Friendly Friday Challenge: SPECIAL TREATS

Sandy

Welcome to the first Friendly Friday Challenge of 2021!

It’s a brand new year and already we’ve had extraordinary events promising another remarkable year. While we can hope for travel and unfettered picture-taking, for many of us it will be a while. This is one of the reasons Amanda and I changed the focus of Friendly Friday from photos only, to stories, pictures, recipes and anything else that inspires you.

For the next two weeks the Friendly Friday Challenge is SPECIAL TREATS. Share a post featuring special treats and tell us what makes it extraordinary.

This past Christmas, Amanda and I were comparing special treats for the holidays. In sunny Australia the favorite dessert is Pavlova. In my family our favorite meringue dessert is Dacquoise. It’s a fancy name but that’s what Hubby (he’s from Paris) calls it. It’s made with nutty meringues covered with crème pâtissière, fresh berries and chocolate sauce.  

I started making these after taking ‘Baking Arts’ at culinary school. The best thing about cooking school? It removes the mystery around fancy desserts. Suddenly whipping up meringues and making pastry cream from scratch isn’t complicated. Technique though requires practice … as my chocolate drizzling skills show.

  • Pavlova
  • Dacquoise

Special treats need not be desserts. For me, the first treat of the day is a cup of freshly brewed coffee. Unfortunately I don’t always get what I want when I want. There’s a diva in the house whose needs supplant mine. What started out a special treat for my cat, soon became a daily morning demand.

Special treats can be visual too. Especially when they capture magical moments, like this early morning scene in Halong Bay. The overnight mist hadn’t quite cleared and the island silhouettes formed an eerie backdrop to the still waters. The fisherman staring ahead looked otherworldly, like someone from another time, a hundred years ago.

Early Morning on Halong Bay (Vietnam)

I look forward to seeing your post on SPECIAL TREATS. Remember that you have two weeks to post your response to this challenge. You’re encouraged to post photos, pictures, stories and even recipes – whatever inspires you!

If you’re new to Friendly Friday, full instructions can be found here.

By the way, if you’d like to try my family’s favorite dessert, here’s the recipe for making Dacquoise. Make it. Shoot it. Tell me what you think. I’d love to see it!

Toronto, Canada. January 2021

46 Comments

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  10. Thank you so much for bringing this back and reinventing it too for a new year, I like the new format! What a beautiful photo that is of Halong Bay, a special treat to see that for sure. But now I am craving a sweet treat after seeing the dessert photos 🙂 I might have to go and see what I can whip up! I will put my thinking cap on now, I like this theme…

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  13. Ooh making pavlova is so much fun! One time I made a pavlova board for my nephews to put together with the whipped cream, fruit, and mini pavlovas. Unfortunately they ate it all not leaving any for the adults!

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    1. I’ve been looking for this post and it took me a while to find it!
      My special treat is also a fresh Brew coffee in the morning and a white wine at 5pm
      Will think of something to post

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  20. Wow those island silhouettes! And I’m very impressed with your canva cartoon, gosh, well done! The cat story reminds me of my three-year-olds: we too gave them an organic toddler muesli bar (sugarless) as a treat and now they want them every morning and every afternoon and fill their tummies with them and refuse to eat “real food” afterwards! 😅 Oh-oh…😝
    Also, good idea about expanding FF due to the pandemic. I started thinking if I could use “special treats” as a writing prompt… but you know what? Now I’m hungry!! 😀

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