Fig, Arugula and Mascarpone Crostini

When you're in Whole Foods and you see the last container of figs, you buy them. I repeat, you buy them. You buy those figs and figure out the rest later. Luckily for me later was during my shopping trip.

While going through the "what should I do with this" list of options in my head I thought of ice cream. I drew my recipe inspiration from an ice cream (Cool Haus -Balsamic Fig & Mascarpone) that I recently had (minus the arugula) and loved. With no time to make my own ice cream, I decided to keep things simple and put it all on crostini.

Crostini was a quick and easy option for me to enjoy those flavors. I needed quick and easy as it was a weeknight and this was impulse buy. So I quickly grabbed a baguette, bag of arugula, some mascarpone cheese, and headed home. After preparing my crostini, which I was pretty excited to devour, I realized that I had a bottle of Balsamic Ginger Reduction in the pantry unopened. With a drizzle on top, the weeknight masterpiece was complete.

Ingredients

• 1 baguette, sliced diagonally into 1/2 inch thick slices
• Olive oil for brushing
• Kosher salt (optional for taste)
• Cracked pepper (optional for taste)
• 4oz mascarpone cheese
• Arugula
• Thinly sliced fresh figs
• Balsamic Ginger Reduction (optional)

Steps

1. Slice baguette diagonally into 1/2 inch thick slices

2. Brush baguette slices with olive oil on both sides and sprinkle salt and pepper (optional)

3. Thinly slice fresh figs

4. In a heated skillet, toast baguette slices on both sides

5. Remove from skillet and add mascarpone cheese, arugula and fig slices

6. Optional (but recommended). Drizzle Balsamic Ginger Reduction.

7. Enjoy