Simple strawberry cheesecake mousse (that's really hard to mess up!)

For someone who loves to cook, there are a fair few simple recipes that I've never made before. For instance, I've never made shepherd's pie. I'm sure it's not difficult, I've just never got round to it. The same goes for mousse. I'd been led to understand that mousse is pretty simple to make, but making it has never come up - even though I bloomin' love mousse.

We were having Fiona and her hubby round for dinner the other day and I was pondering what dessert should follow our Mexican feast. We had strawberries to use up in the fridge, so strawberry mousse won. I started off following a recipe, and then realised after I'd finished making them that I'd completely forgotten to measure the amount of cream I used, or the amount of strawberries, so I actually had no idea if I'd made mousse or just strawberry flavoured cream. What I could vouch for, though, was that it tasted really good, so even if the consistency wasn't right, it didn't matter all that much.

However... the consistency was good! I took a bite and was like 'Yep, this is definitely mousse' which is what you want to happen when eating, you know, mousse. So my learning from this is that it's really difficult to screw up mousse, which I find reassuring. The only thing that did go wrong is that I made enormous portions - which I don't think is all THAT wrong, personally. There were still clear plates all around. But FYI, this makes 4 huge mousses or 8 respectable ones. Make of that what you will.

Simple Strawberry Cheesecake Mousse

300ml double cream

300g strawberries

40g icing sugar

225g cream cheese

1 tsp vanilla extract

10 x digestives

60g butter

1 tsp sugar

Serves 4-8

1. Make the base by crushing the digestives into crumbs - I always go for the old sandwich bag and rolling pin approach.
2. Melt the butter in a large bowl and then add the crumbs to the bowl along with 1 tsp of sugar and stir until the crumbs are coated in butter.
3. Divide the crumbs between your serving bowls or glasses (mine were a Tesco bargain) and press down into the bottom of the glass/bowl until firmish. Don't worry too much about it being perfect - we're going to cover them in mousse anyway. Set aside.

4. Chop up your strawberries and remove the leaves, then pop in a blender (I used my Blend Active because I'm obsessed with it) and blitz into a puree.

5. In a large bowl, combine your icing sugar with your cream cheese and vanilla and stir until well combined. Add your strawberry puree and stir through again until combined.

6. In a separate bowl, whip your cream with an electric whisk for a few minutes until it thickens and goes all stiff (snigger).

7. Add to the other bowl of cream cheese, sugar and strawberry and fold in gently to combine. If it looks a bit lumpy, give it a more vigorous stir - I did this and it didn't do any harm!

8. Pour the strawberry mixture into all your serving bowls/glasses on top of the digestive base, cover with clingfilm and pop in the fridge for at least 15 minutes (I left mine 24 hours).

9. To serve, top with fresh strawberries and maybe a coulis or something - I went for a blob of leftover strawberry curd, because it's awesome. And dig in!

Yeah, I know they look like boobs. I see no problem with this.