Lemon & Lime Syllabub

Well now doesn't that look tasty! And the best thing about it is how satisfyingly easy it is to concoct. Not strictly speaking baking, but it falls in the dessert category for sure.

Serves 4 greedy people or 6-7 people that've just had a rather large meal (and aren't greedy).

Ingredients:
500ml double cream
1 lemon
1 lime
75g icing sugar
handful of gingernut biscuits

Method
1. Pour the cream into a deep bowl. Grate in the zest of the lemon and lime, being careful not to grate in the pith. Juice your lemon and lime and strain out any pips. Pour the juice into the bowl.

2. Sieve in your icing sugar. Whisk until the syllabub is just forming stiff peaks. Taste it at this stage - you want enough acidity to cut through the richness of the cream. Adjust with more juice or more icing sugar as necessary.

3. Roughly crush one gingernut biscuit (or two if, like my housemate, you like the extra crunch) into the bottom of a wine glass, or a dessert glass or similar. Whatever you've got that looks good!

4. Spoon your mixture into the serving glasses, on top of the crushed biscuit - take care not to get too much down the sides.

5. Using the finest side of your grater, grate some gingernut biscuit over the top. Serve!

I've tinkered with the photo below so you can get an idea of how much of a dusting of biscuit you're aiming for. Scroll down to see my tips and variations - do let me know if you try any of them out for yourselves.


Tips and variations
- Turn your fruit after two firm grates on one spot - this should help you to avoid grating in any pith.
- If you don't have a reamer or other juicing device, push a fork into your fruit after cutting in half and squeeze the fruit around it to help you get all the juice out.
- I don't recommend getting "extra thick" double cream - it's usually full of unnecessary stabilisers and you're whipping this up anyway.
- Invest in an electric whisk - unless you are using this as your workout.
- Do experiment with a variety of citrus fruits and other suitably crunchy biscuits - in this recipe quantities are far more lenient than in traditional baking.
- Possible variations: orange syllabub and chocolate biscuits could work quite well. You could even try a lime syllabub with passion fruit swirled through and coconut macaroons for the crunch factor.
- Stick some alcohol in it.

rocky road - concocted by my good friend Katie!

Katie's made stunning Rocky Road (recipe here) - it looks so awesomely yum that I wanted to post the pic here - more encouragement for you! She managed to take pictures before eating it - that in itself guarantees extra brownie points...or extra rocky road points?

I'll check on exact nature of rocks and get back to you, but in the meantime let's make your mouth water...


Update: rocks were maltesers, marshmallows and glace cherries

The Gingerbread Men

This one is a quick one, and a bit of a cheat (but not really). My lovely manager at my last job got me a Gingerbread Man making kit for my 'secret' Santa, and making Gingerbread Men suddenly seemed a congruous indoor activity to the outdoor making of snowmen. Does that sentence make any sense?? The snow's gone to my head via my ears.

So anyhoo, here are my little lot.

I wish I'd had some different colours of icing, and maybe some brightly coloured, mini Smarties rather than these 'natural' 'normous ones. Yes, several of them have too many buttons, but this was the best way to cram chocolate bits on top.

Inside the cute box, in the image of a Gingerbread Man, was a packet of dry ingredients (flour, dried egg, bicarb, ground ginger...something else I can't remember), a sachet of golden syrup, a tube of black icing and those slightly odd non-Smarties.

All I had to do was tip out the dry ingredients, rub in 30g of butter 'til it resembled breadcrumbs, squeeze in the syrup, add 2tsps of cold water, squidge together, roll out, and voila: Gingerbread men!

Although this gave satisfying results in the form of baked goods, this didn't feel quite like baking for me - I quite enjoy all the measuring out and a certain amount of judging and concocting. But it was therapeutic nonetheless.

Regrettably, after my Menu For A Snowy Day, I couldn't possibly have fit a Gingerbread Man in my gob for dessert, so I'm going to munch one for breakfast and let you know how it tastes....

Report: hmm, quite tasty actually. Maybe could be a tiny bit more gingery, and perhaps have a little more chew. But it's not a bad biscuit!

