Recipe Fiasco and Recipe Find Friday: Strawberry Desserts

Nothing says Happy Valentine's Day like a yummy strawberry dessert. Especially if it is an easy one to whip together. Easy enough for a kitchen klutz like me.

The first recipe I tried came from the Pillsbury website and promised "easy treats to say I love you." Not! Not so easy, that is. They still express love, but didn't quite turn out as the recipe photo promised.

These cookies look deceptively easy. The recipe recommends ready bake cookies and the cream mixture is simply a matter of stirring strawberry gelatin into whipped cream. They also suggested you could substitute sugar cookie dough for the chocolate chip cookies pictured above. Alas, this is where it turned into a fiasco. I had a roll of sugar cookie dough in the fridge which needed to be used, so I sliced the dough and pressed the slices into the mini cupcake pan. Yet, when I went to extract them, they crumbled and fell to pieces. I only managed to salvage a dozen. Here is the photographic evidence of my recipe's demise:

Still, they ended up looking okay. Only Trevor tried one and he decided he'd rather have the plain sugar cookies (which I had made up with the remaining dough after the first two batches flopped):

A far cry from the beautiful photo Pillsbury offers up. I doubt I'll try that again - easy or not!

The second recipe I tried this week came from a Facebook post by Courtney Luper, although I found countless other versions of this recipe on the computer. Apparently it is nothing new, but it might be new to you, so here you go:

Strawberry Cream Cheese Cobbler

1 stick butter (I think you could use less of this - at least I will next time)
1 egg, beaten
1 C. milk
1 C. flour
1 C. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt (In my klutziness, I forgot this)
2 quarts strawberries, hulled and sliced (I used 2-1/2 pound containers)
4 oz. cream cheese, cut into small pieces

Melt the butter and pour into a 13x9 inch pan. Mix egg, milk, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt and pour over butter, without stirring. Add strawberries in a single layer.

Sprinkle cream cheese over the strawberries (this was my least favorite step - the cream cheese was impossible to cut into small pieces, so I ended up tearing off little bits and my fingers were covered in cream cheese residue - I think if I did it over, I would use a knife and smear a bit of cream cheese on the backside of each strawberry as I lay it down in the layers).

Bake for 45 minutes in a preheated 350 degree oven.

I think my final verdict is that I would rather eat a dessert with the strawberries fresh, rather than cooked into a cake-like background. While it was good, it wasn't as good as a different pudding/strawberry dessert recipe I have and used to make back in the day. Still, it received a thumbs up from my hubby and he was the critical reviewer in my book (neither of the boys wanted to try it, even though they like strawberries).

Happy Valentine's Day! Happy eating! May the kitchen odds be ever in your favor!