Don’t want to turn on your oven and bake?
These salty-and sweet bars are your saving grace.
The bars combine sweet with tart, smooth with crumbly, salty with sweet.
And you can knock them out in 15 minutes flat.
The best part of these freezer bars, in addition to being pink, is the use of one of my favorite ingredients, COOL WHIP Whipped Topping.
Copious amount of COOL WHIP in the freezer for a rainy day was totally normal in my household growing up.
This recipe is a play on something my mom used to make called Lemon Lush and when I saw this recipe on the Kraft site for No-Bake Raspberry-Lemon Bars, it got my wheels turning.
In addition to my love for the fluffy stuff, I love a good crumble topping. Actually, I am one of those people who picks off the crumble topping pieces from blueberry muffins or peach cobbler.
They are concentrated little balls of butter and sugar so of course that’s what I go for.
Except this crumb topping is not made from butter and sugar and flour.
It’s made from butter and sugar and Ritz crackers.
I have spring fever, badly. Maybe if I keep making frozen desserts spring and summer will arrive faster.
This is the type of refreshing dessert you want after a hard day at the beach.
In between that beloved crumble topping and the buttery, slightly salty Ritz cracker crust is the tangy-yet-sweet COOL WHIP middle that’s fluffy without being airy.
Gather the goods.
Place the crackers and powdered sugar into the cracker pulverizing container.
If you don’t have one of these or don’t have a food processor, place the crackers and sugar into a large ziptop bag and roll a glass or a rolling pin over it until you have crumbs.
Or hit the power-on switch for about 5 seconds.
How do you make Ritz crackers better? You crush them and add butter and sugar.
Stir until it combines and a dough forms.
Press slightly less than three-quarters of the dough into the prepared pan, reserving the remainder for the crumble topping.
Crack the seal on the thawed container of COOL WHIP.
How do you make a can of pink lemonade juice concentrate become amazing?
Add a can of sweetened condensed milk and a container of COOL WHIP. That’ll do the trick.
Pour the pink mixture over the crust, add the crumb topping, and freeze.
Allow this to set up for at least four hours. While waiting, remember that patience is a virtue.
The middle pink layer never quite freezes solid so you don’t have to struggle to slice it, yet it has a surprisingly long room temperature “shelf life” before it begins to melt.
Must be one of those magical properties of COOL WHIP.
I always go for that bite of softserve that is just slightly melty. This dessert tastes even creamier when it just begins to melt and is going to be my summertime go-to dessert.
Or my put-a-smile-on-my-family’s-face-in-a-hurry-dessert.
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Pink Lemonade Freezer Bars
Ingredients
- 120 crackers Ritz, about 3 cups crumbs
- ½ cup confectioners’ sugar, heaping
- ¾ cup unsalted butter, melted (1 1/2 sticks)
- one 12-ounce can pink lemonade concentrate, thawed to liquid
- one 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
- one 8-ounce container Cool Whip Whipped Topping, thawed to room temperature
- red or pink food coloring, optional (I used about one dozen drops of red food coloring)
Instructions
- Line a 9-by-9-inch pan with foil and spray with cooking spray.
- Place the crackers and powdered sugar in a food processor or blender to pulverize. Alternatively, cracker-crushing can be done by hand by placing crackers into a large ziptop food storage bag, zipping it shut, and rolling over the bag with a large glass, coffee can, or rolling pin).
- Place the cracker crumbs into a bowl, add the melted butter, and stir to combine.
- Press a little less than 3/4 of the mixture into the bottom of the prepared pan, set the pan aside, and reserve the remaining 1/4 of the cracker crumbs.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine pink lemonade concentrate, sweetened condensed milk, and stir until combined.
- Add the Cool Whip and stir until smooth.
- If desired, add food coloring drops to desired shade and stir until color is uniform.
- Pour the mixture over the crust, noting that you may have an extra half cup or so of the mixture depending on the height of your pan; do not overfill the pan. Use the extra mixture for a mini-tartlette, as a dip for fruit, or just eat it.
