my 25th Birthday menu

So .. last week I celebrated my 25th birthday :) And since my sister was about to go abroad for one semester we had a big party together with lots of great friends! My sister is vegetarian and a lot of our friends are too, so we had a mostly vegan, completely vegetarian menu. Today I want to share our recipes. At least the vegan ones, because I don't have the other 2 recipes .. so here we go:

Hummus:

• 2 cans drained chickpeas (puréed)
• minced garlic (1 clove)
• 1 tablespoon tahini (sesame "butter")
• water
• lemon juice to taste
• salt
• black pepper
• a little splash of olive oil

purée everything together, add as much water as you need to get a consistency you like!
Keeps fresh in the fridge for 2-3 days.

Guacamole

• 2 fresh avocados
• minced garlic (1 clove)
• salt
• black pepper
• lemon juice to taste

mash everything together or purée as well!
Keeps fresh in the fridge for about 1 day. Make sure you'll store it in an air-tight container to prevent the guacamole from browning (if it gets a little brown, stir well!)

We offered turkish bread with both creams!

Couscous-salad

• iceberg-lettuce
• romaine lettuce
• tomatoes
• cucumber
• sweet corn
• couscous (prepare as instructions say)
• olive oil, salt, black pepper,..

cut the vegetables, mix in the readily prepared and cooled couscous. Season with olive oil, salt, black pepper and whatever you desire. Chives and spring onions would taste great in it as well!

Green salad
we used the same vegetables as in the couscous-salad to simplify things.
For the dressing we used:

• olive oil
• balsamic vinegar
• salt
• black pepper
• chives
• a tiny splash of lemon juice

Onto the good stuff ;) :

we made chocolate muffins, lemon muffins and a cherry-mousse-au-chocolat- gateau
the dough was a normal cake mixture made of: (this is enough for the gateau-base and about 40 muffins)

• 1kg flour
• ~ 500grams sugar
• 2 packs of baking powder
• 4 packs of vanilla sugar
• 2 tablespoons canola oil
• approx. 1 - 1.2liters water/soymilk (whichever you prefer. I usually use half'n'half)

once that was mixed together we took about 1/3 of it and added lemon flavour and a bit of lemon juice to it.

The lemon muffins were topped with lemon icing (icing sugar and lemon juice) and a vegan gummi bear in the middle. (obviously top the muffins with the icing when they've cooled a bit!)

The other 2/3 were mixed with approx. 125grams of baking cacao-powder (the unsweetend kind)
use half of this for the gateau. Mix the other half with chocolate chips and chopped walnuts for the chocolate muffins.

muffins and gateau-base take about 20-30minutes in the oven. Bake on the middle rack on 180°C

 once the gateau-base is cooled, top with cherrys (jared) or fresh strawberries, blueberries or any other fruit that appeals to you! on top of that you'll put the mousse-au-chocolat

for the mousse-au-chocolat you need:

• 800grams of silken tofu (puréed)
• 200grams of dark chocolate (melted)
• approx. 125grams icing sugar

purée the silken tofu while melting the chocolate on low heat on the stove. Once the chocolate is completely melted pour it into the silken tofu. Keep purée-ing the mixture. pour in the icing sugar. once you have a fluffed up creamy consitency put the mousse-au-chocolat into the fridge. Keep it the as long as you can! I recommend preparing it 1 day ahead. When you've put the mousse-au-chocolate onto the gateau-base keep it in the fridge until you'll serve it!

We also offered a vegetarian pasta-salad and a vegetarian-only gateau with a cream-cheese / yoghurt filling with mandarin oranges as well.

Unfortunately I forgot to take photos! :(

From now on I will write my blog due to time-issues in english only. I hope you will still keep reading!

Let me know if you have any questions about the recipes and if you've used one of them, let me know how it turned out! ;)

Love,
Julia
xxx