A Diamond in the Ruff: Orange Fluff

Reminiscent of drawing on place mats and molding play dough into multi-colored blobs, here I am in college scooping heaps of “orange fluff” into a bowl. Mountains of sweet, lush orange cream, dotted with bubbles of tapioca and hunks of mandarin oranges makes for a light dessert or late-night study snack. The “instant” labels on these ingredients signify the simplicity of the dessert, perfect for students working with a limited time frame, all you need is patience when letting the puddings cool. But you can always counter this with sampling your ingredients! The taste of the final product will have you convinced that this pudding-like dessert should have a special place in your personal [not community] fridge.

While it may sound like a mystery dessert, I assure you that the only mystery is why you haven’t tried it earlier. It is often difficult to find instant tapioca pudding, but in that case, just buy the Minute brand of tapioca and combine with milk, sugar, egg and vanilla for your tapioca. Once you make and cool this, just add it to the mix. Don’t let one ingredient get you down.

Issues also arise when questioning the taste of orange Jello in their dessert, but it is not an invasive taste. On the contrary, there is so much pudding and fluff that it is more like the creamsicles you chased the ice cream man down the street for. Chase no more! Now you can have the taste of creamsicle for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Well, okay that is a little much – this would be too much of a good thing I’m afraid. And this recipe does make enough for your army of hungry college friends. For the occasional dessert partaker however, this is a heavenly orange dream where the clouds are made of cool whip and the rain is tapioca falling from a bright orange Jello-colored sky.

Orange Fluff

Ingredients:

3 cups water

1 small package instant orange jello

1 small package instant French vanilla pudding

1 package instant tapioca pudding

8 oz cool whip

15 oz mandarin oranges

Instructions:

1. Boil water in medium sized saucepan. Add jello and pudding mixes, stirring constantly with a whisk or spoon for about 3 min.

2. Remove from heat. Place in pan of ice water to help it chill faster.

3. Once pudding mix has come to room temperature, fold in cool whip and mandarin oranges.

4. Chill in fridge for about 2 hours.

5. Best eaten cold and fluffy.