The grand finale of our virtual dinner party is here! True hospitality rarely ceases at dessert; it extends into small sips and bites that leave guests feeling calm, content, and pleasantly plump. The colorful juxtaposition of a warm, glowing digestif and the light palate cleansers of pastelled sorbets has the potential to create an incredible canvas of color.

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Seasonal fruits, like juicy orange mangos, ruby red raspberries, and deep yellow pineapples, can add a flavorful collage for the cherry on top of your meal (literally). And finally, a soothing peppermint tea or bittersweet milky cappuccino keep the cheerful dinner table conversation going.

Let the après-dinner conclude your evening as a soft, sweet goodnight, but not a goodbye--the beauty of feasts is that we can delight in them time after time.

Thanks for taking the time to indulge with us. Until we meet again, à bientôt!

Cheese Plate

A bright bowl of fresh-picked summer berries. The rich, dark stream of molten chocolate from a lava cake. The delicate colors from the creamy base to the caramelized top of a Crème brûlée. Desserts around the world never cease to amaze us here at Forkly--the detail, the depth in colors, the genius and creativity that come to life. When dessert arrives, the table falls silent, guests gasp at the beauty in unison, and with mouths watering, they prepare for that first bite of sweetness to balance out the savory feast before it.

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Enjoy the third course of our virtual dinner party (check out Exquisite Entrees and Colorful First Courses if you missed them) and enjoy every moment of the next decadent dessert you taste!

Chocolate Bomb

Incredible how creatures of the sea can camouflage themselves in the depths but captivate us with their vibrant colors when paired with earthy vegetables, legumes, and grains. For your second course (here's the first, if you missed it!), we've decided to highlight this lovely balance of earth and sea.

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We’ve included two dishes from avid Forkly-ers, Chef Rodrigo De La Calle of Aranjuez, Spain and Chef Alessandro Ricciardi of Florence, Italy. Chef De La Calle’s creations focus on “Gastrobotánica,” a new wave of cooking that emphasizes the use of uncommon plant species for delicate, artistic dishes. Chef Ricciardi works with flour and natural yeast concentrating on impastazione, or, “making the dough” into beautifully textured dishes with contrasting reds, purples, greens, and such, depending on the ingredients of the season.

As is our reaction to many of the chefs and food enthusiasts on Forkly, we wish we could hop on a plane just to try a bite!

Pulpo Y Lentejas

On Forkly, stunning food images from food and drink lovers around the globe are an everyday treat. The luscious red of a perfectly plump summer tomato; the deep, velvety green of fresh-picked mint; the marbled yellow of golden beets...the list goes on. We've repeatedly found that the brightest, most colorful dishes and drinks are the ones that spark the most enthusiastic responses both at the dinner table and in the online world of food photography.

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So for the next few weeks, we’ll be serving you a course a week at our virtual Forkly dinner table. This week, we wanted to whet your appetite with a beautiful range of first course dishes from users across the US and Europe. Play around with the images and you’ll see more information about the restaurant and other dishes tried there...or simply take in their beauty--savor that first bite.

Bon Appetit!

1) Gran Fra i Fjor & Sjøkreps (Last Year's Spruce & Langoustine)

We're fortunate to have guest authors Megan Fizell & Cassandra Edlefsen share their collaborative colour series here on COLOURlovers. Their monthly colour project considers select artworks featuring one predominant colour within the context of the pigment’s history and in relation to natural edible form. Read more about the project at the bottom of this post. You can find the original articles on Feasting on Art. The one below is located here.

Hung Liu’s artistic production is a process of recollection – a symbolic excavation.  Having weathered the re-education of artists vis-a-vis Mao’s Cultural Revolution and immigration to the U.S. in 1984, Hung Liu’s influences are richly transcultural.  She is known as one of the very first Chinese artists to study within the U.S. and has since received numerous accolades for her dynamic work.  Starting from anonymous photographs (often of unnamed Chinese prostitutes), Liu’s portrayals pair elements of tradition with contemporary critique.  Vividly, her use of colour challenges her audiences’ emotive links to colour.  In an interview she gave in 1995, Hung Liu refers to her vibrant use of colour, particularly red: “Red is an alarming color. We use red lights to warn people; to tell about danger and to use caution.  In China, red is the color of the national flag. It is also the color of revolution; it suggests blood. Red also is used for celebration; it is festive and is used for such things as weddings, the Chinese New Year, and red banners. I like to work with layers of meaning.” (1)

Hung Liu, Yang, 2008

We're fortunate to have guest authors Megan Fizell & Cassandra Edlefsen share their collaborative colour series here on COLOURlovers. Their monthly colour project considers select artworks featuring one predominant colour within the context of the pigment’s history and in relation to natural edible form. Read more about the project at the bottom of this post. You can find the original articles on Feasting on Art. The one below is located here.

In the mid-16th century, Spain began importing a vibrant red pigment from the New World that was so highly sought after that the source was held as a national secret. The dye was extracted from the blood of a female cochineal, a wingless insect that lives upon the leaves of the prickly pear. The dye was so valued that in the late 18th century, a French spy by the name of Nicolas Joseph Thierry de Menonville, snuck into the Spanish territory and successively procured a living specimen. The cochineal insect is closely related to the Indo-European kermes bug. Kermes insects live upon the scarlet oak and the red dye they produce was the most expensive pigment in the middle ages and very valuable to the Romans. According to Victoria Finlay, author of Colour: travels through the paintbox, “for many cultures red is both death and life – a beautiful and terrible paradox.” The connotations this colour, often made from the blood of insects, is embodied in Claude Monet’s Still Life: Quarter of Beef. This painting of a dead animal is created – is given life – through the death of the cochineal insect; yet represents a food source that sustains life. The small canvas represents the cyclical and paradoxical nature of the colour red.

[Claude Monet, Still Life: Quarter of Beef (Nature morte : le quartier de viande vers), c.1864
oil on canvas, 24 x 33 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris]

Bet you cool cats haven't seen a recipe visualized in quite this way before, eh? It's new to me too and it's got my mouth a-watering. Ikea's actually behind this delectable book which is called Homemade is Best. It features desserts, all meticulously styled in a way that's completely new to food photography (hat tip to Carl Kleiner for that). Sure, I still want a fat slice of the cake, but now I have so much more appreciation for what goes into it. Makes it seems so much more simple to make, no?

Not too long ago I was having a conversation about chocolate and realized that one either loves it or just simply finds it not to their liking at all. There are also those who crave chocolate on a constant basis. The color that we all identify chocolate with is brown. Rich and organic in appearance, brown is a beautiful color that stirs up a concoction of tasty treats in our head. What do you think?

macaroons | donut | pretzels | mousse cakes | cake | cupcake | ice cream

Continuing on colorful treats, today's pick is focused on green. There are so many great green sweets around. Though it is not one of the desserts included in this roundup, mint chocolate chip shake is an absolute favorite of mine. Also, the green macaroon look so delicious and sadly, I have never ever had the pleasure of tasting an actual macaroon, but from what I hear they are pretty tasty. So, I hope that you enjoy this yummy collection of sweets and please feel free to share some of your favorite green treats.

gummi bear | sprinkles | cupcake | jordan almonds | macaroons | cookie | cake

Instead of touching on home decor today, delicious sweets will be the focus. To be exact, yellow treats. Who doesn't love to indulge in a tasty dessert every once in a while? Ever wonder how many yellow snacks exist? To be honest, there are actually a decent amount, something that has never crossed my mind until recently. Here, you will see a roundup of some yellow sweets. Do you have any favorite desserts that are yellow? You should share with us.