There's always room for Dessert!

Especially when you don't even bother to eat dinner. In second year of uni my housemates and I started our own traditional way of celebrating the holidays, with a dessert party. Yep, that's right, a dessert party. It's when you replace dinner with dessert. And a lot of desserts, might I add. There are five of us that live in the house, and we each make our own special dessert for the house. So a couple weeks ago we had our third annual dessert party, which we all agreed was our most successful yet. We had been looking forward to it all semester. I had known for months what I would be making because I found the recipe in the Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey cookbook that I received for my birthday. I made, wait for it.... chocolate soup with cinnamon toasted croutons. In terms of rich desserts, this takes the cake. It's basically melted chocolate and caramel. YUM. We actually ended up with such a great variety of tastes, textures and dishes it was fantastic! And of course, it was accompanied by a viewing of Love Actually (also tradition). So check out our night of indulgence, and try not to drool all over your keyboard...

Baked apples stuffed with cranberries, nuts, honey & spice

Can`t tell from the pictures but they`re actually massive. When you break into them, the inside spills out and the apple is super soft.

Chocolate soup with cinnamon toasted croutons

A little spoon of vanilla ice cream and a cinnamon sugar rim perfects the dish

 The croutons - made from pound cake

 torta rogel aka milhojas - an Argentian dessert

Thin slices of puff pastry layered with dulce de leche

What my housemate calls `Sex in a pan`

Layers of cream, chocolate pudding and cream cheese atop a buttery walnut crust

And to finish off the night - Butter Rum Ripple

(or what I called butterber)

Think you`ll make this your family`s tradition too

Escape from the Studio

I spend so much of my time in the studio, it's like my second home. Most of the fine art students basically live there. But outside of the studio, we never do anything together as a group so this holiday I decided to host a BFA potluck at my place. Last week we had about 17 people over at my house, accompanied by an array of hot and cold dishes. We ended up with such a delicious variety it proved quite successful in the end. I made appetizers: Vietnamese spring rolls with peanut sauce, and goat cheese & honey toasts. It's so nice being able to spend time together outside of the studio, not covered in ink and oil paints, and talk about something other than our studio work... though we always end up talking about it anyways. And always a plus of hosting potlucks: the leftovers! We had such an overload of cheese; I have actually eaten an unhealthy amount of brie in the last week.

Goats Cheese & Honey Toasts

I'm not going to write an actual recipe, because it's basically all there in the title (I don't know what they're actually called, they probably have some french name)

Take a french baguette (or any type of loaf you like) and slice it widthways. Align them on a baking tray and drizzle with olive oil. Broil them for 1-3 minutes, and take them out, flip them over and do the same thing again. They should be nice and crisp now. Spread each with about 1 tsp of honey, followed by your desired amount of goats cheese. Then top them off with a little more honey. Bake them at 350F for a few minutes (5-10), just until the cheese is starting to melt. Serve immediately.

Vietnamese Spring Rolls

Cabbage with carrot and apple

Flatbread

Lionhead Meatballs

Tortellini

Sweet Potato Pie - first time I've had this!!



No-bake Berry Cheesecake

Wine, Cheese & Chocolate - could there be a better combination?

For my housemate's 21st birthday she decided to have a wine, cheese and chocolate party. Is that not the absolute best theme for a party ever?! It's BRILLIANT! Everyone brought chocolates, cakes and cheeses, and wine of course, and we ended up with a huge selection of treats. I made peanut butter chocolate truffles and the birthday girl prepared lots of toasts with cheese and honey. The party was complete with a chocolate fondue. It was just divine, the house was overflowing with the best eats.

So many extravagant truffles, Godiva and french chocolates everywhere. We literally ate and drank for hours. I managed to eat far too much of everything, and by the end of the night was feeling extremely ill. I couldn't even look at cheese or chocolate the next day without wanting to be sick. Who ever thought there could be such a thing as too much chocolate?! I am sorry stomach. Regardless of the overload, the night was nothing short of fabulous, and I can't wait to have another party with the same theme. It really is the best.

Party of Five

I am not the only one of my friends that is obsessed with food. All my housemates are, and many of my other friends. This leads to a lot of events that revolve around food (and is the reason for the next few posts). My class circle of friends and I like to take turns hosting dinner parties. We had our first one this semester a couple weeks ago. My friend and I did the cooking at my house and our three girlfriends joined us at my house. Here is the menu (random but delicious):

Crackers baked with goat cheese and honey - topped with dried cranberries and maple cashews
Butternut squash risotto
Barbequed chicken with rosemary and lemon
Coconut tapioca with melon
Grape pie

I have to say the butternut squash risotto was my favourite. My friend made it, and she baked the squash, then softened it and mixed it into the risotto while it cooked. So nice. Another friend of mine who came early to help cooking made grape pie. I had never heard of anyone doing this before and was therefore slightly skeptical. But it actually tasted pretty good! I think we covered quite a few nations with this menu - France, Italy, America and China. An evening filled with great (though very random) food, great friends and plenty of wine. I just love dinner parties.

Hallelujah!

Well you guys must have been crossing your fingers (thank you!) because the next day after my last post, my cord arrived! WAHOO! Ebay finally pulled through! It is so nice to be living in the 21st century again, I have really missed it (and studying was getting way too difficult). So now I am quite behind on my posts, I have so many pictures from the past couple weeks! I'll start by finishing up my autumn posts with this pumpkin bread I made a while ago. I used a recipe from my favourite foodblogger Emily @ Visions of Sugarplum. This is where I used the rest of that can of pumpkin from my pumpkin cookies. I've never made a pumpkin loaf before but it was really nice!

Pumpkin Loaf Recipe: Sugarplum

So I plan on posting as much as possible now, to catch up on my photos. AND can I just acknowledge that today is December 1st, and December means Christmas and Christmas means amazing holiday foods and treats! It also means tons of time to blog because tomorrow is my last day of class (hurrah!). So prepare yourselves to be bombarded with pictures of Christmasy foods - ready set GO