for no reason but extra taste

With our annual summer party looming at the horizon, we're starting to get even more creative in the kitchen than usual. Therefore, I have nothing really substantial to post but a whole lot of pictures of half-successful experiments.

But let's start at the beginning:



Constantly on the search of some new dessert for the party that will survive both several hours on display as well as our quite discerning guests, we came up with the idea of 'truffle pots', as a simplified version of my wife's banana cake. So basically, we gathered up all shotglasses in the household, and some espresso cups on top, dropped some diced fruits in each and topped it with a ganache of (hopefully) complementing chocolate.



Look & handling turned out close to perfect for the occasion, but the tastes and textures still need a lot of tweaking. Especially disappointing were the rasberries, which surprisingly were completely overwhelmed by the dark chocolate ganache they were covered with.



Next was an attempt at making cigar 'börek' myself, a turkish specialty made of yufka (or filo) dough sheets and a filling of goat cheese, parsley and lemon juice. The pictured filling was pitch perfect and a real treat, but I had attempted to make the dough myself, and it was awful. Just... awful. I still feel like wailing when I think of the wasted food.

But I definitely have to note down the filling, for it was really good. I mean, it had butter for no reason but extra taste in it, how bad can it be? Julia Child would have loved this.



My wife made marbled muffins today, also an experiment. And those turned out flawlessly. I so love her, she saved my day.

And apart from that, tomorrow is another day, and I'll have quite some more things to try. We'll see how those turn out.