Dinner party

It has been a total of 15 days since I last posted something so I have decided to have a posting marathon today! A few weekends ago now, it was my flatmates birthday so instead of doing the normal party thing we decided to be all grown up and have a proper dinner party (well we attempted 2...) It was all very nice, there was lots of candles, nibbles and delicious dessert wine. Below are a few things I made :)

Tiramisu (on a stick)

Ingredients

1 strong short espresso (or 2 Tbsp strong coffee)

6 sponge fingers (aka savordi biscuits)

3/4 C cream

1 tsp vanilla essence

1/3 C icing sugar

1 1/2 C storebrought custard (I think it would be fine if you made your own instead)

1/2 C mascarpone
2-3 Tbsp cocoa

Instructions

1. Place the sponge fingers in a shallow dish and spoon enough coffee over the them so it just soaks through

2. Whip cream, vanilla essence and icing sugar until stiff but glossy and fold it into 1 C of the custard

3. In another bowl, whisk the mascarpone with 1 tsp coffee then whisk in the remaining 1/2 C custard

4. Arrange 12 paper/plastic cups on the bench. Dust inside the base of each with some cocoa. Use teaspoons to drop dollops of the cream mixture and mascarpone mixture into the cups. Crumble in some coffee-soaked sponge fingers here and there, adding another dusting of cocoa to each one about half-way through. When cups are about 2/3 full smooth the top of the mixture and add a last dusting of cocoa.

5. Seal the top of each cup tightly with foil. Cut a small slit in the middle of each piece of foil and slide a wooden iceblock stick through it and 2/3 of the way into the tiramisu mixture. Freeze overnight

6. 20-30 minutes before serving put individual tiramisu's in the fridge, this is so the mixture is not rock solid. To get them out of the cups, dunk each cup into a bowel of hot water for a couple of seconds then they pull out easier!

Chocolate pistachio fudge

Ingredients

375g of dark chocolate
390g can condensed milk

30g butter

pinch salt

1 C unsalted pistachios (shells removed)

Instructions

1. Put first 4 ingredients in a saucepan and stir over a low heat until melted and well combined

2. Put pistachios in a bag and crush with a rolling pin. Add pistachios to the chocolate mixture and stir well.

3. Pour the mixture into a 20cm square baking paper lined tin and smooth out. Allow the fudge to cool then refrigerate before cutting into pieces.