Today’s recipe comes from Morag, who sent me the recipe for Frozen Fruit Loaf from 7-Up Goes to a Party! (It appears canned soda is more popular than I am, but I digress.) This recipe comes from the ‘50s, a period of time when our caker ancestors thought soda pop was a miracle liquid. I once caught my grandmother bathing in root beer. She said it was good for her arthritis. Not sure that explains why she polished the furniture with Mountain Dew.
Anyways, I made this and it was okay, although it was cold and made my brain freeze up more than when I’m looking for the hidden images in a Highlights picture. My main complaint was that it was too hard. The only thing worse than fruit is frozen fruit. If you’re going to chip your tooth, I’d sooner do it on a frozen Creamsicle than a frozen grape.
Speaking of grapes, you know how people sometimes see the Virgin Mary in toast? Tell me this doesn’t look like Dilbert. I’m going to sell it on eBay before it mel…Never mind.
Thanks, Morag! Come back Monday for a trip back to It-lee!
1 3-ounce package cream cheese (see note 1)
1 9-ounce can crushed pineapple (see note 2)
1 7-ounce bottle of 7-Up
2 cups diced fresh peaches
1 cup diced seedless grapes
½ cup sugar
½ pint whipping cream (see note 3)
1 ½ cups miniature marshmallows
Soften cream cheese and mix in pineapple. Stir in 7-Up. Sprinkle sugar over peaches and grapes and stir into mixture. Pour into a 2-quart refrigerator dish (see note 4) and freeze until partially thickened. Whip cream until stiff; fold cream and marshmallows into fruit mixture. Free until solid. Makes 8-10 servings.
Note 1: About a 1/3 of a regular package
Note 2: 1 cup
Note 3: I used Cool Whip. Of course.
Note 4: I used a loaf pan.
Maybe I'm still in shock from Canned Penis Casserole, but the placement of those grapes makes me think this recipe should have been the dessert for that one. Ewwwww. O.o
ReplyDeleteActually, I'm surprised that the recipe called for fresh fruit and not canned fruit cocktail. (Hee hee, she said COCKtail...)
I think Canned Penis Casserole has affected many of us in ways that will continue to haunt us forever. I'll never look at a Vienna sausage the same way again. Not that I looked at them in the first place.
DeleteThis looks unusual. Basically a log of frozen fruit????
ReplyDeletePretty much. I guess the folks at 7-Up thought calling it "Frozen Hard Log o' Fruit" lacked a certain sexiness.
DeleteI was also surprised this didn't call for canned peaches!! This must be "fancy" caker cooking!
ReplyDeleteThink of this as breakfast rather than dessert...better? ;)
How about I don't think of it at all? Actually, I do have to think about it because it's still in my freezer. Thanks for the recipe, though!
DeleteHas anyone checked whether fresh fruit is actually safe to eat?
ReplyDeleteFresh fruit is actually quite bad for you. Apparently, it causes body warts in embarrassing places. Avoid it at all costs!
DeleteI think my mother-in-law used to make this, but she froze it in individual Bundt pans. As a kid, it was a major celebration if my mom put canned fruit salad in some Jell-o, so I was secretly thrilled to be served this as an adult. When she first served me Watergate Salad, I decided that even if Farm Boy dumped me, I was going to crash their family dinners.
ReplyDeleteYou can't go wrong with Watergate Salad, also known as Pistachio Salad. My mom could make that one blindfolded. It was one of the first recipes I featured on the this blog.
DeleteI think the Cool Whip is likely responsible for the poor results of this recipe (not that if you had used the whipping cream indicated it would have yielded a delightful, fruity, citrus-infused cheese panna cotta, but it probably would have been less inedible). Cool Whip isn't a substitute for whipping cream*, which, in our home-and-native-land, is 35% butter fat. Cool Whip has about 2/3 less fat than whipping cream and a significantly higher percentage of water (it's actually the first-listed ingredient). Sufficient fat creates creaminess and softness in frozen desserts, and too much water results in a hard, icy product. And in other recipes that call for whipped cream--especially when directed to beat until stiff--the low fat and high water content means it's unable to achieve the volume and structural properties of whipped cream, so a mousse will be flat and watery, you can't frost a cake with it, and it will fall flat if you try to add other ingredients to it (like fruit or chocolate). Trust me, I tried to make a simple chocolate mousse with it about twenty years ago for someone who couldn't have eggs and needed to keep dairy to a minimum, and it was a deflated, gummy disaster.
ReplyDelete*Except as a dessert topping, scooped straight from the tub, for poor unfortunates who can't have dairy.
Thanks for the info, Olive. You obviously know your stuff. I might have to give this one a whirl again and stick with the whipping cream. And just to clarify, I can have dairy and I've eaten Cool Whip straight out of the tub before. Usually, I'm wearing track pants and watching Golden Girls reruns at the time.
DeleteMy pleasure, Brian. I've hurled advice at you before, but always anonymously. :) Cool Whip is best enjoyed straight from the tub, watching Blanche eating cheesecake and hoping she'll say, 'Slut', ideally with your cat(s) at your side. (All cats love The Golden Girls; I suspect it's because they especially enjoy the relaxing, melodic, interstitial music...or perhaps that's just me).
DeleteOh, and one more Cool Whip-related problem: The recipe calls for 1/2 pint of whipping cream, not 1/2 pint of whipped cream. When whipping cream is whipped, it doubles in volume, so even if Cool Whip were a feasible substitute for whipped cream, the 1/2 pint (a bit less than 1 cup) of Cool Whip was half the amount, by volume, of whipped-stuff that the recipe called for.
ReplyDeleteI just can't believe there was no Jell-O involved. I thought that was a universal law for desserts in loaf form.
ReplyDeleteA few things managed to escape the wrath of JELL-O in the '50s. Come to think of it - do you remember the movie The Blob? Was that really JELL-O?
Delete