Watergate Salad

Watergate Salad is a crazy easy dessert invented by Kraft in the 1970s to promote their new pistachio pudding (go marketing). They called it “Pistachio Pineapple Delight” but somewhere along the lines it took on the name “Watergate” instead (it was the ’70s after all…)

Anyway, my mom always whips up this cute, easy little dessert around Christmas time because it’s green. And the recipe is typically right there on the back of the Jello pistachio pudding box.

[Prep: 5-10min / Chill: 1hr]

– 1 (3.4oz) package pistachio pudding mix
– 20oz can crushed pineapple with juice
– 1 cup mini marshmallows
– 1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
– 1 1/2 cups thawed whipped topping

1. Combine pudding mix, pineapple, marshmallows and nuts.
2. Fold in whipped topping until well-mixed.
3. Chill in the refrigerator for about an hour.
4. Ready to eat!

Adapted from the Kraft Jello Pistachio Pudding box

For the life of me, I can hardly find variations of this recipe anywhere. I guess that’s to be expected with a recipe invented strictly to make use of pistachio instant pudding mix. But here’s a few things you can do:

• Make it creamier by adding a bit of cottage cheese, cream cheese or sour cream
• Substitute or add a different fruit & juice such as mandarin oranges, maraschino cherries or fruit cocktail
• Add shredded coconut (ick… but who likes shredded coconut?)
• Add sprinkles or colored sugar on top- mostly for decoration
• Leave out the fruit chunks and use only fruit juice if you’re like me and you don’t like pieces of FRUIT getting in the way of your dessert
• Use a different flavored pudding or jello mix such as lemon, lime, cherry, etc
• This is a recipe that uses the mix simply as a flavoring for the juice & whipped cream- so if you don’t have access to jello or pudding mixes, you can try other flavoring powders like lemonade or sports-drink powders. Or even try flavoring drops or essences (with some sugar), since that’s most of what the mix is anyway.
• You could also use prepared pudding or vla directly, but know that your consistency will likely be thinner than the dry-mix version. But mind your flavors. Chocolate and cherry or chocolate and orange could be nice. Chocolate and pineapple, not so much.