Sweet Valentine

So after dinner on Valentine's Day, Bry had a fun idea planned. He had secretly taken a trip to the grocery store earlier and picked out some choice ingredients that Kaitlin and I would have to use to make a creative dessert (no recipes allowed).

If you've seen the show "Chopped" then you get the idea. Except that Kait and I are not exactly professional chefs. Oh, and we decided to combine our powers and make one dessert instead of competing against each other, because Valentine's Day is about love, not winning. Bry also didn't pick out anything too challenging at the grocery store because, in his words, he wanted "a really good dessert." I think that means that he didn't have much faith in us.

Our required ingredient list:
-Bananas
-Mascarpone cheese
-Peanut Butter
-Pre-made vanilla pudding
-Chocolate gelato
-Whipped cream
-A giant block of sweetened dark chocolate

And here is our finished product:

For a base to build on, we made a vanilla cake (which wasn't easy without a recipe) and cut it into pretty circles with a biscuit cutter. The dark chocolate, we melted down with vanilla extract and mixed in chopped bananas and strawberries. The peanut butter and mascarpone cheese we whipped together with a bit of the pudding and some dark rum to make a fluffy mousse (yum!). We then proceeded to stack our layered tower of goodness, accompanied by a scoop of gelato and a hefty swirl of whipped cream on top.

It was actually very good and lots of fun. And I think I might make that peanut butter-mascarpone-rum mousse again sometime.

(Funny enough, my sister and her husband randomly happened to have a very similar idea for their Valentine's Day dessert. Check out their version of "Chopped" here.)