Grilled Cheese Dessert: April Fool’s!

My turn to host Book Club happened to fall on April Fool’s Day.  In the name of fun and foolishness, I made “Grilled Cheese Sandwiches” for dessert.  I wish I could say everyone was totally fooled until they took the first bite, but they all knew something was up.  Still, it was fun.  Here’s how you can make your own — and hopefully your “cheese” will be a more realistic color.

You will need:  a thawed pound cake (or two, in case you mess up the first one, which would never happen to me, but you know, just in case), thawed whipped cream (or fake whipped cream in the form of Cool Whip), vanilla pudding, and red and yellow food coloring.

  

Remove the pound cake from the stylish tin.  Or you could make your own pound cake, but why?  Incidentally, pound cake was so named because it traditionally uses a pound of each ingredient.  Yes, that’s a pound of flour.  A pound of eggs.  A pound of sugar.  And a pound of butter.  And a pound for each hip, but we won’t go there.

The recipe I found online said to slice it like bread…

…and toast the slices.  I put them under the broiler.

So far, it wasn’t looking very promising.  That doesn’t look like bread, it looks like slices of pound cake.  I decided to slice the second pound cake lengthwise instead.

And I’m glad I did, because the regular slices just weren’t doing it for me.  I cut them diagonally, as the recipe instructed…

 

and stacked them, with the filling in between. 

Sadly, the result looked like tiny wedges of toast and/or pound cake, slathered with fry sauce. 

 Okay, we really need to talk about that unfortunate filling.  Put the pudding mix in a bowl:

Add milk according to the package.  I cut it down by 1/2 cup to make the pudding thicker. 

Whisk for two minutes, until thick and yellow.  Yes, that’s a pretty good American cheese color right there, all by itself.  Alas. 

Oh look, we added the whipped cream, and now it doesn’t look like cheese anymore. 

Should’ve just used straight pudding.  Oh well.  Break out the food coloring!

Keep adding red and yellow, to make a nice light orangey cheesy color.  Or, discover that you can never take back the color, once added, and make your peace with the fry sauce.  This would have been great, had you chosen to make pound cake french fries, but no, you followed my advice and made cheese sandwiches.  Way to go.

The original recipe called for icing, but wouldn’t you rather eat pudding-filled yumminess?  Even if it’s a disconcerting shade of salmon, and a tad runny? 

At least the “bread” turned out well.  Toast it under the broiler.  If you forget it’s there, all the better, because then you can scrape off the black bits, just like you do with your real cheese sandwiches.  It gives it a nice realistic appearance.  Don’t tell me you never scrape your sandwiches, because you know you do.

Cut the horizontal halves into sandwich-sized squares, then cut them diagonally.  Slice each triangle in half horizontally again, fill with the “cheese”, and voila:

After you’ve fooled whoever you’re trying to fool (or not), add another dollop of filling to the top, because the toasted pound cake is pretty darn dry.  Overall, it was fun for appearance, but just so-so for taste.  Not anything to rave over.  Next year, I might just invest in a few whoopie cushions and be done with it.