Drinkies and Petit Fours

We had drinkies with the neighbours on Friday, for which I offered to bring something dessert-ish for us all to nibble on. And just to make sure that nothing goes simply the host is also wheat and dairy intolerant, not the easiest person to make a dessert for. I struck upon an idea to make petit fours that way avoiding baking which is of course so often laden with butter and flour.

I made Caramel Custard Squares from Good Housekeeping’s, Step-by-Step Cook Book. Which were fine but not a recipe I would particularly recommend, just not enough wow factor for the faff that went into making them. To accompany the squares I went a bit nostalgic and decided to make every 7-year-olds favourite, peppermint creams. I also thought it would be a good idea to experiment with different flavours and recruited my lovely fiancé to join in.



Lovely fiance's 'builder's grout'

In a matter of minutes, we had beautiful peppermint creams rolled in very dark chocolate shavings to make them a bit more adult-friendly. We did however also have a kitchen-full of various bowls of creamy paste in a myriad of colours including something that looked like builders grout and something yellow with crunchy bits in. Maybe we had been sampling a bit too much of the ridiculously sweet mixture but our flavours of choice were: limoncello (crunchy – fiancé had fun trying to reduce it down to improve the texture), crème de mures (bloody nice actually), elderberry vodka (made no difference apart from making it runny).

Needless to say only the non-embarassing ones (peppermint choc and crème de mures) ended up being offered to the neighbours and they were all finished which is a good sign, though we did get through a truly impressive amount of wine and rum so judgement may have been impaired.

Lesson of the day: cooking with fiancé dearest is huge amounts of fun, and better yet I have no fear of being rivalled for the role of cook in the relationship!