Lemon Pots de Creme from Patricia Wells

LEMON POTS DE CREME

One of a couple of Patricia Wells’ desserts from At Home in Provence which always gets the thumbs up. This is taken directly from her book (which is packed away the other side of the world), but I found it online.

Serves 8

• 125ml/4fl oz lemon juice (about 4 lemons)
• 100g/312oz sugar
• 6 large egg yolks
• 375ml/13fl oz double cream

Preheat oven to 325F/160C/Gas 3.

In a small bowl, combine the lemon juice and sugar and stir to dissolve. In a large bowl, gently whisk the egg yolks, then whisk in the cream. Whisk in the lemon juice and sugar, combining thoroughly. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve or several layers of cheesecloth. Let stand for two to three minutes, then remove any foam that rises to the top.

Place eight 125ml (4fl oz) ovenproof ramekins, custard cups, or petit pots in a baking pan large enough to hold them generously. Divide the cream evenly among the individual moulds, filling each about half full. Add enough hot tap water to the baking pan to reach about half the depth of the moulds. Cover the pan loosely with foil to prevent a skin forming. Place in the centre of the oven and bake until the creams are just set around the edges, but still trembling in the centre, 30 to 35 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and carefully remove the moulds from the water. Refrigerate, loosely covered, for at least two hours and up to 24 hours.

Serve the pots de creme chilled, without unmoulding.

Chocolate Gourmandise from Patricia Wells

Apparently I have dessert on my mind….

 

Chocolate Gourmandise from Patricia Wells At Home in Provence (Nigella uses this recipe and calls it Gooey Chocolate Puddings)

The mixture for this can sit for a few hours, just the last minute cooking needs to be done…well…at the last minute.

Four 1-cup (25-ml) ovenproof ramekins

• Butter and flour for preparing ramekins
• 4 oz (120 g) dark chocolate, I just use Cadbury’s if it’s about, grated or finely chopped
• 8 tablespoons (4 oz; 120 g) unsalted butter
• 3 large eggs
• 3/4 cup (150 g) sugar
• 1/4 cup (35 g) plain flour

Cream for serving to those who might want it: this is only my idea, not part of the original recipe…

1. In the top of a double boiler set over, but not touching, simmering water, combine the chocolate and butter. Whisk until melted. Set aside.

2. Gently whisk together the eggs, sugar and flour, mixing just to blend. Gradually whisk in the chocolate-butter mixture. Set aside to rest for 1 hour, to allow the flavors to mellow.

3. Preheat the oven to 400 F (200 C; gas mark 6/7).

4. Generously butter and flour the ramekins. Place on a baking sheet. Carefully pour the mixture into the ramekins. Place the baking sheet in the center of the oven and bake just until the edges are set and the interior is still a bit liquid, 10 to 12 minutes. Transfer the ramekins to 4 dessert plates and serve immediately. Warn guests not to burn themselves on the hot dishes.

I’d say you’ll get lots and lots of Brownie points for these…but maybe pudding points is more appropriate?

Banana Cake a la Stephanie Alexander

My mother has a recipe for banana bread I used to make until I discovered this. Probably I should revisit making my own banana bread, if only to experience a version that isn’t the industrial take favoured by cafes these days. But it’s so damned hard to go past….

Banana Cake

Ingredients

• 125g softened butter
• 1.5 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup mashed ripe banana
• few drops of vanilla
• 250g plain flour
• 1 teasp bicarb soda
• half teasp salt
• half a teasp cinnamon
• good pinch of allspice
• half cup of buttermilk or half a cup of milk to which is added 1 teasp of lemon juice: I never have used buttermilk

Method

Butter and flour a 20cm square cake tin. I use a large round cake tin with spring sides. Then line base with baking paper. Preheat oven to 180C.

Cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Beat in eggs, banana and vanilla. Sift dry ingredients and add to mixture, alternating with the milk. Spoon into tin and bake for 45 minutes or until a skewer slipped into the middle of the cake comes out clean. I find that the round tin I use takes more like one hour. Cool in the tin for a bit and then take out and cool on wire rack. When cool completely cover top and sides with chocolate icing. That’s my take, the chocolate icing. Stephanie Alexander recommends this:

Walnut and brown sugar topping. Combine 3 tbsps coarsely chopped walnuts, 3 tbsp self-raising flour, one and a half teaspoons ground cinnamon, 100g softened butter and 3 tbsp brown sugar. Scatter this over the mixture before baking.

Recipe from Stephanie Alexander The Cook’s Companion

Prize Chocolate Cake

Prize chocolate cake

The fashion these days is heavy, flourless cakes that last for ages without having to devour on sight, but what a bizarre idea that is. The whole point of baking a cake is to treat it in a lustful way. If you, like friends for whom I cook, yearn for a light sponge chocolate cake that one eats sooner rather than later when it comes out of the oven, this is it.

Ingredients

• 100g butter
• 3 eggs
• half a cup of cocoa mixed with half a cup of hot water
• 2 cups of self-raising flour
  one and a quarter cups of sugar
• 1 level teaspoon of cream of tartar
• half a level teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
• half a teaspoon of salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• half a cup of milk

While oven is preheating to 180C

Method

Cream butter and sugar well, add eggs and beat again. Add sifted flour, cream of tartar, bicarb of soda and salt alternately with the milk. Lastly add the cocoa/hot water mixture.

I bake this in a round spring tin, lightly buttered and then sprinkled with flower, followed by a layer of baking paper. I really don’t want the cake to stick. Alternatively you can put this mixture into two log tins.

How long it will take to cook depends on so many variables, but most importantly whether you are using two, or one, pans. If two, this will take maybe 35-40 minutes; if one then longer, maybe even an hour, but check after 50 minutes or so. If you have a relation of the worst oven in the world (of which I am the proud user) you may wish to turn the tin(s) around so that more than one part of it bakes properly. Use a skewer to check. Gently insert it into the middle of the cake. It will come out clean if the cake is ready.

Take the cake out of the oven but leave in the tin for maybe 10 minutes to settle a bit before attempting the traumatic process of getting it in one piece onto a cake rack to cool. When it has cooled completely, put on cake plate and generously ice all over the top and sides with chocolate icing. As soon as the icing has had time to harden, serve.

 

Self-saucing chocolate pudding, a traditional Oz dessert

Self-saucing chocolate pudding

This is the opposite of chocolate mousse. If chocolate was ever not to be sexy, this is how. If chocolate mousse is about being naked, chocolate pudding is about slippers and old cardigans.

If you haven’t made a self-saucing pudding before, trust the instructions, it will look like it is going to be a disaster, but the whole thing’s a miracle of science. You start off with a dog’s breakfast. You end up with a lovely pudding complete with sauce. I have no idea why people have icecream with pudding. That hot and cold thing doesn’t do it for me…(see Complicity for the sexual version). But I’m not making it for me. Offer vanilla icecream and also whipped cream. Real hedonists will take both.

Preheat the oven to 180C.

• 50g butter
• half a cup of sugar
• 2 dessert spoons of cocoa powder or twice as much with commensurately less flour
• 1 cup SR flour
• 1 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 1 teasp vanilla

Topping: half a cup of sugar and one dessertspoon of cocoa mixed well.

Cream butter and sugar, add beaten egg, then flour, milk, cocoa, vanilla; mix well.

Pour into buttered DEEP casserole – this will rise. Sprinkle the topping over the mixture.

Now for the messy part. GENTLY pour 2 cups of near-to-boiling water over the top.

Pop in oven for 45 minutes or so and check it. It should be dry on top, the sauce will be underneath, a little browned, maybe….you’ll be able to tell if it is time yet.

