Candles, flowers, crystal, and fingerfood.

I hadn't seen my friend Khulood in over four months.. we only see each other about three times a year anyways! And so, last week I invited her over for dinner. She loves fingerfood and so I started looking through my cookbook trying to find recipes for bite sized meals and canapes etc.. I've never really made fingerfood so yesterday's cooking experience was something new.. I didn't have to use the stove once! And everything was done in less than an hour.

I made a sweet and sour yogurt dip which I served with some crisps, mini burgers, small pizza slices, bruschetta, and chocolate mousse.

The yogurt dip was delicious (and healthy!). All you have to do is take one cup of fresh yogurt and beat it until smooth with around a third cup of sweet and sour sauce. I added some fresh chives to the mixture and seasoned with salt and pepper. It is SO addictive and works great with just about anything- especially breadsticks. Easy!

The pizza slices were also extremely simple and quick. Just take around four pizza bases and spread each with basil pesto. Sprinkle with some pizza cheese and pine nuts and bake for around 15 minutes at 180C. Cut each pizza base into four equal pieces and further slice each piece into three slices. You get 48 pieces with just four pizza bases.

I love the idea of using lots of glasses in a table setting. I've used them as vases and as candy holders. And now for crisps and the dip!



The Chocolate Mousse

 Enjoy the photos!

Baked Mini Lemon Doughnuts with Vanilla Glaze

Lots of studying to do and a new baking pan I haven't used. That's the perfect combination to get me into the kitchen when I'm stressed.

And so yesterday, I went to make a mini baked doughnuts. BAKED, yes, that's the key word! I love doughnuts but hate myself after eating one, because they're almost always deep fried. As if sugar and butter weren't enough, add oil to that and a whole lot of topping. Umm, no thank you. You might think my reaction is odd- considering I bake and am a food blogger.. but it's important to eat healthy most of the time so you can enjoy cakes guilt-free.

These are adorable and bite sized. Perfect for kids or as a snack with tea. Or coffee. Or just on its own, really.

I wanted to experiment with colouring the glazing and doing some more creative things but funny enough the glazing was not easy. I took a tea spoon and starting dripping the glaze all down the sides of the doughnut but I guess the doughnut itself was too tiny! I got a lot of excess glaze down on the bottom of the wire rack on the newspaper that I kept for easy cleanup.

But these are fairly simple to make and are a melt and mix batter.

Ingredients
1.5 cups cake flour
0.5 cups granulated sugar
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
0.75 teaspoon salt
0.5 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest
0.5 cup buttermilk
1 egg, lightly beaten
1.5 tablespoons melted butter
1 cup icing sugar
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
Chocolate sprinkles, optional

Ingredients
Preheat oven to 220C and lightly grease a 12 mould doughnut tray.
Sift the flour twice.
Add sugar, baking powder, salt, and lemon zest to flour. Stir to combine.
Add egg, melted butter, and buttermilk to flour mixture and lightly whisk to combine until just smooth.
Take a teaspoon and add the batter carefully to the insides of a doughnut mould.
Bake in preheated oven for 6 minutes until doughnuts spring back at touch.
Let them cool in the pan for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool.
Meanwhile, make the glaze by mixing together the icing sugar, milk, and vanilla essence in a bowl.
Once doughnuts are cool, drip the glazing over the sides. Quickly add the chocolate sprinkles as the glaze hardens fairly quickly.

 

#BakefestDXB

Does anyone actually eat cupcakes like this? (I don't).

I haven't blogged in ages and I miss it entirely! I actually miss cooking and baking for the PURPOSE of blogging about it, and I miss spending ages taking photographs of my food, and I miss writing these posts and reading your lovely comments. Mostly, I miss reading through all your blogs and getting inspired by each and every post. The creativity, innovation, talent, and love that goes into each of your posts is just phenomenal and I quite love being part of an international community of food bloggers. I feel as if we all share something special and can relate to each other in a way not many other people can!

I also miss taking part in all the amazing blog challenges that go on every month- the creativity in them is wonderful and the best part is the round-ups where we see all the pictures!

My awesome new invention of serving cupcakes in drinking glasses.

Attempting food photography

I've been baking and cooking quite a bit recently- I had a couple of dinner parties and one afternoon gathering that kept me busy in the kitchen. And today, I took part in Round 2 of #BakefestDXB which you might remember from an earlier blog post.  The event was lots of fun with a few familiar faces from last time and lots of new ones.

My dessert table.

