Chocolate Mousse Cheesecake

As I have stated, I love making desserts.  I really love making desserts that don't actually require any baking at all.  Seems like baking something increases the chance of messing it up in some way, like the dessert that I baked and took to last week's family dinner.  I was excited to eat it and then blog about it, but, somewhere in the baking process something went awry and my pie was less than stellar!  So for this week I picked something that looked simple, practically fool proof and was a success! 

When you take Oreo's, cream cheese and cool whip, it is hard to create something that would be disappointing, unless you are a crazy fool who doesn't happen to like cream cheese of course!

Now for any of you that has ever made something with cream cheese and wondered why it had little lumps, the reason is that the cheese wasn't soft enough before you started mixing it up.  So make sure you can either leave the cream cheese out long enough to get to room temperature or soften it slowly in the microwave.  So while this is softening up you can work on the crust.  When I have to crush Oreo's, I have found the simplest method is to put them in a ziplock bag and toss that bag around and beat it up a bit. 

I ended up needing almost 20 or 2 rows of cookies to give me enough crumbs to cover the bottom of my 9x9 pan.  Mix the crumbs up with some melted butter to help it stick and a little bit of sugar before pressing into the bottom of the pan.  At this point, feel free to take a quick milk and cookies break, even if it is 10:00 on a Sunday morning, I won't judge!

Set that aside while you work on the filling.  Now this recipe had mousse in the title, just a little bit deceptive as the filling doesn't have eggs and isn't cooked at all but oh well, makes for a better title!

So, mix up your softened cream cheese and sugar until it is nice and smooth.

Gently mix in the cocoa next, since cocoa powder is so fine, it can tend to get all over! 

Next you will mix in the cool whip.  I ended up using about 9 ounces, next time though, I think I may increase the cocoa powder and the cool whip to a full 12 ounces.  I like my fillings very thick!  Once everything is mixed in, carefully spread on the crust, being careful not to pull it up as you spread.

Cover and refrigerate for about 3 hours.  Originally I was going to leave it as is, with a cookie garnish of course.  But during the interim of I decided that I wanted to use the little bit of cool whip that I had left to add one more layer.  Shortly before serving I spread the remaining cool whip on top and topped it with approx 4 cookies crumbled up.

After seeing how it turned out

and tasting the different layers I am really glad I added that final layer!

This is easy enough, very delicious and just different enough than other desserts I have made I will be making this one again!


Chocolate Mousse Cheesecake

Ingredients

1 1/3 cup crushed oreo cookies
1/8 cup sugar
3 Tbls cup melted butter
12 oz. (1 1/2 8-oz. pkgs) cream cheese (softened)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tbs vanilla
1/4 cup cocoa
1 16-oz. carton whipped topping, divided
Oreo cookie crumbs (topping)

Directions
1. Mix oreo crumbs, 1/8 cup sugar and 1/4 cup melted butter. Pack into a 9x9 dish.
2. In large bowl, beat cream cheese, sugar and vanilla thoroughly.  When lumps are gone, beat in cocoa.
3. Fold in 12 ounces of whipped topping, just until mixed, on low speed.
4. Fill crust, cover with plastic wrap and chill for 3 hours.  Right before serving spread remaining cool whip on top and sprinkle with cookie crumbs.