Friday Breakfast

These are pictures from a little breakfast 'do that I threw sometime last summer. Yes the theme again happens to be floral... I don't know why I tend to go for feminine/floral themes so much. Maybe because I feel there's a lot that I can do with it!

Tea Party entry with IMAGES!

These pictures are from the tea party that I threw for fashion-hermit's sister's birthday. (www.fashion-hermit.blogspot.com)

The theme was obviously very feminine and floral. I used candles and pink, yellow, and white flowers to accentuate the table. I also placed jellybeans and marshmallows in little gahwa (Arabic coffee) cups and scattered them around the table.

The cupcake with the crown was the birthday girl's! I placed one cupcake on every plate.

You can see what I've done to the chair there.. I gently tied some pastel coloured chiffon to it and placed a rose in the knot. I also gave each person one rose on their plate along with the cupcake.

Ramadan Recipes

Ramadan has become commercialized so much lately what with food advertisements/offers, late night enticements and TV shows that there is one particular irony I find: Ramadan, the month of fasting and technically an ABSENCE of food from your day becomes.. the month OF food..

So keeping in line with the "food" theme of Ramadan, here are some of the things that I have cooked since the start of the month.
chicken and leek pie
roasted vegetable risotto
tomato, chilli, and olive salad
grilled chicken with green olive butter
pasta with aubergine and tomato sauce
cherry and almond cake
chicken chilli stirfry

I personally thought that the chicken and leek pie, roasted vegetable risotto, and chicken chilli stirfry were the top three. The chicken and leek pie was a big dish covered with puff pastry and was substantial enough for Iftar. The herbs mixed with the chicken and milk brought out a wonderful flavour.

The roasted vegetable risotto was interesting because I used carnaroli rice for the first time instead of arborio! I personally didn't notice many differences between the two except that maybe carnaroli takes a little longer to cook and doesn't soften as easily as arborio does. The vegetables were roasted, thus bringing out stronger flavours, and the risotto was made separately completely plain which was good!
Interesting article I found: http://www.finecooking.com/articles/other-risotto-rices.aspx

I've always stayed away from cooking chicken or meat in stirfries because for some reason I always find that the meat/chicken stays hard. This time however, I had an amazing result! I cooked with peanut oil for the first time.. which is what you should use when stirfrying, and cut the chicken up into smaller pieces thus increasing the surface area and having it cook easier and faster. The sauce.. oyster sauce tasted fabulous with freshly ground black pepper. The vegetables I used were beansprouts, red capsicum, and snow peas. I love how when you make a stir fry and throw all the vegetables in the wok, they're huge... but a few minutes later they're cooked through and become half of their size..

I've also been experimenting with table settings. I got these amazing napkins and placemats from London. Here's the website of the company that makes them: http://mydrap.com/ES/index.php . They're cotton and linen placemats and napkins that come in kitchen roll style.. so all you have to do is unroll the amount you need and tear at the perforated section. Best part is that because they're cotton or linen you can wash them and reuse them!

Some table themes I've been using lately are summer lunch, carnival, beachside picnic, and classic dinner... which is mainly cream and ivory with little bits of light green.

Food as Serving Dishes

This is something that I've always found beautiful. Soup served in a bowl made of bread, or salad served in a bread box or tray. I recently threw a small dinner party for some friends visiting Dubai and made a lemon, mushroom, and chicken risotto as one of the entrées. I sliced the top part off the capsicum (so that the top part looks like a little hat) and a removed the seeds and membrane from inside the larger, hollow part of the capsicum. I then spooned risotto into the capsicum and then covered the top with the part I had cut away. One thing that I found a challenge was finding capsicums that would actually stand on their own. If I'm not mistaken, capsicums usually have four points at the bottom. However, not all capsicums you get at the supermarket are perfect like that. Most had three or three and a half "legs". I had to really search to find some that would stand on their own, and still, I only managed to find around two or three. I then had to improvise and make the risotto-filled capsicums lie down on the dinner plates.

Speaking of improvising, as one of the dishes for dessert, I intended to serve a brownie topped with ice cream and caramel sauce (recipe taken from 50 Fast Desserts- Australian Women's Weekly). I spooned my brownie batter into the rose shaped silicon cases and when they were done, I took them out of the oven. I waited a few minutes for them harden, otherwise the brownies would break. However, when I started removing them from the silicon pans, they broke! My rose shaped brownies were gone! I, being the person that I am, made no attempt to salvage the rest of the brownies and took them out of the pans in any way I could. On the spot, I decided to make a parfait. I layered the broken up pieces of brownies in wide crystal water goblets and placed them with icecream and the caramel sauce that I made. Tasted quite good, albeit better than the stiff-brownie-on-plate-with-icecream.

