This is what I had in my refrigerator/freezer the week of the 4th of July: one 9-inch round red velvet cake, blueberries, and frozen white chocolate whipped cream. Good thing too, because it was over 100 degrees and I really did not feel like turning on the oven! I’m kind of bad at layering parfaits. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I find it really difficult to get the mousse or cream or yogurt or whatever to go on in an even layer, especially when it sticks to whatever is under it (granola, cake, etc). So I had to practice. Yeah, I practiced making parfaits – I mean, 4th of July dinner, we can’t have sloppy looking dessert when we have company, can we? It was too hard to make two layers of cake so I went out and got some strawberries (healthier too right?) – so it was red velvet cake, white chocolate cream, strawberries, and blueberries. I had some extra chocolate on hand so right before I served them, I melted a little and drizzled it on top. Boom – red white and blue parfaits!
I’m not really sure how much of everything I used because everything was just what I had, so I’m going to round up all the ingredients – I used 5-oz. wine cups and got about 10 parfaits out of it. This is so adaptable though, my instructions are not exact measurements but proportions of the cup so you can use any size wine glasses.
Recipe: Red White and Blue Parfaits
Ingredients
- 3 cups red velvet cake crumbs
- 1 pint blueberries, washed and dried
- 2 cups diced strawberries
- Chocolate chips, for drizzle – optional
- 6 oz. white chocolate, finely chopped
- 1 ½ cups cold heavy cream
Instructions
- For the white chocolate cream (adapted from Annie’s Eats) [Note: this makes a lot of cream. I’m not sure how much you would need to fill your parfait cups though, so worst case scenario you have a lot of extra white chocolate whipped cream. Boo-hoo…]
- Place the chopped white chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Melt, stirring occasionally. When the chocolate is almost melted, bring 1/2 cup of the cream to a boil. Once the chocolate is fully melted, transfer the bowl to a counter, pour in the hot cream and let it sit for one minute. Then stir gently with a spatula until the chocolate is smooth.
- Let the chocolate sit until it reaches room temperature – the chocolate can’t be the least bit warm when it is added to the whipped cream. Beat the remaining 1 cup cream only until it holds the softest peaks. With the mixer on high speed, add the white chocolate all at once and continue to beat just until the mixture holds firm peaks. (Be extremely careful at this point, I overbeat mine the first time. To prevent this, use a whisk and hand beat it until the peaks are firm just after the peaks start firming up.)
- Transfer the cream to a bowl, press a piece of plastic wrap gently against the surface and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. This stuff melts really fast, so don’t remove it until you are ready to fill the cream part of your parfait.
- ASSEMBLY Fill the glasses ¼ of the way with cake crumbs. Fit a piping bag with a large round tip or use a plastic bag and cut a hole in a corner, and fill the bag with the white chocolate cream. Pipe it on top of the cake crumbs in a circular motion, taking care not to dip the tip into the cake crumbs. Fill until the glass is about half full.
- Wipe off any cream that may have gotten onto the sides of the cup. Spoon the strawberries on top of the cream in an even layer, until there is only a fourth of the cup empty, then layer the blueberries on top. If desired, melt some chocolate chips and drizzle it on top of each parfait. If not serving immediately, store in refrigerator, probably for no longer than a day.
Number of servings (yield): 9-12