I changed my diet quite radically in 2024, cutting out all ultra-processed food and nearly all sugar — you can read about my experience here.

While the health benefits have been remarkable, with weight loss in particular, I still get cravings for sweet food and chocolate. On this new journey with food, I’m slowly learning how I can still make food that satisfies sweet cravings while still being delicious and not containing any ultra-processed ingredients.

Two recent favourites are these healthy cookies made in just minutes and this healthy granola packed with nutritious ingredients but no added sugar. But the latest recipe discovery has blown those two out of the water.

I was sent Tim Spector’s chocolate mousse with olive oil recipe and immediately thought it sounded good. Even better, I had all the ingredients for the mousse at home already, so I didn’t need to do a shop to get ready for it.

How did it go?

In summary: amazingly well. Over recent months, I had started to worry that, although it was possible to make healthy desserts, they would never really match the delicious and moreish sweetness of those packed with sugar and other UPF ingredients. This recipe has completely changed my mindset on that.

The aquafaba was a very surprising ingredient. For a start, I had no idea what it was but when I realised it was the liquid from a tin of chickpeas, I knew I had plenty stocked in the cupboard (you could use the liquid from a tin of cannellini or butter beans too).

But even then, it was a revelation to me that it was an ingredient that could be whisked like an egg white into the sort of stiff peaks that you use as the basis for a meringue (this does take a while, so don’t lose heart if you think nothing is happening — it will happen fairly suddenly after a few minutes of whisking).

I already had all the ingredients (except the cherries for the topping) in the kitchen and I used Lindt Excellence 90% as the dark chocolate. It was all ready in minutes and even my young daughter loved it (I even filmed her saying so as I knew her mum wouldn’t believe me that she had loved it!)

How is this dessert healthy?

It’s probably a bit cheeky of me to call this a “superfood” dessert. It’s generally not a term that its creator, Professor Tim Spector, who founded Zoe, uses. However, he regularly sings the praises of good quality dark chocolate and extra virgin olive oil and has said “if I did believe in ‘superfoods’, extra virgin olive oil would be one of them.”

He added: “While many of us were taught to fear fat, research shows that diets rich in extra virgin olive oil are associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.”

Talking about this recipe, he said: “It’s no secret that chocolate and olive oil are two of my favourite foods. They’re both packed with polyphenols to support your gut health and they combine to make the most delicious chocolate mousse.”

This recipe comes from Tim Spector’s The Food For Life Cookbook, which you can buy on Amazon here.