Eat without Wheat: CDWM Hosting Highlights

Round 2 of CDWM and after a few months planning in the bag; our turn to host.

The menu...

Perfecting a menu for probably our most critical ever guests took meticulous planning and preparation. With much devouring of my humongous cookbook collection, scouring my favourite cookery website BBC Good Food and adding my own ideas and inventions meant I was quite happy with the menu...until I tried out the main course the weekend before the big date and found I wasn't quite so happy...in fact I didn't like it at all! Back to the drawing board for that.

Tada! The final menu revealed...

Shopping

We are blessed with some amazing local shops on our doorstep, and this week would be no different from any other week (except this time I took photos along the way). First stop the butchers!

Then Dougie the fishmonger in nearby Inverkeithing...

Then a dash up the town to get the wine and local Bruary beers...

...and finally I had to brave the supermarket for cream, no photos required (it was a whopping 2 litres!).

The preparations...

Now the fun begins. First stop, desert. The hazelnut brownie part is easy to make, coulis is pretty straightforward, ice-cream you bung in the ice-cream maker but the chocolate melting dome, well that's a whole new ball game! I had practised these with milk-chocolate and had no idea that dark chocolate is a nightmare to temper properly. Armed with my chocolate thermometer that Santa brought me I thought it would be a dawdle. Dawdle it wasn't! Using my technique that I conjured up whilst a contestant on Britain's Best Dish (yes I do claim to be the first person to using water balloons to make domes!) I followed the instructions, had the balloons good to go, then runny chocolate wasn't sticking to the balloons. About two hours later (and very little patience left) I had six shiny domes prepared.

Onto the preparation for the starter and this was easy as it's a tasty recipe on my regular repertoire, and one we had on Christmas day. The pastry was made with spelt flour as it makes a lovely pastry (one for CDWM and one for lunch on Sunday).

Looking rather tired at this point as it was getting late! Time for bed and finish prep on the big day.

Setting the scene...

The meal...

Starter was a great hit...

...main was a near disaster as the oven decided to pack in (next door neighbor to the rescue) but all was good and the beef was cooked to perfection (phew!).

Plating the desert was exciting (bit of a Masterchef moment)

The grand finale took place as everyone poured over the hot chocolate sauce or hot toffee sauce (or both) and watched as the chocolate dome melted to reveal the brownie and ice-cream.

All that was left was to serve up fresh coffee and homemade chocolates then over to Mr CDWM to crack open his whisky collection.