When summer comes, I think about this strawberry refrigerator dessert from my youth that is light, fluffy, and cool. I’ve been trying to find the recipe or remember how to make it for several years. It features angel food cake pieces, strawberries, whipped cream, and strawberry gelatin. My mom didn’t remember it at all. Eventually I asked my sister and she did remember it. She said it was made with Dream Whip and suddenly how it was made all fell into place. I wondered if Dream Whip (a powder that you mix with milk to make a whipped cream substitute) was still made but when I went to the store it was right there on the shelf next to the gelatin and pudding mixes.
As you know, I’m big on taking a basic recipe and varying it according to what’s on hand. In this recipe, the Dream Whip could be replaced with Cool Whip (a frozen whipped cream substitute) or real whipped cream. Using real whipped cream seems like a good idea but Dream Whip is lighter and lightness is what I want in a summer dessert. Also this recipe makes a large batch and I suspect that prepared Dream Whip has a longer refrigerator life than whipped cream. Frozen strawberries could be replaced with fresh strawberries but fresh strawberries often aren’t available in summer. You could also substitute the strawberries and strawberry Jello with another fruit.
I grew up in a family where eight people usually ate together. I’m trying to cut all of my old family recipes down to serve about 4 but this recipe doesn’t reduce well. It uses a whole angel food cake which is hard to divide. If you can’t use the whole dessert in a few days put part of it in the freezer.
Strawberry Angel Cake Dessert
makes one 13″ x 9″ pan, 12 to 16 servings
- 1 angel food cake
- 1 3 ounce box strawberry gelatin
- 2 cups water
- 1 10 ounce box frozen sweetened strawberries
- 2 envelopes Dream Whip
- 1 cup milk
- Make gelatin according to package directions. Refrigerate until a thick syrup, not fully set.
- Break angel food cake into bite sized pieces and place in large bowl.
- Prepare Dream Whip according to package directions.
- Beat gelatin with electric mixer until fluffy. Add thawed strawberries.
- Fold Dream Whip into gelatin mixture.
- Fold into angel food cake. Place in 13″ x 9″ cake pan and refrigerate.
I’ve heard a story that a Chinese king was traveling and stopped unexpectedly at a peasant’s house for the evening. The peasant made a dish of leftovers to serve the king, the king loved it, and thus fried rice was invented. Now this story has multiple problems if you stop to think about it but for a cooking blog the idea of fried rice using up a variety of leftovers is at least plausible. Unless you live in my house. I rarely have enough of even one leftover to add to fried rice much less 5 or 6.
Although I have a basic recipe for fried rice, I vary it according to what meat I have on hand or what vegetables are in season. In spring I might add snow peas, in summer zucchini or in winter frozen corn. I’m even more likely to vary the ingredients depending on which child is eating with us. One doesn’t like peas, another doesn’t like mushrooms, etc. I always add carrots and a green vegetable like bell pepper or celery for color appeal. And I might even add some leftovers if I have them. All ingredients should be cut into bite sized pieces. I use peanut oil to fry my fried rice although any vegetable oil can be used. Peanut oil adds some flavor of its own which isn’t bad in fried rice but I use it because you can fry foods hotter in peanut oil without the oil smoking or the food burning.
For a vegetarian dish, double or triple the mushrooms and omit the meat.
Fried Rice
- 3 cups steamed rice
- 2 cups shrimp, chicken or pork
- 1 small onion
- 1 cup carrots
- 1 bell pepper or 1 cup celery
- 1 cup corn, peas or snow peas
- 1 cup mushrooms (optional)
- 1/4 cup peanut oil or vegetable oil
- 2 cloves garlic
- 2 eggs beaten
- 1/4 cup soy sauce
Serves 4.
- Clean shrimp or cut chicken or pork into bite sized pieces.
- Cut onion, carrots, mushrooms, bell pepper, celery and other fresh vegetables into bite sized pieces. Mince garlic.
- In large skillet or wok, saute meat and garlic in oil until cooked through. If using shrimp, remove shrimp from skillet.
- Add onion, mushrooms, carrots, snow peas, bell pepper and celery (and other vegetables except frozen or canned) and saute.
