Want a Halloween dessert recipe that’s a little bit spooky, but majorly delicious? Then you need to try these Ghostly Pumpkin Spice Mousse Cups! To build these pretty adorable ghost mousse cups, we spooned our pumpkin spice mousse (recipe below), over a premade chocolate cake, then topped them off with our whipped cream ghosts. The mixture of flavors and textures in this recipe work perfectly!

And with the help of a premade or boxed chocolate cake, these yummy ghosts are super easy to put together. They can easily be made gluten-free, sugar-free, low-carb, and/or keto-friendly. They’re the perfect dessert to make for Halloween!

How to Make the Ghostly Pumpkin Spice Mousse Cups

 

Make the Pumpkin Spice Mousse

To make the pumpkin spice mousse, start by whipping cream cheese, pumpkin puree, pumpkin spice, vanilla extract, and the sweetener of your choice. Prepared whipped cream is then folded in to lighten up the texture.

Tips for a Super Smooth Mousse: Make sure your cream cheese is softened before whipping with the pumpkin puree for a silky smooth mousse. If it’s not softened enough and you find yourself with little white specs of cream cheese, pop the bowl in the microwave for about 10-15 seconds to soften and then whip until smooth.

This pumpkin mousse is also super delicious as a standalone dessert, even dare we say without the ghosts.

Assembling the Dessert Cups

 

Chocolate Cake (bottom layer)

Add your favorite premade chocolate cake to the bottom of your jar or dessert dish. You can use your dessert dish to punch out the perfect sizes and then slice horizontally through the middle to make the cake about 1/2 thick. You can also just lay the bottom with cake crumbles. Your favorite chocolate cookies will work here too.

Pumpkin spice mousse + garnish (middle layer)

Spoon your mousse over the top of the cake. We like a 2:1 ratio of mousse to the cake. Then garnish with cake crumbs and chopped pecans, which add another layer of flavor and a lovely crunchy element to this dessert.

The whipped cream ghosts! (top layer)

Place your whipped cream in a piping bag fitted with a large round piping tip ( We used Wilton 1A Large Round Piping Tip). If you don’t have one, simply place the whipped cream in a plastic bag and make about a ½” wide cut-off across the corner.

Pipe the whipped cream over the top of the pumpkin mousse in a tall swirl.

How To Make The Ghost Faces

• For the ghost eyes: We used candy googly eyes.
• For the ghost mouths: We rolled moistened cake crumbs into oval shapes and flattened them.
• You can substitute the eyes and mouth with mini chocolate chips instead.

 💡 Tip: Practice piping your ghosts a couple of times on a piece of waxed paper to get them just right.

GET THE RECIPE!