Sometimes when time is scarce and you have to make something for a party… like say a picnic, a Memorial Day picnic perhaps, you need something quick. But you always want it to be something that everyone will love. How about chocolate cream pie? When you use Instant pudding, chocolate cream pie suddenly becomes one of the easiest desserts ever!
A million bazillion years ago, my Grammy Vera, when she wasn’t making macaroni salad, used to make chocolate cream pie using Dream Whip. I’m not even sure what it is… actually that is a fib. It is powdered non-dairy magic in a box that makes skim milk look like whipped cream. You put the dream whip powder in the mixer with milk (even skim works) and mix it on high for six minutes, and when you are done its like cool whip (and you can use it right then). I add in instant chocolate pudding and some more milk to make chocolate cream pie base, not dense super chocolate-y pudding, but light fluffy mousse-like pudding.
In a 9″ x 13″ pan I make a graham cracker crust, fill it with the chocolate-heaven-Dream Whip-pudding and top it with real whipped cream. If I had planned ahead I would have added some chocolate shavings to the top. I have dessert for 12 people in less than 15 minutes… seriously 15 minutes. And, if you have a stand mixer, you really are just standing there for 10 of those minutes, yup, standing. There is a good 3 minutes of spreading out chocolate pudding and whipped cream but that is all the hard labor involved. Unless you count licking the spatulas when you are done, and the beaters, and the bowls…. that was hard work. Keeping the pudding bowl away from the kids was the most difficult, I might have said “go play outside” a few times… Try it you’ll like it!
