Favorite Things Dessert: Chocolate, Cheese, and Wine! (or chocolate avocado pudding, cheesecake mousse, and red wine syrup!)

On Friday night, I was making dinner for my cousin and two of her friends… and apparently I thought that was a good time to experiment on almost everything I was making. I had made the macadamia chicken before, but everything else was kind of “weird” and I was winging it as far as any so-called “recipes.”

I’m only going to share the dessert with you today. It seriously deserves its own post–it’s probably the most amazing thing I’ve ever eaten, and my guests said the same thing. The idea for it has been brewing in my head for a while. I often think of themes for a recipe, and then work out the specific details of how I’ll execute it. This one’s theme is My Favorite Things…

Chocolate. Cheese. Wine.

Enough said, right ladies?

Anyway, I came up with a layered dessert idea that begins with Chocolate Avocado Pudding on the bottom. Next, I added cheesecake mousse (cheesecake flavor, but lighter and fluffier texture). Last, I drizzled it with a Red Wine Syrup. For that, I just bought a sweet red wine, reduced it on the stove till it turned into a syrup, and added just a bit of maple syrup to sweeten it.

Here’s what it looked like:

 

I didn’t have great lighting for the pic, but hopefully it still looks as good as it tasted!

So, here’s how you do it:

Favorite Things Parfait

Make Avocado Pudding and refrigerate.

Make Cheesecake Mousse: 

1 8oz brick of cream cheese, room temp

1 batch of whipped cream (8oz carton of heavy cream, 1 Tbsp of grade B maple syrup, mix with hand mixer on high till it turns into whipped cream)

Mix (on low to medium if you use a hand mixer) the cream cheese and the whipped cream. Add a splash of vanilla extract and/or a splash of lemon juice. Taste it and add more sweetener if needed. When smooth, refrigerate.

Make Red Wine Syrup: 

pour 2 cups of sweet red wine into a saucepan. Bring to a rolling boil, and continue to boil until it has reduced to about 1/2 cup. Taste it—if it’s not sweet enough, add a sweetener (I used grade B maple syrup). Refrigerate.

To serve: 

I used a Pampered Chef Easy Accent Decorator, but if you don’t have anything like that, just put some of the pudding into a plastic baggie and cut off a corner. That way when you pipe it into a glass or dish, it will look smooth. Do the same thing with the mousse, and then drizzle the syrup on top. You will want to be stingy with the syrup–it’s very strong tasting!

Note: you can use any type of sweetener you want—stevia would make this very low carb!

My guests loved this so much they talked about it for the rest of the evening! They said the combination sounded a little strange at first, but it was amazing, especially when all three flavors were combined into one bite.

This is definitely going on my list of things to make again! I really would like to share it with everyone I know…

News/Notes: I did the SM Stairs today at high noon… what a mistake! Well, not really, but it was pretty treacherous at that time of day–busy and full of people with no common sense: one guy who brought a puppy and a couple who brought their two year-old and actually had him going down and then up the steps. I’m surprised no one got hurt—I’m the person who worries the whole time I see something like that. Last week, a lady had her baby in a carrier on her chest. I suppose that’s ok, but it makes me nervous with the possibility of tripping up the steps or falling down them.

Oh… the reason I brought up the stairs… I did 6 trips without stopping, so I’m definitely making progress toward my goal of 15! I think I’ll probably reach it before the 8 weeks is up, so once I do, I’ll just start running up them and see how long I can do that for… maybe. I don’t know, that sounds kind of awful.