The menu for that dinner was: tomato soup, risotto, lamb and corn quesadillas, baby potatoes, strawberry jelly with blueberries, and the brownie parfait.

Kitchen Shops in London

So this post has been "pending"... for around two weeks now. Oh well, I better get it out the way..
Here are some of the stores etc.. that I visited in London which had a good selection of kitchenware.
Not to be missed in Divertimenti on Brompton Road. Just pass Harrods and walk straight down and eventually you'll find it. Divertimenti has a wonderful selection of pots, pans, serving dishes, glasses, and other quirky kitchen items. I loved their shot glasses which can serve as canape dishes or individual dessert dishes. I also found cotton and linen placemats and napkins in something that looks like a kitchen towel roll. Very creative and convenient!
John Lewis's kitchen section on the lower ground floor is again not to be missed. Wide variety of serving dishes in creative designs.
Another shop is Jane Asher on Cale Street. It specializes in baking goods and has a small selection of the basics needed in baking as well as special equipment for sugarcraft.

London Eateries

So here I am, on my second day in London, reviewing some of the restaurants and cafes I've visited so far.

For breakfast yesterday, we went to Richoux on Brompton Road. It's right opposite Harrod's and is decorated in warm reds and dark woods. I loved the fact that classical music was playing throughout. Some famous ones were Boccherini's Minuetto and Vivaldi's Winter.. I had strawberry waffles with syrup and loved every bit of it. I also had fresh cranberry juice. I was in the mood for Bircher muesli so I ordered something called "muesli with fresh fruit and nut". That was the one thing that disappointed me. It was basically a fruit salad or strawberries, grapes, melon and pear slices set upon a base of muesli. It was DRY.

I've found the perfect London substitute to my usually late lunches: afternoon tea. Yesterday we had afternoon tea at the Dorchester. Tea is served at the Promenade, which is the hotel's lobby. The flower arrangements are beautiful. Yesterday they were peach and cream and white. I love white roses. The sandwiches were melt in your mouth scrumptious! That was my favorite part. I also tried their Jasmine Dragon herbal tea which was very nice. They served a strawberry jelly with yogurt between the sandwiches and scones/pastries. When you make a reservation, they ask you in advance what food requirements you have and we said vegetarian. They were prepared for us when we came and had a selection of vegetarian sandwiches ready.

We then went to Laduree at Harrods. Beautiful pastel shades and a scrumptious (yes I love that word) display of sweets. What kind of ruins the place is that it's frequented by people from the Arabian-Persian (diplomatically correct ;) )Gulf, who primarily want to see/be seen/show off/ and generally look absolutely weird. Lines of "exotic".. garish, in my opinion, cars are parked outside the cafe and other foreigners are constantly seen taking pictures of them. I saw a mat, hot pink Qatari Lambo Murcielago today.. emmm... what? AH, I better remind myself that this is a FOOD BLOG and not a social commentary. SO, going to the food at Laduree.. I tried the macaroons after hearing they were like heaven. (so far, my favorite is Paul's macaroons).. I tried the vanilla, chocolate, caramel, and raspberry macaroons. Loved the raspberry and vanilla best!

I then met up with a friend and we walked over to The Terrace on Knightsbridge which is by the Sheraton on Lowndes Square/Sloane Street. I ate olives a la Provencal and she had a sandwich. They brought the wrong sandwich at first and then took half an hour to bring the correct one. Their fries were good though, friendly staff, and the place is perfect for people watching on the street if you don't really want to be seen yourself.

For dinner, we then went to Artisan at the Westbury Hotel Mayfair. Lovely restaurant. Everything was amazing, creative, lovely, delicious, and simply wonderful! The menu is pretty interesting. The cuisine is modern European and everything has a creative take to it. They bring lots of appetizers, canapes, and palate cleaning things that are on the house. I tried a mini foie gras burger.. (first foie gras for me.. tried not to think of what it really is...) I also tried a tomato and basil milkshake. There was also trout stuck on something like those pop up wire photoframes. We all had a fillet of sea bream as our main course. This was cooked perfectly. As a starter, I had smoked salmon, caper, and tartare terrine which I loved. My other dinner companions had spring onion and mushroom veloute... which is a soup. The staff bring you bowls with sprigs of leaves on them and then pour the soup from a sort of transparent teapot. We were too full for dessert but the restaurant did give us mini chocolate giveaways which I have yet to eat.. saving it for when I really get the munchies!

