Heavenly Banana and Strawberry Dessert Recipe

Heavenly Banana and Strawberry Dessert Recipe bettyskitchen Hi I’m Betty. Welcome to Betty’s Kitchen. We’re going to be making Betty’s banana and strawberry heavenly dessert so let’s get started. We’re going to have it pressed on the bottom and that crust is going to be made with three ingredients. We’ll have our flour. These are just self rising flour and I have 2 cups measured out. We’re going to be using some pecans and I have 1 cup of they say Fancy Pecan Pieces, they don’t have to be fancy just pecans. I’ll be using that and then I need 2 sticks of margarine melted. That’s on the stove over here I have already got it melted so I’m going to bring it over and it’s a little bit warm still some I place it on this pan and then just combine those 3 things. Here goes the flour 2 cups and we have the 1 cup of chopped pecans and remember there were 2 sticks which would be a complete cup of margarine that was melted so you just stir this around and it will come into a dough and it’s going to be like a big cookie on the bottom there’s no sweetness to it but we’ll be adding sweetness on the top layers so what I’m going to do at this point is put this out and I want to kind of put it in different places. If you put it in the middle then it makes it a little hard to spread it to the corners so I’m going to give myself a chance to do it without too much trouble by placing these strategically. So this looks fairly even. What I need to do now, let me touch that up a little bit but I’ll be having to wash my hands before I put this in the oven. I have oven which is preheated to 400 degrees so this is going to bake from 15 minutes and then I’ll be back to continue the recipe. Hi I’m back with our baked cookie that is going to be the base of our banana and strawberry heavenly dessert. You can see that it baked up nicely. There aren’t any burn spots, a little brown right there. You don’t want to let it get too brown so you keep watching it. It did take 15 minutes and this is a 13x9x2 pyrex dish. You can see the bottom should be nice and toasty colored but not the brown, not black. If you have that then you have to start it around your press. Now let’s make our filling. It starts out with one 8 ounce package of cream cheese. I chose to use fat free. I’m trying to cut down on some calories here because there are lots of things that are going to be added and if I add them all at full fat and full sugar then it’s going to be full calories so I think I can maintain before— so I know I can maintain the taste and cut down on those calories that you would pick up if you ordered this at a restaurant. So start with room temperature cream cheese and just mash that and that does very easily, add in 2 cups of confectioner’s sugar, powdered sugar if you want to call it that, 2 cups goes in there. So we’ll just be blending that around. I guess the fork is probably the best way to do that and it’s kind of stiff actually but that’s no problem and actually it helps you out when this begins to set up because you want it to have a nice firm slices when you bring them out in squares. I’ll just need to get all of the sugar incorporated into the cream cheese and you see it’s coming out to be kind of nice look. I got a few lumps there but those will dissolve so I’m not going to worry too much about perfection around here. I just want you to show the method. Get that mixed and then the next thing I’m going to put in is one 8 ounce container of whipped topping and I have chosen fat free just to save on the fat and calories so I’m going to empty this in here and you notice it’s light and fluffy so that means I want to fold it in and instead of just whipping it and stirring and beating it like I was the cream cheese. I’m getting a few things in the way here so let me just move those off to the side and I can move over to my work space and I don’t think we need the fork now so let’s jut kind of fold this together. You want it all blended so it’s one color instead of seeing streaks of cream color and streaks of white color meaning that the 2 aren’t together yet. Alright that was good. The next ingredient here will be bananas and I’ve already prepared these. I did put a little lemon juice on them to keep them from turning brown. They’ve been sitting here just to couple of minutes and they’re beginning to get that brown color so I want to get them in there fast so as a tip for the future. Cut these at this point. I would have done that but I am— but I did them ahead and you can see it’s just a regular slice I used 3 bananas so you’re going to pick up some bananas like that 3 of them will do if you want to make it four that will be fine. And then that in and again be gentle with it because you don’t want to destroy any puffiness that came with that whipped cream of whipped topping actually it’s like a cool whip if you want to get that particular brand and if you want to use the full fat kind that’s fine. It doesn’t matter just to know what your goal is. Now this is ready to go on top of the crust so I’m going to just pour this down, down the middle or about the edges in a moment but this should give good coverage. It is a nice thick crust and it also has a nice big filling that’s why we have a nice big 13x9x2 pyrex dish waiting for it. Let’s spread this out and it will easily go to those corners and remember cream cheese is solid when you have it refrigerated and this will be a refrigerated dessert so that means that when we put this back in the refrigerator all of this will jell up and be of the consistency we need for cutting it in to nice squares. Alright we have one more topping and over here I’ll show you. I don’t think I remember to get my strawberries out but the last topping has strawberries this is ¼ of strawberries that I have washed and halved so they go in this mixing bowl and then I have a container and this is sugar free. You don’t have to get the sugar free kind but its 12-3/4 ounces of strawberry glaze. We’re going to blend this up and it should be just the right amount to cover those strawberries. Now let’s place this on the top and try to make a nice design. This will take me a minute. I spread the glazed strawberries on the top and this is a finished dessert. It doesn’t really show up all the layers on the side but it is beautiful when it is cut. So I’m going to put this in the refrigerator. It should chill at least 4 hours and even over a night if you can before you serve it and I’ll try to come back and let you see what a piece looks like. So this is my finished dessert and you can see that I have chilled it to the point where I could get remove a piece. It probably could have been chilled longer. It should take 4 hours to maybe even overnight to set up properly but it makes a beautiful square when you bring it out and it has all of that nice glaze with the strawberries on top and when you cut into it you’re going to get probably some strawberries maybe some bananas and that nice crust and that’s just a gorgeous look and a gorgeous taste.