Mothers Day Desserts

9 people have just unloaded out of my tiny apartment. I was the host of mothers day dinner tonight– providing the space and in charge of desserts. My two nans turned up as well so we had a full house as we crowded around the makeshift dining table on the communal first floor. My middle sister was cooking the food. She turned up with a slow cooker, a few pans, meat and vegetables. For the past couple of days I’ve been planning the desserts.

I actually started designing the main dessert a few weeks ago. I was working on an incredibly interesting, but also frustrating, essay on Vietnamese national identity and the celebratory banh chung. So while looking for many ways to procrastinate I designed a dessert. I bought half sphere silicon moulds a while ago, and I’ve been looking for an excuse to use them ever since.

This was the original design. A chocolate shell filled with chocolate mousse, chocolate ganache, and a honey comb and choc biscuit base. I would have loved to have topped it with gold leaf as well, but I didn’t get a chance to buy any. Instead I changed a few things. I made a hollow teardrop shaped chocolate pipe in the centre of the shell (teardrops were easier than cylinders). This was surrounded with mousse and then ganache. I filled the pipe with a raspberry coulis that after a bit too much reduction resembled more of a raspberry jam. Then I decorated with a few chocolate shavings, bits of homemade honey comb, and a few raspberries. The end result:

You can’t see the raspberry centre because I only filled 5 of them and we had two unexpected guests turn up.

It wasn’t quite as I’d pictured it, but I was happy with the results. Initially I’d planned to have some kind of anglais or chocolate sauce to pour over the top, but in the end I ran out of time and ingredients. Thankfully it didn’t let the dessert down.

Of course it wouldn’t be a family gathering without my nieces so I whipped up something for them too… quite literally. My go to dessert is an eton mess. Chantilly cream, strawberries, and meringue. The only tricky/time consuming part is making the meringue. Apart from that you just need to chuck everything together at the last moment. That way the meringue stays crunchy throughout the cream and strawberries.

I’ll try and add some recipes up a little bit later, but for now I’ll just leave you with the pictures. I’m off to China on Tuesday for two weeks, so I won’t be in the kitchen again for a while. Perhaps I’ll get some inspiration while I’m away.

How did you celebrate mothers’ day? Was there anything sweet on the table?