Day 2's restaurants were as follows:
We had breakfast at Harrod's Georgian Restaurant/Terrace Bar.. I've always wondered, is it the same thing or two different things? So yet again I was in search of the muesli I've been craving so bad and ordered a home made granola.. (oats, milk/yogurt, fruits, raisins..) DISAPPOINTED yet again.. the only places I've had perfect bircher mueslis or muesli in general are Qatar's W hotel breakfast and Bahrain's Ritz Carlton. Tried making my own once but it didn't work out somehow...
Anyways, I've had breakfast @ Harrod's Terrace Bar before and I really like their eggs florentine. I became an eggs florentine person the last time I was here in London.

For our afternoon tea/late lunch we went to Brown's Hotel in Mayfair on Ablemarle/Albemarle (sp?) Street. If you'd like their "tea-tox" you need to order it at least 24hrs in advance. Tea-tox is their "detox" version of afternoon tea which is low-fat, low-calorie, low-sugar, low-carb. We ordered two tea-toxes and one normal one.. as you can imagine, we started eating more of the traditional, normal, full fat tea food than the detox one. Although, kudos to Brown's, their tea tox was GOOD! there was a nice selection of sandwiches, namely tuna, cucumber, and salmon on rye and brown breads. There were cucumber, carrot, and capsicum sticks served with hummus, and the desserts were the most creative of all. Jellies and mini tarts, and little cake slices but all healthy. They also bring two large, round cakes on a tray and serve you slices of those but we were too full. One of those was a Victoria sponge which looked fab. I love Victoria sponge. The traditional tea was also really goood. Nice sandwiches and mini scones. If I'm not mistaken, clotted cream tastes like butter... I had a hibiscus tea there which was very nice, and as you leave, the staff present you with tiny sachets which contain the dried tea leaves of the tea you had.

For dinner, we visited Via Condotti on Conduit Street.. it rhymes doesn't it? Via Condotti, the Italian restaurant is right opposite the Westbury Mayfair where Artisan is. Via Condotti, the actual street in Rome that the restaurant is named after, is one of my favorite places on Earth <3. The restaurant had such a warm and friendly feel to it. The walls are orange, the flooring wood, and each table has a little flower pot and candle. Their spaghetti pomodoro is phenomenal!

So that's it! ALSO, london-eating.com is amazing for making reservations! SEE FOR YOURSELF.
ciao. x

Plain Butter Cake

So there's this theory that I came up with a while back... it's actually quite simple to understand.. I find that a plain butter cake is akin to a white canvas.. There's so much you can do to a butter cake.. it's the base for everything. I find large, round butter cakes more of an outlet for creativity than cupcakes perhaps only because of their size difference.

Here are two things I did to a plain butter cake recently:

The first of the instances was last week when I realized that I had some whipping cream in the fridge that would go bad if I didn't use it quickly. So I made a plain butter cake, let it cool, and then decorated it. I hate waiting for cakes to cool down! They take so long and all the while you're impatiently waiting to get your hands on it.
So what I did was to tint the batter pink, bake it, and then when it cooled down I whipped up the whipping cream and spread it over the cake. I tried to make it look like a snowy expanse.. I then washed some berries, dried them, and placed them over the cake. After that, I grated some dark chocolate around the fruit and then sifted a little bit of icing sugar for an extra snowy effect. It looked like a winter wonderland! I realized that a little less icing sugar would have been better, appearance-wise. I had to store the cake in the fridge though, otherwise the cream would go bad- especially in our weather! However, storing the cake in the fridge made it hard.. That's an issue I need to resolve.

The second butter cake I made was yesterday. I love how quick it is to make these. At 3.30 I had decided I wanted to bake and by 4PM the cake was in the oven and the dishes were in the sink.

After the cake cooled down, I spread Nutella alllll over it.. afterwards I realized that perhaps the Nutella wasn't SUCH a good idea.. extra decadence wise, but everyone loved it! So I spread Nutella over the cake, and then placed a whole bunch of Malteser's in the centre along with chocolate chips and chopped pieces of dark chocolate. I wanted to use Flake but both of the supermarkets I checked with didn't have it in stock. Have they stopped making Flake? nooo.. :(

Oh, I also mixed some chocolate chips into the cake batter, but they all somehow sunk to the bottom.. Any ideas why...? :(


A fun activity with kids: bake a cake or cupcakes, apply the icing if you are, and then arrange bowls of jelly beans, chocolate chips, sprinkles, MnMs, maltesers, mini marshmallows, and the like.. and ask them to decorate!

