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Pudding Cream Cheese Cake
This is a simple dessert recipe with a shortbread crust and layers of
cream cheese, chocolate pudding, and whipped topping. I got the recipe
decades ago from one of Dave's relatives, but it turns out you can find it
many places online, though with very
different
names.
It's an easy recipe because it uses instant pudding and instant whipped
topping (aka Cool Whip).
I tweaked the original recipe to use more cream cheese and topping.
Later I tweaked the proportions for an 8"x8" pan (the original recipe
uses a 13"x9" pan).
ingredients
13x9 8x8
6oz 3oz butter
6.6oz 3.3oz flour
2.5oz 1.3oz walnuts, chopped
3.5oz 1.8oz powdered sugar
16oz 8oz cream cheese
12oz 8oz Cool Whip
2 boxes 1 box instant chocolate pudding (small box, 3.9oz)
3C 1.5C milk
garnish: nuts, cocoa powder, or shaved chocolate
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut the butter into the flour. Add nuts.
Pat into pan. Bake until light golden brown (13x9 about 30 minutes,
8x8 about 20 minutes). Cool completely.
2. Cream together powdered sugar and cream cheese. Fold in one half the
Cool Whip. Spread over crust.
3. Prepare pudding mix and milk. Pour over cream cheese layer. Top with
remaining Cool Whip.
4. If desired, garnish with powdered cocoa, chocolate shavings, or finely
chopped nuts.
The 13x9 version
makes 24 servings, each about 265 calories, 4 grams protein,
and 24 grams
net carbs.
The 8x8 version
makes 16 servings, each about 210 calories, 3 grams protein,
and 19 grams
net carbs.
Other notes:
- If the crust is sticky and difficult to pat into the pan, try smoothing
it in using the back of a spoon.
Next time make sure the butter is cold and cut it into the flour more
completely.
- After removing the crust from the oven, I cool it with a low fan
while making the cream cheese layer.
- I put the pan in the refrigerator while making the pudding layer,
and while making the garnish for the topping layer.
- To make it easy to serve myself
a 1/3 size piece, I cut the 9" side (or one of the 8" sides)
into 3 sections rather than 4. When I remove a section from the pan,
I cut off 1/3 for myself, and what remains is a full size piece.
- Extra portions can be frozen. The crust won't be as crisp when it thaws,
but is no different from eating a piece that has been in the refrigerator
for a week (which will probably also have its layers bleeding into each
other).
- I am tempted to try making this with homemade pudding and whipped cream.
Even before going LCHF,
I thought the pudding was overly sweet
(not to mention kind of gloppy), and the Cool Whip was definitely sweet.
The problem is the whipped cream won't hold for long,
so it would have to be eaten at once,
which means a large gathering, which means I'd probably be too stressed
and time-crunched to make it!
This article is part of the seeking42 recipe series.
