Turn Cool Whip Into Delicious Ice Cream With This One Sweet Addition

Have you ever eaten frozen Cool Whip straight out of the tub? Treat-sneaking kids use a stealth tactic of pulling it out of the tub in one piece and eating from the bottom, but once you're a grown-up, you can have it anyway you like (as long as you don't have kids of your own to follow your bad example). If you can put down the spoon long enough to let the Cool Whip thaw, though, you can turn it into an even better treat with the addition of pudding mix.

To make Cool Whip "ice cream," stir a box of pudding mix into a tub of non-dairy topping. Add some milk, as well, because this will give the dessert a softer texture with none of that signature Cool Whip stiffness. Any flavor of pudding will work, so your creation could be chocolate, vanilla, pistachio, banana, or even pumpkin spice if it's in season or you've stashed a few packets in the pantry. Another option would be to use Jell-O gelatin instead of pudding mix for a fruit-flavored frozen dessert.

Cool Whip is an ingredient that typically lives in the freezer, but can thaw pretty quickly to a spoonable consistency — in fact, even frozen, it doesn't require much hacking in order to be edible. This makes it ideal as the base for a number of frozen desserts in addition to the easy ice cream-ish concoction described above. For an effortless icebox cake, simply spread flat cookies with creamy topping, stack them into a log, and freeze them. You could also make a more elaborate variant, such as our Oreo torte, which consists of a Cool Whip-cream cheese filling on a crushed cookie crust.

Cool Whip also features in several copycat frozen treats. These include DIY versions of McDonald's McFlurry and Dairy Queen's Blizzard, both of which involve mixing this ingredient with ice cream. A homemade (and dairy-free) Dole Whip can be put together by blending Cool Whip with pineapple juice and frozen pineapple, and you can even make a knockoff Three Musketeers bar if you combine Cool Whip with melted chocolate and freeze the mixture until solid. Sure, the candy bars need to stay frozen to be eaten, but then, real Three Musketeers bars also taste best when they come straight out of the freezer.