Who counts Strawberry Pretzel Dessert as one of their top ten desserts of all time?! That stuff is seriously so good! The problem for those of us that are gluten-free and eat a (relatively) clean diet is that this dessert is traditionally made with wheat pretzels and (gasp!) Cool Whip. Now, I don’t know about you but Cool Whip doesn’t cross the threshold of my house anymore. (Here’s why.) While it used to be a staple ingredient, I’ve seen the conventional-seed-oil-free light and have many different ways to avoid nasty ingredients like that now.
I did want to recreate the amazing sweet and salty flavors that you get in a nice big piece of that dessert though. I tried a few different ways to recreate this but they didn’t work out so well. Turns out that cream cheese, in large quantities doesn’t freeze very well. It tends to stick to the popsicle molds … even though it tastes amazing!
So, after eating those cream cheesy fails by dipping them in extra pretzel toffee, I figured, why not just dip each bit in pretzel crumbs? I mean, it worked for Fun Dip Candy. For me, it’s far more important to get some sweet and salty pretzels with each strawberry bite than to figure out how to put the pretzels IN the popsicle.
The next thing we did was decide to puree the mixture and incorporate the strawberry flavor in the whole pop and instead of having small pieces of frozen strawberries in it. Personally, frozen strawberries aren’t my thing, especially when they’re in something else that’s frozen. They’re cold and hard and you have to melt them in your mouth before you chew them. ewww.
PC: Fox Run
If you’re looking for a great popsicle mold, here’s the one I used. I had a couple before this one and this is by far my favorite!
So, the simple fact is these are a creamy strawberry cheesecake popsicle WITH an amazing topping of toffee-d gluten-free pretzels. The combination of flavors and textures are amazing! They taste just like the Strawberry Pretzel Dessert!
- For the Pretzel Toffee:
- 1 ½ cups small, gluten-free pretzels (before crushing into small bits)
- 2 Tbls. sugar
- 6 Tbls. melted butter
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- For the Popsicles:
- 2 cups fresh or frozen strawberries (must be thawed)
- 1 cup whole milk, preferably raw
- 2 oz. cream cheese, full fat
- ¾ cup sugar
- ½ tsp vanilla
- For the Pretzel Toffee:
- Crush the pretzels into very small pieces.
- Combine with sugar and melted butter.
- Bake at 350˚ for 10 minutes. Remove early if it’s getting too browned.
- Cool completely.
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- For the Popsicles:
- In a blender, combine all the ingredients and blend well.
- Pour into popsicle molds.
- Freeze overnight.
- Release by immersing briefly into hot water half way up the molds.
- Serve with a small dish of pretzel toffee, broken into small pieces. Dipping each bite is the best!