A Berry Happy 4th of July...a week later.

Well, it's been almost a week since the 4th, so I figured it was time to post the biggest from the day.  J & I spent the 4th eating, sunning & swimming with our friends. It was the perfect 4th!  The temps in LA have been in the 90s the past few weeks so coming up with a light yet tasty & thematic dessert was a bit of a challenge.

This dessert was a bit of an accident.  I found the recipe for Berried Treasure from Mr. & Mrs Pear and just briefly skimmed it. Enter big screw up.  The original recipe has  different layers of whipped goodness. The fruit is supposed to be buried under a layer but I totally disregarded that. Now looking back..the name actually makes sense.  Anyways, while I may have only had one layer & had to skip making the 2nd layer because I used too much cool whip on layer 1, it was still DELICIOUS and EASY.  It doesn't taste like a screwed up dish at all. 

Clearly, this dessert was a hit!  This dish was GONE in less than 20 minutes.  I will have to go back & try the original recipe at some point...but in the meantime, I will absolutely make it this way again! 

Berries & Cream & Crust

Serves: 15

Cook time according to Rachel: 45 mins

How difficult was this for Rachel? Easy! (Even though I didn't follow the instructions)

Ingredients

Yes, the jell-o was for the layer I screwed up 

Crust:      
1 graham cracker pie crust
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter, melted
Filling:
1.5 tubs light cool whip
1 (8oz) package light cream cheese, softened
2 tbsp skim milk

Berries of choice to top
I used strawberries, raspberries & blueberries.




Directions:       

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium mixing bowl, break up pie crust.

Mix in butter & sugar. Mix well.

In a 9x13 greased baking dish, spread out crust mix.  Bake for 8 mins. 

Before putting the filling on, the crust needs to cool. I put mine in the fridge for 15 mins to speed up the process.

While the crust cools, combine all the ingredients listed under filling.  The trickiest part is making sure the cream cheese is COMPLETELY mixed in.  I recommend mircowaving the cream cheese a bit to make sure it is really soft.

Once the crust is cooled, spread the cool whip mix over the top of the crust.

Top with berries of your choice. Fridge an additional 15-30 minutes so filling hardens up just a bit.