Raspberry Pretzel Salad

Another recipe! I made this Jello-salad for Mother's Day on Sunday. I have been craving this for a long time and I thought Mother's Day was the perfect excuse to make it :) This is definitely NOT a healthy salad (don't let that word trick you ;) It's sugary, salty and sweet and delicious!! I LOVE it! It's like a dessert....but you eat it with your dinner! A couple notes: Make sure you really soften your cream cheese. I thought mine was soft enough after pulling it out of the fridge but I could not for the life of me get that cream cheese to blend in smooth!! (It still turned out fine and tasting great!) Also make sure you let the cream cheese mixture really set before dumping the jello on top....nothing horrendous happened but the jello salad didn't look picture perfect. But the most important thing is that it tasted AMAZING!! And that's really all that matters :)

 

Ingredients:

• 2 heaping cups coarsely crushed pretzels - really make sure they are HEAPING cups in order to cover the entire bottom of the dish.
• 3/4 cups butter, melted
• 2 Tablespoons sugar
• 1 large (8 oz.) pkg. cream cheese, softened
• 1 (8 oz.) ctn. cool whip
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 lg. pkg raspberry Jello
• 2 (10 oz.) pkgs frozen raspberries - I used 1 12 oz. package and it worked perfectly!

Preparation:

 

Combine pretzels, butter and 2 Tablespoons of sugar in a bowl and mix well. Press into a 9X13 baking dish. Bake at 400 degrees for 8 minutes. Cool. Beat cream cheese, cool whip and 1/2 cup of sugar in a mixing bowl until blended (again, make sure your cream cheese is softened, either in the microwave or at room temperature if you want a nice, creamy filling. With the little chunks in mine it wasn't noticeable but I wasn't too thrilled with how it looked....). Spread over cooled crust. Dissolve Jello in boiling water. Add frozen berries, stir until thawed (does not take long). Let Jello set up about 1/2 way (about 30 minutes) then spoon over cream cheese. OPTIONAL: Can add crushed pineapple to cheese mixture.

 

Note: The pretzel crust unfortunately gets soggy. Next time I'm going to try making this backwards....so the Jello part first, then the cream mixture and then the pretzels. Hopefully this way works better and the pretzels stay crisp and salty.