Mascarpone and Strawberries Toastie Recipe

It must be the easiest dessert in the world, yet it’s so delicious… mascarpone and strawberries! Mascarpone tastes like toughened up whipped cream, but without the overly sweet sugars added to it. Strawberries are, well… strawberries are strawberries! YUMMY! And with fall ready for us, we have to take advantage of the last batches of fresh, locally grown strawberries!

Because when you got things between bread in your head…

Recipe Inspiration

I went to an Italian restaurant once and had pizza for dessert. Pizza with mascarpone and strawberries. And of course, I wanted to try that on a toastie. Now, I also have this thing for strawberries drenched in balsamic vinegar, so I wanted to try that on a toastie, too. As a sign of our experimental nature here at the Toastie Lab, we did both! 

Why We Love It

Like I said, so simple, yet so delicious! The fresh, fruity flavor of strawberries, mixed with this mega, moisty mascarpone… It’s just so good! It’s also super easy! And if you want to go above and beyond – you can add a ton of flavor to this recipe by adding balsamic vinegar, some sugar and mint. But if you don’t want to, you don’t too, because, like I said, this recipe is delicious in its simplicity. 

Equipment

We went back to basics with this toastie: the Toastie Maker was the star of our show!

• Tefal: Ultracompact Sandwich (Dedicated Toastie Maker)

Mascarpone

Let me take you to Italy, to a time in which fatty cream cheeses were a welcome addition to the table (as it should be always and forever!). Mascarpone is basically the older, fatter, Italian brother of cream cheese. By adding some lime or vinegar to whole cream, the Italians created this rich and creamy delicasse. 

Mascarpone tastes like whipped cream, just not as sweet. It has the texture of a full fat cream cheese, though. If you want to go for a lighter version, go for cream cheese, it contains slightly less fat.

Butter: Yes, No, or Yeeeeesss!?

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees! Butter ‘r up! I’ve considered using olive oil, because… well because it’s Italian (too short sighted?), but we ended up going for classic butter-covered-slices of bread. 

You could use coconut oil if you’re out of butter. It will make the toastie slightly more dessert-like. 

Balsamic Vinegar

Whoops, here’s the second recipe with Balsamic vinegar! Have you ever tried strawberries drenched in vinegar? It’s soooo good! And it’s also soooo easy! And it will make for an even more special dessert. 

Even when you’re not making a toastie out of this, you should absolutely try it: add a tablespoon of vinegar per portion size amount of strawberries, add a tablespoon of Balsamic vinegar and mix together. 

Let it sit for at least 15 minutes so that the sugar can dissolve in the vinegar. If you let it sit longer the flavors will be even more intense! 

If you have it available, add some finely chopped basil or mint leaves and add them to the mixture. 

Strawberries

Available from early spring through early fall, strawberries should actually be STARberries! Or actually, none of that is very accurate, as strawberries aren’t technically berries… What can we say… It’s complicated! 

Pro Tip 

Now, mascarpone might seem pretty solid, when you heat it up, it will definitely melt! To make sure that our delicious cream cheese wouldn’t disappear on us, we decided to go for the dedicated toastie-maker as our equipment for today’s toastie. And it worked pretty well! As soon as we heard the cheese sneaking out, we turn it off and got the toasted bread of the iron.

Now… we wouldn’t be the Toastie Lab if we didn’t try to make this beauty on a sandwich grill as well! Unfortunately, we realized too late that it was easier for the mascarpone to go for a run, and we lost some of the precious cream in the process. Nevertheless, the taste was indescribably delicious!

Feeling Creative? 

Strawberry love? Make a heart out of slices of strawberries around the toastie. 

YouTube Video

Want to see the real pro’s handle this? Watch us on YouTube! Oh yeah, and while you’re add it, hit the subscribe button! 🙂

Let Us Know What You Think

Suggestions? Recommendations? Want to share the love? Reach out to us! We love to hear what you think of this recipe and we definitely like to see more people doing some experimentoasting! 

If you have any ideas for a toastie recipe that your would like us to make, let us know that, too. We love to try all varieties of toasties… like, all of them! If we choose your toastie idea we will give you a shout-out in our articles and YouTube videos.

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