Hey all voting is now live for the Dinner for Dessert challenge! I’d love it if you’d click over and vote for me!! 🙂
It’s hard to believe it has been almost a year since I last entered one of Marx Foods contents!  The last one, if you remember was the three part risotto challenge – a complete blast, but man did I need a risotto break after that one!
It’s safe to say that this contest has not turned me off from chocolate nor pasta! Marx Foods has challenged us bloggers this time around to create an original dessert recipe that looks like an entree using their cocoa-flavored penne pasta. Â Dinner for Dessert if you will, I love breakfast for dinner, so why not?Â
My first, and truthfully only idea (it’s chocolate pasta yo, despite the cocoa powder, my mind wants to think savory) was to figure out the best sauce – browned butter of course! After that, I wanted a “whipped topping” of sorts and to continue into the savory items that can also be turned sweet, ricotta was the first thing that popped into my head. Â Originally, it was to be a thyme sauce, knowing it plays well off sweet flavors but, I forgot to pick up thyme the day I made this! Ooops. I happened to have some sage sitting in my fridge and the swap happened. Â I’m happy it did, browned butter and sage are a match made in heaven and the aroma didn’t overwhelm the rest of the dish.Â
I’m not always a huge fan of super sugary sweet desserts, so I intended to keep my sweet part on the natural side. Â Don’t be afraid of chocolate pasta, it’s absolutely lovely to work with, you get a slight hint of cocoa at first and then after it just feels like you are eating some penne. Â
Ingredients
- 4 oz cocoa penne pasta
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 2 teaspoons chopped fresh sage
- 1/4 cup toasted hazelnuts
- 1/4 cup fresh raspberries
- 1/2 cup ricotta cheese
- 1 tablespoon heavy cream (or milk)
Instructions
- Fill a large pot with water and bring to a boil. Cook the cocoa penne according to the packages directions. Drain, set aside.
- In a small saute pan over medium-low heat melt the unsalted butter, swirling it around the pan occasionally to keep it from burning, add the chopped sage. Continue to melt until the milk fats have been cooked off it starts to turn a light brown golden color. Remove from the heat.
- While the pasta is cooking, using your stand mixer or hand mixer with the mixer attachment whisk the ricotta and heavy cream until it is light, smooth and the curds of the ricotta have been worked out - about 2-3 minutes.
- To finish, toss the cooked pasta with the browned butter sage sauce and portion into individual servings. Top with a heaping dollop of the whipped ricotta, chopped hazelnuts and fresh raspberries.
Interesting. I’ve never had chocolate pasta but your dish certainly looks appetizing. Good luck in the contest!
Good luck, Susan! Your ingenuity never ceases to amaze me – I’d be stumped if someone gave me a bag of chocolate pasta. This looks really good (even if I’m wondering how chocolate pasta tastes). Happy Saturday, lady!
Nice to see you in the contest! That chocolate pasta was really a challenge, wasn’t it? Yours looks lovely!
This is such a sophisticated dish Susan! It looks really amazing and I sooo wanna try chocolate pasta now!
definitely smells more like chocolate than it taste 🙂 love the pairing of browned butter and whipped ricotta!
WOW, that looks amazing! Hoppin on over to give you my vote right now 🙂