Serve as instructed above in old clothes with icecream and cream.

My mother’s chocolate mousse

Monica’s chocolate mousse.

It really does make sense to be naked for cooking this one. Somehow it goes everywhere and it is so much nicer for the person licking it this way. Well, nicer for you too, of course. You don’t want him licking your windcheater. Honestly.

Makes about 6 serves.

340g dark chocolate
4 tablespoons water
30g butter
6 eggs
For serving: whipped cream

Break up chocolate and melt with water very gently over low heat. You can use a double boiler if it’s the right size.

Cool slightly and beat in butter.

Separate eggs. I’m crap at doing this and it is extremely important that no yolk contaminates the white or you won’t be able to get the whites stiff. So, use an abundance of bowls. Crack an egg and carefully move the egg from one half of the shell to the other over a bowl which collects each white. Any time you break a yolk while doing this discard the whole thing. So, you have some nice pure white, put it in the large bowl you are collecting the whites in – needs to be large as you will see. Put the yolk in the yolk collecting bowl. Break another egg over that first bowl etc. Eventually even I have the yolks and whites of 6 eggs, but I might need a dozen to get there. Yep, completely crap at it. Never think you are on a roll. The moment you think that you’ll mess one up for sure.

Beat the egg yolks one at a time into the mixture.

Remember you put the egg whites in a large bowl – if not, do that now as you are going to beat them with an egg beater until they are stiff and they will expand a lot. How stiff? Poke at it with a fork and you should get a little peak that stays up, doesn’t flop back down again. There is something really sexy about this, but I don’t know exactly what.

Deftly mix the egg whites into the mixture or vice versa. It might depend on which container is larger. You need to make sure it is very well mixed, especially at the neglected bottom. But you want to keep all the air that you created through beating the eggs and if you are rough with the mixture you will lose that.

Pour mixture into parfait glasses, glass bowls, whatever seems best, cover with gladwrap (or equivalent) and put in the refrigerator to chill overnight first.

Whip the cream. Use single cream and add sugar. The sugar helps it become nice and thick and a little stiff. It goes in the fridge too.

Chocolate mousse vegan style from Fleurieu Pantry

Or let’s just call it a yummy chocolate cream dessert that can be made in a few minutes and doesn’t have to set.

Ingredients for two

• 3 tblesps cocoa powder, I used Cadbury’s premium
• flesh of 1 ready to eat avo
• 1 very ripe banana, peeled
• 1 tblesp maple syrup: I used honey
• 1 teasp vanilla extract
• 1/2 teasp ground cinnamon

You can puree if you want it smooth, but I don’t think mashing is so bad.

We had it with plain yoghurt and that would have been cream if we’d had any….but we aren’t vegan.

Thanks, Fleurieu Pantry which shared this online yesterday.

 

 

 

 

 

Notes for apple crumble

Why put chilli in stewed apples? Because this is a dish eaten with tea and the chilli adds a moreish taste which goes with tea the same way a curry does.

Note: when stewing apples, you need to stir often as they cook quickest on the bottom and otherwise you will end up with a combination of mush and half crunchy apple – of course, that may be exactly what you want!

For one standard pie dish:

For the filling:

• 6 granny smiths peeled, cored and sliced
• dash of water
• sugar to taste – with sweeter apples maybe none
• cloves
• freshly ground cinammon
• a few dried chillies crushed/crumbled

Bring to boil in saucepan, they don’t take long to soften, stir once or twice.

For the topping (I didn’t measure the ingredients):

• whole oats
• sugar
• dessicated coconut
• powdered ginger
• cinammon
• finely chopped pecans
• butter in small pieces

Preheat oven to 180C

• Butter pie dish and add apples, take out cloves.
• Mix all ingredients for topping and rub in butter. It will be dry in parts and lumpy
• Spread over apples

Bake until topping looks ready.

Serve piping hot with natural thick yoghurt. Yoghurt could be cream, creme fraiche or icecream.

