• Whip the heavy cream, if using.
• Blend all of the ingredients together in a mixing bowl.
  
• Spoon each serving into a bowl, chill for 1-2 hours.
• Serve and enjoy!
  

To serve as dip 

• Plop this into a pretty bowl and serve with apple and pear slices, cookies, vanilla wafers, graham crackers, pretzels, to dip, eat, repeat.

To make pie

• To use the mousse as a pie filling just dump the entire thing into a pie crust. Graham cracker, cookie, or pre-baked pastry crusts work. Chill for 1-2 hours and serve with whipped cream.

No Bake Pumpkin Cheesecake

• Whip 8 oz. room temperature cream cheese, the pumpkin, and vanilla pudding mix and pumpkin pie spice together. Add the whipped topping in 3stages. This maintains maximum fluff. Use the filling in a graham cracker crust, or in a prebaked pie crust. Refrigerate for at least one hour before serving. Top with additional whipped topping and nuts if desired.

No Bake Caramel Pumpkin Cheesecake

• Prepare as above, substituting caramel pudding for the vanilla. Drizzle with caramel topping.

Pumpkin Mousse Dessert Bars

• Make a cookie crust – crumble 25 golden sandwich cookies in a food processor or go all old school with a zip top bag of cookies and smack them with a rolling pin. Mix with 4 tablespoons melted butter and press into an 8X8 inch baking pan. Bake the crust for 15 minutes. Spoon a smooth layer of mousse (with cream cheese or without) on top of the crust. Add a thick layer of whipped cream or topping and refrigerate. Garnish with cinnamon.

Frozen Dessert

• You can serve the mousse frozen! Who doesn’t like pumpkin ice cream?

Iced Mousse Sandwiches

• Like ice cream sandwiches made with ginger snaps, butter cookies or oatmeal cookies. Wrap individually and freeze for a frosty treat.

Filling for Cake

• Spread mousse between two layers of cake or use as the cream cheese version as frosting. I suggest spice cake, yellow, chocolate, butter pecan, carrot cake, caramel cake, okay, just about any cake.

Filling for a Jelly Roll

• Use your favorite recipe for sponge cake in a jelly roll pan. Once baked and cooled spread the mousse on the cake a roll. Refrigerate before serving.

Make Ice Box Cake

• Using a spring form cake pan; starting with a layer of cookies, alternate layers of cookies (I love chocolate wafers but I’ve used oatmeal cookies and ginger snaps, too) and mousse. Refrigerate overnight so the cookies soften to the texture of cake. Serve with a dollop of whipped cream. 

Layered in a trifle

• We love gingerbread trifles this time of year. Cube gingerbread and alternate layers of cake with mousse and whipped cream. Add toasted pecans and dust with cinnamon on top.

Doughnut salad?

• Here’s a crazy idea – break doughnuts into pieces, and make the trifle above using doughnuts in place of gingerbread. Please don’t tell your healthcare professional you know me.