When I began this blog, I had every intention of writing mostly about the desserts I make. Unfortunately (or fortunately), I'm a pretty healthy eater and so it became difficult to post fancy desserts on a daily basis. I had two options. I could only post desserts, and have my posts few and far between, or I could make this blog mirror my eating (and thus cooking habits). I chose to do the latter because I really wanted to be able to look back on this blog and see everything that I had made.
This recipe just happens to be one that I am incredibly happy that I found. Plus, as an added bonus it looks absolutely stunning and tastes like heaven too. I actually made this and took the pictures of it years ago, when I had never even heard of food blogging. Now I figure is as good a time as any to pull the images out of the depths of my albums to share.
The recipe comes from Kraft and the only adaptation I made was that instead of using Nilla Wafers (because they were on a manufacturer shortage at the time. The nerve right?) I had to settle for some store bought shortbread cookies that were slightly larger as they were the closes thing I could find (I was looking for round, small, plain cookies). The shortbread worked just fine, but you won't quite get as many servings out of this dessert if you use larger cookies because you have to cut between cookies to get a slice. But then again, maybe you want larger slices.
One other thing to note, this recipe calls for fresh raspberries and for good reason. The first time I made this dessert it was in the middle of December (hence the Xmas plate in the pictures) and unless you were willing to pay a fortune for a half a dozen imported raspberries, the only option was frozen. Well, let me tell you, frozen berries are great for some things, just not this. This dessert is all about presentation and it's really hard to make something look good when your berries are flat and mushy looking, and in small pieces or large clumps. It was sort of a nightmare. I sat and hand picked each berry out of the bag and inspected it to make sure it was in fact a whole berry and not a piece of one. Then I placed it on paper towel and waited them to thaw. Meanwhile I had another piece of paper towel over top of the berries and I kept lightly patting them to get the juices away from the berries as to try and prevent them from mushing. You see how imprinted this memory is on my brain after all this time? This was no minor procedure I'm telling you.
Anyway, so for the most part I succeeded in getting the berries to be presentable. But, I now know it is well worth the $6.00 you'll pay for the tiny container of berries in the winter. I won't be that cheap again; I've learned my lesson.
Ingredients
Serves: 16
37 Nilla Wafers
4 Squares Semi-Sweet Chocolate
2 Pkg's (3.9 oz each) Chocolate Instant Pudding
2 C. + 2 Tbsp. Milk
1 Tub (8 oz.) Cool Whip, thawed
1 Pkg. (8 oz.) Cream Cheese, softened
1/4 C. Sugar
3/4 C. Fresh Raspberries
Directions
~Stand 16 wafers along the inside edge of a 9-inch round pan that has been lined with plastic wrap.
~Melt 3 squares of the chocolate.
~In a medium bowl, combine pudding mixes and 2 C. milk. Whisk for 2 minutes.
~Add in the melted chocolate and mix to combine.
~Stir in 1 C. Cool Whip.
~Pour mixture into prepared pan, making sure that the wafers stay pressed up against the side of the pan.
~In another bowl, beat cream cheese, sugar and remaining milk with mixer until blended.
~Stir in 1 C. of the remaining Cool Whip.
~Spread mixture over pudding layer, making sure not to mix the layers together.
~Top with remaining wafers (you want them to be placed as close to the next wafer as possible because this torte is inverted and the top becomes the bottom, so essentially you are making the crust here.)
~Refrigerate for 3 hours.
~Shave remaining chocolate square into curls using a vegetable peeler. (This didn't work so well for me, even when I slightly warmed the chocolate as the original recipe instructed. I got tiny flakes instead of curls, it still looked and tasted fine though.)
~When tort has set, invert it onto a serving plate and remove plastic wrap.
~Top with remaining Cool Whip (a large blob on top, don't spread it around like frosting), berries and chocolate curls.
Enjoy
~Melt 3 squares of the chocolate.
~In a medium bowl, combine pudding mixes and 2 C. milk. Whisk for 2 minutes.
~Add in the melted chocolate and mix to combine.
~Stir in 1 C. Cool Whip.
~Pour mixture into prepared pan, making sure that the wafers stay pressed up against the side of the pan.
~In another bowl, beat cream cheese, sugar and remaining milk with mixer until blended.
~Stir in 1 C. of the remaining Cool Whip.
~Spread mixture over pudding layer, making sure not to mix the layers together.
~Top with remaining wafers (you want them to be placed as close to the next wafer as possible because this torte is inverted and the top becomes the bottom, so essentially you are making the crust here.)
~Refrigerate for 3 hours.
~Shave remaining chocolate square into curls using a vegetable peeler. (This didn't work so well for me, even when I slightly warmed the chocolate as the original recipe instructed. I got tiny flakes instead of curls, it still looked and tasted fine though.)
~When tort has set, invert it onto a serving plate and remove plastic wrap.
~Top with remaining Cool Whip (a large blob on top, don't spread it around like frosting), berries and chocolate curls.
Enjoy
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