Creamy Fruit Mousse

Happy Easter, friends! It's Sunday night as I'm writing this post, and I'm back in Boston, settled in after a wonderful weekend with my family back home in upstate New York. It's always great to be home! We enjoyed a delicious Easter dinner together, and our dessert was this yummy creamy fruit mousse! This is quite possibly one of the easiest desserts I've ever made. Seriously.

The original recipe for this creamy fruit mousse is from Our Best Bites. When I saw it on their blog a couple weeks ago, it looked like the perfect springtime, Easter dessert so I pinned it, purchased all the ingredients, and I was ready!

Disclaimer: this dessert isn't as pretty as it could have been because I wasn't thinking smartly when I made it. The mousse needs to set in the fridge for a few hours, and to do that, I just put the mousse in a couple tupperware containers overnight. What I should have done was pour it into these pretty glasses before refrigerating it so that the mousse molded right to the glass and was more flush with the sides of the glass like it is this picture:

So pretty!! Oh well. Next time I'll know!

Ingredients:

-1 box (.3 oz.) fruit flavored gelatin, regular or sugar free

-1 cup boiling water

-8 oz. cream cheese, divided

-1/2 cup cold water

-8 oz. container Cool Whip, divided

-1/2 cup powdered sugar

-1/4 tsp. vanilla extract

-1 small orange

Instructions:

Dissolve gelatin in boiling water. Place in blender and add 4 ounces of cream cheese (half the package). Process until smooth. Add cold water and pulse blender to stir. Add half the container of cool whip to the blender and process until mixture is combined and free of lumps. Pour mixture into one serving bowl or into several individual serving dishes (this is where I failed!! oops). Refrigerate until firm, 3 to 4 hours.

For the frosting, with an electric mixer, beat the remaining 4 ounces of cream cheese with powdered sugar, vanilla, about 1 teaspoon of orange zest, and one teaspoon of orange juice. Mix until creamy and smooth, and fold in the remaining 4 ounces of cool whip. Add more orange juice, if needed, for consistency. Dollop, pipe, or spread topping over mousse just before serving. If you chill the mousse in the fridge with the topping on it, the topping will harden so it's best to make the topping just a few minutes before you're ready to serve the mousse.

Serve with fresh fruit, if desired. Makes about six 1/2 cup servings.

I chose to make this recipe twice - once with lemon gelatin and once with strawberry - and we enjoyed both flavors together. It was a great flavor combo!! If you ever make this, I'd definitely recommending picking two or three flavors that go well together and layering the flavors for a really pretty dessert. This is seriously the perfect dessert for the spring and summer!

Here's a picture of my "problem" I described earlier - when I went to serve the dessert, the texture was not as smooth as I would have liked since I didn't chill the mousse in the serving dishes. Lesson learned I guess! :) We all still loved the dessert though even though it wasn't as pretty as it could have been. I was thinking that this could also be a really easy, yummy treat to serve at a bridal or baby shower. So simple!

Be back again soon this week, I hope! :)