- Top with the reserved cracker crumbs by sprinkling evenly over the top.
- Place pan into the freezer to set up for at least 4 hours before slicing and serving. Store extra dessert in the freezer with a sheet of foil over the top. It will keep for up to 3 months.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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I love anything with cool whip. These look delish!
Very interesting and creative! by the way, I made your peppermint/creme de menthe bars tonight (or a variation thereof). They were the first things from your blog I made, and I think they are my favorite recipe of yours. Perfection. Minty, creamy, vanilla-y perfection – and so quick, too!
Thanks for LMK they are a fave of yours. Funny, a very good friend of mine who I got to know in the blog world made them as one of the very first things from my blog and she wrote to me about it and the rest is history…she’s one of my besties and we’ve “known” each other for 3 years and it all started with those bars!
I am telling you, those mint bars of yours are genius, pure genius. I have never made them 100% according to the recipe (I seem to be incapable of following a recipe exactly…), but they are delicious how I make them and I am sure they are even more delicious in their original form. (The changes I made are very minor: I use all ground oats for the crust, instead of half oats and half nuts, and I use peppermint extract because I’m not sure if creme de menthe is vegan.) GENIUS.
ok Averie… maybe you should change the name of these bars to “the wham bam, thank you ma’am magical bars” – 15 minutes? no bake? salty/sweet? fruity, creamy? my head is spinning! amazing recipe.
Aww, thanks. It’s totally one of those really easy AND good desserts and it’s unexpected; the sweet/salty/tangy all working together.
These look so refreshing! Awesome idea :)
These look beautiful Averie!!! I am going to make these for my sister for her birthday! She loves anything with Cool Whip!
Aww, well aren’t you sweet. LMK how she likes them!
I made something kind of similar to this for my graduation party last summer, but it was strawberry flavored. I am sure you could easily make this one strawberry or that one pink lemonade. Either way, you can’t go wrong with a buttery cookie crust and a creamy middle. I have to say though, that these pink lemonade bars with condensed milk sound better than the ones I made with cream cheese. Sweetened condense milk >>>> cream cheese!
https://makingfoodandotherstuff.wordpress.com/2011/06/23/about-those-cheesecake-bars/
Omg I remember that post now! I have to say, the lightness of the COOL WHIP with the sweetened cond milk, are just…perfect together. Yes to: Sweetened condense milk >>>> cream cheese!
yes ma’am! a hard day at the beach welcomes this kind of treat!
i am printing this one and saving it for the 90 degree days ahead
I think you will love them! Please LMK if you make them! I saw Erica make your choc cookies today. Now I want to make them even more!
im saving this recipe! thank you!
also, i’m sure i missed this post somewhere but i thought you were vegan? when did that change?
About 2 years ago :)
I have this post you may want to read since you asked. Thanks for following along over the years!
https://www.loveveggiesandyoga.com/popular
Ahh love all these summery recipes! :) My mom would LOVE this one! Sending her the link!
LMK if she makes them. It’s SUCH a MN/WI type recipe :)
How fun and girly!! I could eat an entire tub of cool whip ;)
Me too :)
I love Cool Whip! My husband thinks I am crazy, glad I am not alone :) These bars sound amazing, perfect for a summer afternoon!
Tell him HE’S the crazy one :)
I love recipes like this. I bet the Ritz crackers make it too. PS – Skylar is adorable!
Between this and the compost cookies, I’ve been on the salty/sweet desserts lately!
Really cool Cool Whip dessert! Love the photos on the beach, which reminds me that I need vacations, away from everything, just my family and the beach, and blue water…:) and this dessert, strait from the freezer.
In going thru my photo stash, I was feeling major beach withdrawals..ha!
Yum those look so good, so trying them.
Tab
Please LMK how you like them!
Very cool – that would be super cute for a girlie girl’s birthday party too.
This is awesome. Love the pink! It reminds me of the summer days poolside as a kid and my sister and I would like away at our “frozen pink lemonades”
Reminds me of time with my sister and growing up, too. And my grandma…she loved recipes like this.