Wednesday 25 February 2009

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.

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4 comments:

Andy Millns said...

nice. thanks!

Anonymous said...

I always wonder how to spell sieve [that's not true, I've only just wondered it , just then] with a squint it looks like steve. I should be more careful I spose.
Happy baking!

Krista said...

YUM! this looks delicious and ready for a summer day now we've got some sun :)

Anonymous said...

I suspect you got "inspiration" (cough) from the Gordon Ramsay Cook Along. But anyway, thanks for sharing because C4 have taken the recipie off their site.