I should probably add more pictures to my blog.. I really should actually.. I take the pictures and then don't upload them, or Blogger usually takes REALLY long to upload them.. *sigh* better do it, though.

Enjoy xx

Spending time in the kitchen.

So here are a few more things that I've been making in the kitchen.

I made a marble cake the other day which was absolutely fun! What you do is bake a normal cake and then divide it into three parts; leave one the way it is, tint one pink, and for the third part, you add a mixture of cocoa powder and milk to make it a chocolate flavour. You then add alternate tablespoons of the cake mixture to the tin and then at the end swirl a skewer through them gently to mix the colours. I find it takes a certain amount of talent to properly swirl. Otherwise- you'll end up with something that looks like it's a mix of pink or chocolate... an earthy colour... and not marbled cake. If I'm not mistaken marble cakes are also called Neopolitan cakes... so is that from Naples or Napoleon's era? The icing was a plain buttercream that was naturally yellow!

The day after that I decided to make jelly cakes, what you do is dip the cakes in jelly before it forms and then put it in the fridge. They look gorgeous when coated with desiccated coconut.

I took both these recipes from Australian Women's Weekly's "100 Classic Cakes", which is a very good book!

I've made two pastas the other day which turned out to be "classics" in my kitchen. They both don't have any sauce but instead are moistened by a combination of olive oil and balsamic vinegar coupled with some herbs. The best thing about pasta is that you can add anything you want. I added cherry tomatoes and capsicums and normal chopped Roma plum tomatoes. I always have to start with a base of onion and garlic in my pastas anyways.

Ciao
xx

The Saucier's Apprentice

I finally finished reading "The Saucier's Apprentice" by Bob Spitz. I bought the book a few months ago from Kinokuniya and started reading it a couple of weeks ago. The book is a travelogue about a guy who travels through France and Italy visiting various cooking schools. They're all about his experiences and the book is scattered with some really good recipes I can't wait to try. Sauces, pastas, and entrees. I love cooking with tomato. That's a fact. And tomato is a staple in Italian cooking and also French.

More than half of the book is set in France. After that, the author travels to Italy. I personally prefer the Italian parts of the book, but I guess that's only because perhaps I can relate to that more since I've been there. Or because I'm more accustomed to Italian food than French food.

It's a good book to read especially if you want to see the differences there are in "cooking schools".. the variety of forms they come in, from those that are simply demonstrations to one-on-one sessions, to those in peoples' homes to those which take place in posh restaurant kitchens.

Reading the book made me want to travel all over France and Italy. Taking my own time, a nice slow pace, exploring, and doing whatever I feel like spontaneously..


Ciao..
S.E.

Kitchen Shelving!

I got this random idea a few days back to move a shelf we have in the kitchen to a more convenient location. I then rushed to IKEA and bought all kinds of jars and tins and then labelled each with "Flour" "Icing Sugar" and so on and so forth! Also filled tiny jars with spices!

Now I have easy access to what I use most.. This is something that should have been done longgg ago...

At least I didn't color code the ingredients, as I have a tendency to do with everything else.

CIAO
XX

So these are some of my favorite cookbooks! You can tell from the titles how yummy they are! I can't cook without the first two.

Lots of Updates!

So there is a lot that I need to write about in the world of cooking!

The chocolate cooking class that I took, the pink layered cake that I baked, the lemon cake I made, the hokkien noodles I stirfryed for dinner one night, the soufflé I made tonight, the numerous cooking shows I've been watching, and the tea party I threw for my really good friend!

The Chocoladdict cooking class was the second cooking class that I took at L'atelier des Chefs Dubai. We made cookies, cupcakes, a fondant, and a soufflé. My favorite two recipes of the morning were the soufflé and the fondant. The fondant was self saucing in the centre and the soufflé has to be the world's best I have ever tried (which I recreated today!). I never knew that soufflé doesn't require flour as such. Apart from very little cornflour, there were no grains at all in the soufflé. We placed raspberries in the center of each ramekin and this added a lovely flavor to the entire dessert as the sweet chocolateyness of the dessert was broken up by the sourness of the raspberries.

