White Chocolate Cranberry Fluff Salad

With this White Chocolate Cranberry Fluff Salad, enjoy your Thanksgiving or Christmas cranberry sauce in a creamy, comforting classic fluff salad form. Actually, come to think of it, this is cranberry sauce you'll want to enjoy all year long!

As much as our family loves classic fluff salads, it's only fitting that I'm sharing one featuring one of the holidays' classic flavors - cranberry. That's right, along with Green Fluff {Pistachio Watergate Salad}, Cherry Fluff Salad with Cherry Pie Filling, Chocolate Fluff, and more, we've added Cranberry Fluff Salad to our fluff favorites line-up.

But I've got to say ... it's a darn good thing we love this stuff, because it took me quite a few iterations to get this Cranberry Fluff Salad right!

With this White Chocolate Cranberry Fluff Salad, enjoy your Thanksgiving or Christmas cranberry sauce in a creamy, comforting classic fluff salad form.

Not that it was ever wrong ... just in variation after variation of my "inspiration recipe," I kept having this nagging inkling that I could figure out a way to make it even better.

See, in variation after variation, two things kept troubling me texture and the degree of cranberry flavor. Both of which just weren't quite to my liking in this fluff's original recipe.

I wanted a Cranberry Fluff Salad that had a creamy, fluffy texture with enough "body" to hold its own shape when spooned out onto a plate. And, I wanted it to taste of cranberry.

The original recipe I used as inspiration called for cream cheese as the base of the Cranberry Fluff Salad.

The first time I made it, I used 1/3-less fat cream cheese as that's a regular substitution I do in my kitchen. While the texture was indeed creamy, it was too loose to hold its shape. When spooned onto a plate, it crept all over, running into and mingling with other foods on the plate. Which just so happens to be one of my food pet peeves.

I tried again with the originally-called for regular cream cheese. Again, too loose a texture for me.

Would instant pudding mix be the answer to creamy, fluffy texture?

As is traditional in many fluff salads, I added miniature marshmallows to absorb some of the moisture and see if that would give the body and heft I was looking for.

Better. But still not fluffy and "hefty" enough.

So I turned to the other fairly typical fluff salad ingredient ... instant pudding mix. Would instant pudding mix be the answer to creamy, fluffy texture?

Turns out, yes, it was.

With pudding mix added in, the Cranberry Fluff Salad was fluffy, creamy, and held its own in terms of shape when spooned onto a plate.

I then decided to see if both cream cheese and pudding mix were necessary in the Cranberry Fluff Salad to achieve the coveted texture ... or, if pudding alone could work. Because quite honestly, the cream cheese was also serving to significantly mask the cranberry flavor.

The answer?

A resounding no!

No, there was no need to include both cream cheese and pudding mix. Pudding mix on its own did just fine in giving the fluff the fluffy texture it needed. {And, as you can use sugar-free pudding just fine, if you're looking to take out at least a teeny bit of calories and/or fat, this is an added bonus.}

With the removal of the cream cheese, the cranberry flavor had become stronger. But I wondered if using a pudding flavor other than vanilla would let the cranberry flavor come through even more.

So now it was time to move on to cranberry flavor. With the removal of the cream cheese, the cranberry flavor of the Cranberry Fluff Salad had become stronger. But I wondered if using a pudding flavor other than vanilla ... which is what I had used in the first texture test runs ... would let the cranberry flavor come through even more.

The answer?

White chocolate pudding!

Yes, using white chocolate flavored instant pudding allows the cranberry taste to shine through more distinctly than vanilla pudding did. While still not overpowering in cranberry flavor, this fluff's flavor is distinctly cranberry.

So instead of Cranberry Fluff Salad, I ended up creating a very tasty White Chocolate Cranberry Fluff Salad. And it's a flavor our family adores.

We now have a new favorite fluff that will allow us to enjoy our Thanksgiving and Christmas cranberry sauce in a creamy, comforting classic fluff salad form.

Actually, come to think of it, ... I think we'll be enjoying this White Chocolate Cranberry Fluff Salad all year long!

Thank you for stopping by . We'd love to have you back soon!

cranberry fluff, cranberry fluff salad, cranberry sauce, Thanksgiving sides

Salads

Yield: 10-12 servings

Author: Tracey |