Reviving the Best of the 90s

Ahh the 90s...the time of Crystal Pepsi, blow-up furniture, and approximately 76 different boy bands. It was a decade where boys wore bowl cuts and girls wore ungodly high platform sneakers (in hindsight, the bowl cut was the safer choice. Orthopedists everywhere are thankful for the trend though). The 90s had music so damn good that MTV still played videos in their regular programming. Kids these days will never know the real reason libraries exist and the horror of having a take-home research paper that required you to hope to God your Encyclopedia Britannica cd-roms worked without freezing Windows 95. When the Internet came on the scene, I still remember the joy I felt creating my very first AOL screenname and exceedingly colorful profile typed out in Comic Sans when it was still an acceptable font. We grew up in a time where our video gaming was limited as our parents forced us into this magical place called "outside" to play. You knew your parents loved you, but you were never more sure then when they packed your lunch with your favorite Lunchables and the Holy Grail of 90s desserts, Dunkaroos. As a child, I was not well versed with "pacing myself" (it could be argued I'm still not so great at it), and so I could never find the magic ratio of Teddy-Graham-to-funfetti-dip with my Dunkaroos. It always ended in the pitiful sight of a nine-year-old girl scraping the bottom of the dip with her tiny little fingers while muttering about how there's never enough...ahhh, baby's first fix. It has taken me the better part of 20 years, but I finally solved that problem. Fellow children of the 90s, say hello to Dunkaroo dip.

If they had just given us this much dip to begin with, there wouldn't have been a problem.

That is a veritable bowl of nostalgia right there. One bite of this dip transported me back to my elementary school lunchroom cafeteria. Aside from our lunch monitors being power-hungry college students, lunch was an enjoyable experience for me. Every Friday we had square pizza (you know the one), and every once in a while I was fortunate enough to have my mom bring me a Happy Meal before I became too cool to eat with her in junior high. Why I ever turned down the opportunity to eat McDonald's to save face is beyond me. I speak with like two people from my junior high days still, and I'm pretty sure they would've just been happy someone had good fries to share with them and not cared about the parent thing. I digress. Clearly I enjoyed the 90s, but we all know there's nothing I enjoy more than a really simple but insanely delicious dessert recipe (sorry jelly shoes, you're a close second).

Even the biggest of dreams have humble beginnings.

Yeah, three whole ingredients make up the Dunkaroo dip. My husband found this dip recipe on Imgur, the greatest website in the world to waste time on, and my only regret is that he is deployed and I will have to eat the whole bowl myself. Did I say regret? Because it kind of feels more like gleeful, sinister gluttony. I mean, I ate this FOR LUNCH. I know it seems like maybe I'm the mature one in this house, but the real truth is my husband is the adult, not me. I've already had ice cream for dinner more than once and he's only been gone a few days. I have sweet tooth impulse control issues that can clearly only be controlled by a real adult, not just a pretend one.

I tweaked this recipe a bit to fit my sweet toothy needs, so here's how it breaks down:

• One box of funfetti cake mix (do not make the cake recipe, leave it dry)
• 1/2-2/3 of a tub of Cool Whip (see note below)
• 16 ounces of plain yogurt (see note below)
• Mix all three of these things together, put in a bowl, cover, and let set in the fridge for a couple hours to overnight. I somehow channeled the willpower of a god and let mine set overnight.

Good things come to those who wait. Good, gluttonous things.

Hi, I'm the note below: For the amount of Cool Whip, it's all about taste preference. I like a light, fluffy dip, so I used 2/3 of the tub. If you want a denser dip, just use half the tub. As far as the yogurt is concerned, I realize mine is vanilla and not plain. Know what our Walmart has? Six cases full of different kinds of yogurt. Know what is does not have? Plain yogurt in any size under "able to feed family of thirty-seven." Since I didn't want to throw away a ton of plain yogurt, I opted for vanilla. It really added a nice flavoring to the dip.

Can you feel the diabetes?

After my dip had set overnight, I turned it out into a pretty bowl and topped it with sprinkles...not because I'm taking it anywhere, just simply for photo staging. A picture of me using my hand a spoon didn't seem appropriate. Well that and my inner child just cannot get enough sprinkles. I set this up with Nilla Wafers, chocolate Spritz cookies I thawed out from my mom, and birthday cake Oreos. Fairly certain I've never eaten more sugar in my life after sampling several of these, so this blog post was brought to you by the best sugar high I've had since that one time I ate eight pancakes in one sitting as a small child. Again, impulse control is just really not my thing. Honestly, this dip would be an amazing addition to your upcoming Super Bowl festivities. I just want to say how happy I am to have predicted the Super Bowl teams for like the fifth year in a row. I also have some residual happiness from watching Tom Brady lose. He clearly never ate Dunkaroos in the 90s, and I have a feeling that's why he's such a sore loser. So here's to yet another Manning pulling one over on him and to the world's most nostalgically delicious dessert dip ever. 'Til next time, my fellow eaters!