Well, I’m back, and it was a banally bumpy road to this first post of 2024. How so?

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Dreamin’ and Wishin’

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I run a blog newsletter over at Bay Area Kei, and we vote on monthly themes that people can optionally participate in. You know, for fun. I usually just have our bloggers throw out some options (myself included), as well as recycle some previous suggestions that didn’t make it off the ballot. But for January, this professional blog boss remembered that:

• lolita fashion bloggers in particular have this seasonal ‘Wardrobe Post’ deal
• a lot of people like to make New Year’s Resolution-type posts
• …but that last January’s theme was Resolutions

So I made an executive decision to make the theme Wishin’ and Dreamin’, in the hopes of accommodating both types of posts that our participants were likely to be writing this month anyways.

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How Did You Work Gelatin Into This

I didn’t, actually! Much later, I had the bright idea of a dessert post that wouldn’t involve me actually making, let alone photographing, a dessert. I was confident that the word ‘dream’ appeared in a sizeable number of gelatin desserts, and I was going to do a linguistic analysis of What That Meant. Twelve dessert cookbook indexes later, I had a total of two (2) desserts with the word dream, neither of which contained gelatin. (Insert joke here about ‘Did I dream up this dream-named desserts?’)

So I decided to cut my losses and pivot. I was already a good week into February at this point (yes, I did go ahead and backdate this post, but after being on hiatus for as long as I was, I have no shame in admitting my lateness). Even more concerning, my inability to finish my theme post was also starting to be the only thing standing in the way of my assembling the newsletter. 

The third recipe I eventually stumbled across was the sole entry in the 1970’s classic “The New Joys of Jell-O” to feature the word dream, and for an obvious reason – this Dream Parfait contained Dream Whip.

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The Stuff of Dreams

But wait, my imaginary reader says. What about people who are avoiding dairy? Cool Whip is often mistaken as a non-dairy topping, but there is indeed totally milk in it. Dream Whip should be safe, right?

Nope.

This is all a moot point however, because what do you mix the magical powder with? Milk. I suppose one whose main concern is in the realm of lactose intolerance could attempt to make it with a plant-based milk, or even just lactose-free cow’s milk. But I’ve found that lowering the amount of milkfat when making desserts has roughly the same degree of effect as swapping butter for margarine – your recipe will prolly turn out, and taste fine, but the end result will be noticeably degraded. 

Anyways. Most applications of Dream Whip are just what you would expect – a whipped topping you can add to a different dessert. That doesn’t help my blogger’s block. And I’ve already made the dessert featured on most boxes of Dream Whip (or its store-brand counterpart), which is more or less one of those chocolate pudding pies in a graham cracker crust. Kinda hard to make one of those and have it not be edible, although I’m sure people have found a way.

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Dream…Cake?

But lo, I was thrown a bone, as I like to say. After getting the box of white powder down from the shelf, I saw there was another recipe on there for a Dream Cake which involved…adding the dream mix to cake mix. And then just baking the cake.

I’m not a big fan of cake, especially the variety commonly sold and consumed in America. But one of my resident taste-testers is, and I was curious to see what effect, if any, adding Dream Whip had on just…regular old yellow cake mix. The box recommended several different additions depending on what flavor of cake mix you were using, but being a house of GERD sufferers, I didn’t have any orange juice on hand. I did, however, have pineapple juice, and figured it would serve the same purpose. That purpose might be “add a confounding factor to determining what the Dream Whip is doing in the finished cake” but this is a weird dessert blog, not a laboratory.

They recommended you grease and flour the pan, which meant my slightly cooled cake popped right out of the pan…still covered in residual flour. I did use cooking spray instead of butter for the grease, but I mean, who in their right mind is buttering a bundt pan.

This is after some delicate work with a damp paper towel.

I normally finish off my bundt cakes with a generous sprinkling of powdered sugar, which would certainly camouflage the flour-y finish, but this time I decided to go ahead and make a glaze as is typically depicted…and promptly felt vindicated in not doing it before. I dunno, maybe my glaze was slightly too runny for the Ideal Drips, but. I felt like I was action painting my cake, and not in a good way. If I could turn back time like entertainment legend Cher, I would have just gone with the usual powdered sugar treatment. 

Readers may be thinking, ah, that dollop of creamy white stuff in the center is unadulterated Dream Whip, yes? Well, no. It’s Cool Whip. By the time my cake cooled, I was the only one awake, which meant no power tools. And there just happened to be some Cool Whip in the fridge, along with fresh strawberries, I assume for related reasons.

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Does It Taste Of Dreams?

I almost forgot to cut myself a slice before heading out from the kitchen – I’m used to putting things in the fridge and then waiting hours for them to set, after all. My verdict? It seemed on the moist side, but when I went to pull the cake mix box for reference I was met with “Super Moist™ cake mix”. And I did add an extra egg. Meanwhile, the pineapple juice was ‘lost in the sauce’, as the kids say. It prolly did serve to add ‘brightness’ or whatever the culinary lingo is, but beyond that you would have no clue I added it. In the end, it tasted like cake, and I would have had to do a formal A/B test to really flush out any possible differences. My cake-enjoying taste-tester did think it tasted different, but I’m not convinced the Dream Whip was responsible. Still no reason to buy whipped topping mix in this, the 11th Year of Luigi.