Strawberries with Ricotta Creme and Chocolate Pound Cake

On The South Beach Diet one of the desserts I love is their Ricotta Creme. It tastes like the inside of a canoli. It's divine. So I adapted the dessert to suit my children (substituted Splenda for powdered sugar) and served it with our healthy freshly picked berries and a chocolate pound cake. But you could serve it on a regular pound cake... or banana bread. This was actually a bigger hit than I expected!

To make the ricotta creme:

2 Cups of part skim ricotta cheese
6 Tbs. powdered sugar (Rebecca wanted it a tad sweeter)
2 Tsp. vanilla extract

Pour ingredients in to a food processor (I used my mini prep) and pulse until smooth and creamy like whipped cream as pictured below.

(Note: Strawberries used did have imperfections as I was trying to use the ripest berries first.)

To make the dessert as pictured above cut a slice of pound cake and cut it in half. Warm it a bit (in the microwave about 12 seconds and place a layer of the creme over the bottom layer of the cake and top with sliced strawberries. Place the other layer over the berries, top with creme and place a whole berry on the top of that. Voila, an easy and perfect dessert!

The kids were so delighted with their little dessert that I decided to make myself a bite-sized piece. Isn't it cute? It would be perfect to serve at a party or bring to a pot luck! It definitely tasted every bit as good as it looked!

And since I had some left over banana bread I had to make a little sample of that... delish, but the chocolate was stronger and the flavor held its own whereas the banana flavor was lost. I suspect these would be fabulous on a traditional pound cake as well.

For a fabulous pound cake recipe check out Martha Stewart's... and if you subscribe to her magazine you will know that she has many featured this month! And of course Martha has a recipe for chocolate pound cake as well!