Strawberry Pretzel Squares

This past weekend, I was thumbing through the weekly Meijer grocery circular and saw this recipe, in the ad, which was promoting the sale of some "Kraft Foods" items.



Every holiday, when my family gets together, I try to make something different, and it's usually a dessert. So, I had to give this recipe a "test-drive" and see if it's something I'd like to make for Easter!


Now this would be what I call a "cheater" recipe as it does utilize some pre-made, store bought ingredients. I suppose you could use freshly whipped heavy cream in place of the Cool Whip.


Also, I tested this recipe using low fat cream cheese and fat free Cool Whip and it tasted just as good! So if you want a lower-cal version, go that route!


You can get the complete recipe here: Strawberry Pretzel Squares


Start by smashing up some pretzels into fine crumbs. Another reason I wanted to make this was I had 2 bags of pretzel rods in my pantry from Christmas Time when I made chocolate dipped & decorated pretzel rods to give as gifts.
Making the pretzel crumbs is easy if you have a food processor. You could also place them, a few at a time, in a zip top plastic bag and roll over them with a rolling pin. Note, the salt on the pretzels tend to "poke" tiny holes in the plastic bag when using the "rolling pin" method.





Mix the pretzel crumbs with a little sugar and some melted, unsalted butter!




Press the crumb mixture into a 9 x 13" pan and bake for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool.




While the crust is cooling, beat together some cream cheese, a little sugar and some milk until smooth. Stir in a cup of Cool Whip and evenly spread over the cooled crust. Place this in the refrigerator.





While the crust is chilling, make your Jell-O! I'm not going to go into detail here because if you can't make Jell-O, we've got a lot of work to do before you should attempt this recipe! Be sure to make the Jell-O using only 1-1/2 cups of cold water (the recipe states this!) and chill this in the refrigerator for 90 minutes! You want this to just start to thicken.




Remove the Jell-O from the fridge and add your sliced strawberries! This looks good all by itself!






Pour the Jell-O and strawberries over the chilled cream cheese & crust, evenly! Return to the refrigerator and chill until completely set. About 3 hours.






Enjoy!