Preparing Easter Dessert

The plan for Easter is to drive to Sanford and have dinner with the Florida relatives. Our task is to bring some kind of dessert. I've been dreaming of "Dream Pies" lately, so that's what I plan to take.

Looking in the cupboards, we found an unopened box of Dream Whip. I can't recall buying Dream Whip, oh, within the past 10 years or so. Actually, it's probably been with us since our Marysville days. It didn't have an expiration date on it, so we'll use it - I'm sure it will be just fine.

Susan went to the store to buy some chocolate and lemon pudding mix for our two pies. We already had two pie shells in the freezer for our unsatisfied desire for homemade strawberry pie.

When Susan returned from the store, we all gathered in the kitchen around the mixing bowl. Andrew was in charge of adding ingredients and pushing and turning buttons and knobs on the mixer.

I first started wondering about the quality of the Dream Whip when, after six minutes of mixing, there was no sign of peaks. I read the instructions again and found that the mixer was set too low, so I had Andrew crank it up to full speed and mix for another three minutes. This produced better results, but still not what I would call peaks. Oh well, too bad, moving on. Andrew added the chocolate pudding mix and mixed for another five minutes. Meanwhile, Susan put the frozen pie shells in the oven to get them baked and ready to accept the pie filling.

After mixing and pouring into the pie shells, Andrew was named the official mixer blade licker. He enjoyed his previous jobs, but he took to this new job with extra zeal.

After the chocolate pie was complete, we repeated the process for the lemon pie. While adding the contents of the Dream Whip packages to the mixing bowl, I was concerned by the difference in texture and color from one package to the next. Oh well, too bad, moving on.

Both pies looked great and it was hard not to sample them on the spot. Luckily, our pie shells were smaller than required, so we had a little extra filling left over. Yum.