hi there! after the success of my holiday/birthday dinner party back in december i decided i wanted to host a dinner party each season. i emailed some friends a few weeks ago and let them know of the plan.  and of course since they are all awesome (hungry) friends, they jumped on the idea and came over on a perfect spring night for an evening of food, drinks and fun times.  

to create the menu i decided to look at whatever was in season and make generally light/spring dishes.  the menu for that lovely night:

for the appetizers i made some a quick tomato salad and placed over homemade ricotta cheese on fresh french baguette slices.  the cheese was really easy to make and it was delicious.  i got the recipe from clare from the blog an american in ireland. after tasking homemade ricotta, i don’t think i will buy ricotta cheese ever again.

i topped the tomatoes with fresh basil and scallions.

i don’t have many pictures from the night because we were all very hungry and instead of taking pictures just dug into everything.  i did take pictures of the marinating and cooking process for the pork shoulder, and i will be posting that tomorrow. 

i made a quick strawberry tart for dessert to go with the cake.  we topped the tart with freshly made almond whipped cream.  the recipes for the two of them are below.

for the strawberry tart:

ingredients:
2 cups of sliced strawberries
1/4 cup of sugar
2 teaspoons of lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon of corn starch
1 ready made pie crust
a pinch of salt

to make:
mix together the strawberries, corn starch, sugar, salt and lemon juice.  place the pie crust on a baking dish or baking sheet.

arrange the strawberries on the pie crust leaving about an inch of crust.  fold the crust over the strawberries.  pinch the pie crust to seal.  if you want, brush egg whites over the crust but it is not necessary. 

bake for about 20 minutes or until golden in a 350° oven.

_________________________________________________________________________

for the almond whipped cream:

ingredients:
2 cups of cold heavy cream
2-3 tablespoons of sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons of almond extract

to make:
combine all the ingredients with a mixer at high speed until the cream thickens up and forms peaks.

i also made a cake. well, two cakes really - red velvet and white cake. 

my inspiration for this cake came from i am baker’s rose cake tutorial. i made the cakes the night before and froze them until it was time to carve.  at first i was a bit disillusioned but thinking back, i am very happy with the results. 

overall, the dinner party was a success.  there were many glasses of champagne, wine and cocktails consumed.  everyone had a great time and we all ate as much as we could. i am already looking forward to this summer and the next dinner party. 

thank you for stopping by! happy spring!!