Cooking With Avi Night: West Valley Gets it’s Just Desserts

By Avi Vieira

Glendale

This week one n ten West Valley had its own hunger games as youth and volunteers were guided into making a selection of desserts to tackle anyone’s sweet tooth by the group’s very own Iron Cook Avi, who had a menu of decadent, yet surprisingly simple treats for the evening: Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries, Oreo Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Truffles, and Candy Sushi.

Beginning with the Strawberries, Avi demonstrated how to hollow out the berries then showed another group how to mix the cream cheese filling and how to pipe it using a Ziploc baggie before finishing with a graham cracker topping. He then showed another group of youth and volunteers how to make Candy Sushi using thin sheets of Rice Krispy treats, rolled around twizzlers or gummi worms, and wrapped with fruit rollup “seaweed”, and accompanied by whipping cream “wasabi” and chocolate syrup “soy sauce”. The final treat of the evening was the Oreo Peanut Butter truffles, peanut butter, flour, cream, butter, and crumbled Oreos mixed together into balls, and coated with a coat of finely ground Oreos and dusted with powdered sugar.

The desserts were a huge hit, mostly due to the sugar content, but also in that it encouraged everyone to work together creatively on a common project as well as how deceptively simple the desserts are to make. Several youth with little to no cooking experience left for the evening stating how they were going to make these treats on their own to share. It was great to see youth not only enjoy the evening, but become inspired to create something and share it with those closest to them. Food has a funny way of bringing people together as family; be it one’s traditional family or an extended one of friends and supporters.