Adults Only! Orange Dreamsicle Salad

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One of my fondest memories as a child was summer barbecues. It was quite an event at our house. My mother would set up card tables all around the backyard, topping them with matching red and white checked tablecloths that she had made herself. On top of each table was a hurricane surrounded with fresh greenery and a candle that looked marvelous burning at night. At our house, a barbecue wasn’t a barbecue without a slab of ribs, deviled eggs, and my mother’s orange fluff salad. Everyone loved the orange fluff. She had no recipe, and, as such, I don’t have one to share with you, but I do have this one that I think is so much better, largely thanks to the hefty dose of alcohol that I have decided to add to it. This is for adults only, but I guarantee you they are going to love it. And, if you don’t tell them that orange liqueur is one of the ingredients, it’s going to come as quite a pleasant surprise. Do you want to become legendary? Serve this.

Adults Only! Orange Dreamsicle Salad

1 3-oz. box orange Jell-O
1 c. boiling water
1 3.4-oz. box vanilla pudding
½ c. extraordinarily well chilled orange liqueur*
1 8-oz. container Cool Whip**
1 c. miniature marshmallows
1 14-15 oz. can mandarin oranges***

In a large bowl, whisk together orange Jell-O and boiling water, whisking until Jell-O is fully dissolved. Add cold liqueur and chill in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.

Remove mixture from the refrigerator, and slowly whisk in the vanilla pudding mix until smooth. Chill in the refrigerator for another 15 minutes until it becomes slightly thickened.

Remove mixture from the refrigerator, and fold in Cool Whip, mini marshmallows, and mandarin oranges. Chill until ready to serve. Garnish with additional marshmallows and/or segments of reserved oranges.

I love to serve small salads like this in my favorite glass yogurt jars. If you don’t have any, I recommend these.

 
*I used Patron Citron, but you can use whatever you like. If you prefer less alcohol in this salad, use ½ cup of cold water and ½ cup of orange liqueur.
**Yes, I know. Chemicals! Chemicals! I’m on lock-down here, leave me alone.
***Reserve a few segments to use as a garnish, if desired.

Not Your Momma’s Pretzel Salad

Pretzel Salad has been around for a long time. My first taste of it came somewhere in the 70s, and I loved it then the same way that I love it now. I’ve eaten a lot of it over the years, served to me by a lot of people. What I have learned from this is that very few people know how to properly make it. One pretzel salad that I had is particularly memorable, because there were big chunks of pretzel in the crust! Let me ask you, when you have a graham cracker crust, are there big chunks of graham cracker in that crust? No! And there should not be big chunks of pretzel in a pretzel crust. Pretzels should be treated in the same way in which graham crackers are treated.

The filling should be wonderfully creamy. For this to happen, the cream cheese needs to be at room temperature, and the topping needs to be thawed. This is one of those cases where I do use Cool Whip and I like it, and make no apologies.

Now let’s talk about the Jell-O. It needs to be made by the quickset method, refrigerated for a short while, and poured on top so that it’s not going to sink down through the layers and into the pretzel base. I was once served a pretzel salad where the Jell-O had apparently been poured on right after being made. It seeped all of the way down completely covering the pretzel layer turning it into a gelatinous mass. What you want is a beautifully layered salad.

If you want your pretzel salad to be memorable in a positive way, rather than the negative ways that I’ve mentioned above, I’m going to tell you exactly how to do it. One thing that’s going to make it particularly easy, is to do two of the layers in the food processor. You will get a beautiful crust if you pulverize your pretzels in the food processor, and then just wipe it out with a paper towel, replace the work bowl onto the base, and mix the filling ingredients in there as well. It turns out perfectly every time. I find strawberries in pretzel salad to be a bit cloying and mundane, so I like to use cherries. I find more people like a cherry topping than they do one of strawberries. If you want to make an adults only version of pretzel salad, you might try using bourbon or brandy-soaked cherries. Talk about delicious!

Here’s the way that I make a pretzel salad, and I’ve never tasted one better.

Not Your Momma’s Pretzel Salad

1 8-ounce bag mini pretzel twists
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 8-ounce pkg. cream cheese, room temperature, I mean it!

1 c. sugar
1 8-ounce container Cool Whip, thawed
2 4-ounce packages cherry Jell-O
1 12-ounce can pitted bing or morello cherries, 

or fresh, pitted, if in season

Preheat oven to 350° F.

Pour the pretzels into the work bowl of your food processor. Pulse until they have been reduced to fine crumbs. Add sugar and melted butter, and pulse until combined. Turn out into a 9” x 13” pan pressing into the bottom. Bake for 10 minutes, remove from oven and allow to cool.

Wipe out the bowl of your food processor and add cream cheese and sugar. Pulse until combined. Add Cool Whip and process until smooth and creamy. Pour over the cooled crust.

Make Jell-O according to the “quickset“ directions. I use 2 cups of boiling water for two packages, and 1-3/4 cups of ice water. Place in refrigerator for 30 to 40 minutes, (checking at 30 minutes) until it has thickened, but is still pourable. Meanwhile, place the cherries in whatever design you see fit on top of the cream layer. When the Jell-O is ready (no more than 40 minutes), carefully pour over the cherries. Place pan in refrigerator and allow to chill completely, 3 to 4 hours. Cut into squares and serve. Keeps, refrigerated, for 3 days.

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