One of the great moments of adulthood is undoubtedly getting your own place. The feeling that you are “playing house,” as if at any moment the grown-up owners of the place that you have busted in to are going to come home and call the police (or your parents), lasts for quite a while — and it’s a great stage to be at because you have to remind yourself again and again that it is really real. Realising that you are the boss is pure joy (and sometimes pure terror, which is where parents come in handy: “Erm, Mum, how do I order a tanker?”) But after a while, when you have put your feet up on the coffee table enough times and no one has yelled at you and when you have furnished that last nook, it starts to become a truth that becomes a part of you.

I remember my first flat. I remember unpacking boxes with The Lord of the Rings playing in the background (we had no cable yet and it was the first DVD I found). I remember my mum arriving with every practical thing you could think of (from buckets to a can opener) as her house-warming present. I remember serving the rather perplexed lineman who came to install my phone with his rather strange request of both a cup of tea and a glass of water when he asked for his ”chai pani.” I remember finally having enough furniture to have my house warming.

Entertaining in your own space is, without a doubt, huge fun. You meld the styles of all the (actual) adults in your life and throw in a little of your own panache to find your own voice. If you are like me and would never dream of cooking for more than four people, then you have the art of ordering down pat. I have called À la carte Express (a delivery service that will bring you anything to your doorstep) so many times that they now recognise my voice and never ask for an address as a result. However, now that karachisnob.com has all the menus online, I have been forced to innovate more to make the very ready-made food that I serve unrecognisable to my dinner guests.

What follows are four of my household’s favourite desserts, so if you ever happen to be at a dinner party at my house and you recognise one of these cheats, shhhh! It’s our little secret.

Maltesers Dust on Ice Cream

A Jamie Oliver Classic: Maltezers over ice cream is sure to never go out of style. Photo: Bina Khan

My husband and I saw this on one of Jamie Oliver’s first programmes in the early days of our marriage (I have never tired of BBC food, or BBC Lifestyle as it is now known). The malt and honeycomb interiors of Maltesers, crushed and sprinkled on top of, and offset by, creamy vanilla ice cream is truly fantastic. It’s crunchy, malty, tasty and most importantly you don’t have to try too hard! (Think: effortlessly cool!)

The Dark-Milk-White Chocolate Platter

Cacao Row: Cascading rows of dark, white and milk chocolates make for a handsome dessert. Photo: Bina Khan

My parents-in-law gifted us a black and white platter from Paradise Road in Sri Lanka that gave birth to an idea that has become our staple dessert. We layer small pieces of dark chocolate on the white side of the platter and white chocolate on the black side with a milk-chocolate line running down the middle. Maybe because this presentation truly allows you to control just how much you consume (or more realistically, you can kid yourself about the amount you really had) or maybe because it’s easy yet luscious looking, but taking three kinds of good quality chocolate, snapping them in to small pieces and arranging them for people to graze from is a winner every time. Agha’s have started to import the famous Green & Black’s chocolate. Otherwise, throw in some fresh, dark Lindt, or a little milkybar if all else fails, and arrange in any attractive platter, and you’ll find they just sell themselves!

Arizona Grill Mousse with a Humble Candi Biscuit Crust

Dressing your Desserts: Serve mousse in interesting crockery; espresso cups also work very well. Photo: Bina Khan

Experimenting is definitely a family trait. A member of my family recently cut a chocolate-frosted muffin in half and rearranged it so that the top was the middle. When she bit into it, she was treated to cake at the top of the mouth with a fantastic creamy centre. Muffin cake!

This kind of ingenious thinking can be applied to all aspects of life. In fact, it has given me a career. You can customise and tweak ordered desserts too. Try doing it to Arizona Grill’s fantastic chocolate mousse and you’ll have a winner. Order three or four mousses, decant into an attractive dish (or small cups as I have done here), wrap up some Candi (by Lu) biscuits in a napkin and smash (think of the last person who irritated you while you bash: a fun perk!) and cover the mousse in a toasty, heavenly crust. Make sure to order the mousse without the Hershey’s syrup or whipped cream, as it spoils the perfect harmony of the cruncy biscuits and the creamy, dense mousse. Truly a dessert to die for.

Reema’s Gooey Chocolate Cake

Anatomy of a Cake: Dissecting a slowly collapsing, gooey Reema confection. See a bigger version of this sinful collapse in the slideshow below. Photo: Bina Khan

I don’t actually do anything to this cake simply because I don’t believe in messing with perfection. But she does make it at home, so technically it is “homemade.” I think the pictures speak for themselves and you can see just how sinfully gooey and moist this cake is. The centre is a gorgeous puddle of fudgy decadence that has you longing for the guests to leave just so you can change in to your tracks and have a romantic interlude involving you, a fork and about 5,000 calories. This comes from the famous Reema, whose catering menu includes all kinds of food, but this cake is definitely why God created her. Just return her platter and cake base to her home after the event and this cake can be yours for the evening.

Click on any photo to begin the slide show: