Last year I’ve spent New Year’s Eve in the plane, on my way to the Philippines. I think I landed an hour after midnight and have spent a good 45 minutes to an hour getting my passport stamped and waiting for my luggage at the carousel. I got picked up by my sister-in-law and the driver. It was between 1-2 a.m. when we were on our way out of the airport (NAIA). There was no traffic, no firecrackers anymore and gasoline station fastfood places are all closed. We were planning to grab something to eat. But no choice. So we just drove straight home. My parents are waiting for me, and my nephew is peacefully sleeping on our couch.
This year, I’ve spent New Year’s eve (and day) here in Germany. So I was like asking my husband, what should we do, do you have any plans? I originally, wanted to go somewhere and have a relaxing weekend in a hotel spa/sauna kind of thing. It was too late to catch on some really good deals. So I scrapped that idea. We agreed on making chocolate mousse from scratch, pizza from and scratch, some drinks and he made an executive decision to buy some junk food.
The day before New Year’s eve, I’ve decided to make the chocolate mousse after dinner. I’ve searched for recipes online for chocolate mousse. And all of the recipes have eggs. I am not a big fan of eggs, so I was trying to look for something that is egg-less. I’ve watched 3 videos on YouTube on how to make chocolate mousse and ended up going with Laura’s chocolate mousse recipe. By the way, I did not go to the grocery. I gave Poni a big shopping list. He was really skeptical if he will find all the items on the list. But I am 100% sure that the grocery that he’s going to has all the items. Usually, when I ask him to go to the grocery with a list, he usually forgets an item or two. But this time he did not miss anything. He bought some junk food too! 😀 Which is unusual of him to do, since he’s in a strict high-protein diet.
Back to the chocolate mousse making process. It was all going smoothly. The recipe that I’m following is good for 2 servings only. But when I asked Poni how much should I make, he said, “a lot, like a lot!”. So I have quadrupled the recipe. He helped me whipped the cream, egg yolks and egg whites. Now, it’s time to melt the chocolate and that’s where we encountered a “bump” on the road. 😀 In the video she mixed water in the chocolate chips and butter. The chocolate melted, but as soon as I’ve added the water it clumped up like thick cake batter. There was no chance that it will fully melt. I started panicking, and getting quite stressed. Poni checked online if there’s a way to resurrect the chocolate mess. It was around 9:15 p.m. and I know 2 groceries are still open up til 10 p.m. I insisted that we should go replace the chocolate. The cream is already whipped, the egg whites are whipped and starting to break and become watery. He wanted to wait till tomorrow, but we went ahead and bought some chocolate. We read online that you should never add water in the melted chocolate. I don’t know, I guess it’s with German chocolates because the recipe clearly said that you should add water. Since it’s my 1st time to make chocolate mousse I wanted to stick with the recipe.
When we came back, I started the double boiler again, and this time I worked alone. It was pretty late and the Poni was sleepy (he was drinking some wine while whipping the cream and eggs) and got repelled by my stress-level. 😀 I did the same thing but this time I did not add water. The chocolate melted beautifully. And proceeded with how it should be made. The only thing that I should do next time is to use bigger bowls. It became slightly messy, because everything is whipped and my bowl was not big enough. It tasted really good, and did not smell egg-y, and did not tasted egg-y as well. I’ve made it the night before so that it’ll have time to set. You can leave it to set for 4-6 hours but best if it’s overnight.
I was able to fill up 3 containers (almost full). Poni had some for breakfast. We bought some blueberries & raspberries and vanilla sauce (instant) to serve the mousse with. It really tasted good.
This is how I served it after our New Year’s Eve dinner. I am slightly buzzed to bother wiping the bowl to make it look nice for the picture. 😀
I made the pizzas 2 hours before dinner. Just really chill not rushing or anything. I followed Emeril’s pizza crust recipe. I searched for a by hand method since I don’t think my hand mixer will be powerful enough. But it worked. Plus the crust is really good and it’s easy to make. Again, it’s my first time to make a pizza crust from scratch, and never tried using German yeast. I was expecting that I might end up with a dough that did not rise, but it was surprisingly easy. For the toppings we used prosciutto, green & black olives, fresh basil leaves, arugula, pizza sauce (of course), mozzarella & Grana Padano cheeses. It was really good. I made 2 rectangular pizzas. 1 for dinner and the other one for dinner the next day. We really enjoyed eating the pizza. And it was really easy, to make and prepare everything. Will definitely make this again in the future.
The very yummy pizza! 😀 We have topped it with some basil leaves and lots of arugula.
After dinner we did some karaoke, drank some stuff (ouzo for Poni and some fig vodka for me), then after karaoke we had dessert while watching Family Guy and The IT Crowd. 5 minutes before midnight we went out and watch a bit of fireworks, took some pictures (for a change). We were actually really sleepy after dessert, but we managed to stick it through til midnight (hahaha! we are indeed in our 30’s) 😀
All in all, it was something simple but nice. I think it’s always hard to celebrate when you’re only 2 people in a household. I hope everyone had a fun New Year’s Eve & day! 🙂
