Pumpkin Mousse

Last year for Thanksgiving I made a Pumpkin Cheesecake; this year for Thanksgiving I made Pumpkin Mousse Parfait from THIS site. I felt like it was too heavy- too much like cheesecake, not enough like mousse so my recipe proposes a change.  But its got great flavour.

Note: The original recipe calls for a 15 oz can of pumpkin, calculated to mL it was 443, which was just slightly more than one can had here in Nanaimo.  So you can either just do slightly less (the small can had 398 mL) or you can open a big can and use like 2/3 of it.  Depends on if you want extra pumpkin for something later.

Ingredients:

one can pumpkin
1 package cream cheese, room temperature
2 cups icing/confectioner's sugar
1 tbsp vanilla
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground allspice
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
pinch of salt
2 cups heavy cream
ground gingersnap cookies (crumbs)
sweetened whipped cream, for serving (whip cream with sugar and cinnamon)


Directions:

Spread the pumpkin on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 for 10 minutes to help dry it out.  Once it has cooled, beat with cream cheese and sugar.  Then beat in spices and vanilla.  In a separate bowl, whip cream till stiff peaks.  Fold cream in three batches into pumpkin cream cheese mixture. 

To make parfaits: layer pumpkin, sweetened whipped cream and gingersnap crumbs in glasses.  Top with gingersnap cookie.  Voila.