- Move food away from center of skillet and pour in beaten egg. Scramble egg breaking it into bite sized pieces.
- Add frozen or canned corn or peas and other frozen, canned or precooked vegetables. Heat through.
- Add rice and soy sauce. Heat through stirring frequently. Serve.
Here we have three different flavors of pudding: chocolate with chocolate chips, butterscotch with toffee bits and vanilla with toasted coconut. So you would think that I would use three different recipes, right? I actually use the same basic recipe for all three! Only slight changes to the recipe change the flavor and other slight variations change this into pie filling, like a nice coconut cream or banana cream, or into frozen pudding pops. I’m just going to talk about pudding here, I’ll post about cream pies and pudding pops in the summer.
This pudding has only three basic ingredients: milk, cornstarch and sugar. Starch thickens the milk and sugar adds sweetness. You can vary the milk substituting whole, lowfat or nonfat milk, soy milk or almond milk. You can vary the sugar: white sugar makes vanilla pudding and brown sugar makes butterscotch pudding. You could even vary the starch using something like arrowroot starch. I haven’t tried this but if someone in your family is allergy to corn you might want to. You would have to play with the ratio of starch to milk to get a nice consistency.
Once you have your basic pudding, you can flavor it or add other ingredients. I always add salt and vanilla both tastes are “expected” and you don’t hardly notice them – unless they aren’t there. You might also want to add some extract: wild cherry with vanilla or butter rum with butterscotch, or food coloring. Finally, you might want to stir in a special ingredient at the end: sliced bananas for banana cream or coconut for coconut cream. And I always add a topping! It tastes better if it look appealing.
Basic Vanilla Pudding
- 6 tablespoons cornstarch
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 1 tsp. salt
- 5 cups milk
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- In heavy bottomed 1 1/2 quart saucepan, mix cornstarch, sugar and salt thoroughly.
- Add 1/2 cup milk and stir to make a paste.
- Add remainder of milk and stir.
- Place on medium high heat and bring to a boil stirring constantly especially as the mixture nears the boiling point. Use a spatula so that you scrape the bottom as you stir. The mixture will thicken on the bottom of the pan first and will be lumpy if not stirred well.
- Remove from heat when first bubbles from boiling appear.
- Stir in vanilla and pour into custard cups or dessert bowls.
I’m putting the variations for chocolate and butterscotch puddings in their own posts so they index. Here are the links:
Chocolate Pudding
Butterscotch Pudding
Chocolate Pudding is a simple variation of basic Vanilla Pudding. I just add 1/3 cup cocoa and increase the sugar from 2/3 cup to 1 cup to counteract the bitterness of the cocoa.
Chocolate Pudding
- 6 tablespoons cornstarch
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 1/3 cup cocoa
- 1 tsp. salt
- 5 cups milk
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- In heavy bottomed 1 1/2 quart saucepan, mix cornstarch, cocoa, sugar and salt thoroughly.
- Add 1/2 cup milk and stir to make a paste.
- Add remainder of milk and stir.
- Place on medium high heat and bring to a boil stirring constantly especially as the mixture nears the boiling point. Use a spatula so that you scrape the bottom as you stir. The mixture will thicken on the bottom of the pan first and will be lumpy if not stirred well.
- Remove from heat when first bubbles from boiling appear.
- Stir in vanilla and pour into custard cups or dessert bowls.
Butterscotch Pudding differs from my basic Vanilla Pudding by just substituting brown sugar for white sugar.
Butterscotch Pudding
- 6 tablespoons cornstarch
- 2/3 cup dark brown sugar
- 1 tsp. salt
- 5 cups milk
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- In heavy bottomed 1 1/2 quart saucepan, mix cornstarch, sugar and salt thoroughly.
- Add 1/2 cup milk and stir to make a paste.
- Add remainder of milk and stir.
- Place on medium high heat and bring to a boil stirring constantly especially as the mixture nears the boiling point. Use a spatula so that you scrape the bottom as you stir. The mixture will thicken on the bottom of the pan first and will be lumpy if not stirred well.
- Remove from heat when first bubbles from boiling appear.
- Stir in vanilla and pour into custard cups or dessert bowls.