Faux Mousse

I made up a dessert the other day. I decided to call it Faux Mousse because it's not made like actual mousse, but does contain cream. If you have a better idea for a name, please leave it in the comments! What follows is sort of a recipe. I didn't measure or write anything down, so these are my best guesses.

Aren't they cute? I didn't have any special little glass dishes made for holding Faux Mousse desserts, so I used punch cups that go with a lovely cut-glass punch bowl I never use. We have three flavors: Bailey's Irish Cream, Chocolate, and Strawberry.

 

First I crushed 6 graham crackers (the whole thing, the rectangle shape just as it comes out of the package) using the food processor. I microwaved about 2 Tbs of butter, stirred in the graham crackers, and spooned the mixture into the punch cups evenly. Once these were refrigerated, the butter got cold again and made it pretty hard for you to get your spoon through it until it had thawed a bit. I would recommend a thinner layer of graham cracker crust. These were almost an inch thick because of how narrow the bottom of the cups is, so maybe half an inch would be better. I smooshed the mixture down with the bottom of a measuring cup so it would be compacted.

I microwaved about a quarter of a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips next, stirring it every thirty seconds. To get it a little smoother, I added just a tiny blop of olive oil. You could use another oil of your choice here or just skip it all together. I just didn't think the chocolate would spread nicely enough on its own. Again, I divided it (more or less) evenly between the cups and smoothed it out with a small spatula.

Here are my flavors all ready to go along with the whipped cream. I ended up using maybe 1 3/4 a cup of heavy whipping cream and just a splash of vanilla extract, then using a hand mixer until it formed stiff peaks. (I whipped it a little too long, actually, until it almost started to turn into butter! Don't do that. I added a little more cream, though, and that softened it back up.)

I took about eight or ten whole frozen strawberries, thawed (in the microwave--I didn't plan well enough ahead to set them out beforehand) and pureed those in the food processor. Then I plopped in about an equal amount of whipped cream and blended it gently together with a spatula.

I did the same for the chocolate flavored Faux Mousse--this was about a cup of chocolate pudding leftover from the previous night's dessert.

As for the Bailey's Irish Cream, I simply poured 3 or 4 Tbs into the remaining whipped cream and gave it another quick blend with the hand mixer.

Using a regular table spoon, I plopped the whipped cream mixtures into the punch cups. Miraculously, there was just enough to fill two each even though I'd done nothing but guess at measurements! I garnished the Bailey's with a little sprinkle of a Holiday Spice Mix I made for Christmas, but you could use cinnamon, nutmeg, crushed candy cane.... whatever you think would go well with Bailey's. For the chocolate, I drizzled chocolate syrup on top, and I'd reserved about a tablespoon of the strawberry puree to top the strawberry Faux Mousse.

 

Next: spend the rest of the afternoon doing dishes! (Or put most of them in the dishwasher, huzzah!)

And there you have it! Six little individually-sized desserts in three flavors. Great for a dinner party, I think. The strawberry was rather tart, especially with the puree on top, so unless you like that sort of thing, you might add a teaspoon or so of sugar to the puree before you mix it with the whipped cream. The chocolate was delicious. I also liked the Bailey's, though because it wasn't mixed with anything besides just the whipped cream, it was very.... fluffy. 

These kept fine in the fridge for a day after I made them, but on the second day they started to get a bit of a skin on top. It wasn't nasty or anything, just not idea. I recommend making these, chilling them for about an hour (or until they're needed), and serving them that same night.

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If you are the sort of person who likes real measurements, here's the best I can do:

Faux Mousse--

-1 3/4 cups heavy whipping cream + splash of vanilla extract -- whip and divide by 3

-8-10 whole frozen strawberries

-1 cup chocolate pudding

-3-4 Tablespoons Bailey's Irish Cream

-1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

-6 whole graham crackers + 2 Tablespoons melted butter

Some Things I Have Been Doing Lately

taking walks

making scones

mopping the floor

playing fetch with the doggie

buying stuff at a yard sale for my classroom

buying stuff at a yard sale for a friend who gave me money with that express purpose, because she knows I'm so good at it

riding my new bike to work (about a mile) and just around a little


(Her name is Mabel)

reading The Fellowship of the Ring

doing Wii Fit yoga, strength, and balance (I get enough cardio at work!)

going to knitting at a coffee shop (and mostly talking with a little knitting)

being on Facebook

crocheting this collar

typing letters on my typewriter

watching the new Joshua Danger video


(I know some of the people who made this! When they are super-famous I will say I knew them when....)

sleeping in a little

laundry

having a weird, slightly scary dream about icky aliens

going out to dinner with my husband (we had a coupon!)

going to a birthday party and managing somehow to match my outfit to the wrapping to the present itself:


wishing I could sew

not wanting to clean the sewing table off

sweating a lot (at least 100 degrees for the high today!)



