The Diet Diaries: #4 (Strawberry Pretzel Pie)

If you haven't noticed already, my main diet obsession has become finding ways to eat dessert without feeling guilty.  I don't eat it all that often, but when I meet up with Ryan and Laura for Survivor night we have a cooking system.  Laura makes a fabulous dinner and I make a fabulous dessert.  It's a good system, made even better by the fact that we are both happy to taste each other's experimental creations.  Lately, my experiments have all been in the realm of healthy sweets.  For the most part these creations have turned out well, with the exception of a soy-cappuccino "custard" that came out more like coffee jello.  They were thankfully forgiving and we all had a good laugh.

To make up for the custard disaster, this past Thursday I spent all day whipping up a culinary masterpiece.  In all fairness, the recipe doesn't actually take all day, but my close friends know all too well that I am the slowest chef on the planet.  This is mostly due to my inability to multi-task in the kitchen, not because I lack the ability to multi-task, but more because I am a hopeless clutz who is terrified of injuring herself (again).  But that's a story for another day.

I found a recipe on Recipezaar (my favorite cooking community) for something called "Makeover Strawberry Pretzel Dessert."  After reading over the ingredients I knew not only that it would be delicious, but also that I could probably trim it down even more.  I swapped out all the sugar for Splenda, including the frozen sweetened strawberries.  I just bought unsweetened ones and tossed them with a little extra Splenda after they thawed.  The end result, I'm pleased to say, looked exactly like the photo in the recipe and was phenomenal.

Full credit to Audrey M for the recipe, but here is my slightly altered version:

Ingredients

For crust:

2 cups crushed pretzels (I used Utz's extra thin)
3/4 cup light margarine, melted
3 Tb Splenda

For filling:

8 oz fat-free cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup Splenda
8 oz Cool Whip Free, thawed

For topping:

20 oz unsweeted canned crushed pineapple
2 small boxes sugar-free strawberry Jello
20 oz unsweetened frozen sliced strawberries, thawed
pinch of Splenda

You can follow Audrey's recipe instructions exactly, just swapping in my ingredient list, and it comes out slimmer and just as tasty!  Full instructions can be found here: http://bit.ly/a9c2ft