When I recreated making the soufflés tonight, I made them in slightly smaller ramekins and ended up with six in total. I felt that the consistency of my pre-baked soufflé was slightly runny and was thus concerned about how the final result would be. I however left the soufflés in the oven for a couple of more seconds than necessary and it thus became alright. The only issue I have with making soufflés is that it has to be served immediately. After leaving it out for a few minutes, it tends to make a dent within itself and deflate. I wonder whether making the entire thing beforehand and then just popping it in the oven right before it needs to be served would be alright....

Next up is my "lovely" pink layered cake. I wanted to make a slightly more complex, professional cake so I decided to bake a three tiered plain butter cake. All that worked out perfectly. I wasn't in the mood to make the icing/fondant so instead decided to make a pale pink buttercream. I ended up added a lot more red icing than necessary so it turned into a darker pink than I intended it to- in fact it ended up looking like barbie pink. Anyways, I was carefully using an icing knife and coating the cake when my trusty assistant :) decided to take the entire bowl of buttercream and pour it all over the cake. I watched in horror as the buttercream became soggy and dripped all over the cake, and had flashbacks of the pink goo the characters were after in the Power Rangers movie I used to be addicted to. Anyways, I tried to salvage the cake by removing the excess however it looked better once it dried slightly than it did initially. I ended up adding little pink cake decoration hearts and pink flower shaped icing to the top of the cake.. and it looked like a birthday cake for a five year old girl who's into ballet. BUT, the important thing is whether it tasted good, WHICH IT DID! So, looks can be deceiving, as always.

Last Sunday I decided to make something quick and easy for dinner so instead of going for the usual easy solution: pasta, I decided to make Asian noodles instead. The recipe I used was from Australian Women's Weekly Vegetarian Stir Fry. I've made this before and it was a big hit so I decided to go for it again. However this time, hokkien noodles weren't available in the supermarket and so I had to go for Pad Thai. Also, I accidentally ended up with creamy instead of chunky peanut butter. It tasted nice but for some reason not as spicy as last time, which was a bummer since I'm a junky for anything beyond spicy.

The Food Network and BBC Lifestyle have both been showing some very interesting cooking shows. There was one I watched last night, can't remember the name, but it was about this guy who sets out to deviate from the usual picnic menu and come up with other picnic staples. He visits random people and cooks with them however the dish that I liked best was his own where he scooped out the center of a bread loaf and filled it with a jar of homemade mayonnaise, sticks of julienned carrots, capsicum, celery etc... and other vegetables. That loaf of bread thus ended up becoming an edible picnic hamper. Another interesting show is "Come Dine with me", where people take turns in throwing dinner parties for one another. "The Restaurant" was one more

interesting shows where eight pairs of people compete for the top spot by each opening their own little restaurant for a period of time.

The lemon cake I made was also nice as it was a plain cake which I then spread with a lemon juice/sugar mixture while it was still hot. The liquid seeps into the cake and flavors it wonderfully!

Well last thing I need to discuss is obviously the best! -- which is the tea party I threw for my friend's birthday. I made it very feminine. The tablecloth was white with random floral embroidery in pale pink, green and yellow. I threw a baby pink chiffon cloth around the center where I arranged flowers in a vase as the centerpiece. The flowers were baby pink and white roses, chrysanthemums, and carnations. I filled the rectangular vase with pebbles and poured water halfway up. I trimmed off the stems of the flowers and so when they were placed in the vase they looked as though they were suspended in mid air. What held them there was the close proximity of each flower to the other. I then took little silver arabic tea glasses and filled them with jellybeans and marshmallows. The crockery was baby pink and white and the cutlery was silver. As drinks I served water, and fanta! The orange color of the fanta added a really nice bright contrast to the table. There were also five thick cream colored candles I scattered across the table. Each place setting had its own white rose, the birthday girl however got a bright pink one! The plates also held one cupcake each, the birthday girl's cupcake was in a special "birthday princess" case with a crown on a toothpick sticking out of it. The chairs had swaths of chiffon wrapped around them with a rose poking out of the knot formed.

The menu was as follows: vegetable filled puff pastry, Lebanese inspired pickled chicken rolls, chocolate buttercream and vanilla cupcakes, plain floral shaped biscuits, chocolate mousse served in champagne flutes, and a coconut and lemon cake.

I hope I can upload pictures! They never work for some reason!

Vanilla Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream

So today I decided to bake, and I pulled out my Magnolia Bakery cookbook that's been lying patiently on my shelf waiting for me to pick it up. All the cupcakes I make taste fresh and tangy and the icing turns out thin and hard. Today, I wanted to try something that was more "frosting" than icing, so more creamy, less hard, and generally more chewy.