What are some things you have been doing lately?

8 Things Friday

1. We picked out and bought the paint for the new kitchen, as well as all the other supplies! :) Go here, click on "Warm Reds," and type "Tomato Red" into the search on the right side. It looks horrid on my monitor, sort of pinkish and dull, but it's much nicer than that, really. I'm trying to think of something in real life to compare it to... Maybe a bit more orange than geraniums, and a little darker.

As a reminder, here's the kitchen:



Keep in mind the new countertops will be medium-grey with speckles. The two walls you can see, as well as the third wall facing the living room, will be painted. Did I say the new theme for the kitchen is "sushi"? :D I think it will be so cute! I want to make a rag rug from old t-shirts that looks like a sushi roll (green on the outside for seaweed, white inside for rice, and pink in the center for salmon or whatever). Any links to sushi-themed fabric, knick-knacks, pictures, or kitchen doo-dads, if you happen to come across them, would be appreciated!

2. Now for plans for the sewing room! I might clip a few aprons onto a pretend clothesline on the wall, or hang them on pegs, but the rest I want to pin onto curtains and replace the lame sliding closet doors with those curtains! They'll look like they're almost made out of aprons, but I can still take the aprons off at any point and not damage any if I just use safety pins. I might also sew/pin doilies and hankies in the blank spots between aprons and make it really patchwork-y, we'll see.

I got a couple of nice wooden hangers on which to display my pretty vintage dresses. I hate that my Gunne Sax, my 60s homecoming dresses, and a few other neat ones, are just hung in the back of my closet and are worn either never or very rarely. Why not treat them as art? I'll put a couple hooks or pegs on the wall and rotate the dresses on hangers depending on what I want to see.

If I could find some decent-looking wig heads, I might put some of the vintage hats on them; HOWEVER, 1) having heads in my sewing room, especially at night and when it's dark, might freak me out out of the corner of my eye and 2) I'm not sure I'll have enough free horizontal surfaces (like bookcases or shelves) on which to put them. So the hats might go on the wall, too.

After this, if I have any wall space left (one wall is mostly sliding glass door, the other is mostly closet, and there's the door into the room in another wall), I might do something like this with a few of my favorite/most meaningful fabrics. Cute, huh? I got about 8 wooden embroidery hoops of various sizes at the Goodwill the other day for really cheap, too.

Oh, and I want a vanity in the sewing room. With just my sewing table and desk, there should be room. It would be so nice to have all my jewelry, makeup, and hair stuff in a place where I can sit down and get ready in the morning, with a nice little table, stool, and mirror. I described my ideal vanity to Mom--white, sort of curvy, with rounded edges and maybe moulding?--and she said it was "French Provincial." Lovely!

3. Good grief, are we only on three? All right, here's another picture:



Yes, it is a picture of a dirty, rather linty floor. But do you know what floor it is? It is the floor of the current craft closet! YES, IT HAS A FLOOR! I have discovered it! The overflow pile of laundry is GONE (it all fits in the hampers, now, and holy cow do we have a lot of clothes!) so you can SEE the FLOOR! If I'm ever not running around doing stuff for the new house/moving, or doing school, I could actually get in there and sort through stuff and pack stuff! CRAZY!

4. More pictures! The other day for lunch, I turned this



into this



Appetizing, no? :P It was quite delicious. The addition of a banana helped to disguise the spinach taste completely, and the strawberries and pineapple plus OJ, made it very yummy! I will give you a tip, though: don't have this much fruit in one day, two days in a row. I'm just sayin.