Promised Profiteroles

So I haven't made these for a long while, but I did promise the recipe after showing profiteroles having a love-in in the oven!

One reason I haven't made them is that they're very much a birthday or other celebratory item - heaps of cream and piles of chocolate sauce mean it's almost the only time people will throw guilt to the wind and stuff their face with melty, forgiving profiteroles. In fact I often think the choux pastry is an incidental item in the whole setup, to dupe people into thinking they're eating some sort of socially acceptable dessert rather than just...err, chocolate and cream.

Choux pastry might indeed be acting as some sort of cover-up for glorious face-stuffing here, but it does add a certain je ne sais quoi in taste terms, as well as for presentation's sake - it's a lot easier to stack cream and chocolate when there's pastry involved.


To prove how much easier it is than it looks, I will reassure you that this recipe comes from year 8 Home Economics lessons. I don't remember any disasters either!

Ingredients:
Choux pastry
65g plain flour and a pinch of salt
150ml water
50g unsalted butter
2 eggs, lightly beaten

Sauce
175g dark chocolate (preferably at least 40% cocoa solids)
15g unsalted butter
3 tbsp golden syrup

Filling
150ml double cream
1 tbsp icing sugar, sifted

Method
1. Pre-heat the oven to 220C/425F/Gas7 (200C fan oven). Sift the flour and salt on to a sheet of greaseproof paper (or I sometimes sift it on to a baking tray or similar).

2. Heat the water and butter gently in a saucepan until the buttery melts, then bring to a rapid boil.

3. Quickly add all the flour in one go and beat with a wooden spoon until the mixture forms a ball and leaves the sides of the pan.

4. Remove from the heat and transfer the mixture into a clean bowl. Leave it to cool for 10mins (it helps to spread it around so it cools quicker), then very gradually beat or whisk in the eggs - it's best to use an electric whisk if you have one. Important: keep a close eye on your mixture, as you may not need to add all the egg. What you're looking for is a smooth, glossy mixture with a smooth piping consistency.

You'll probably know when it's ready - think of the consistency of....toothpaste! Maybe slightly firmer, but it'll really start to shine at this stage, which is a good indication.

5. Dampen two baking sheets with cold water - filling them and tipping out the water is a good way to do this.

6. Spoon the choux mixture on to baking sheets in about twenty even heaped-teaspoon sized blobs. If you divvy up the mixture as evenly as you can and assess the size, you'll have a frame of reference for next time.

Bake for 15-20 minutes until well risen, golden brown and super-crisp. Do not open the oven for the first ten minutes or so of cooking, otherwise the choux buns will sink.

7. Remove the buns from the oven and transfer to a wire cooling rack. At this stage pierce each bun with the tip of a small, sharp knife to allow steam to escape (stopping them from getting soggy).

Leave to cool completely.

8. For the filling, whip the cream and icing sugar until the mixture holds its shape - you can do all sorts at this stage. Put no icing sugar in at all, put more in, put vanilla extract in, even lemon extract and put lemon curd on top instead of chocolate (I just invented that right now - try it and let me know!).

9. Slice each bun in half, but without cutting right through. You can pipe in the cream filling if you like, but I prefer to use a teaspoon to pile it in. Yum.

10. Arrange the buns in a spectacular pyramid if you so wish, or leave them as individual ones, or however you wish!

11. To make the chocolate sauce, place all the ingredients in a heatproof bowl and microwave on 80% power, 1 minute at a time until more or less melted. Beat until smooth.

12. Cool for 15minutes and pour over buns. Of course at step 11 you could've used white chocolate, or milk chocolate, or made toffee sauce instead, or whatever you like! You can definitely be creative with the presentation. And let's not forget that chocolate eclairs also use choux pastry as their base...


A Profiterole is no Rocky Road, but I like that both items have a similar air of sharing about them and they always feel like a luxurious treat.

While I've been writing this post, I've been mainly listening to Laura Marling and Maximo Park. Music and baking are fine friends.

A nice big slab of rocky road

Well at least, that's how it started out, until it'd been cut into manageable chunks, piled up high, then steadily devoured. Shame to chunk it up, being as it's meant to be a rocky ROAD, but I think about an inch square is enough to enjoy without feeling guilty - so guilt-free that you could have several small chunks.

