While the main dish for Easter dinner (duck) was quickly decided thanks to J, I spent a good amount of time to finalize the dessert menu. I wanted to make something with fruit. For the early spring, berries would be not enough sweet and flavorful yet. We had
lemony pudding recently. Apples make me associate with autumn. Ice cream would be too early while I didn't want to use the oven on the dinner day. Cake, tart or pie..., somehow any didn't sound right this time. After I drafted on the web and books for a while, I finally landed on the land called "
blancmange." I have made blancmange a couple of times before, and liked the result. The milky, light dessert could be made a day before. Perfect. To meet my "fruity" demand, I made apricot sauce with dried organic Californian apricots. I also added candied violet and fresh mint for decoration. Probably blancmange itself was enough for dessert since J's parents don't care of sweets too much. On the other hand, I know that they like coffee after dinner. Blancmange with apricot sauce and coffee? It didn't sound quite right for me. I baked viennese-style Spritz cookies on the day before and assembled little jam sandwich cookies with my new favorite American Spoon's Berry & Rose conserve. The cookies were light and airy and had almond-y and cinnamon-y flavor, which would be good for coffee and play a role of bridge between blanmange and coffee, I thought. J brewed very good coffee with French press. Although I don't know whether all of my thoughts were necessary and I admit that I put jam a little too much between cookies, the dessert time has passed peacefully.