Had half for dessert, the rest will be breakfast in the morning.

Added: I have also made this with no sugar on granny smiths, and with treacle instead of sugar on the crumble. If using treacle add after you have rubbed in the butter.

The Confident Cook by Lauraine Jacobs

I was missing my friend Jared tonight – he’s been gone over 24 hours now…but fortunately he left behind some books including The Confident Cook, which I assume is a book well-travelled, in Geneva now, but New Zealand in origin. In this it reflects the author, who has done an incredible amount of travel in her life in her dedicated search for all she could find out about food from a cooking point of view.

The result is a book that reminds me of Australian Belinda Jeffrey’s style and attitude. Practical, tending towards healthy, but with no compromise on great taste. Naturally that comment doesn’t apply to dessert, but even then, one can find this dish, which I haven’t made yet but I’m anxious to try. It has no sugar, but that isn’t going to stop it being a sophisticated dessert option which one could serve up any time.

She introduces it thus:

This is another recipe for poached pears. My friend and guide on a trip to Santorini, Rosie Barron, shared the idea of combining savoury and sweet flavours to complement pears, and was the inspiration for this dish. The perfect way to end a meal, it should be served with thick Greek yoghurt, drizzled with extra honey.

Ingredients

6 firm, ripe pears
½ cup red wine vinegar
½ cup mild liquid honey (blue borage or clover)
1 bay leaf
6 sprigs thyme
1 cinnamon stick
6 cups water
thick Greek-style yoghurt, to serve
½ cup shelled fresh walnuts, chopped, to serve

Method
Peel the pears, leaving the stalks attached, and set aside. Combine the vinegar, honey, bay leaf, thyme, cinnamon stick and water in a large saucepan and bring to a simmer. Add the pears and very gently poach until the flesh is almost translucent (about 20 minutes).

Place the pears in a serving bowl and reduce the liquid over a fast heat until it becomes quite syrupy. This should take about 30 minutes. Pour the syrup over the pears and allow to cool.

To serve, place a pear on each plate with a little of the syrup. Spoon some yoghurt beside each pear, drizzle extra honey over and garnish with chopped walnuts.  (From The Confident Cook, recipe available online here.)

 

Stephanie Alexander’s sponge topping

I don’t eat desserts out often as I think however adventurous the rest of a meal is, dessert is for comfort. Restaurants don’t seem to get that. The last dessert I recall eating out that really fitted the bill in that regard was an apple crumble, piping hot, with lashings of equally hot custard on the side in Manchester eight years ago.

No surprise then that Stephanie Alexander’s sponge topping is an essential part of my limited dessert repertoire. Indeed, the author herself clearly sees it as more than just a dessert, as it is in her basics section which kicks off The Cook’s Companion.

Ingredients

• 60g butter
• 4 tablespoons castor sugar
• 2 eggs
• 150g SR flour, sifted
• 1/4 cup milk (about 65 ml)
• 2 cups drained poached or pureed fruit

Method

Preheat oven to 180C. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each. Fold flour and milk alternately into egg mixture to make a soft batter. Put fruit into a 1 litre buttered pie dish and cover with topping. Bake for 30 minutes until well risen, firm and golden brown.

To this I add: I’ve tried it with apple and with rhubarb. I’ve also used small individual ramekins instead of one large dish. Sometimes I then serve it as is, but the dishes come out hot and hard to handle, so more often I then gently take the sponge head off, tip the fruit into a mound in something like a soup plate and then rest the sponge on top.

Cream, creme fraiche and strained yoghurt are all good accompaniments. Sometimes I serve with a little syrup on top.

It’s okay to make the topping ahead, even put it in the fridge if necessary, and as the fruit’s also been precooked, it’s a good dessert for not having to hang about in the kitchen with guests around.

And, it’s comfort food that will simply make everybody happy. I do wish restaurants understood how important that is.