I made raspberry cream sandwiches, chocolate shortbread drops, a three toned pink layer cake, vanilla cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes, and some mini cupcakes (made from left over batter and frosting!) -That's why I love mini cupcakes so much.

You can find the recipe for my raspberry cream sandwiches here. I made them early this year and they were a huge success. The cream is made out of pureed raspberries and white chocolate and the cookies have vanilla beans in them (which, in my opinion, make ALL the difference).

And here's the recipe for the vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting.

Oh, and GUESS WHAT? My mixer broke. Again. The new one. So all of this I made by hand. I also made risotto yesterday after baking the cupcakes so my arms got one hell of a workout. It's a handheld Kenwood electric mixer- just like my old one.. very basic, no fancy attachments or anything.. and now the whisks just won't move.. I think it's the icing sugar. The last one stopped working as I was making frosting. And my cute mechanical sifter also gets jammed with icing sugar! SIGH.

Anyways, here are some pictures from the event. As you can tell (I hope you can- it's not too subtle!), I went on a pink theme. Mainly because Spontaneous Euphoria (both the catering business and the blog) are pink. And also because I had been coming across lots of pink dessert tables recently and was just INSPIRED.

 

Maple Mousse in an Edible Chocolate Container, A Daring Bakers Challenge

The April 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Evelyne of the blog Cheap Ethnic Eatz. Evelyne chose to challenge everyone to make a maple mousse in an edible container. Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 27th to May 27th at  http://thedaringkitchen.com

So I made these today. On the day we had to post them. The actual recipe called for maple mousse in ham containers... and since I don't eat ham and to be honest found the meat/maple taste mixture a bit odd, I opted to make edible chocolate containers.

I had seen a technique for this in one of my many cookbooks and decided to recreate it with some variations of my own.

For the edible chocolate container:


200g milk chocolate (I used Van Houten's baking chocolate)

Turn small glass bowls upside down and place on a tray.
Scrunch up some baking paper and form it over the upside down bowls.
Melt the milk chocolate on a double boiler and leave to cool for five minutes.
Pour the melted chocolate over the bowl covered with baking paper. Use a spatula to evenly coat the bowl with the chocolate. Leave to set for half an hour and then place in a fridge for two-three hours to completely form.

For the maple mousse:

Ingredients: 

1 cup (240 ml/ 8 fluid oz.) pure maple syrup (not maple-flavoured syrup)

4 large egg yolks
1 package (7g/1 tbsp.) unflavoured gelatine
1 1/2 cups (360 ml. g/12 fluid oz) whipping cream (35% fat content)

  

Directions:

1. Bring maple syrup to a boil then remove from heat.
2. In a large bowl, whisk egg yolks and pour a little bit of the maple syrup in while whisking (this is to
temper your egg yolks so they don’t curdle).
3. Add warmed egg yolks to hot maple syrup until well mixed.
4. Measure 1/4 cup of whipping cream in a bowl and sprinkle it with the gelatine. Let it rest for 5
minutes. Place the bowl in a microwave for 45 seconds (microwave for 10 seconds at a time and
check it in between) or place the bowl in a pan of barely simmering water, stir to ensure the
gelatine has completely dissolved.
5. Whisk the gelatine/whipping cream mixture into the maple syrup mixture and set aside.
6. Whisk occasionally for approximately an hour or until the mixture has the consistency of an unbeaten
raw egg white.
7. Whip the remaining cream. Stir 1/4 of the whipped cream into the maple syrup mixture. Fold in the
remaining cream and refrigerate for at least an hour.
8. Remove from the fridge and divide equally among your edible containers.

The maple mousse was heavenly. I don't think I've had anything moussey apart from chocolate or lemon mousse and this just gave me the idea that I can make tons of different types of mousse! And all sorts of flavours! The more cream I added, the lighter the color became, but the taste stayed wonderful.

Here are some pictures, which I'm not too happy with.. they took me a total of 3 minutes to snap. I'm still horribly jet-lagged and just wasn't bothered to spend lots of time taking photos. But enjoy.

OH! And the edible containers? Yeah, make sure you pop them back in the fridge after each attempt to peel the paper off. Chocolate bits kept on breaking off and the entire thing was starting to melt in my hands, so I put them in the fridge after every attempt to peel and eventually peeled the whole thing off while it was all still the fridge.. I was half in the fridge as well...

My Foodie New York City

I spent the past week in New York City exploring all its delights with around twenty friends from university. We were attending the National Model United Nations Conference and found the entire experience, both the conference and the city, to be exhilarating. While the conference did not allow much time for serious foodie expeditions, I did manage to come across some wonderful delights which I am sharing with you now:

1. Teuscher Chocolates, 620 5th Avenue, New York


Absolutely delicious truffles and an even more amazing window display for Easter. It's located in a wonderful spot between 5th Avenue opposite Saks Fifth Avenue and Rockefeller Center. 

2. Rock Center Cafe, 620 5th Avenue, New York


Looking over the ice rink, you have to take a special elevator to the basement to get to this cafe. The cafe is wonderful and the ambience is lovely. Best of all is this dessert which was two whoopie pies sandwiched with a coconut cream layer in between. And that chocolate glaze? Heaven. 

3. Tartinery, 209 Mulberry Street, Nolita, New York

Wonderful for a light lunch, Tartinery is super fab, sleek, and modern. The best part is the seating area in the basement- it's wide, bright, and airy. I had a roasted vegetable tartine which tasted fantastic.

4. Breakfast at a diner on Broadway and Times Square.


I cannot seem to remember the name of this diner, I guess because we were all super-hungry and rushed in as soon as we saw it. But the pancakes were WONDERFUL. I was caught between choosing this (old-fashioned pancakes) and their lemon and ricotta ones.. for once, I decided to go with the "safe" option. My friend had the delicious chocolate pancakes below.

5. Fluffy's Cafe, 855 7th Avenue

Good, cheap, filling, and wholesome food. Fluffy's had a wonderful variety of wraps, sandwiches, and baked items. The cafe was supercrowded and I had to improvise by sitting on the counter. One thing I noticed about NYC was that there were a lot of wraps everywhere- and being my favourite sandwich- I was in heaven! My friend had this gorgeous chocolate cake below. My sandwich was already devoured before I had the energy to dig out my camera.

6. The Halal Guys- 53rd and 6th, New York


The longest lines ever outside this place- and well worth it- or so everyone I knew told me. I was attempting to be vegetarian that week and didn't try the meat. Although now I wish I had.

7. Ray's New York Pizza, 736 7th Avenue, New York

Wonderful pizza which we first had late at night the day we arrived and once again at 11pm when my friend and I were super hungry. Yes, they sell you one slice (you can obviously have more) but that one slice is sooo filling and delicious.

8. Sarabeth's, 40 Central Park South, New York


WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL French Toast. It was soo good and crispy and sweet but not too sweet and HEAVENLY with the fresh strawberries. I want to make French Toast like that. And their jam was the icing on the cake. They had an apricot and orange flavoured one and a raspberry and rhubarb if I'm not mistaken. My friend recommended this restaurant to me before we left Dubai and I made sure I went there to try it early one morning. GREAT breakfast. GREAT jam.

9. Armani Restaurant, 717 5th Avenue, New York


On our second last day in New York, I had some last minute shopping to do.. (I always have last minute shopping to do...what gives?)... anyways, on our second last day in NY, I quickly took the bus to 5th Avenue to finish some retail therapy...and halfway through I felt very hungry.. shopping is an exhausting activity, let me tell you. I wanted a good place to eat, I wanted to sit down in a nice, quiet restaurant and relax for a while, and savour my meal.. unlike the other days when all I was doing was rushing everywhere. And so I spotted Armani Restaurant. And there I discovered the best bread I have ever had. They brought a little basket filled with around five different kinds of bread, each more amazing than the other. There were parmesan flavoured breadsticks, sage flavoured bread like pappadums, and best of all, soft bread that was baked in a cupcake tray (I could see the paper case lines) and was savoury but had the slightest hint of a raisin flavour. It was mindblowing. Yes, I do realize I'm talking about bread. The bread went amazingly with this tomato gazpacho that was courtesy of the chef, and the risotto reminded me so much of the one I make back home. All good, but nothing beat the bread.

10. Novella, 191 Grand Street, Little Italy, New York

I went here for lunch with three really good friends and although the food was good, the service was horrible. The food took more than half an hour to bring (AFTER we got our appetizers) and the staff were extremely rude. I asked one waiter for the bill and he gave me a dirty look and walked away. Before that, when I asked for chili flakes, I got the same expression. It didn't bother me much though. I just wanted to have a good time with my girls and eat. Which we did. The food was good. I had the spring vegetable pasta with pink sauce (although I couldn't reaaally see the pink sauce). The bruschetta we shared was very, very good, especially the one with avocado on it, and the artichoke starter was lovely as well.

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And this, ladies and gentlemen, is a quick roundup of my foodie picks of NYC (without prior research or true exploration).