Desserts for Bunco Game Party

Some friends of ours have a fun tradition at Christmas Evening to do Bunco Game. You can play Bunco anytime but this is special Bunco game because you could get a prize. Prizes consist of cash or gift cards attached to candies or sometimes a can of food for joke. Each of us supplies one prize to party and when you win at the table, you could trade with person on your left (loser). Most of the time you could see the prize so you easily could decide if you want to trade or not. But sometimes prizes are all wrapped up and you just have to take a chance. Hoping that it’s nice enough to gamble on.

The hosts requested me to bring “Crostata alla crema di cioccoalata con pistacchi siciliani” they called it ‘Chocolate pie’ Whatever! I made it before for other occasion (See my old post ‘Tale of two desserts) and they must have liked it. I’m honored! I went all the way and made the crust from scratch this time.

Somehow, the crust shrunk in oven and did not have enough height to hold all the chocolate custard. I yelled to my husband for help and he quickly brought frozen pie shell from freezer and started baking the pie shell. My hero!

Rare cheese aux Framboise

Two hours before the party I began to doubt that two chocolate pies would be enough. So I made the Rare cheese aux framboise (French for raspberry) cupcake style also (because I wanted to use cute Christmas cupcake case). The base is same cake (see my post ’WILLSEEYOUAGAIN Party’) minus cocoa powder.

Rare cheese filling

• cream cheese  200g
• water 4 Table spoons
• unflavored gelatin 1 packet
• 2 large egg yolk
• 2 large egg white
• sugar 40g
• milk 150 cc
• heavy cream 100g
• 1 lemon rind grated
• lemon juice 1 tablespoon
• rum flavoring 1 teaspoon

1. Whisk cream cheese till creamy. Set it aside
2. In a small sauce pan, mix well: egg yolk, sugar and milk over double boiler
3. Dissolve gelatin in water and put in egg mixture, whisk well to combine.
4. Cook and stir until gelatin is completely dissolved / melted.
5. Remove from head and when the egg mixture has cooled a little bit, add cream cheese and mix well. Set it aside.
6. Whip heavy cream in mixer to soft peak stage. Add egg white and whip again to soft peaks. Then add lemon rind, lemon juice and rum. Mix well.
7. Combine cream cheese mixture and heavy cream mixture. Mix well until creamy
8. Scoop out some of the center of the cupcake and spoon in the cream cheese mixture as much as you could. Chill until loosely set.

Framboise sauce

Thin seedless raspberry jam (about 4 tablespoons) with water (about 2 tablespoons) and add half packet of unflavored gelatin. Spoon on top of loosely set cream cheese on the cupcakes. Chill until set. (If using seeded raspberry jam, strain through fine mesh to remove seeds.)

Total of 18 games we played; I won 11 rounds, got three 5’s and 2 Buncos. I got a unknown amount gift card and  a box of Junior Mints. My husband won’t tell me how many he won but he held onto the mystery gift, ended up with Lava Lamp. Yay!  He took it to his office and put it on the shelf next to his magic 8 ball. Don’t you love his fancy Hawaiian Shirt?