Hey dudes! Happy day after Christmas! hopefully everyone’s Christmas days were awesome, and not at all stress filled, as they have a tendency to be. After solemnly swearing last year that we would never host a Christmas event again, Ben and I found ourselves hosting Christmas at our place this year. How did THAT happen? It seems that the practice we got last year had us in good stead for this year though, and we managed to churn out some garlic prawns, roast lamb with potatoes, vegies, trifle, etc with a minimum of stress. Thank Christ. We even managed to enjoy our lunch, and scored some help from Ben’s mum with the washing up afterwards, so we weren’t up until 11pm doing tedious kitchen chores like we were last year. All in all, a success. I didn’t get any pictures of the festivities, apart from one of the trifle (and lets face it – you see one trifle, you’ve seen them all), so I’ve decided to bang on about the birthday cake I made for Biff earlier this month.
Biff turned 28 you see, and to mark the occasion, he decided to regress to his childhood, and go to the park to eat ice creams. He lives such a wild life. Just out of the blue, and completely unrelated to Biff’s birthday celebrations, I purchased an ice cream maker recently, and decided it would have its maiden run making some ice cream for the birthday festivities. I found a recipe for mascarpone ice cream in the Good Living section of the Sydney Morning Herald, and it looked so bloated and decadent I just had to try it. I can highly recommend making it too, especially if you are new to making ice cream, because there is no need to make a custard (which I find extremely fiddly, and so vexing if I get it wrong!), and it tastes pretty awesome.
My ice cream was an accompaniment to the “cake” I made, which I think is actually more of a flan or a slice… or a torte, as the recipe refers to it as. It’s a VERY easy recipe to make, and it looks rather impressive… I give you STRAWBERRY ALMOND TORTE!
Oooph! Just look at all of those little strawberries, all lined up like Stonehenge… or penguins at a meeting on an ice berg. Or just strawberries on top of some mascarpone spread over an almondy cakey base. Super easy, which really appeals to the lazy arse in me. If you too would like to emulate the super easy glory, read on…