5. SEVEN DAYS TIL SAN DIEGO!!!

6. Speaking of which, does anyone who knows San Diego have any fabulous places we simply must visit while we're there? (July 24th-31st) So far we have: one day of thrift stores, one day of the Gaslamp District, maybe one day at the swap meet. We'd like to visit the beach at least a couple of mornings/afternoons (not all day) and just lay around and read and be bums. :) Also want to hit the Jim Croce restaurant/shop because my mom has fond memories of his music from her youth, and we might go Coronado Island Hotel. We're not that interested in Sea World (been there, done that), nor do we want to drive far at all since we'll be borrowing my aunt's car while she's at work.

7. Goodwill is made of awesome! I needed new jeans that fit and weren't holey, and a hoodie that met very specific requirements (none of which my other 537 jackets had), and ended up getting not only classy wide-leg jeans and a lime-green hoodie, but the embroidery hoops mentioned above, white sandals (strappy, high-heeled) that I like a lot better than my current white sandals, two comfy knit dresses about knee-length, and a really 80s-looking cotton floral dress that I think is cute but might be a little tacky/lame in 2009. Don't care, I wore it anyway. Oh, and also our Christmas cards for this year because they were cheap, and a hot pink sheet to make into a dress/skirt/whatever. I need to quit buying sheets for fabric until I use up a few that I have! All that for just about $34!

8. If you could recommend one book on pregnancy/childbirth, what would it be and why? I want to get a few in the near-ish future to start looking ahead and considering all my options.

This is not for the faint of heart

Beware the pictures below! They are of a fruit-and-greens smoothie, but the color and texture is somewhat... well, it looks like someone already ate it, let's just say that.

Are you prepared?

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Mmmm, looks delicious, right? I sort of used this recipe, but not. Before I tell you how I made it, though, let's go in for a close-up.



Brown, with colored flecks in it. Fabulous.

So I filled my blender about 2/3 full of baby spinach, just fluffed in there, not squished down. Then I added maybe 1/2 a cup of orange juice, and 6 or so strawberries, leaves cut out and then cut in halves or fourths. The strawberries were past the point of being yummy on their own, but they tasted just fine all blended up with everything else. To that I added 12 chunks of canned pinapple chunks and a tablespoon or so of the juice. It took a little shaking of the blender to get all the spinach leaves down in there, but I managed to blend everything up nicely. And there was a super-healthy lunch! (I think. I know canned fruit has more sugar than regular fruit, right? But at least it's still fruit.) I wish I had a banana to throw in and thicken it up a bit, but it was fine like this. I just had to put it in a coffee mug so I wouldn't have to look at it through a clear glass!

Cheers!

I don't like cooking. Or do I...?

I realized today that I actually do like cooking, though I've been protesting for years that I don't. What I don't like is that I rarely have time to cook, and cook well, so I'm forced to throw together the same handful of easy, boring-ish meals over and over. That adds to the idea that I don't like cooking, since not much that I make turns out that great, anyway. Yes, it's (almost) all edible, and even yummy at times, but spaghetti for the third time in a month... eh.

I don't see this changing any time soon. Even though I'm going down to part time at work soon (hopefully by the end of next week, since that's how far out the schedule is right now), I still have lots and lots of school this summer. I start at my middle school on August 11th (12th?) to help out my mentor teacher with set-up, and the week after that, the kids get there. The way it looks, with me on campus at the middle school four days a week, and at the college campus at least four days a week, with the evenings and weekends devoted to homework for my college classes, and grading papers and doing lesson plans for my middle school class... I don't think I'll be cooking too many spectacularly involved meals for, well, a while.

I am a huge fan of the crock pot. I also like casseroles: cook some rice, some meat, throw it in a pan with some sort of cream of ____ soup and some veggies, and call it good. Grilling is also nice, since Matt does that part, I nuke some instant mashed potatoes and some frozen veggies, and it's dinner. I could probably make spaghetti in my sleep, and there's always the standby of meat- and/or cheese-filled ravioli with sauce from a jar. Since there's just two of us, if I manage to make about four real meals a week, we can live off leftovers the other few nights. And I've even been trying to get us to eat healthier lately, too. I'm excited to check out the weekly Farmer's Market this summer for fresh produce, honey, etc. Currently, not too much comes out of a box or a jar pre-made, though I don't beat myself up if that's my only option, at times.

And I've come to accept all of this. I have other priorities, for sure. But someday, far, farrrrr in the future (maybe; we'll see, I guess), I might actually have time to plan cool meals for my family. When that day arrives, I hope I still enjoy it. I think I will.