Spring Fever! Strawberry Nutella Panini for I Heart Cooking Clubs

There are always certain things that are signs of spring. These things can be depended on, without fail, to harken the coming of warmer days. I could name a half dozen of those signs right now. But around here, there is one sure sign of spring that every local recognizes.

Strawberries.

We even have an annual Strawberry Festival, although every year the berries come a little sooner and are nearly out of season by the time the festival rolls around. But, to me, the first decent strawberries that appear in the stores always excite me. And I was lucky enough to find these luscious little gems just yesterday at my local grocer.

One of my favorite things to do with the season’s first berries is something I learned from Giada de Laurentiis. See, the first berries aren’t necessarily the prettiest berries, but they still taste wonderful after having just gone through the local ice age and its series of snowpocalypses and blizzasters. One thing about berries that might not be the prettiest, though, is that they look just fine when they are sliced and covered in chocoloate.

After discovering the shiny red goodness, I promptly rounded the store and grabbed a pound cake from the freezer and a jar of Nutella.

And, really, I am not a patient person.

So, waking up at the ridiculously ungodly hour of 3:52am this morning, I got the hubs out the door to work, and by 5:00 I was slicing pound cake and heating up the Panini press (also known as the George Foreman grill that Ginny gave me).

This is so simple, its stupid.

1. Slice the pound cake into ½ inch thick slices.
2. Slather one side of each piece with Nutella. Not too thick, though it may be tempting to do so, because it will just ooze out onto the grill and be wasted. And that’s just unacceptable. So restrain yourself. Please.
3. Slice your strawberries and place them on half the Nutella-coated slabs of pound cake.
4. Spray the Panini press with cooking spray. Sandwich the slices together and place them on the grill, closing the lid.
5. Grill until you have beautiful grill marks on each little sandwich.

Because a pancake yields pretty small slices, these make perfect little finger sandwiches....or breakfast sandwiches....which is what they are for me today. Breakfast.

Now THAT'S what I call "packing a lunch"!

However, if you wanted to get fancy, you could slice the loaf the long way and make bigger panini, then cut them into thinner sticks, or just shove the entire thing down your gullet and pretend its health food, you know, because it has fruit on it. That’s my rationalization, anyway.

 

So there you go. I declare it SPRING! And I’m celebrating with strawberries and Nutella. Care to join me?

This is my submission for Spring Fever week over at I Heart Cooking Clubs.