Strawberry Mousse Oreo Cookie Crumble

This week I set out to make a dessert for someone with the request that it be strawberry flavoured. I browsed through a couple of my baking books and a few websites until I found what I hoped to be the perfect recipe. 

I found a recipe for Strawberry Mousse Squares but I decided to make it into a crumble with ladened with strawberries. 

The Original Recipe is this: 

• 2/3 cup boiling water
• 1 pkg. (85 g) JELL-O Strawberry Jelly Powder
• 18 OREO Cookies, crushed
• 1/4 cup non-hydrogenated margarine, melted
• 1 pkg. (250 g) PHILADELPHIA Brick Cream Cheese, softened
• 2 cups thawed COOL WHIP Whipped Topping, divided
• 3 cups small strawberries, sliced, divided

Stir boiling water into dry jelly powder in small bowl at least 2 min. until completely dissolved. Cool 5 min., stirring occasionally. Meanwhile, mix cookie crumbs and margarine; press onto bottom of 13x9-inch pan.

Beat cream cheese in large bowl with electric mixer until creamy. Gradually add jelly, beating well after each addition. Gently stir in 1-1/2 cups each of the whipped topping and strawberries. Spoon over crust.

Refrigerate 1 hour or until firm. Cover with remaining whipped topping. Serve topped with the remaining strawberries. Store leftovers in refrigerator. The recipe is courtesy of Cooking with Philly - google them for more great dessert and entree recipes!

I made my own personal take on it by doing this:

I crumbled the Oreo cookies and used about 30 of them instead of 18, the 18 didn't seem to be enough for the pan I was using. 

18 cookies

30 cookies

30 cookies was far better! 

Cookies crumbled into the pan

Mixing the mousse 

I also used about four times as many strawberries as it called for on the top!

I took the larger pan of the mousse crumble in to work to test it on my co-workers! I love baking but I can get nervous when I'm trying a new recipe. And since I wanted the recipe to be really good I figured I would make a test batch and see what the reactions were. The reactions were pretty favourable so I tested some myself and thought it would be ok to give the crumble mousse cake I had intended to for a certain person's birthday.

So all of that was done to make this! Enough for one person's birthday! One  singing candle later I had a strawberry mousse cookie crumble birthday treat!