Strawberry Shortcake Sushi

Valentines day. Unquestionably the most controversial holiday ever invented. If you're in a relationship, it's flowers and chocolates and pink hearts and mushyness over a romantic dinner. For everyone else, it's  the greeting card industry's obnoxious attempt at robbing everyone blind over an emotion that should be expressed every day of the year. (But really, what holiday isn't?)

If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm in the former category. Valentines day was last night, and I pulled out all the stops - fancy-pants dinner, flowers and chocolates from the boy, dollar store candles, I even bought freakin dollar store place mats. We drank orangina out of Ikea wine glasses. It was so legit. Yeah, I know, it wasn't really valentines day, but it's on a Tuesday this year. Tuesdays suck. I have class all day, orchestra that night, and the boy has a test the next morning. We'll be lucky if we get a romantic dining hall lunch to celebrate.

But anyway, a super epic dinner has to have an equally epic dessert, right? Cue the sushi.

I hate sushi with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns. It's cold and squishy and fishy and weird. Sadly, the boy loves sushi. So I surprised him with dessert sushi. Strawberry shortcake sushi to be exact, complete with chocolate sauce "soy sauce," and chopsticks!

They were a hit. They tasted amazing, and they took a little practice to make, but turned out perfect. The cake was just a box mix baked in a jelly roll pan. The bottom layer that was against the pan was too hard to roll up, so I had to veeeeery carefully slice it off. Then I cut it into rectangles, blopped a strip of the filling down the middle, and rolled them up in a piece of plastic wrap.

The wrapped up rolls got popped in the freezer for a little bit to firm up. Once they were ready to go, they got sliced up and wrapped in green fruit roll up. (Dude, fruit roll ups are amazing. I forgot how awesome they were! Sheets of flavored sugar!) This part was a little obnoxious, because if they didn't seal all the way, they popped open in the fridge. Now, what I would have done if I'd planned ahead, is borrowed my dad's fruit dehydrator and made some homemade fruit leather for this part. With that thing, you can whip up a smoothie whatever color you want (including a strawberry spinach one that would taste like awesome and look like sushi seaweed junk) and make it into your own fruit roll up. Yum.

Anyway, garnish with a few strawberries or orange nonparelis (those little round sprinkles) for caviar. They were expensive, and I need to cut back on the sprinkles, hence I didn't get any. Serve them up with some chocolate sauce and chopsticks, and it looks like valentines day to me!



Strawberry Whipped Cream

1 cup whipping cream
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup chopped strawberries

Beat cream, sugar, and vanilla with a mixer until fluffy (don't overbeat, or you'll end up with butter!) Gently fold in strawberries.