The first place my mind goes to . . . the dessert!

In quiet moments alone in the car, under the shower or sipping on a coffee my thoughts drift to the possibilities, the seasonal availability of produce, the likes & dislikes of the intended recipients.

This is a creative & expressive process for me and I probably enjoy it more than the actual cooking. I just love anticipating how it will look & how it will taste!

Pears & pastry with ginger chocolate and honeycomb/passionfruit ice-cream or Donna’s Dessert 4

1. Fresh pears, peeled cored & halved – gently poach in a sweet syrup & serve some of the syrup with the pear( For my syrup I used low GI sugar, spice mix from pastry twists-below, dash of red wine, splash of masala, juice of a lemon)

        2. Chopped glace ginger mixed with melted dark chocolate & set into small free forms

      3.  Sweet pastry twists – brush strips of puff pastry with a little butter, sprinkle with spice mix(cinnamon, ginger,cardamom, all-spice) & panella. place crushed pinenuts & pistachios on pastry &     then twist. Place on lined baking sheet and again brush with just a little butter & sprinkle with sugar & spice.

     4. Homemade ice-cream – vanilla, cream, yoghurt, fresh passionfruit & crushed chocolate honeycomb

or

Good quality commercial vanilla ice-cream

Assemble all 4 components on a large plate & encourage eaters to use pastry to mop up pear juices & melting ice-cream

The birthday cake was made by the very lovely Alex, partner of my very talented musician/artist brother. It is a dark chocolate(she used a block of 70%cocoa lindt)and pumpkin cake.

Perfect with coffee and perfect for post party late night snacks for this happy but tired cook. I await the recipe & will include on my next post.