I used Nigella Lawson's basic recipe and my own assorted chunks - say what you like about the lady, but she certainly knows her rocky road. My adapted recipe is below.

Ingredients:

125 soft unsalted butter

200g milk chocolate, broken into pieces

100g good quality dark chocolate, broken into pieces

3tbsp golden syrup

200g rich tea biscuits

arbitrary amount of:

mini marshmallows

Mars Planets

Maltesers

50g white chocolate to decorate

Method

1. Heat the butter, chocolate and golden syrup in a microwaveable bowl, in said microwave. Keep microwave on 80% power and do 30seconds at a time to avoid burning/over heating chocolate. When melted, scoop out around 125ml of the mixture and set aside.

2. Put the biscuits into a plastic freezer bag and bash with a rolling pin until you have some crumbs and some, er, rocks. Give your other crunchy ingredients a bit of a bashing in the same manner.

3. Fold it all into the mixture, along with any squishy ingredients you might've chosen to use (raisins, glacé cherries, dates etc.)

4. Line a baking tin (approx. 24cm/9in square) with foil and tip in the mixture. Pour over the reserved non-chunky mixture and smooth the top with a spatula.

5. Refrigerate for around two hours, or overnight.

6. To serve, melt your small amount of white chocolate and drizzle over the top however you please. It might need a little re-chilling after this, but the cold rocky road should set it fairly quickly. Cut into squares or fingers or rhombuses or whatever you choose, stack up on a plate, and feed housewarming guests.

Other variations include Nigella's Christmas rocky road, using gingernut biscuits and a higher proportion of dark chocolate for a more 'grown up' feel, adding nuts, only using marshmallows...as you will see if you Google "rocky road recipe", one of the joys of rocky road is that nearly anything goes and proportions are flexible. What could be easier?

The picture above and pictures of empty plates is all I have, so this will have to do, but I can guarantee yours will look tempting, no matter what you bung in.

The getting of job

The getting of job is somewhat problematic, because it requires readjusting to what it's like not having acres of time to yourself.

So, I need to get back to blogging! I've got two weeks off now for the catch-up period, but I must keep up when I go back to work...maybe I should take my laptop and write on the train to work. Plan!

So what you've missed - as well as baking/making of desserts (lemon and lime syllabub, chocolate and banana muffins, blueberry and lemon friands, OTHER), I have also been concocting Christmas gifts with the help of my Marguerite Patten book, The Basic Basics - Jams, Preserves and Chutneys

They call her the "doyenne of British cookery" on that there page, but I believe she was once The Face of the WI.

Anyway, so I also made spiced pickling vinegar for my pickled onions (NB - if you ever make pickled onions, your fingers will smell and look like onion for several days)...and of course the pickled onions, apple and pear chutney, and piccalilli. The latter is the one I'm most looking forward to tasting, because is smelt SO good. My mouth is watering now, but then I do love a pickle.

I've made oodles of rocky road too, though I'm yet to make my housemate's preferred version containing glacé cherries and raisins. Lucky for her it's her birthday this week, so when she's back in London she can have some of that. I'll be interested to see if it tastes as good. My first batch was the best.

So, on to updating...

Honey fudge/ toffee

Another recipe from the River Cottage Family Cookbook but this time, not so foolproof.

This seemed so easy, but despite having my sugar thermometer carefully in hand, I made two batches - one that turned out as fudge-ish, one that turned out as toffee, neither of which were the same colour as in the book...

In fact, I think I nearly burnt the stufff that turned out fudgy. But I don't understand how I did that, and indeed how I got tofee, when according to my thermometer I hadn't even reached 116 degrees Celsius. According to the recipe, that's what I was aiming for and I'd have to get to 200 or so to hit toffee levels, but that's not what happened so...

My reliable fudge-making friend tells me that I overcooked the milk. I suspect I could've done with a deeper pan (so as to be able to do it all in one batch), with a heavier bottom and on a lower, less impatient temperature.

This one definitely requires further experimentation.

I haven't taken pictures of it chopped proper because...well, let's just say it wasn't pretty.

But here it is in a tray.