Mini Desserts- Jello Mousse

I chose to serve mini desserts at my MOPS (Mother’s of Preschooler) Moms’ Night Out at my house this week. I made several different desserts. I liked the Jell-O dessert, as it was light, fluffy, and I didn’t feel like I was going to be eating a bazillion calories. I like recipes that are simple and only require a few steps, but I also want them to be delicious and look yummy too. This recipe fit all my requirements. They turned out lovely-

Here is how to make this Jell-O dessert recipe:

Step 1:Gather your ingredients and you will also need a hand mixer. Here are the ingredients I used:

1. 8 ounces of Cool Whip (original)
2. 8 ounces of plain cream cheese
3. A 6 ounce box of Strawberry Jell-O
4. A 3 ounce box of Berry Blue Jell-O
5. A 3 ounce box of lemon Jell-O

Step 2: Make regular Jell-O following the recipe on the box. For a small box, it is one cup of boiling water, you mix in the powder until it is dissolved, and then you mix in a cup of cold water. Then pour the liquid into containers. I used martini glasses and dessert shot glasses, so I had several sizes of the dessert. Fill them about half full, as the bottom of the dessert is regular Jell-O and the top half of the dessert is the Jell-O Mousse. I made two flavors of Jell-O for variety in the bottom half. You can do what I did and use two different flavors using two small (3 ounce) boxes, or stick with one flavor and use the large box size (6 ounce).

Step 3: Put the containers in the refrigerator to allow the Jell-O to set up- which according to the box directions takes 4 hours.

Step 4: After 4 hours have passed you can now make the mousse and put it into the top half of the dessert containers. To make the Mousse, you will first make the large box size (6 ounces) of Jell-O. Boil the water, add the powder until completely dissolved, and then add the cold water.

Step 5: Pour the hot Jell-O mixture over the 8 ounces of cream cheese in a large bowl. Next, use a hand mixer to completely blend the Jell-O and the cream cheese together. The cream cheese should no longer have any clumps and should be fully blended- it may take a few minutes of blending.

Step 6: Fold the 8 ounces of Cool Whip into the bowl of cream cheese and Jell-O mixture. I did not use the hand mixer. I simply used a large spatula to fold this in and get it gently blended together.

Step 7: Pour the mousse mixture into the top half of the dessert cups. After they are filled put them back into the refrigerator and allow them a few hours to set up as well. I gave them 4 hours to set up in the refrigerator.

Once they have set up (solidified) in the regerator they are ready to serve! I added whipped cream to the top of my martini glass sized desserts, with a blueberry on top. They were very good! It is a very easy dessert, you just have to allow time for it to set up in the refrigerator. Of course you can layer different flavors of Jell-O in this recipe, you simply need to allow time for refrigeration between adding layers (about 4 hour between adding each layer). I like the pretty colors that this dessert makes. You can experiment with all sorts of colors for the holidays- pastels for Easter, green and red for Christmas, red and pink for Valentine’s day. They sell Jell-O in a variety of flavors, which makes a variety of colors. The mouse ends up being paler in color than the Jell-O, so keep that in mind. They are yummy in any flavor or color in my opinion!