FoodPress

Stephen and I have finally had a chance to breathe a little, now that recruitment is over for our respective Greek organizations. This school year promises to be busier than usual; all the senior year festivities, graduation audits, and final projects have already begun to dominate my time. (And I’ve only been going to class for two weeks!) It’s my last school year at UCLA and I have high expectations for myself.

On the second day of Tartmas, my true love gave to me, two chocolate hazelnut ricotta tarts, one lemon tart, and a partridge in a pear tree. This is yet another one of those delicious desserts that I’ve put off blogging. Like the lemon tart I made for the first day of Tartmas, this chocolate hazelnut ricotta tart was originally for the family Christmas party I had with a group of my close friends.

So it’s December and I’m so happy to be back to making muffins. After taking a month’s hiatus from Muffin Mondays I realized that I missed having moist, freshly baked muffins in my home every week. I also realized that while I decided to take a break for the month of November, that’s when An decided to assign the most deliciously decadent muffins after a few weeks of healthy choices. However, the decadence continues for the month of December.

I don’t know about you, but for me the idea of being a mum has always been synonymous with images of angelic flour-splattered children standing on chairs in the kitchen next to an apron-clad serene-looking woman, joyfully stirring cake mixture before licking the spoon. Well, Finn is too young to help out at the moment and I am anything but serene, but I’ve been working on getting my bake-on. For me, mum’s bake. And to date, I’ve been a miserable failure on that front. So, time to rectify…

Ahhh, there are as many ways to make a mousse as there are stars in the galaxy … trust me, I should know. Ex-astrophysicist who makes lots of mousse. Qualified! If we were talking full-on wicked desserts, I’d be getting on my soapbox and ranting ad-nauseum about authenticity, the abomination I consider to be the adding of cream, and which chocolates marry well with various flavouring options. Actually, that last one isn’t such a bad idea…