Cream cheese mixed with currant preserves is called Bar-le-Duc, for some reason, in France. The humbler cream cheese and jelly sandwich used to be popular with kids when I was one, but seems to have gone out of style. You might want to use just strawberry-flavored cream cheese, if you can find it.
Here’s a word to the wise based on something that didn’t quite work this week — okay, it didn’t work at all. You know those cute waffle cone bowls you can get to serve ice cream in? Do not, I repeat not, try to substitute them for tart shells with any filling that has to be baked in them. The more moist the filling, the more disastrous the mess will be. I don’t even see how people can eat ice cream out of those things, they crack and leak so easily. And they burn in the oven, unlike regular goblet style ice cream cones, which I’ve actually baked cupcakes in. Okay, you’ve been warned.
Also, if you wrap cooked sausages in tortillas (a little cream cheese helps it hold together), sprinkle some cheese on top, and heat in the oven for a few minutes, you’ll get something tasty but not at all pretty for your brunch. It depends what’s most important to you and the others at the table.
- 1 large croissant
- 1 Tb. raspberry jam
- 1 Tb. plain cream cheese
- 1 tsp. chocolate chips
- Freeze the croissant for an hour or more to make for easier slicing and spreading.
- Preheat the oven to 325℉.
- Mix the jam and the cream cheese.
- Split each croissant horizontally.
- Dig out a more or less teaspoon-sized hollow in the middle of one half of each (use a serrated grapefruit spoon or a bread knife).
- Fill the hollow with chocolate chips.
- Spread the jam/cream cheese mixture on the cut sides of each half — no need to spread it over the chocolate chips, though.
- Place the other half carefully on the half with the chips.
- Wrap each croissant tightly in aluminum foil.
- Heat in the oven for 5 to 7 minutes or until warm.
- Unwrap and cool slightly.
- Try using a chocolate mini egg (not the coated kind) instead of the chocolate chips.
