 19th century.

Savory mousses are frequently prepared from poultry, foie gras, fish, or shellfish, to be eaten as a first course or light entree. They may be stabilized by the addition of gelatin.
Mousse - a sweet light food

Kunafa or Knafeh - Middle Eastern dessert

In the Middle East for instance, the dessert dishes constitute a major part of the Middle Eastern cuisine.

Kunafa is a traditional Middle Eastern dessert made with spun pastry called kataifi, soaked in a sweet, sugar-based syrup called attar, and typically layered with cheese, or with other ingredients such as clotted cream, pistachio nuts, depending on the region.

It is a dessert specialty of areas in the Levant, mainly Turkey, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. Originating between the 10th and 15th centuries, kunafa’s name comes from the Circassian word chnafah, which means "bulbul color." The bulbul is a songbird found throughout the Middle East and Turkey and the dough in knafeh is often colored with reddish or orange food dye to imitate the color of the bird's vent

Different spellings of the word are used in different countries and include knafeh, konafa, kunefe, kenafe, knefeh, and kunafa, the root word being 'kanaf', which means to shelter or protect in Arabic.

According to history derived from a variety of legends and stories, the dessert was created during the 7th century in a Syrian city called Damascus by Muawiyah I. The stories say he asked his cook to prepare a dish rich or great enough to serve during Ramadan.

Kunafa then made its way to the Levant through the Turkish Ottomans, when the Palestinians adopted the recipe and enhanced the flavor to its modern state. Their addition was simply stuffing the pastry with cheese and then garnishing it with a touch of margarine, sugar syrup and sprinkles of crushed pistachio.

Kunafa is available in two different types, na’ameh and khishneh. Na’ameh is very smooth, with ground semolina dough or farkeh used for the topping. Khishneh is much rougher with crunchy pieces of pastry created using shredded dough or kataifi for the topping.
Kunafa or Knafeh - Middle Eastern dessert

Food dessert: Jelly

Jelly is a semi-transparent dessert made with a sweetened and flavoured processed collagen product of animal origin used as a thickener.

This kind of dessert was first recorded as jelly by Hannah Glasse in her 18th-century book The Art of Cookery, appearing in a layer of trifle. Jelly is also featured in the best selling cookbooks of English food writers Eliza Acton and Isabella Beeton in the 19th century.

Jelly comes from the Old French gelee, "jelly" and also "frost," from the verb geler, "to congeal," with its Latin root gelare, "to freeze."

The juices of most fruits and berries and many vegetables are suitable for processing into jelly. The primary ingredient in dessert jelly is gelatin. Gelatin is a product made by cooking collagen. It is made almost entirely of protein, and its unique amino acid profile gives it many health benefits. Gelatin is made from animal collagen — a protein that makes up connective tissues, such as skin, tendons, ligaments, and bones.

Collagen can be extracted from these parts by boiling them in water. People often do this when they’re making soup stock to add flavor and nutrients.

Collagen often hides and bones of certain animals — often cows and pigs — are boiled, dried, treated with a strong acid or base, and finally filtered until the collagen is extracted. The collagen is then dried, ground into a powder, and sifted to make gelatin.

In fruit jelly, the fruit comes in the form of fruit juice. Jelly has the smoothest consistency and is usually clear. While in fruit jam, the fruit comes in the form of fruit pulp or crushed fruit.

One tablespoon of jelly (20g) provides 53.2 calories, 0g of protein, 14g of carbohydrate, and 0g of fat. Jelly is not rich in nutrients, but it does supply trace amounts of potassium, choline, and calcium.
Food dessert: Jelly

Pavlova: Cream covered meringue cake

The pavlova has been an iconic New Zealand and Australian dessert for almost 100 years. The cake is a real crunchy delight, based on golden meringues, covered with whipped cream and often decorated with fresh fruit.

The cake is cooked until the outer crust is crisp while the interior of the “cake” is the consistency of a marshmallow.

Meringue is a fluffy mixture that is delicious on its own. Meringues are widely used in the food and culinary industries for the textural and flavor properties offered by a sweetened protein foam matrix. Traditional pavlova meringues are topped with berries and whipped cream. This recipe includes a layer of lemon curd.

Pavlova was invented to honor ballet dancer Anna Pavlova during her 1920s world tour. During Pavlova's tour of New Zealand in 1926, a chef at a hotel in Wellington, New Zealand invented a dessert for her.

Pavlova and meringue cookies are simple product matrixes consisting of sucrose, water, egg whites, and flavoring.
Pavlova: Cream covered meringue cake