In our house we have an established “dessert night”. Actually we have two: Mondays and Thursdays. I started this years ago when the boys were much younger and asking me every night if they could have dessert. It got exhausting. I did not let them eat desserts every night, no, and I did not really like having to always say no. So Dessert Night was born. After that I had to answer, “Is tonight dessert night?” a lot, but eventually they remembered which day of the week it was, and even better, years later, they hardly even think to ask for dessert anymore.
CHOCOLATE MOUSSE NAPOLEON
The chocolate filling I used was pudding and cool whip mixed together with a little cinnamon added – not a mousse at all. It was not as stiff as I had wanted it to be so you can see it listing to the side a bit. Regardless, it was delicious, and tasted a lot like a chocolate cream pie. The boys LOVED it!
I used 1 sheet of a premade pie crust, rolled it out until it was about 1/8 inch thick, and then used a 3 inch round glass to cut out 12 circles with very little dough left over. I had to re-roll the dough twice to get the last 4 circles cut. Prick each round with a fork several times.
Pre-heat the oven to 350* and bake the circles for about 10 minutes, or just until slightly browned. Allow to cool completely.
Mix up pudding according to package and place in the refrigerator for at least 10 minutes to set. Let Cool Whip soften and add 1 cup to pudding. Stir in 1 tsp. cinnamon, and place back in fridge until ready to assemble the dessert. Because of the fragile nature of this dessert, I did not put it together until we were ready to eat it.
In two small bowls I have grated chocolate for garnish, and chocolate pieces ready to melt. I split a Hershey bar between the two and grated the first half using my Pampered Chef cheese grater. The Hershey bar didn’t melt smoothly so then I added about an 1/8 cup chocolate chips and I got much better results.
Put a dollop of melted chocolate on the plate to secure the bottom round of pastry. Then on top of each round you will spread a little bit more melted chocolate and sprinkle on some sliced almonds. Place the desired amount of pudding mixture on top of the chocolate and almonds, and layer another pastry round on top. There should be 2 layers chocolate, and the top is Cool Whip with a sprinkling of grated chocolate for garnish.
These were quite rich with the melted chocolate. I only used a little over half the pudding mixture, so the other half went back into the empty Cool Whip container and into the freezer for another time.
Makes 4 desserts 
