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This chocolate delight recipe is the ultimate graham cracker and chocolate pudding dessert! If those two are your favorite dessert combination like Mr. Magpie, then this is the dessert for you. That man would literally just eat chocolate pudding with graham crackers crumbled on top and call it a day. Luckily this pan dessert is hardly any more work than that and makes for the perfect dessert!
Now this recipe is close to Sex in a Pan, but it has a graham wafer crust and no vanilla pudding in it. It does make for an entirely different dessert flavorwise when you don’t have a baked flour and chopped pecan crust and vanilla pudding like Sex in a Pan does. This is alllll graham cracker love!
Retro Chocolate Delight Pan Dessert
This is one of that awesome pudding mix and Cool Whip concoctions that everyone secretly loves to eat. Sure, everyone’s all like ” OMG Cool Whip isn’t even dairy, it’s an edible oil!” – dudes, we all grew up eating Dream Whip from a package and I’m actually too scared to read the ingredient list on that box hahaha! Dessert is the wrong time to be worrying about using a pudding mix and some premade whipped cream.
However you can totally make homemade chocolate pudding and whip up some real whipped cream if that floats your boat, but be warned, homemade chocolate pudding weeps and doesn’t keep, and homemade whipped cream deflates fast. There’s a valid reason that these desserts are made with boxed ingredients, all those additives help keep the pudding together and keep the cool whip, well, whipped.
How to Make Chocolate Delight
This is as easy as 1,2,3! ( and 4 and 5 but it’s still easy) The most time you will take is letting the crust cool!
- Combine your crust ingredients and press into the pan. Bake and cool.
- Combine the cream cheese, icing/confectioners sugar, and beat until smooth. Add in 1/2 the whipped topping. Spread onto the crust.
- Make the pudding and spread out on top of the cream cheese layer.
- Top with whipped cream and graham crumbs.
- Refrigerate for two hours, then serve!
Chocolate Delight Tips and Tricks
- If your cream cheese isn’t really soft, it will be lumpy and won’t mix in properly.
- I find that different brands of graham crumbs absorb more butter than others, so you can add more butter if yours seems dry. A 1/2 cup butter is the standard ratio for 2 cups crumbs, but sometimes I find I have to add more to get it to stick together.
- You can sub in lower fat ingredients if you want, low-fat cool whip, pudding mix, and cream cheese all will work. The consistency will be slightly different, however.
- This is really great if you let it sit overnight!
- This will fall apart when sliced. Don’t expect it to look like mine, it took me many sliced to get it to look like this!
This was even better after sitting in the fridge overnight, everything comes together so nicely and it does help it slice better. But again, this DOESN’T slice as well as the photo shows, remember that I had a whole pan to slice up and try to get the perfect slice for photos! This is delicious, fall apart pan dessert, it won’t look this pretty but it will still be so delicious!
Happy baking!
Love,
Karlynn
Chocolate Delight Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 cups graham cracker crumbs
- 2 tablespoons white sugar
- 1/2 cup salted butter melted
- 8 ounces cream cheese softened
- 1 cup icing sugar (confectioners sugar)
- one 1 litre/16-ounce tub frozen whipped topping (thawed)
- two 110 grams/3.9 ounces packages chocolate instant pudding
- 3 cups milk
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350 °F
- In a medium-sized bowl, combine the graham cracker crumbs, white granulated sugar, and the melted butter until the crumbs are moistened completely. If you find that the crumbs aren't coming together, melt another 2-3 tbsp of salted butter and then add, mixing until they stick together well. See notes.
- Take out two tablespoons of the graham crumb mixture and set aside to use as a topping later.
- Press the rest of the graham crumb mixture into an even layer in the bottom of a 9 x 13 pan.
- Place the pan in the oven and bake the bottom crust for 10 minutes.
- Remove and cool completely while preparing the other layers.
- Beat the softened cream cheese and icing sugar together until completely smooth.
- Fold in half of the whipped topping until blended in.
- Spread the cream cheese mixture over the cooled crust carefully, making sure not to pull up any crumbs into the layer while spreading it out.
- Place the contents of the two pudding packages into a large bowl and add in the 3 cups of milk. ( yes it will say four on the package, we are making it thicker than usual for the dessert.
- Spread the chocolate pudding carefully over the cream cheese layer, trying not to mix the two.
- Take the remaining whipped topping and spread over top of the pudding layer.
- Sprinkle the whipped topping with the reserved graham crumbs.
- Chill in the fridge for 2 hours, then slice and serve.
Notes
- If your cream cheese isn’t really soft, it will be lumpy and won’t mix in properly.
- I find that different brands of graham crumbs absorb more butter than others, so you can add more butter if yours seems dry. A 1/2 cup butter is the standard ratio for 2 cups crumbs, but sometimes I find I have to add more to get it to stick together.
- You can sub in lower fat ingredients if you want eg, low-fat cool whip, pudding mix and cream cheese all will work. The consistency will be slightly different however.
Nutrition
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The Real Person!
The Real Person!
Love this recipe!!!
For those stating they had to use 2 tubs of Cool Whip – read the recipe again; it calls for 16 oz of Cool Whip – which is a large tub. The regular size tubs are only 8 oz and therefore you would need 2!
DKY says
If you use Dr Oetker whipped cream stabilizer the real whipped cream will keep as long as desserts last in our house! (2-3 days)
Debi S says
Has anyone tried this with real whip cream? I am not a fan of Cool Whip.
gary says
Real Whipped Crème will not keep its shape and will leak all over.
dreama says
Don’t know what I did wrong, but not near enough cool whip left over to cover the entire 9×13 pan. Luckily I had an extra tub of it so I was good. Otherwise, it was very good!
Dorothy says
I made this and it is was delicious, thanks for the recipe
Regina Mottl says
Love your recipes Some are ones I made years ago and loved now I have the recipes I forgot about THANKS 😍
gary says
I to used 2 tubs