Desserts

I have a rather large sweet tooth. I love candy, cookies, ice cream (lactose free!), cakes, and probably anything else that falls into the desserts category that I can digest.

I have a few Donna Hay cook books and she is great at doing food in a simple way. I have made her chocolate mousse dish lots and lots of times and have refined it along the way.

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What's interesting is that the recipe on the linked page is even a bit different from what's in her cookbook.

Here's my recipe in two parts, since I can't eat cream I make my own!

"Cream" - 1 mashed banana + 1 egg white (stiffly beaten) + 1 tsp white sugar.

Beat the egg, add the already mashed (I do this in a blender to get all of the chunks out), add the sugar and blend it together until well mixed. 

Chocolate Mousse - 1 C "cream" (I use all of what I make from the banana mix) +     ~125g dark chocolate + 2 egg yolks + ~30g butter + however much vanilla you like

Heat the 'cream' until it's starting to stream (stirring so it doesn't burn to the bottom), stir in the butter and yolk, remove from heat and stir in the chocolate and vanilla until it's well combined. Chill the mixture in a metal bowl for as long as you can wait - an hour is good. Blend with an electric mixer just before serving.

Much appreciated electric mixer

Cream that I can get, warming up on the stove

Chopped up dark chocolate to mix in

Mixing it all together

In my excited state I forgot to take a picture before we ate it. Last night we dug in a bit too soon and there were parts that were more frozen than others - it was still very yummy. It kind of looked like what Donna Hay has on her website (or the first picture in this post) but much darker because of the darker chocolate we used.

TV Guilty Pleasures: The Summer Edition

While the fall and winter are full of mind numbing TV shows to waste way too much of my time, the summer doesn't offer quite the same spread. But I've managed to find a few shows to pass the time, whether it be downtime in Labrador, or lazy mornings of unemployment.

I started watching Pretty Little Liars (season 1) earlier in the year and then I wasn't sure what was going on with Season 2 until I stumbled upon updates about the show in mid-June. Just in time to have time on my hands since classes were over. So I'm back on the PLL train and some parts of the show are just terrible, but I can't seem to stop watching.

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Another show is True Blood. I watched Seasons 1 and 2 straight through, but it seemed I was too busy impatient to wait each week for a new episode to come out, or perhaps it was because I was disappointed with season 2 and was hesitant to start 3. But again, with too much time on my hands I resort to TV and I gave True Blood another chance. I watched Season 3 way too quickly and was onto the current Season (4), where I'm now one of those people excited for each week where there's a new episode.

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And finally, the last of my summer's TV guilty pleasures is The Glee Project. I didn't really know about this show until half way through. And I'm not usually a huge fan of singing/dancing competition shows I was roped in with it being about Glee. This show wrapped up this week with a modest 10 episodes. But with Glee starting again pretty soon you don't have to worry about me going through any sort of musical high school withdrawal. And who knows? Maybe I'll get a teaching gig at a school where singing and dancing in the hallways is embraced and promoted?

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So I know I'm not the only one with TV guilty pleasures, so please validate my sharing by commenting with YOUR summer TV shows :)