The story of Chocolate Cream Delight

Today was a 2-fer in the kitchen with the October/November issue of Light and Tasty! Part II was the Chocolate Cream Delight on page 19. (Click for the recipe)

OK, for starters -- trying to find the ingredients. Once upon a time, I remember seeing chocolate cookie crumbs in the baking section. No more - at least the three grocery stores I went to! Ditto for trying to find plain chocolate cookies in the cookie aisle. So I planned to make my Hershey Chocolate Crumb Crust, check the recipe and I'm out of graham cracker crumbs. No problem, I'll use the chocolate graham crackers in the pantry, how brilliant am I? But T and L bought the store brand ones on one of their adventures and yikes, 1 gram of trans fat per two crackers?! No way, so I took off for the third grocery store and bought the Honey Graham Chocolate Sticks (low fat and no trans). Cuisinart'ed a cup, melted 2 tablespoons of butter and skipped adding the extra sugar. But wait, there's still more obstacles -- I couldn't find the 1.3 ounce size sugar-free cook and serve chocolate pudding the recipe called for. In fact, I only found it in the 5 ounce, 6 cup size at the second grocery store, but by that point I had already bought the regular Jello pudding 5 oz/6 cup at grocery store #1 since they didn't have the sugar-free version. And I also took a leap of kitchen faith thinking if the pan is 8" square, the 6 cup portion size should be OK. But then on that box, it called for 3 cups of milk. The recipe said 3 1/2 cups. At this point, I thought this dessert is already off the track and I'm sticking with what the box says. More oddities? Yes! The cream cheese. Recipe called for 3 ounces, I have an 8 ounce box. No problem, get out my little scale, weigh and give myself an extra dab for all this trouble so far! Layer this all in the pan, sprinkle a few extra bits of the graham crackers and let it and me chill. I declined to smear Cool Whip (er, "reduced fat whipped topping") on the top. (Suffice to say, I grew up when Cool Whip was first introduced. That stuff got glopped and plopped onto everything from pudding to pies to cakes to jello parfaits. And what was really an affront to nature and all which is called dessert, when someone tinted it with food coloring for cake "frosting"! Shudder! )

Ultimately, what a pain in the butt to shop for and make. It tasted pretty good and we all liked the chocolate cream cheese layer. My grade: C-/Make every once in awhile, maybe. Once a healing and sufficient amount of time has passed.