Category: Dessert

Homemade frozen yoghurt

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I have almost become obsessed with the healthier alternative to icecram – frozen yoghurt or the shorter – fro-yo. But I think it is wrong that it costs more than icecream to buy it, and decided to try and make it myself. At the office.

It was very easy to make, and it tasted just like the real thing, only downside is that it doesn’t freeze that well, it gets too hard.

But luckily (?) there are other fro-yo obsessed people in my office, and they were happy to help me eat it.

I only added agave nectar to the yoghurt for that nice tart taste, and that is what chains like Snog use as well.

Frozen yoghurt, 1 l

2 x 500 g greek style yoghurt, 10 % fat

100 ml agave or to your taste

Mix yoghurt and agave in a bowl. Taste and add more if you like. The frozen product is slightly more tart the before it is frozen, so add a bit more agave than you think is needed. Pour into an icecream maker and  let it do its magic for around 40 mins. Enjoy straiht away. 

A reminder: green pea soup

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I have mentioned green pea soup on this blog before, but that was a while ago now and I think it is time for a gentle reminder. The reason for this is, that I think this is one of the nicest soups around and probably the only one I find light enough to enjoy during the summer. Hot, that is. I don’t really do cold soups.

I live for the weekends, although I like doing things during the week as well, I adore weekends when you have time to prepare and eat a meal with plenty of time on your hands. That’s why I usually make three courses at the weekends, or at least two. And when one is busy at the weekend, then this works just as well on a Thursday.

I suggested to Christopher that we would have a nice bottle of wine with dinner, and then I made the one course weekday meal I had planned into a three course meal quite easily. The peas in the freezer made this lovely soup, the main course was the aubergine dish I had already planned (it needs some modifications until it gets posted on here) together with garlic bread. And some cheese and crackers left over from the weekend was our dessert. Easy peasy and incredibly fulfilling.

The cheese board consisted of, from the top: Rebluchon (creamy, French, cow’s milk); a lovely French blue cheese that I have forgotten the name of; Brie de Meaux (French, cow’s milk) and last but not least Ossau Iraty (Basque region, France, ewe’s milk, hard). My must-have crackers with cheese are both British; Carr’s water biscuits and Bath Olivers (the two types to the left in the bread basket).

Greenn pea soup, serves 2

300 g frozen petit pois

water to cover

a dash of concentrated vegetable or chicken stock

100 ml cream

2 dashes (3 tbsp approx) dry white wine

Place the frozen peas in a sauce pan, just about cover with water. Bring to the boil and let it boil for a minute or two. Drain but keep the water. Blitz the peas with about two ladles of the water until you have a thick soup. Pour it back into the pan, add cream, wine and stock and bring to the boil again. Add more liquid if the soup is too thick. Season. Pour into bowls and decorate them with whirls of cream and truffle oil.

Lemon curd squares

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For our Midsummer lunch, I made a strawberry gateau with lemon curd cream, which was really nice when we left the house. An hour and a half later when we got to our friend’s house it was rather melted (because of a heat wave and being in the underground), and therefore didn’t look its best, so I will give you the recipe and pictures next time I make it.

I ended up with some left over lemon curd after making the cake though, and as I try to avoid throwing food away, I wanted to use it up. The result was these chewy squares with lemon curd and crispy oats on top.

I brought some with me to work, and they disappeared fast, and I kept a few for dessert the next day and served them up in the simplest way possible; with a dollop of lightly whipped cream. Delicious!

Lemon curd, about 500 ml

100 g butter

2 eggs

200 ml caster sugar

1 1/2 lemon

Grate the peel and squeeze the juice from the lemons. Place in a saucepan with butter and half of the sugar. Bring to the boil and wait for the sugar to dissolve. Leave to cool.

Beat eggs and the rest of the sugar fluffy and pour it into the saucepan. Let it thicken on low heat while stirring, it must not boil. Leave to cool and keep in the fridge for about a week.

Lemon curd squares, makes 20

450 ml plain flour

150 ml caster sugar

150 g softened butter

1 tbsp baking powder

1 egg

200 ml lemon curd

Topping:

150 ml oats

100 ml caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla sugar

50 g softened butter

Beat sugar and butter creamy. Add egg, flour and baking powder. Spread out in a 20×30 cm baking tray. Spread the lemon curd on top. Mix butter, sugar and oats and sprinkle on top. Bake in 200C for about 15 mins. 

Four course dinner

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Our friends Malin and Martin have been staying with us Wednesday to Sunday last week, and we did the most of eating and drinking during that time. 🙂

On Friday we met up with them after work and walked to our favourite Terroirs for a glass or two. OK, two. We take most our visiting friends here for drinks as it is such a nice a place. We were a little hungry so we nibbled on bread and nice green olives before we headed home to eat dinner.

While I was cooking we had some Pimm’s and snacks and after half an hour or so we were ready to eat properly.

We had Delia’s smashing halloumi with lime vinaigrette as a starter, followed by lamb neck fillet with French potato salad and asparagus.

For dessert we had vanilla pannacotta with strawberries and raspberries and a pinch of icing sugar, followed by a cheese board, sourdough bread, crackers and port.

Yep, we were very sleepy and full after all this. The next day the gluttany continued with a big brunch and Henley Regatta, which I will post tomorrow.

Bread and butter pudding

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Yesterday I posted our proper Sunday supper consisting of venison burgers and potatoes au gratin, and as that was not enough we finished it off with a super traditional bread and butter pudding. My first ever as well, and thanks to Delia, we really enjoyed it.

