Hey guys! Welcome back do Dede’s Mediterranean kitchen. Today, I’m going to make a little sweet surprise called Mascarpone Stuffed dates. They are amazing, they’re bit size, they’re great for parties if you have a dinner party or if you’re having guest over, or if you just want to serve something sweet but not make a full on dessert. They’re really easy to make, you can get this recipe written out all the ingredients at my website, www.DedeMed.com. Go there, join my social network. It’s a lot of fun, there’s a lot of people there you can get involved in this top Mediterranean cooking all day long.

So I’m going to show, we need to put these together and I’ll put it together really quickly. There are pretty much just four ingredients that you need. You need the Medjool Dates.
They’re nice and big size dates that are why I like using them. They’re really sweet and really juicy. I have Mascarpone cheese, toasted coconuts, and toasted pecans. If you don’t like pecans, you can use walnuts or pistachios, or whatever kinds you like.

We’re going to start of by mixing the Mascarpone cheese with a little bit of pecan and the toasted coconuts. I like using Mascarpone because it’s really like a buttery cream cheese. It’s very buttery, the flavors are so smooth. I love it. So we’re going to add the toasted coconuts. I like using toasted coconuts because they add a little bit of nuttiness. Just a little bit of pecans. We’re going to mix these all up and we ‘re just going to put in—I’m going to put it in a plastic bag. If you have a piping bag, it’ll be a great choose of piping bag. It’s a lot easier but I know not a lot of you guys, you know, I’ve got used it readily so that’s why I’m going to be using—showing you how to use a plastic bag and be able to do the same thing. So see, it’s just like that, it’s all nice and mixed up.

Next, we’re going to put this aside and get our dates. And I want to cut out the pit. It’s really easy just cut down the middle. And the pit is big so it’s very easy to find, and just remove the pit just like that. You have a nice little space. I’m going to do that with a couple of these. Cut it down in the middle, open it up, remove the pit.

It’s really easy to do. I’m telling you this because these are so easy to assemble and I’m not adding any sugar to the Mascarpone because the dates are very sweet so you don’t want to have an overwhelming sweetness. So that I’m very –and hence like chocolate cake or certain desserts get too sweet and I’m trying to avoid that with this one.

So I’m just going to do this with a couple more of this and then I’m going to pipe. Let me show you how. Pipe this up. Let’s move this to the side. I’m going to get this regular bag, a ziploc bag. Open it up and we’re going to add this to it. If you have piping, it’s really easy. Just like that, give my hands a rinse and I move everything to the corner. And then we’re going to cut a little bit of a hole in the corner with our scissors. Just a little one, not too big otherwise, it will come out. Cut just like that.

Now we’re going to get our dates and we’re going to fill them just like that. Even refrigerate this after so that the Mascarpone can harden a little. It’s a lot like cream cheese in a sense where if you refrigerate, it does get more firm. These are really pretty. Really easy to make, I tell you. Anything get the Medjool dates, they are amazing. What you can do, you can neither leave them like this or you can get the rest of the pistachio—I’m sorry not the pistachio. Well you can use pistachios but I think pecan mixture and just slightly roll them in like that. What you can do if you’d want, you can get these nice little personalized service dishes and I’m going to put one in here like that. You can set them around the table if you want. You can add a nice next to it. It looks really pretty like that or if you’d like, you can get a nice plate and you can like alternate them like that. You can put a sprig of mint in the middle just to make it colorful just like that. And there you go. It’s a quick, easy dessert. It’s so fast, takes probably no time. If you made a full on dinner and you don’t feel like making big cake or a cheesecake, or whatever kind of dessert, it’s so easy to put together. You can serve it with coffee afterwards. Try it, let me know what you think and join me again for Dede’s Mediterranean kitchen