Preparing and taste testing

Today I had the pleasure of testing and experimenting with what I might serve tomorrow. For breakfast I tried out a raspberry, musli and greek yogurt parfait, with a glass of sparkling wine and two floating raspberries. This evening I experimented with puff pastry and chocolate, and fell inlove with a raspberry twist to this combination. So i prepared the chocolate rasberry puffs, and put them in the fridge so that i can just pop them in oven tomorrow morning to have them fresh for brunch. I've also been mixing up a batch of cheese and bacon scones, which are now in the oven. I'll put them in the fridge when they've cooled down and hope that they'll still have that beautiful fresh texture when I heat them up in the morning. Tomorrow I'll be making a batch of sweet scones to have with strawberry jam and whipped cream, the raspberry parfaits, some scrambled eggs with spring onion and smoked salmon, and maybe smoked salmon on slices of baguette. But for now I'll share the recipes that I have tried out, and hope that you'll enjoy them as much as I did!

Raspberry parfait

Raspberry parfaits are a healthy and delicious way to start the day, and are pretty easy to make. You can serve these in pretty much any glass that you can eat out of. Today I just used a normal glass, and tomorrow I will use sundae glasses.

Add a thin layer of light Greek yogurt to the bottom of the glass
Sprinkle a very thin layer of sugar.
Add a layer of fresh or frozen raspberries.
Add another layer of yogurt.
Then goes the musli. I used a musli that is glazed with honey and has some nuts. All you need to think about is what will go well with the fruit you include in the parfait. For the raspberries I preferred to have a fruitless musli with some almonds, hazel nuts and pecans.
Add a third layer of yogurt, top with some honey and please child in you by popping a rasberry in the middle ;o)

Chocolate rasberry puff

With this recipe you can make 28 chocolate rasberry puffs.

Ingredients

3 1/2 sheets of frozen puff pastry
100g milk chocolate
Fresh or frozen raspberries

First, shave the chocolate. If you'd like to make your life easier, roughly chopping shuld be fine as long as the pieces are small enough. This might take a while so you might like to put on some good music to keep you entertained :o) putting everything together can also take a while, especially if you're making 40.
Cut the raspberries roughly into quarters.
Use a cookie mould or the top of a glass to cut the pastry into the shape you want.
Add about half a teaspoon of chocolate to each piece of pastry, top with some raspberry.
Stretch the top piece of pastry a little to fit over the other.
Place the pastry on top and press the sides down well with your fingers.
Place in the oven at 200C for about 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Chocolate raspberry puffs are by far at their best when they have just come out of the oven. If you are not going to serve them straight away, they can be put in the fridge until you are ready to use them. Place some baking paper or the sheet that was used to separate the frozen puff pastry between each layer of chocolate raspberry puffs (see bottom left), in an airtight container.

Hope you're all having a great weekend!!!