Michelle Schoeps Organic: Happy Anniversary to you and me!

One year and 4 days ago today I started my blog.

I'd been procrastinating about doing it for a very long time,(well for as long as Heather had been on me to start)and she just happened to be visiting on New Years Day last year.

So she helped me set up my account, gave me the run through on blogger and a swift kick up the butt!

And off I went...

As a little celebration for my 1 year anniversary,I suggested to Heather that we do a joint post - after all she is the reason I have a blog!

The offer went something like this....

Need to see you before we leave!
(we've been in Melbourne for Christmas)

Lets make Chocolate Pavlova and drink Champagne!

The kids can play and we can cook and talk(something we're both pretty good at).

And that is exactly what we did.

I'm not sure who had more fun,the 12 year olds or us?

In between swimming, Adele renditions and some nail/body painting, Heather and I made the most delicious Chocolate Mousse Pavlova covered in Organic raspberries and we washed it down with the champagne in the pic (above). My chocolate mousse didn't quite go to plan (I'll blame the pink champagne) but eventually success!

I also made custard with the egg yolks leftover from the eggs we used for the pav, freshly collected from my dad's garden that morning. As a parting gift for the King's - for having the Doyle's for the day!

How we made the Pav:

In Heather's equally gorgeous KitchenAid (Al did you come up with a name?)we whisked 8 egg whites - freshly laid that morning by my dads chooks.

With 2 cups of super fine sugar.

Now, knowing what I now know, I'd have sifted the cocoa with the sugar before incorporating, but I didn't and it still worked (but it would have been better doing it with the sugar at the start)

Whip until it is marshmallowy - not sure how long we let it go?(too much drinking and talking going down)

Then plop it onto a sheet of baking paper and fork the sides(I did this under the watchful eye of the Pav expert) - because of my addition of cocoa after I'd whisked the whites it wasn't as mallowy as we would have liked.

Bake in a pre-heated 150c oven for 1hour and 30 min, then let it cool for an hour.

While this was happening and amongst all my chaos - my children,(which I kindly bought to Heathers house)I tried to make a lighter chocolate mousse - can I just add that I've never made a mousse before and I was a little sozzled....

So this is how I made the finished 'Chocolate Mousse/cream'(Heather, can you believe I can remember how I did this?)

I whipped the cream in the picture (both of them) with 2 sifted tablespoons of cocoa and then for some strange reason I added melted (not quite cooled) 70% chocolate about 80g - this is when it all went a little pear-shaped and the cream kind of split and went a little nasty.

So I popped it in the fridge hoping somehow it might fix itself.

Then I decided to half heartedly follow a Stephanie Alexander recipe for chocolate mousse - but again, I'm not very good at following directions....so I whisked 2 egg whites with 2 tablespoons of sugar, whilst I melted 100g of 70% chocolate, then whisked in 2 egg yolks and 100g of butter (which was supposed to be 50g - because I was halving the recipe)oops! And then wondered what I'd done wrong...added some more cocoa, thinking that might fix it (it didn't)and then thought what the heck I'll add this to the egg whites and pray to something that it works!

Then I figured, what the F#*! I'll just add the cream concoction from before to this and see what happens - And who new,it worked!

So we took our Pav, poured in the mousse and dressed her up with the sweetest most delicious raspberries ever..and voila!

Ready to eat!

We got rave reviews from all members of both families - it was a little messy, but hey that's what both of our families are like -nothing's perfect and never will be, and that's just the way we like it!