Mrs J spent most of the day on New Years Eve with her head down various pots in the kitchen, doing what she loves to do. The menu is inspired by classic dishes, with a few variations.

Starting off with shrimp cocktail with avocado, cream cheese and white wine onions. Topped with some black caviar.

Oh yeah baby.

This is followed by tournedos with butter and port sauce. No time for pictures of the tournedos. With that kind of beef, you cook – you eat. Mrs J doesn’t recommend faffing around a tournedos, even for a good cause.

And to finish off the year in style – a dessert bomb.

Easy bomb recipe coming up.

Take a chocolate and nut roll of cake and cut in 1 cm slices. Mrs J made her own cake but it’s perfectly fine to buy one. No stress, y’all.

Line a medium sized bowl with cling film and then cover the sides evenly with cake.

Stir some vanilla ice cream (about 3 dl) with about 100 g of mascarpone.

Add some extra vanilla pod scrapings, 50g of chopped white chocolate and about 3/4 dl of chopped nuts. Walnuts, pistachios…. whatever you like and have handy works.

Slather the sides of your bowl with the ice-cream mixture making a bowl-in-a-bowl of the ice cream. Put in the freezer to set. If needed, take it out once more to reshape the bowl if it slides down the sides too much.

When firm, fill your bowl with raspberry sorbet. Cover with cling film and put back in the freezer to fully set again.

Take out of the freezer and leave in the fridge for 25-35 min before serving. Add raspberries and your choice of other garnish.

And on that bombshell – Happy Ending and Happy New Year 2012 from Mrs J!