Looking back at Xmas, with recipe photos to share

Tomorrow will be New Years Eve, and we’ll be looking forward to a new year. Hopefully, one with more growth and improvement in all areas of our lives. But let’s take one last little look at Xmas.

Christmas Day menu

• Turkey “star” balls – recipe here and scroll down
• Cranberry sauce – recipe here
• Brown mushrooms stuffed with cream cheese
• Coleslaw
• Chocolate mousse with berries and whipped cream

It was so tasty I’m going to make it all over again for New Year’s Eve! And since I’ll then have photos of the mushrooms, I’ll have to post that recipe later.

But one thing I did for you was to take photos as I made the mousse. So I’ll recap the recipe from this post here with pics.

The chocolate mousse recipe (again)

Serves 4-6.

• 120g (4 oz) dark chocolate, preferably 70% cocoa. I used De Spa sugar free.
• 4 eggs
• ¾ cup of softly whipped cream
• Optional – 1-2 Tbs of your favourite liqueur (orange is especially good, but also experiment with butterscotch, Irish cream, hazelnut or whatever you fancy really)

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler, or find a bowl that will fit neatly over a pot. Make sure the bowl is completely dry. If any steam or liquid gets into the chocolate once it has started to melt, it will seize up into hard chunks that can’t be melted. Break the chocolate into squares and put it in the bowl. Bring water to the boil in the pot, then remove from the heat and place the bowl over the pot.

Leave for a few minutes, stirring occasionally with a dry spoon, until the chocolate melts.

Meanwhile, I prep the other ingredients. Separate the eggs, putting the yolks in a small bowl and the whites in a large bowl. Measure your alcohol, if using, into a shooter glass or similar.

Whisk the egg whites until stiff but not dry.

If you want to make the version with the cream, folded in, whip it up now.

When the chocolate is melted, lift the bowl off the pot of water and beat in the egg yolks until smooth. Add the alcohol and beat again.

Fold in a large spoonful or two of the egg whites to loosen it.

Then add the chocolate mix into the egg white bowl and gently fold in.

Then fold through the whipped cream. (If you prefer, you can leave the cream out of the mousse, and just serve it on the side, but I like it this way.)

Spoon the mousse into a serving bowl, or 4-6 small bowls or fancy glasses, and refrigerate for at least an hour.

Serve with berries and extra whipped cream. Sorry, I forgot to take a photo later on when it was all berried up!

Miraculously, there was a little bit left over, so @andysantics48 could taste it when she picked us up the next day. So she can vouch for the fact that this seriously good mousse!

Boxing Day menu

I made another batch of avocado stuffed eggs (recipe here) and this time did pipe the mix in with a piping bag made from a snaplok bag with the corner cut off. They look heaps better, don’t they! And this was before any further garnishing.

This is my platter of low carb treats – sugar free gingerbread, macadamia blueberry mini muffins and choc brownie stars. Before I’d even taken the photo, half of one of the brownies was snaffled up!

And here are the Xmas cake mini muffins with some choc covered marzipan to go with them.

And then there was everybody else’s contributions, which I didn’t take photos of, or I would have been there all day.

Thanks for reading

Top pic from Pixabay, rest by me.

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