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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Happy National Lemonade Day, Averie!! Stopping by to let you know that I’ve featured your Pink Lemonade Freezer Bars in a celebratory round up today: https://www.chattingoverchocolate.com/2014/08/national-lemonade-day-sips-sweets.html
Thanks for sharing your sweet recipe! Have a lovely day! :)
Thanks so much!
I made these last night. They were so easy! But after 4 hours they still were not set enough to cut, I had to scoop and plop. And the crust is so hard to get out of the pan without getting foil everywhere. I think they would work fine without the foil since the crust kind of pops out when it’s frozen. Also my pink lemonade concentrate was suuuuper tart so I’ll have to adjust for our taste next time. There WILL be a next time! I sound like I’m complaining but I’m not, promise! It’s a great recipe, just needs some tweaking to work for me. Also…your pictures are what made me want to try this…holy Ritz crumbs!
Thanks for trying them and I use the thicker, higher quality Reynold’s and it works great but if it’s easier for you to not use it, do what’s easiest. And sounds like your concentrate and mine were fairly different given both the setting up time as well as the tartness but with baking, there’s always a few tweaks that need to be made. Glad you like the recipe and will make it again!
This sounds like a wonder recipe, my family loves pink lemonade. I am wondering if you could add in bits of fruit like diced strawberry or kiwi? Or would be too weird?
I’m sure it would be great!
Can these be frozen longer? We are making some things for a mission trip fundraiser and they have to be frozen. How long is it good for?
They can be frozen for months if you want. So yes, making ahead is fine. Not sure when you take them out of freezer how long they will stay cool if you’re going to be outside or in warm weather but the make-ahead part is fine!
Yum! Averie, these look amazing! I’ve never seen Cool Whip over here in Australia though, does it taste like vanilla icing? Love the crunchy topping, mmmm… freezer bar goodness! Thanks for the beautiful recipe. Love the pictures too xx
Cool Whip is like whipped cream that’s sweetened and stabilized so that it doesn’t fall/collapse like real whipped cream would after a couple hours. It’s more fluffy like whipped cream than it is like frosting (icing). Crazy you can’t get it there. I can even get Cool Whip in Aruba! You could make these with real whipped cream that you sweeten, but…beware, they will collapse as the cream deflates over time, which is unavoidable with whipped cream.
Hm, I don’t think there’s anything similar to that here (in Western Australia… possibly the eastern states might stock it?). Do you think that adding half sweetened whipped cream and half cream cheese might work? It’d be a little more ‘cheesecakey’ but definitely more stable than the whipped cream alone. Darn it. Kraft needs to expand it’s Aussie product line!
Okay first of all… we need to talk about how cute your little girlie is in those giant sunglasses. Completely flipping adorable!!!
And second– thank you for sending me this recipe!!! LOVE IT. I am not likely to be hosting a sleepover anytime soon BUT! My momma has a birthday coming up and she is a lemon fanatic. These are gonna find their way to the dessert table no doubt!
Glad you saw these and that you can work them into something coming up! And that pic was taken about 18 mos ago – she seems like such a little peanut there to me :)
I made this and wrote about it here. Next time I need to try it with limeade!
ps I ate the extra filling with the leftover Ritz crackers I didn’t use for the crust. So good!
Glad you made it and enjoyed it and thanks for blogging about it!
Those Pink Lemonade Freezer Bars are not only delicious but beautiful too. Almost too pretty to eat…almost! Thanks so much for contributing to RecipeLionBlog.com with the recipe. You can check out your post among many others at https://blog.recipelion.com/tmhb-cool-whip-recipes/ for more recipes that use Cool Whip. Thanks again Averie!
I MADE THIS LAST NIGHT! Easy peasy lemon squeezy, and DELISH. :) Delish, Averie. You’re the best when it comes to sweet :) Is it bad I had some for my breakfast?!
Glad you love them and yes they are ” Easy peasy lemon squeezy” <--- my 5 year old just used that expression on my yesterday. I busted out laughing so hard coming from her little mouth :)
She did?! How freaking adorable is that?? What a sweetheart!
I was making dinner asking her if she could spell cat for me. She’s like, mom. Easy peasy lemon squeezy C-A-T as she screams it to me :)
I LITERALLY just laughed out loud, oooh my GOODNESS!!! SO funny and cute!!!!!!!! You must have just been hysterical when she said that! Oh, from the mouths of babes :)