A South African Feast

I had the honour of seeing my dear friend living more than 11 000 km away and my parents on the same day - what a treat! For this occasion I wanted to do something authentically South African to celebrate and remember this day. As "melktert" is one of the infamous desserts of South Africa, I found it fitting to serve delicious "melktertjie" shots to celebrate the get together. Really yum!

I served a few snacks to keep everyone busy while my husband braaied the delicious food for mains. No snack table can be classified South African without biltong and droëwors, and that was my theme for the snacks table. Together with the dried meat snacks, chips and grapes, I served dried fruit and mixed nuts and made two additional biltong elements which turned out really delicious. The first was biltong quiche with onion, peppers and cheese. The second element was cream cheese biltong balls with a hint of mustard served with cream crackers. To finish off the snacks table, I served Boerenkaas which could be eaten together with the cream crackers as well, and felt fitting for the occasion.

For mains we tried to keep it simple, yet delicious. My husband braaied boerewors, oepsies and chicken "sosaties" (to translate feels so wrong), as well as buttery garlic bread. We also served a ciabatta (although not South African) for those who did not fancy garlic bread - which can only be a sin!! The warm side dish was cauliflower and broccoli bake with mushrooms, bacon and cheese accompanied by two salads which I quite enjoyed - carrot and pineapple salad and three bean salad (mom's recipe), the absolute best. This was a really satisfying menu.

For dessert, I attempted a malva pudding ice cream. I was inspired by malva pudding as it's very South African. I found out that malva pudding comes from the Afrikaans word "malva" which translates to marshmallows, and the malva pudding is fluffy like marshmallows, hence the name. I made malva pudding ice cream by making a plain vanilla ice cream, but adding ideal milk instead of cow's milk to add the malva pudding flavour. For the base of the dessert I made malva pudding cupcakes with the deliciously sweet sauce that makes this dessert so unique, then topped with the homemade ice cream. To finalise, the guests had a choice of Amarula cream to add an alcoholic kick, custard and chopped almonds. All in all, this was such a fun menu to plan and serve my special guests.