The Luxuriously Easy Red, White & Blue Dessert (No Baking Required)

This Fourth of July, you could obsess over flag cake, lay stars and stripes of dough over a flag pie, or arm wrestle with an ice cream scooper.

But how many of us eat cake, pie, and ice cream (almost exclusively) for the whipped cream anyway? (I try to pile up whipped cream onto my berry shortcake at least five separate times before finishing the serving.)

So let's cut to the chase, then. White chocolate mousse will take you about 3 ingredients and 20 minutes to make—and it's no-bake, no-freeze, and, when you top it with any sort of red and blue compote, just as spirited as a flag-themed confection. How's that for freedom!

Watch how easily it comes together in the video below:

You'll use lightly-sweetened, soft-whipped cream to aerate melted white chocolate, folding it in until your mixture is so full of fluff, it could float on your spoon.

So that's your white. But the mousse is so easy, you'll have time to make the red and blue accessories, as well. Whip up any type of compote you want by cooking berries—blueberry, blackberry, strawberry, raspberry, black raspberry, cherry—with sugar, then mash them up and add a splash of lemon juice and a bigger splash of booze (bourbon, rum, framboise, kirsch, amaretto).

Spoon the white chocolate mousse into little glasses, set bowls of compote nearby, and let your friends and family make their own mousse parfaits. Then hurry outdoors, cup in hand, and try to catch those fireworks.

Snag the recipe (and the glasses) below:

What sweets on your Fourth of July menu? Tell us in the comments below!