Strawberry Blueberry Fluff

~Amanda~

If you’ve never enjoyed a delicious “Fluff” salad in your lifetime, then you’re probably not from the Midwest, or you don’t have relatives in the Midwest. Fluff salads are all the rage out there and for good reason – they are incredibly delicious! Both our parents are from the Midwest and all their families still live there, so we have been lucky enough to have experienced a multitude of fruit fluff salads in our lifetime. Now you may be asking yourself, what the heck is a fruit fluff salad, this sounds so weird… well it is haha. Fluff salads are served as a side dish (but I think they’d more appropriately be served as dessert, but where’s the fun in that?!) and they are commonly made of Jell-O, pudding, fruit, crushed pineapple, whipped topping, and marshmallows. It sounds like such a weird combination, but trust me, it works!

The most common fluff salad you’ve probably heard of is Watergate Salad which is made with pistachio pudding mix, crushed pineapple, and walnuts.. I guess rumor has it that it was created by a sous chef at the Watergate Hotel and served at brunch on the weekends, but nobody really knows if that’s true. These days, there are probably a million different ways that you can prepare a fluff salad and they can be made for pretty much every brunch, barbecue, or potluck you go to. You can change the flavor of Jell-O you use, what kind of fresh fruit you put in it, any other additions (nuts?), but the constants are the whipped topping and the marshmallows – you HAVE to have those. I recently made this one with strawberries and blueberries for a 4th of July party we went to (hence the red, white, and blue) and everybody LOVED it! I was somewhat skeptical about bringing a dish like this to a barbecue in Colorado, where I wasn’t sure what people would think of it – or if they’d even try it for that matter. But once they did, I was praised for it.

Okay, so how do you actually make a fruit fluff salad? It’s super easy! The first step is to make the Jell-O according to the package instructions and cool it in the fridge until it’s set. Since I was making this for a big party, I doubled the amount of Jell-O and left all the other ingredient amounts the same and it worked out perfectly, I almost like it better with more Jell-O so it’s not too too thick and creamy. Next, combine the pudding mix with the pineapple and all the juices from the can. Then add in the fresh fruit and marshmallows. Finally, fold in the whipped topping and then the Jell-O and you have made an awesome fruit fluff salad that you and all your friends and family are sure to enjoy! Cheers to the Midwest and their awesome, quirky food… Yum Yum!