"Heavenly Dirt" Recipe

My 5 sons all played high school football, and their team's tradition was to have a spaghetti supper for the players and their families the night before each and every game (with parents volunteering to host the entire horde at their homes). Above is a recipe for a dessert that I made every single week for the past 10 years; it was passed down to me by a mom who'd made it until the end of her son's senior season, and now that my youngest son's playing days are over, I've passed it on to another mom. This Heaven in a bowl has become as much of a tradition for the football team as the spaghetti suppers themselves. (Superstitious types would have been worried about the next day's game if they hadn't had some at the team supper!)

I used to double the recipe, yet those boys would always scrape the bowl clean mere minutes after I'd set it down on the dessert table! If you have any teenage boys in your house, it would probably be a hit with them. Older folks like it, too, though--with the exception of my husband, who's not much of a fan of Oreos (did I hear a gasp of disbelief?). But you can always substitute moist, fudgy brownie chunks for the crushed Oreos.

Postscript: Lent is probably not the best time to post a great dessert recipe, since so many of us Catholics give up desserts or chocolate (or both) for these forty days. But if you can't have it now, it's always something you can look forward to making when Easter arrives. Or if you can have it now, it's a cure for just about anything that ails you. And there are some hurting Notre Dame fans out there this morning who might want to drown their sorrows in sugar, as the Irish women's basketball team--after their astonishing upset of #1 UConn in the semi-finals (see "Perseverance," April 3)--lost the national championship game against Texas A&M last night, 76-70. The Aggies forced the Irish to turn the ball over 16 times, proving the old adage that "Offense wins games, but defense wins championships." Maybe if the Irish girls had had some "Heavenly Dirt" the night before their game, there would have been a different outcome!

Enjoy!