feast from the heart.

one thing my family enjoys the most is cooking.
i gotta say we are one obsessed family.
so much so, we argue about how to cook or prepare something a certain way.

so when the opportunity arises, we like to hold small dinner parties.
like today, we invited my mom's side over for a "small" dinner.
and on such occasions,
our love for food (insanity) really shows.
for example,
the nutty asparagus which was a steal in the market today was assigned to me to prepare.
there was a huge debate between us and we finally decided on wrapping it with prosciutto WITHOUT baking it together with the asparagus. (i won. =) )


i have finally come to the conclusion that in order for dinner parties preparations to go well in my family,
each person should be assigned to a course
and focus on it alone.
which means no butting in into another person's course. (a rule created by my dad)

and naturally, im in charge of dessert.

i got to admit,
today's dessert was accidental.
for i had initally planned to use up my salted caramel left over from my fleur de sel marcarons to make a caramel banana chocolate tart.

the planned changed when my tart base got BURNT.
yes burnt.
the oven timer did not go off (either that or i did not hear it over the rattling of the kitchen aid)

so i gathered my brain juices and came up with this.


which is a simple chocolate mousse cake.
and the base is made up of the unburnt bits of the chocolate tart base, crushed up and mixed with melted butter. (sort of like a cheesecake biscuit base)
and the chocolate mousse recipe is from Godiva.

i decorated the cake by pipping mousse florets and topping it off with raw almonds as well as some dark chocolate coated ones, sprinkling of cocoa powder and chocolate shards and crushed almonds along the side of the cake.



oh and heres my mom's homemade bread. she insisted i put up somewhere on the internet.
its sundried tomato and parmesan.
oh dont you just love homemade bread fresh from the oven. (in this case the bread-machine)

i wonder how our yearly christmas affair will turn out this year.
=0