This morning Iris and I were playing a round of Cherry Pie, in which she tosses a gallimaufry of toy ingredients into a cake pan and puts it into the toy oven. “For 90 minutes,” as she puts it. We got bored of pie, so I suggested we make pretend chocolate mousse.

“I never had chocolate mousse before,” said Iris sadly. I’m not sure this is true, but we checked, and we had all the necessary ingredients in the house, so we whipped up a batch.

People should make more chocolate mousse. Everybody likes it, and it’s not at all hard to make, although it makes a huge mess. Iris got a big dollop of mousse on the rug. Later, she pointed to the spot and said, “Dada, why did you put that chocolate on the rug? I sure didn’t do it.”

Probably people would make more mousse if you didn’t have to chill it for hours. But it’s worth it. We made ours with a Trader Joe’s 70% Pound Plus bar, and it came out deep and rich and not too sweet. The bubbles in the mousse pop on the tongue in the same invigorating way as Pop Rocks or the bubbles in Reddi-Wip.

After we finished our afternoon mousse, we repaired to Iris’s room for a Kitty and Pirate story. This one was about how the young kitties ate too much mousse and had to go to the doctor. Mama Pig (a pig is a type of kitty) brought her son to the doctor (Iris) and explained the situation. Then Iris swept Mama Pig onto the ground with extreme prejudice.

“Why’d you do that?” I asked.

“He didn’t need her anymore because he grew up,” said Iris. “He ate so much mousse, now he’s big.”