You just can’t get enough of that cute Kitty, I know!  So I thought I’d post just one more party food idea for your next Hello Kitty party.  This one turned out great and is super yummy, I promise!

One of our favorite “salads” is more like a dessert, I’m afraid.  It’s a marshmallow-fruit-whipped cream salad of yumminess…ahhhh.  Very easy, and it adapted itself perfectly to this Hello Kitty idea.  This food project needs to be made a day before your party.

Start out with a clean fishbowl.  You could call it a salad bowl, but it’s really a fishbowl…but ours has never even seen a fin.  (I bought it at Michael’s arts and crafts store).  I used one package of mini marshmallows for this recipe.  It’s not really a recipe, just kind of a throwing-together of ingredients.  I don’t think there’s really anything that you could do to mess this one up!

First whip up some whipping cream…the real stuff!!  (with a bit of sugar and vanilla, nice and thickly whipped)  Like maybe about  two cups.  (Or more!)  In a very large separate bowl, mix about half a bag of mini marshmallows and about half of the whipped cream.  It should be a thick mixture, not runny at all.  Now with a big spoon, start spooning this into the fishbowl, and coating the sides of the bowl, like this…This is so that Hello Kitty will have a nice smooth-looking face, instead of  grape “beauty marks or warts” on her face!  Coating the sides of the bowl with the marshmallow/whipped cream mixture is quite easy.  Try to make it as thin as possible, so you have some more mallow for the salad!

Now to finish the salad: mix up the rest of the marshmallows with the whipped cream.  There’s a healthy short cut you can do here.  I added in plain greek yoghurt and/or plain vanilla yogurt instead of some of the whipped cream.  It works great….really, I think this salad could be made with only yogurt and no cream and it would be just great!  But I don’t think cutting out the marshmallows is an option!

Now cut up and de-seed some grapes.  A big bunch of grapes.  We like using the red grapes.  Make sure each grape is cut at least in half!  Add these to the mix in the big bowl.  Add some mandarin orange segments (maybe a can-ful or two).  (I didn’t have any, but you can add a can of pineapple chunks, too).  You kind of add what you have on hand, fruit wise.  Now it’s a fruity marshmallowy salad.  To give it a nice nutty crunch, add some toasted almonds now (might be a good idea to have these toasted before you start making the salad).

Almonds:  to peel whole almonds, put them in a bowl and pour boiling water over them.  Let sit for a few minutes, then start popping the skins off them…that’s the fun part that kids usually like helping with!  After they are all peeled, toast them in an oven or in a skillet on top of the stove….just a warm toasty brown, don’t let them burn!!  When they are cool, add them to the salad.

That’s about it for the fruit salad!  Mix it all gently together and spoon it into the fishbowl.  It made just enough to almost fill it. Now cover and refrigerate it.  The next day, right before the party, you can add the face and bow.  The bow was made from a paper napkin/serviette.  Cut a strip off one side, gather the large rectangle up, then use the strip to fasten around the middle and tape together.  Use a small piece of tape to stick it to one side of the bowl.

For the face:  melt a couple of cocoa candy melts (I use Wilton’s), or a few spoonfuls of chocolate chips.  Put into a plastic baggie and snip a tiny piece of the corner off so you can pipe the chocolate out there.  The fruit bowl is nice and cold so the chocolate will set up quickly.  Pipe the whiskers on first, then the eyes and nose….I think the eyes should have been down a bit….oh well, it took just a minute to do right before the party started.  If you mess up, you can just scrape it off and start again.  I found that the chocolate stayed on perfectly for a long time….the only problem was that the kids wanted to pick it off and eat it!!

Right before eating time at the party, you can gently mix the salad up, or even just mix it up as you serve it…so that there is fruit throughout the whole salad.  Mmmm, love this salad!!  And the Kitty, too!  I was especially pleased that this was my very own little idea…I didn’t “find it on Pinterest” like most of my ideas, haha!!