I made plain vanilla cupcakes because I wanted to start with something neutral and I went for chocolate frosting to add a bit of contrast. What I found interesting about these cupcakes as opposed to the ones I usually make is that these required normal, granulated sugar, whereas all the other cupcakes I've baked are made with caster sugar. The recipe was supposed to make two dozen cupcakes but I ended up with thirty. The first batch also took double the time to bake for some reason, I think I did not have it on the right leveled tray in the oven.

Anyways the frosting was a LOT of fun to make and coating the cupcakes was an especially fun business that required a lot of finger licking and subsequent hand-washing!

Mouth Watering Macaroons Cooking Class at L'Atelier Des Chefs Dubai

So ever since I saw an ad in TimeOut Dubai about L'Atelier Des Chefs Dubai, I've been wanting to take a cooking class there.

L'Atelier Des Chefs Dubai is located in Le Meredien near Dubai International Airport. The kitchen is a very airy and bright place that overlooks the garden and courtyard. They have an amazing variety of classes and what's best is that their classes are one off and run from half an hour to a few hours. More info can be found on their website: http://www.atelierdeschefsdubai.com/

The macaroons class is what instantly took to my fancy as I love EATING macaroons and the planned recipes looked scrumptious. I also made macaroons once and although it tasted good, the shape and texture weren't really great. I learnt some very interesting tips at the class when it comes to making macaroons themselves and also when it comes to making sauces and fillings. Everything is very clean and organized at the kitchen everyone gets a sufficient chance at contributing to final dish.

I can't wait to make these macaroons myself now after taking the class!

Here is a picture!

A Dinner Party

So my grandfather was visiting us here in Dubai for about two weeks and as is my tradition whenever he visits, I throw a small, intimate dinner party for him. Just for us and our closest family/friends. This time I had the dinner party the night before he left as I had just finished exams the day before that!

As I had been so busy with exams, I didn't have a chance to "pre-plan" the theme of the night. What the flowers would be like, what the table setting would be like, and what ambience I would create.

What I ended up doing the morning of the dinner was stand in front of the dinner table and visualize the crockery and cutlery we have and see how I can mix and match. What I ended up doing was more creative than any other table setting I have previously done. I decided to label the theme "outdoor bazaar" after I was done with it. Everything was mismatched. I used plain red dinner plates from IKEA and placed traditional turquoise ceramic bowls from Turkey as soup bowls. I then folded each cloth napkin in a different way. I also added turquoise coasters from Turkey and placed Moroccan tea glasses on them- these were the drinking glasses for juice. For water, I picked up a variety of different gold glasses and arranged them at each place setting. The placemat was thatched and bronze and the table cloth was ivory net with gold trimmings. I placed a red table runner through the middle and made the centerpiece a beautiful glass mosaic tray from Pakistan. I also placed outdoor IKEA lanterns on the table and arranged potted plants around the plates.

I found various knick knacks around the house, like old vintage perfume bottles and a waistcoat pocket and added them to create the ambience of antiques in a bazaar. The smell was represented by the variety in the food and the sound of the bazaar was more than reminiscent by the chatter on the table and the sounds of cutlery hitting crockery.

So here's the menu: my grandfather asked me to keep it simple so I tried to find some quick recipes to make.

Appetizers:

Fresh tomato and red onion salsa with Doritos!

Mozzarella and basil quesadilla wedges

(both from "500 appetisers" by PAGEONE)

Mini zucchini frittatas

(from "Party Food" by Australian Women's Weekly)

Soup:

Roasted vegetable soup

(from "Soups and Breads" by FamilyCircle)

Main Course:

Beef and eggplant bake with polenta crust

(from "Crumbles and Bakes" by Australian Women's Weekly)

Dessert:

Chocolate self saucing pudding- served with Vanilla Icecream!

(from "Old Fashioned Desserts" by Australian Women's Weekly)

The dessert is best served EXTREMELY hot!

And what I ended up doing with the fritattas was place them in a normal sized muffin tray. If you make them in mini tins you end up with 48. We didn't need that many as we were very few at dinner so I ended up making one batch of minis (so 12) and two batches of normal sized ones (so 24). The minis make for adorable hors d'oeuvres at parties as they are extremely bite-sized and delicious! Plus, they're very easy to make!

Unfortunately I do not have proper pictures of the food as I was rushing around to serve it and plate it and all that. But I DO have a picture of the table when it was halfway done.

-

Spontaneous Euphoria

xx