Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Recipes

Two Decadent New Year’s Desserts

Passion fruit and white chocolate yogurt mousse. Photograph by Vared Guttman

(Haaretz) — Getting ready to ring in the New Year also means we have only one more chance to eat decadent food and drink champagne before a new season full of diets falls upon us.

To help you enjoy this time to the fullest, I’ve included two outrageously sinful desserts, both served in cups, which would do well at a cocktail party complete with bubbly drinks. One is an homage to the French Mont Blanc dessert of meringue, whipped cream and chestnut cream, here in a quick version with the addition of very dark chocolate (100% cocoa butter, to be precise). The second, my favorite, is a white chocolate and Greek yogurt mousse topped with fresh pureed passion fruit.

A few words about passion fruit and Israel’s food scene. The South American native vine grows freely in Israel and its beautiful flowers decorate many houses. Somewhere in the late 90’s the fruit was discovered by young Israeli chefs and soon took the country by storm. My favorite dessert from that period was served at Mika Sharon’s Mika, a fusion restaurant in Tel Aviv. It was a small tart filled with passion fruit curd with a bruleed top, served with passion fruit sorbet.

But things got out of control. Every kiosk started serving passion fruit drinks, every restaurant had some kind of white-chocolate-passion-fruit dessert (truly, a match made in heaven), and every salad was served with passion fruit vinaigrette. So much so, that a group of bored foodies formed a society against passion Fruit. Luckily, passion fruit is still popular in Israel for everyone to enjoy, albeit in moderation.

A visit to Whole Foods earlier this week reminded me why I only enjoy passion fruit during my visits to Israel. With the price tag of $2.49 each (which would be about the price per pound in Israel), it’s definitely a once-a-year treat. And New Year’s is the perfect opportunity to have it.

Passion Fruit and White Chocolate Yogurt Mousse

Passion fruit is available at many big chain supermarkets, as well as some of the Asian mega markets.

Serves 6 15 minutes of work (plus 2 hours chilling time) for a truly perfect dessert

12 ounces white chocolate chips
¾ cup whipping cream
1½ cups plain Greek yogurt
6 shortbread cookies
¼ cup milk
4-5 passion fruits

Directions:

1) Put white chocolate chips in a medium bowl. Bring cream to a boil (in a pot over medium-high heat or in the microwave) and pour over chocolate chips. Let stand for 1 minute, then stir quickly to create a smooth cream. Let stand for 15 minutes to cool down, then fold in the Greek yogurt.

2) Put cookies in a plastic ziplock bag, seal, and use a rolling pin to crumble them to rice size crumbles. Transfer to a small bowl, add milk and mix. Divide between 6 dessert cups.

3) Spoon white chocolate mousse over cookie crumbs, shake cups to smooth the top. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for 2 hours and up to 24 hours.

4) Before serving, spoon the pulp of passion fruits into a bowl. Using a fork, stir gently to make pulp smooth. Spoon passion fruit over chocolate mousse, seeds included, and serve.

For more stories, go to Haaretz.com or to subscribe to Haaretz, click here and use the following promotional code for Forward readers: FWD13.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.