December 3 Meal: Shaun's Birthday Party

The night before Shaun's 26th birthday we had friends over for a pizza-making party and dessert.  Shaun chose two desserts from Bon Appetit for the party: Chocolate, Almond, and Raspberry Tart and Mini Gingerbread Cakes with Cream Cheese Frosting.  On his actual birthday I made a Reese's cheesecake, his favorite.

Chocolate, Almond, and Raspberry Tart

This is an easy barely-bake tart that looks a lot more complicated that it is.  The crust is just crushed chocolate wafer cookies and butter.  I was expecting to find chocolate Nilla wafers at the store... they used to have those, didn't they?  They weren't there, so I got chocolate animal cookies.  The crust is baked for 15 minutes.  The topping is almond paste and a chocolate ganache.  The almond paste is very hard to spread out, so I heated it a bit.  That made it a little bit easier, but it still didn't spread out smoothly.  The ganache went on top of the almond paste.  Then arrange the raspberries around the tart and top with a glaze of raspberry jam and cherry kirsch and some toasted sliced almonds.  To make sure I just got the almonds along the edge I placed a small paper plate in the middle of the tart and sprinkled the almonds around.  The outcome is quite delicious and not too heavy.

Yumminess: 10 out of 10 

Mini Gingerbread Cakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

The only things better than cupcakes are mini cupcakes.  These little cakes are made with flour, baking powder, ground cinnamon and ginger, salt, dark brown sugar, butter, eggs, molasses, and plain yogurt.  The mini cupcake pans just happened to be on sale at Harris Teeter, so I lucked out.  They are baked for about 14 minutes.  The frosting is just cream cheese, powdered sugar, and butter.  Each cupcake is topped with either candied ginger or sliced kumquat.  Kumquats are a super-tart little orange citrus fruit and add a nice bite to the cakes.  Yum!

Yumminess: 10 out of 10