If you still don’t have a special Valentine’s Day dessert, you can pick up these ingredients and have something special in 5 minutes.
Kozy Shack’s Chocolate Covered Strawberries all-natural pudding and pie filing is the first in a new line of Limited Edition products from the pudding company. This flavor, available through April 1st, drops large pieces of strawberries into a very satisfying chocolate pudding.
The recipe for the Chocolate-Strawberry Cream Pie is on the package, but we’ve included it below. The pudding is delicious right out of the container and as an ingredient in other desserts.
If you can’t get hold of this limited-edition flavor, buy the regular chocolate pudding and stir in some diced strawberries, fresh or frozen.
If you prefer real whipped cream to frozen whipped topping and have an extra 10 minutes to stabilized whipped cream that doesn’t collapse (deflate), see the recipe below.
RECIPE: EASY CHOCOLATE-STRAWBERRY PUDDING PIE
Ingredients
1 eight-inch pre-made pie shell (regular or chocolate crust)
Fresh strawberries and shaved chocolate to garnish
Preparation
1. POUR the pudding the into pie shell and spread evenly.
2. COVER the entire surface of the pie with whipped topping. Place in the freezer for an hour.
4. REMOVE, slice and serve.
Make this pie in 5 minutes with Kozy Shack’s Chocolate Covered Strawberries pudding and pie filling. Photos courtesy Kozy Shack.
RECIPE: STABILIZED WHIPPED CREAM WITH GELATIN
Ingredients
1 teaspoon unflavored gelatin
4 teaspoons cold water
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1/4 cup confectioner’s sugar, sifted
Preparation
1. COMBINE the gelatin and cold water in a small pan; let stand until the mixture is thick. Then place the pan over low heat, stirring constantly, until the gelatin dissolves. Remove from the heat. Let it cool, but do not allow it to set.
2. WHIP the cream with the sugar until slightly thick. While slowly beating, add the gelatin to whipping cream. Whip at high speed until stiff.
If you don’t have heart-shaped cookie cutters, use stars for your “star” Valentine.
Each year, the Peanut Butter & Co. Sandwich Shop in the heart of New York’s Greenwich Village helps lovers celebrate Valentine’s Day with a special Sweetheart’s Snack. It includes heart-shaped PB sandwiches, milk, PB cookies, and other goodies. You can create the treat at home with a large heart-shaped cookie cutter, your favorite PB and J, and a mix tape of romantic tunes. (If you don’t have a heart, you can substitute stars or other shapes). Keep your lover guessing: Use a different flavor of peanut butter on each sandwich. If your Valentine prefer savory to sweet, use a garlic or Southwestern PB with turkey or ham, instead. Read our reviews of our favorite peanut butters: plain, crunch and flavored, and our favorite jellies, jams and preserves.
If your idea of a Valentine’s Day celebration is more than Champagne—or if you’d like to warm up to that bottle of Champagne with some kissable cocktails, for your drinking pleasure we present:
Heavenly Porcini Mushroom Tortelloni from Bertagni.
We don’t have to twist arms to get people to celebrate National Tortellini Day at THE NIBBLE. In fact, we’re lunching on several flavors of the wonderful tortellini from Bertagni (the topic of a prior post). Tortellini (tor-teh-LEE-nee) are small pastas stuffed with a variety of fillings, and a favorite pasta dish worldwide (wontons are cousins). They are served in soups—as in the classic dish, tortellini in brodo—or with sauce. We also serve them as hors d’oeuvres and snacks—with dipping sauces, on skewers with complementary meats, cheeses and veggies. Tortellini originated in Bologna and are accompanied by a legend: When the goddess Venus stayed in a tavern on the outskirts of the city, the innkeeper spied on her through the keyhole of her room, but could catch only a glimpse of her navel. Spellbound, he went to the kitchen and, to capture this vision, shaped fresh egg pasta into the bite-sized, navel-shaped tortellini. Larger bites, called tortelloni, are also made.
Tortellini and tortelloni are made by adding a filling to a circle of dough, then folding it in half, making a semicircle of the half and pinching the ends together to form the shape. By the way, the word for navel is not tortellini but ombelico; torte is the past participle of the verb torcere, meaning filled.
Take those heart-shaped cookie cutters and make heart-stopping hors d’oeuvres—or a first course—with toast, sour cream or crème fraîche and red caviar. Buy the best white bread or brioche, toast it, let the toast cool, and then cut the heart shapes. Spread with sour cream/crème fraîche, then top with one or several different red caviars: salmon caviar, tobiko, beet-colored whitefish roe (available from Tsar Nicoulai, a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week), lumpfish or capelin roe. Drape a chive across each heart as the “arrow.”- See the full recipe.
– See more red caviar recipes.
– Learn more about caviar in our Caviar Glossary.
– See all of the articles, recipes and product reviews in the Caviar Section of THE NIBBLE online magazine
Make red caviar into heart-shaped hors d’oeuvres. Photo courtesy of Red-Caviar.com.
