When my friend Ben was in middle school, he was a latch-key kid. One afternoon he came home and checked the fridge, and found that his step-mom had made chocolate mousse pie for dessert. Ben took a taste, and then another, and pretty soon had eaten the whole pie. Ever the resourceful child, he walked to the store and bought the ingredients to make another pie, to replace the one he had eaten:

  • A 7-oz Hershey’s chocolate bar*
  • A graham cracker pie crust (Hershey’s makes a chocolate crust, of course, and Nabisco makes an Oreo chocolate cookie crumb crust which works wonderfully.)
  • An 8-oz tub of Cool Whip whipped topping*

Ben melted the chocolate, mixed it (by hand) with the whipped topping, and filled the piecrust. Realizing that there was not enough time for the pie to set before his folks got home from work, he put the pie in the freezer. The resulting frozen concoction was so much superior to the original, that his family made frozen chocolate mousse pie from then on.

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This is a great dessert. It takes under ten minutes to combine the ingredients, and maybe an hour or two to freeze. I use a Hershey’s with Almonds bar when I make it, and melt the chocolate (on medium heat, for a minute or so) in the microwave. I like to chop up a little chocolate (one square of the candy bar) and sprinkle it on the top to make it look a bit fancy; people usually think this dessert is from a fancy shop. Bring it to the next potluck you go to; people will love you. Or, at least, it.


*Update: I've noticed the big bars of chocolate are now 6 oz, instead of 7 (and I could have sworn they were 8 oz when I was younger...) but it doesn't make a difference in the outcome of the pie. In fact, sometimes I buy the big tubs of whipped cream/non dairy whipped topping--the 12 oz size--and that's okay, too. As with many of my recipes, measurements are not exact. Buying the bigger size of whipped topping just means you can eat more as you're preparing the pie.