Strawberry Cream Puffs!

I am convinced that strawberries are a delight no matter your status in life. Who can't agree on a perfect strawberry? Who can resist their red goodness, plucked straight off the plant? Their beauty adorns (and has for generations!) colorful kitchen linens and curtains, pillows and pictures, canisters and more. And why not? They're perfection.

a huge metal mixing bowl I picked up at a garage sale...

In addition to the the bliss of eating as much as you want of the plentiful strawberry harvest in any number of ways: just alone, crushed with a bit of sugar, over ice cream, over angel food cake...you can really impress with many desserts made with these tart berries, in particular you will please almost everyone with this dessert: CREAM PUFFS IN A PAN topped with your garden-fresh sliced strawberries.

Garnished with strawberries, and drizzled with chocolate, on a base of the light cream puff pastry topped with a layer of vanilla pudding: it's heaven on earth. When you take a big pan of these to any potluck or picnic, you will not be embarrassed to be seen taking any of your dessert home: it will for sure be enjoyed and exclaimed over. Be aware that if you make these all alone at your house, the temptation will be way, way too much for you. You'll need help to resist the lure.

This dessert is best served fresh. KEEP COLD if not served immediately.

CREAM PUFFS IN A PAN
1 cup water
1 cup oleo
1 cup flour
4 eggs

3 c. milk
2 small boxes INSTANT vanilla pudding mix
8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
Cool Whip
Chocolate syrup to drizzle

Boil water and oleo. Add flour after removing from heat. Beat in eggs, one at a time, with a fork and spread on a well-greased jelly roll pan or sheet cake pan. Bake at 400 degrees for 25-30 minutes. Let cool. Crust WILL BE UNEVEN.

While crust bakes, prepare filling. Beat together pudding, milk, and cream cheese. (Chill until crust is cool.) Spread over crust. Top that pudding layer with a layer of cool whip. Cut dessert into squares. Garnish every square with a strawberry half. Drizzle the whole dessert artfully with Hershey's chocolate syrup.

Grab a full cold glass of milk, or make a pot of coffee or tea and ENJOY!

The crust is bright yellow going into the oven...

It puffs up as it bakes and eventually looks like a freaky lunar surface...

The pudding mixture is DELISH and is a soft yellow...so creamy and dreamy...you'll have no trouble at all finding someone to lick the beaters!

It makes a WONDERFUL big jellyroll panful! THIS PAN IS MISSING THE DRIZZLED CHOCOLATE! I was out... a disaster! And you can be sure that's on my grocery list this week....gotta have the drizzled chocolate! It makes it so tasty with the strawberries, and of course, much prettier!

Invite in your friends and neighbors and even your great aunt Bessie, put the coffee pot on and GO TO TOWN on those babies!

He picked over a gallon today off our little strawberry patch. So those that didn't get used to garnish the dessert, or eaten in a bowl as a bedtime snack, were stemmed, washed, drained, and crushed or partially crushed, then a scant amount of sugar stirred in, then packaged in quart bags, labeled, then frozen laying flat in a 9 x 13 cake pan, so they can be stored in the freezer standing up in one of the freezer baskets to use this coming winter. To me, freezing them this way makes them the most useful to us. They can be made into pie, eaten on top of shortcake or biscuits, or over ice cream, or taken out to make a batch or two of jam at Christmastime for gift-giving. Nothing tastes better on a bitterly cold February evening than a bowl of "fresh" strawberries from our garden!