I have been making this for years and have even made a few variations to it. My personal favorite is made with blackberry jello and frozen blackberries but I have also made it with mandarin oranges with orange jello, pineapple with lemon or lime jello, raspberries and raspberry jello and so on. The recipe is very versatile and simple to make. Definitely try it, you will love it.

I love this recipe, but I substitute the strawberries with fresh raspberries. The dessert doesn't last long at all. DELICIOUS!

This makes an excellant Potluck dinner dish. Serves as a salad or dessert.

Try putting pineapple chunks in it instead of the strawberries, its delicious!

You can also use peach jello and mandarin oranges.

This dish is one that we force our mother to make every time we are home. Except we don't use Cool Whip, we prepare one package of Dream Whip instead. Either way, This dish never disappoints!

Looking for something good and easy to mix up? That's a dessert and a salad? Well I always pick the Pretzel Jell-O Salad, my favorite. You can have it for any occasion and it works perfect for a dessert and/or a salad. This dessert/salad is amazingly good and anyone would love it, you would have to be crazy if you did not like it.

Pretzel Jell-O salad is about the best you can get that combines both a salad and a dessert. Well to start off with this amazing yummy tasting treat; you need pretzels for your main crust on the bottom of a flat pan. I prefer salted pretzels, it adds more flavor to the dessert/salad. I normally use a glass pan then you can see the layers of the salad/dessert. Mix the pretzels with some sugar and butter to form a crust in the oven on 350°F for about 8 minutes. Once it cools off you mix your cream cheese and cool whip so it is nice and fluffy, and so all the cream cheese is all mixed in the cool whip because you do not want chunks of cream cheese. So now that you have the pretzels and the cream cheese/cool whip you need the special part that's on top. Some people like the cream cheese part the best, but I prefer the main top layer. The top layer includes Jell-O and your type of preferred fruit. The kind I use is strawberries and strawberry Jell-O, and sometimes I do use raspberries and raspberry Jell-O. I do not know but maybe some people even use peaches, or blueberries, or blackberries, or maybe just mixed fruit. It all depends on the person on what he or she likes.

The Pretzel Jell-O salad can be used on any occasion. I have used this salad/dessert on many occasions. My birthday is three days before Christmas, so normally my family cerebrates my birthday in November with my other cousins, that have birthdays in November. So on Christmas I bring this amazing treat and everyone loves it, or on my birthday I exclude the cake and use the Pretzel Jell-O salad as my cake. My family also brings this salad to Thanksgiving, Easter, celebrations, parties, Christmas, birthday parties, also just for at home to eat. The expectations are normally that the salad/desert is very good and delicious you just want to have more and more of it.

Strawberries and pretzel my favorite and if it's yours too you will love this Pretzel Jell-O salad, or even if you do not like that you can always make a different kind. Cream Cheese lovers you will enjoy it, but if not a Cream cheese lover, all you have to do is add some powdered sugar with the cream cheese and it also helps to add more cool whip and you won't even notice the cream cheese. I believe you will love this salad and enjoy every bit of this salad/dessert just like I do.

Been making this for almost every holiday for about ten yrs now, everyone loves it and it is always missed if I don't. I use the strawberry banana jello and put sliced bananas in it. Also the cheese mixture makes an excellent fruit dip. :)

I love this recipe and everyone is right, IT GOES QUICK! I made it for the fourth of July and used the strawberry jello with strawberries and blueberries. It was very festive (red, white, blue) and of course, everyone loved it. I like a thicker crust so I add just a little extra pretzel to mine and crush them up pretty fine (as if making a graham cracker crust). Some people keep the pretzels in larger pieces, but I find they get chewy that way.

This recipe is awesome. Only thing I noted is that 10 minutes was a little too long to let the jello and strawberries set. At 7 minutes I happened to check and noticed that it was completely gelled and impossible to pour over cream cheese. I sort of had to scoop it and try to make it look nice. Hopefully it will still taste awesome, I've made this several times before!

Have been making this for years. For those questions about pouring jello layer over cream cheese layer... once you put the cream cheese layer on....put back in the fridge for about 15-20 minutes to get the cheese back to a solid... and be sure you let the jello set a little before you pour over the cheese layer... pour slowly.

My friend taught me this, and another fun way to jazz it up is to use pudding instead of jello

I tried making this recipe 2 days in advance for Easter, and used fresh pineapple and strawberries. After day 2, day of event, my jello had completely turned into liquid! I wish I had read and known fresh pineapple would breakdown the jello due to it's enzymes. I will be making this again to give it another chance! Can't wait! But DON'T use FRESH PINEAPPLE!

I just made it for the first time. My top layer keeps sliding off the cream cheese layer. Is there anything that I can do to prevent this for the next one that I make?

I've made a ton of this dessert and I have had the same problem on occasion. The last one was the worst. I'm thinking there might be a fine line between putting the Jello on too early and letting it set too much since I was in a hurry with my last one and the Jello was still a little softer than it should have been. I'm going to try to get it as stiff as I can, while still being able to get it relatively smooth when I pour it on top. I would rather have a rough layer on top than have a dessert that falls apart when I cut it.

Can this be made using whipped heavy cream instead of Cool Whip?

Yes, it can be made with heavy whipped cream. I whipped 2 cups of heavy cream and added it to the creamed sugar vanilla, and cream cheese, it is also very delicious.