Marshmallow crème. Nutella. Fresh fruit. Nuts. Powdered sugar. BUTTER! How could this combination go wrong?? These are all things I love! Things I could eat straight out of the container for the most part. So why then was I so reticent to make recipe #135: Dessert Panini? Of all things in a cookbook for me to leave until the end out of sheer disinterest, I’m shocked that one was a dessert. Well, unless it was bread pudding, because, YUCK. I think it comes down to the fact that I dislike…no…I LOATHE hot sandwiches, almost across the board. Grilled cheese is about the only hot sammie that makes the cut. Rarely have I walked into a restaurant, then immediately turned around and walked right back out, but that happened the first time I tried to go into, uh, “Schwiznos”… If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s a deli specializing in hot sandwiches, and I just can’t take it. Cold cuts should, by definition, be served COLD! But I digress… The Dessert Panini! Here’s how this went down.
Before I get too deep into this, I have to confess something really dumb. I have bought the ingredients to make this recipe several times. Like many, MANY times! And after each shopping trip I looked at the page in the cookbook and either let the fruit go bad without making anything, ate the ingredients separately, or used them in a completely different recipe. Or, what happened on more than one occasion, my kid ate all the Nutella without me noticing! The depth of my apathy for this dessert knew no bounds. But what a waste of money! And good strawberries. As you can see, it nearly happened again, as my bananas were getting freckles and the loaf of bread was half gone. But I was determined! I saw the light at the end of the tunnel on this project! I just had to bite the bullet and check this off my list, not serve what I was sure would be a disaster at a dinner party.
I’m making this sound terrible, but look at it! It really looked pretty darn delicious. As I added hazelnut spread to one piece of bread and marshmallow crème to another, the idea of a chocolatey fluffernutter sandwich started to grow on me. I then layered on sliced strawberries and used a little creative license, adding sliced banana as well. Why not? If it was going to be a train wreck, what could a little banana hurt? It might just as well have been a stroke of genius. The recipe DID call for sliced almonds… but I didn’t have any sliced almonds, and I wasn’t going to spend additional energy trying to slice them. Chopped almonds it is! I was feeling quite the rebel.
The moment of truth was upon me: adding the heat and potentially ruining the whole thing! I slathered both sides of the sandwich in butter, and put it down in a grill pan with a panini press on top. Wait, what if you don’t have a panini maker or press at home?? In a pinch, a small frying pan on top weighed down with canned food to “press” the sandwich into the grill will work. Or if you just don’t care about grill marks, you could try making it in a flat skillet like a grilled cheese. As long as the marshmallow “glue” melts enough, it shouldn’t come apart when you flip it. In theory.
A little powdered sugar and more almonds to top it all off, and dessert is served. Or, if you’ve been to IHOP recently, you’ll recognize this as something more likely to be on the breakfast menu. So here it is… a hot mess, quite literally! I was still not looking forward to eating this, now that it had been exposed to heat. But lord help me, was I ever wrong about this recipe!! YOU NEED THIS IN YOUR LIFE! Do you hear me world? I was wrong! Delicious does not begin to cover it. And yep, my banana was genius. I’m gonna let Ree steal that idea… It’s the least I can do!
Have Book, Will Cook 