Ingredients:
1 1/4 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 cup freeze-dried strawberries
1/4 cup jumbo sized confetti sprinkles
1 drop red liquid food coloring

Directions:

Place the freeze-dried strawberries in a  powerful mixer, mortar and pestle or food processor and grind until it forms a powder. Whisk the powder through a fine sieve into a bowl. Discard the seeds. Measure out 2 tablespoons of strawberry powder. Discard or store for future use any leftover strawberry powder.

In the bowl of a stand mixer or in a mixing bowl using a hand mixer beat the cream, strawberry powder, food coloring, and sugar together until soft peaks form.

When the peaks have formed, remove the bowl from the mixer and use a large spoon to gently fold in the sprinkles without deflating the cream. Spoon into a bowl or directly onto cake.

Serve immediately and refrigerate leftovers. Best eaten the day it is made.

My thoughts:

Today is my birthday! Woohoo! I’m celebrating by walking the boardwalk, eating crabs and playing skeeball but I am leaving you with this festive recipe.

I was at the store the other day and I spotted a Hello Kitty ice cream cake. I already had quite an assortment of Hello Kitty paperware on hand so having a pre-birthday Hello Kitty party for me seemed perfect. (Fun fact: When I turned 25 my now-husband threw me a little dinner party and everyone who came brought me at least one Hello Kitty themed present–without coordinating or asking what I’d want.) It was a fun way to kick off my “birthday week”.

Being me, I wanted to make something to go with the ice cream cake.  Whipped cream seemed like the obvious solution: who doesn’t like whipped cream? I love working with freeze-dried fruit so I flavored it with homemade strawberry powder and colored it with just a drop of red food dye to enhance the pink color. Then I stirred in some jumbo confetti for an extra bit of fun and pop of color. It went great with the vanilla confetti cake, it was fresh and fruity tasting yet light.