Hay Hay it’s Donna Day: I’m hosting!

I was excited to hear from Denise over at Chez Us that I won the last Hay Hay it’s Donna Day cooking event!  I won a signed Donna Hay cookbook!!!  I also won the privilege of hosting the next HHDD event (you can read more about the history of the event here), meaning I choose a recipe, invite all my wonderful blog reading and cooking/ baking friends to recreate the recipe and send them in to me by the end of the month.  I will post a roundup on June 5th and ask people to vote on which interpretation they like best announcing a winner (and the next host/ess) on June 15th.

Rules of Entry…

1. Hay Hay it’s Donna Day is open to all food and wine bloggers.
2. Entries submitted for HHDD must be made specifically for the current round of this event, although photos may be submitted to photo competitions such as “Does My Blog Look Good In This.”
3. The host will select, make and post an original Donna Hay recipe without any changes. Participants may make that exact same recipe as is, or put their own spin on the same recipe by altering an ingredient or two, while remaining within the theme.
4. Entrants must include a link to the host (that’s me – www.eatlivetravelwrite.com) and the facilitator (that’s Denise – www.chezus.com) in their entry post.
5. Entries can be made at any time once the event has been announced, but must be posted and emailed to me by the closing date, the end of the month.
6. The host then assembles all the entries together into a roundup (posted before the 5th of the month), from where the participants of the round vote to elect a new host for the following event (voting must be done before the 10th of the month).
7. Denise is going to try to keep this event going on a monthly bases, with an announcement of the new theme on the 15th of the month.
8. With your entry please include the following:

• The Name & URL of your blog
• Your Name
• Your Location
• Name of your recipe
• The URL or the permalink to your entry.
• A photo of your recipe if you have. You do not have to re-size it, but it should be less than 1MB.

Twitter: Follow HHDD on Twitter to keep up to date with all the latest.  Tweet about the event using #HHDD

Ok, enough with all that complicated sounding stuff.  This month, I chose a sweet recipe since it looks like it’s been a while since HHDD “did dessert”!  This is a super easy recipe – it will literally take you 5 minutes to assemble with a couple of hours chill time in the fridge.

Inspired by the recent surge of berries in the fruit and veg stores, I chose Donna’s Blackberry Cheesecake Pots:

Photo courtesy Donna Hay website.

I happened to have a bit of time this past weekend so followed the recipe exactly:

Have to say that this did not firm up as much as I would have liked it to, even after a couple of hours in the fridge.  It was more a yoghurt consistency, which was fine with me but if you want yours to be a little more firm, I would suggest using 35% (whipping) cream – I used 18% as per Donna’s recipe – and whipping it BEFORE you mix it into the cream cheese.  I served it with a blackberry coulis:

And am excited to be able to eat this for breakfast this week!

So do please join me (Soyez nombreux as they say en France!) and make this recipe as per Donna’s instructions or you can add your own spin on it.  I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Don’t forget – you have until 6pm on Wednesday, May 19th to enter my Jamie Oliver Food Revolution Cookbook giveaway! Details here.