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.

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.

Profiteroles!

Having a snog in the oven.
A deceptively easy-to-make dessert! And universally taste-bud pleasing.

Perhaps I will make some more of these soon and take you through in a more step-by-step fashion. My trusty recipe is from the days of Home Ec. lessons at secondary school.

19th October - mother's delight

After a particularly horrible journey back to the midlands, comprising a Thames Clipper full of tourists, an inordinately long journey, and an over-melted tuna melt baguette, this is what my mum had made for dinner.

By this point I was so cranky from travel blah, lack of sleep and lack of food, I would've been happy eating stones, but this was better than stones.

There was naan bread (coriander something...from le supermarché, warmed up in the toaster), coconut chicken, began ka bhrtha (aubergines smooshed up with onion, lemon juice and mustard oil), runner beans from the garden with red onion and Things and a successful rocket and chickpeas item with cumin and possibly something else. Ah my discerning palate (!). I was hungry.

There was also some beautifully fluffy white basmati rice on the side, along with a small bowl of chopped red pepper and carrot - this was dressed with sesame oil, balsamic vinegar and garlic powder. Try this if you haven't - it's strangely moreish.

I was substantially less grumpy after eating this, but substantially more sleepy...mind you, I still had room for a puff pastry mince pie (source unknown) heated up and served with a dollop of clotted cream.