How to Make Pink Fluff Cheesecake

By Jane Marie November 23, 2011

Pink Fluff is an old family recipe that my parents and siblings and cousins and I make for the holidays. It tastes just like those strawberry shortcake ice pop things (a.k.a. amazing), only it’s sort of a cheesecake in that it contains cream cheese, and you made it. Plus, it’s pink, Imeancomeon-uh! I can’t remember if it was a Great Great Gramma Nellie’s or Vivian’s or maybe it’s Aunt Sharon’s recipe if I’m even guessing on the right side of the family, but who cares?

For the crust:

2 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/2 cup melted unsalted butter
1/4 cup sugar

For the filling:

1 large box of strawberry Jell-O
1 cup hot water
1 8oz brick of cream cheese at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 can evaporated milk

That’s everything!

Preaheat your oven to 350. Mix the ingredients for the crust in a bowl.

Stir until it’s all crumby. Reserving 1/2 cup for sprinkling on top later, press the crust into place in the bottom of a 13×9 or similarly sized pan — mine is a super-deep lasagna pan that measures 8×12. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes or until it’s kind of golden around the edges. Set aside and let cool completely before filling.

Now, for the filling: this is multi-tasking at its finest. It’s all in the timing, so read through to the end before you start.

First, mix your large box of Jell-O with 1 cup of almost boiling water. Stir until the crystals are dissolved — don’t add the second cup of water that the box calls for! Take your cream cheese from the fridge if you haven’t already and put it in a mixing bowl with 1 cup of sugar. Open the can of evaporated milk and put it in the freezer.

Now you wait. Every 5 minutes or so go stir your Jell-O. You’re waiting for it to become like a very thick syrup; somewhere between corn syrup and ectoplasm. When you feel like you’re getting close — it can take 30 minutes or more, just keep checking it — beat the cream cheese and sugar on high for about 5 minutes. I use a stand mixer, but a handheld works just fine. Now, go get a very very large bowl; the largest one you own. Mine is a wooden salad bowl. When the cream cheese and sugar is fluffy enough to form soft peaks, pour it into the huge bowl.

Soft cream cheese and sugar soft peaks.

Now clean your mixing bowl and throw the gooey Jell-O in there and do the same thing.Whip it until it is opaque and a little fluffier.

Add it to the huge bowl on top of your cream cheese mixture.

Fold these two ingredients together — video of that technique below. Clean your mixing bowl and whip the evaporated milk from the freezer until it too forms soft peaks. This takes 3–4 minutes.

Fold that into the other mixed ingredients in the giant bowl. My mom says to think of folding as pulling a spatula through the batter from the clock position 12 to 6 and then from 3 to 9. 12 to 6, 3 to 9. Your goal is to not pop any of the air bubbles you’ve worked so hard to create. DO NOT STIR and go slow. Like so:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV9kaGAyWvI

When it’s completely mixed, it should resemble chicken slurry, sorry.