Sweets for my sweet...

Hi, y'all!

At the beginning of this year I already mentioned that I have a special birthday in the family in August. My dear Wolfi (best in-law ever) unfortunately had to cancel his big party due to COVID, and so we packed him a nice present to sweeten his day. 

Sweet is a good cue… First I thought of a cable-knit cardigan/hoodie but he opted for chocolates/pralines. Well then, chocolates it is! As we had summery temperatures during the last weeks, I chose white chocolate as basis for my truffles and prepared two variations: lemon and bitter almond. The lemon truffles I rolled in powdered sugar, and the almond truffles were covered in brittle. My fridge looked like this:

Of course, I put them in a nice wrapping - my tried and tested Tetrapak-packaging: 

And through the grapevine I heard that some extravagant masks could be a nice addition… Well... I thought and thought and then I had my Heureka moment: I remembered that years ago, I collected champagne flutes, and each of them came with a matching napkin. I never used neither the flutes (not dishwasher-safe) nor the napkins. And as they had nice patterns in silver and gold, they would make some pretty face coverings.  

That's the result:

I took everything and put it in a styrofoam package together with special ice packs to keep the truffles cool, which worked although the parcel took a day longer than expected. But the birthday boy was happy, and so was I!

But I have to come back to our garden grapes… In a first attempt I harvested five or six bundles of grapes and happily munched them but then it was time to harvest some more. And then my fruit bowl was pretty full: 

We couldn't devour so many as were ripe, and then the first grapes fell from the vine, so I I picked another five kilos! We couldn't eat them all, even if we wanted to. Thus I made roughly 20 jars of grape jelly! 

Cleaning:

All ingredients:

Part of the result... Delicious - especially with banana bread!

But that wasn't enough, because there were still the ones waiting in the fruit bowl. They had to be processed somehow, and therefore, I made two cakes. I have to admit, that it might have been a good idea to use seedless grapes for baking, but let's just say, it adds extra crunch and fibers :-) 

Keep crunchin' and munchin'!!!