American Dinner

Today I hosted my first dinner party. On a small scale and not a very sophisticated one, though, but you gotta start somewhere, right? Nevertheless, I am feeling a sense of satisfaction, pride and delight that is hard to describe in words, which is very unusual to me. As the aftermath for the evening I am having a warm feeling and am tempted to smile, whenever thinking back how smoothly and perfectly everything went.

A friend couple was invited over for a dinner and a movie (thanks for the company and the visit by the way, we enjoyed having you here a lot!) and to unwind myself from the exam of yesterday (who decided that exam dates ought to be on Saturdays anyway?) I planned and executed an American themed dinner for four with the priceless help of my DH. He helped me through every step of the way, from planning the scheduling of the different dishes and then in prepping, chopping and the actual cooking and baking. How wonderful is he! How lucky am I!

To make it all just a little bit more special I printed out a menu card:

Even looking at the card makes me smile again. Sigh. A little dream come true. And little dreams are just as important as the big ones, right?

Like you can read, for main course we had Sloppy Joes and Coleslaw (recipe courtesy of Simply Recipes, the coleslaw one slightly modified), with Fresh Lemonade by Food Network that you can see a little bit in the glass and jug beneath. The hamburger buns are made with the previously posted recipe.

And for dessert I made Rocky Road Brownies (which I've been dying to make for a while now and I took the opportunity with pleasure and enthusiasm) and followed the recipe by Deborah in Taste and Tell. Messy, but oh so gooey and yummy! A perfect ending to my first dinner party, in my opinion.

Everything turned out very well, even though all of the recipes were ones I had never tried out before. But this definitely was not the first and last time I will make these dishes, as they tasted so good! After eating our tummies full, we continued the evening by watching the movie Up which was sweet and touching, I liked it very much. It isn't too often that an animated film makes you think about things and that's what I liked about it.

After a wonderful, wonderful evening with friends and food I am ready to start the new week with fresh energy.

A little dream come true can sure give one big boost to life.

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A sort of (Finnish) brownie with my twist

I made these (maybe Finnish) brownies a while ago. Usually the frosting has coffee in it, but I replaced it with orange juice as I'm not a huge fan of coffee.

4 eggs
3 dl sugar
150 g margarine/butter
200 ml milk
2 tsp vanilla sugar
3 tsp baking powder
3 tbl cocoa powder
500 ml flour

200 g Marabou's Daim chocolate

Frosting:
4oo ml (227 g) confectioner's sugar
2 tbl cocoa powder
2 tsp vanilla sugar
50 g of melted margarine/butter
orange juice from 4 tbl up to when the consistency is right

Beat the eggs and sugar into a foam. Add the melted butter. Mix up the dry ingredients together and add them to the batter through a sieve in turns with the milk. Add the crushed chocolate and stir it in. Pour the batter into a baking sheet covered with baking paper and bake in 200 C in the middle of the oven for about 15-20 minutes.

Put together the dry ingredients of the frosting. Add the melted butter and orange juice in turns little by little until you have the right consistency. Pour the frosting on top of the little cooled down cake and spread it with a knife or a spatula to a even layer. Sprinkle with dried coconut or sprinkles. Let the frosting set and cut into squares.

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