Whip Up a Light Dessert: Orange Fluff

Orange fluff

Inspiration

The Country Cook Orange Fluff

This recipe must have come up on one of the blogs I read, it's certainly nothing I would have gone looking for on my own.  My mom made a similar version of this over the summer and while at first I thought it was kinda icky, I ended up eating some and enjoying it.  This is actually a Weight Watchers recipe, so it's light. 

Ingredients

• 16oz container cottage cheese
• 3oz box orange Jello
• Container of light whipped topping
• 22 oz drained canned mandarin oranges
• 1/3 bag mini marshmallows (had these leftover from making a batch of marshmallow treats for daycare)

Ingredients lineup.

Mix the cottage cheese and Jello together until they're well combined.  Then add the whipped topping and mandarin oranges.  Mix well again.  Then add the marshmallows.  Like the original post indicates, you'll want to mix this up at least a few hours before you want to eat it so it has time to come together. 

It makes a lot!  That is my 2-quart batter bowl in the photos and it's quite full.

I used more mandarin oranges than called for in the original recipe because that's the size cans I had.  I also eyeballed the amount of cottage cheese, I figured it didn't need to be an exact amount.

Big bowl full of fluff

It seems weird there's cottage cheese in this dessert recipe, but it's good because otherwise it would probably be too sweet.  I'm trying to come up with something else you could put in there, but I can't really come up with anything that would be appropriate, maybe light sour cream? 

Verdict

Husband Jeff and I liked this a lot.  Somehow even a small amount is really filling, I was so full after dinner last night.  Sonny D thought it was fine and ate half of his bowl, but for some reason he was really set on having Cutie clementines for dessert.

I would actually use even more fruit in the future, maybe even twice the amount I used because it seemed like a lot of sweetness and not much fruit.

Variations

You can switch the fruit and the Jello to make different flavor variations.

You can make it with crushed pineapple, which would be good too. And you could switch the Jello to island pineapple or pina colada and add unsweetened flake coconut for a tropical vibe.  Or if you only have some of the mandarin oranges and pineapple, mix the two of those.  And in the summer you could make a strawberry version using strawberry Jello and fresh strawberries. And fresh peaches would be nice too, and apparently there's even peach Jello. 

I wonder if you could switch out the box of Jello for a box of instant pudding?  Because then you could make it chocolate with fresh strawberries or cheesecake with fresh strawberries.  Maybe it wouldn't be light anymore unless you used sugar-free.

If you don't want to make this for yourself because you're scared you might not like it, keep it in mind for a potluck or other situation where you're asked to bring a treat or dish to share.  That way you can try it, but you wouldn't have to eat the whole thing or toss it because you didn't like it.  You might be surprised.