Christmas Dinner with Friends

Let's rewind back to Christmas! It is indeed 'The Most Wonderful Time of the Year'! This year, we had the privilege to be part of five Christmas get togethers, three of which I hosted!  This year for Christmas dinner with friends we kept it simple. I tried to make raspberries the theme of the evening, so it was the main ingredient in both the welcome drinks and dessert.

The welcome drink was raspberry and vodka based. I mashed the raspberries and mint leaves with a spoon, then added vodka and Sprite to taste, together with a dash of lime juice. Once poured into the glasses, I topped each glass off with another mint leaf. This was really delicious and naturally sweet, however next time I'll rather use a food processor to mash the raspberries, as the larger pieces of raspberries made it difficult to drink.

The starters I really looked forward to! I initially wanted to make crostini - something I've been wanting to make for quite some time - but I was a bit scared that the toasted bread will be a bit too crunchy, so I decided to use a fresh French loaf instead. I decided on three toppings, and all were really easy to make.

For the first topping, I just had to use avocado. I spread mashed avo onto each slice of bread, added crispy oven baked bacon pieces and topped with delicious soft feta cheese. To make this topping more Christmassy, I added a few Peppadews to each. You can never go wrong with bacon!

The second topping was mushroom based. I made a very quick an easy mushroom sauce - chopped mushrooms, onions, thyme, dry mushroom soup, cream and a very secret ingredient to give that amazing colour. When adding the cooled off sauce to the slices, I finished each one off with a sprig of fresh thyme. Mushroom and thyme goes really well together!

Lastly, for a fresh element, I mixed cream cheese, soft feta cheese, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper and chives. I added the spread to each slice of bread, then added freshly sliced medley of tomatoes and finished off with a fresh basil leaf.  

My husband really wanted to serve wraps for this Christmas dinner, so to keep with a Christmassy theme, I decided to get beetroot and turmeric flavoured tortillas, instead of the plain flour tortillas. The purple and yellow really brightened up the table, and the taste was very interesting. My husband braaied the protein for us, which was soft juicy delicious fillet. The remaining toppings were black beans, guacamole, crushed pineapple, cheddar cheese, sliced tomatoes, mixed coleslaw, cream cheese and a few choices of condiments. Wraps are always a great hit, and very easy to prepare.

For dessert, I wanted to attempt mini lemon and raspberry cheesecakes. I found this easy recipe, only to realise later that this was more of an ice cream dessert than anything else. The dish as a whole was still very delicious and a great hit - almost like we were in a five star restaurant! For the base of the cheese cake, I crushed biscuits and mixed with melted butter. The mixture was pressed into silicone cupcake moulds and placed in the freezer to set.

For the cheesecake mixture I combined cream and condensed milk, then added raspberry puree. Once combined, it was poured into the silicon cupcake moulds on top of the set biscuit base. This goes back into the freezer for about 6 hours until the mixture is set. The raspberry puree consists of raspberries, sugar, lemon rind and lemon juice, cooked until the sugar is dissolved, then strained to remove the raspberry bits.

I took the cheesecakes out of the freezer about 15 minutes before serving, so that it's not too hard to eat. Before serving I added some of the remaining raspberry puree to each, topped with fresh raspberries and a mint leaf. This was quite quick to make, it's just the time to set that takes long. I'll definitely try this again, perhaps with different flavours, but I still want to attempt an actual cheesecake!