I’ve gone to a few Valentine’s dinner parties where each couple brought a dish with a Valentine’s theme. After eating, we’d vote for best taste and best in theme. These deconstructed connoli won for best in theme the year I brought them.
They’re dead simple to make — as long as you don’t try to make your own pizzelles, and that one’s not on my agenda for a while now. (Though really, it’s just like doing waffles but with a smaller press. I just don’t have one.) Okay, enough rambling, here’s the recipe.
Ingredients
1 pound ricotta cheese
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla (not pictured, oops)
fresh strawberries
pizzelles
Directions
Drain off any excess liquid from the riccotta before putting it in a large mixing bowl and beating it briefly to break it up.
Add the powdered sugar and vanilla and beat until they’re thoroughly incorporated.
Scoop the cheese mixture into a pastry bag or a cookie press with a large star-shaped tip.
Set the cheese aside, and remove the leaves from the strawberries. Using a paring knife, cut out the stem and any un-ripe part from the top.
Slice the berries about an eighth-inch thick.
Now here’s where it’s unfortunate that Valentine’s Day comes in February. In most of the U.S. strawberries aren’t in season, so you may not have a very good selection. Take a look at the difference between local and factory-farmed berries in this post from two summers ago.
You can see that the ones I was working with only gave two or three nice-looking slices each.
Oh well, you take what you can get. The important thing to notice is if you cut them right, they look sort of like hearts.
Now that everything’s prepped, using the pastry bag or cookie press, load up the center of each pizzelle with a layer of the cheese mixture.
Put a berry in the center of each.
And that’s it.
By the way, these were vanilla pizzelles from the local Italian market, Alesci’s. I could buy myself a pizzelle press and make my own, but as it is I only buy them a couple of times a year. It would take until I’m in my 90s to save enough to make it worth the investment. Sometimes cooking like Grandma means knowing when to go to the bakery.
Ingredients
- 1 pound ricotta cheese
- 1/3 cup powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- fresh strawberries
- pizzelles
Instructions
Drain excess liquid from riccotta cheese before putting it in a large mixing bowl. Beat until the cheese is broken up. Add the sugar and vanilla and beat until thoroughly combined. Transfer to a pastry bag or cookie press with a large star tip.
Remove the leaves from the strawberries and cut out the stem and any un-ripe bit from around the stem. Slice lengthwise into eighth-inch slices. Use only the center slices for this dish.
Using the pastry bag or cookie press, put a single layer of cheese filling in the center of each pizzelle, almost up to the edge. Place a single slice of strawberry in the center of each.