The most important thing with this pudding is that the bread is stale. If you use stale bread the top will go nice and crisp and the bottom layer is more custardy and soggier, and that is the way it should be. If you use fresh bread the whole thing will go soggy, and soggy bread is definitely not my thing. 🙂

Bread and butter pudding, serves 6

6-8 slices stale bread

butter

10 g mixed peel

(50 g currants – I omitted these, not fond of currants in things)

275 ml milk

60 ml double cream

50 6 caster sugar

1/2 lemon, the zest

3 eggs

grated nutmeg

Butter the bread slices and  apie dish. Cut the bead in half and place one half as a bottom layer in the dish. Sprinkle half the peel (and currants) on top. Place the remaining bread on top, and scatter the rest of the peel over it. Beat eggs, cream, sugar and zest lightly. Pour into the dish. Grate nutmeg over it. Bake for 30 minutes in 180C. Serve it warm with pouring cream. 

Crème brûlée with Amarula Cream

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As you might know, my favourite dessert in the whole world is crème brûlée, followed closely by panna cotta, and the worst thing that could happen to me in this world (ok, maybe not) is that I grew bored of the two. As I can’t allow that to happen I try to renew the recipes once in a while. So on Saturday I made this lovely version of crème brûlée, flavoured with Amarula cream. I love Amarula cream , it is like the better sister to Bailey’s. Velvety smooth with its particular taste from the berries on the Marula trees in South Africa it worked really well with the creamy crème brûlée. Yum!

Crème brûlée with Amarula Cream, serves 2-3

3 egg yolks

60 ml caster sugar

200 ml cream

100 ml milk

at least 3 tbsp Amarula Cream

brown sugar

Stir sugar and egg yolks together. Heat up cream and milk in a pan. Just before it boils, remove from heat and stir into the yolks. Stir until all the sugar has melted. Mix in the Amarula. Pour into dishes. Bake in 110C for 35-45 minutes or until the mixture has just set. Leave to cool. Sprinkle with a thin layer of brown sugar before serving and caramelize it with a torch. (Brown sugar has a lower melting point than white).

And a little dessert…

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The vegan dessert I had planned was almond biscuits with rose water buttercream wedged in between. But that didn’t happen.

Apparently it is very difficult to make a vegan buttercream that involves rose water. Ifailed. Three times.

So I had to come up with plan B. Said almond biscuits fresh strawberries, perfectly ripe mango and a splosh of rose water on the fruit. Nice too, but not what I had in mind.

Oh well, shit happens sometimes, and the best you can do is to make it work with what you’ve got.

Almond discs with sesame and cadamom, makes 25

100 g ground almonds

3 tbsp sesame seeds

100 ml caster sugar

100 g margarine

2 tbsp plain flour

1 tbsp soy milk

1 tsp ground cardamom

Melt the maragine in a sauce pan, add the other ingredients. Cook for a few minutes while stirring, until you have an even batter. Place dollops of teaspoon size onto a baking sheet, with plenty of space in between. Bake for 6 mins, 175C, leave to cool on a flat surface, then store in an airtight container. 

Custard whip for cakes

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In Sweden you can buy a product called Vaniljvisp (vanilla whip) and it is like a vanilla custard that you whip with your electric whisk until it is nice and creamy. The homemade version of this (which of course is even more delicious) is what I served with the last dish on Sunday’s brunch; rhubarb cake.

This cake can be made with any fruit/berries you like, but I prefer it with rubarb. And make this whip with it, because it is loooovely. Unless you’re pregnant, or for other reasons can’t have raw eggs.

I found the recipe on a nice Swedish blog called Linneas skafferi.

Custard whip (uncooked), serves 6-8

3 egg yolks

3 tbsp icing sugar

1 tbsp vanilla sugar

300 ml whipping cream

Mix egg yolks, icing sugar and vanilla sugar. Whip this until fluffy with an electric whisk. In a seperate bowl, whip the cream fluffy (not too much). Pour this into the yolks and mix it all together until it is fluffy and nice. Serve immediately. It separates slightly when left standing, but just stir it and it comes together again. Keeps for a few days in the fridge.

Key lime pie

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The evening when mum and dad arrived we of course cooked them dinner. Their flight was slightly delayed so while I went to meet them at Paddington, Christopher prepared dinner; the cider chicken in creamy sauce.

Mum and dad’s suitcases were full of gifts for us; Easter eggs, Swedish sweets (cars and chocolate), nice blue towels for the bathroom, venison mince and wild ducks. And a few things I had asked them to bring; Swedish hard cheese (gräddost), some spices and Heinz chilli sauce which is not sold in the UK.


For dessert I had prepared a Key Lime Pie the day before, after a Hummingbird Bakery recipe. It was lovely and fresh! Only change I made was to halve the recipe, as there were only four of us. There were still half a pie left which I brought to work the next day. They liked it so much they’ve asked me to make more. 🙂

Key Lime Pie (halved recipe),  serves 6

250 g digestives

100 g melted butter

4 egg yolks

1 can (397 g) condensed milk

2,5 limes, juice and zest

2 dl whipping cream

Crumble the biscuits and mix with the melted butter. Press into a pie dish evenly, either using your hands or the back of a spoon. Pre-bake the case for 20 minutes in 175C. Leave to cool.

Lower the temperature to 150C. Mix egg yolks, condensed milk, zest and juice in a bowl. it thickens naturally. Pour it into the pie crust and bake for about 40 minutes until the filling has set. Leave to cool and refridgerate for a few hours. Whip the cream and spread it on top of the pie just before serving. Decorate with some more lime zest.

Premiere: British strawberries

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I was extremely happy when I noticed British strawberries in the supermarket yesterday. Is it that time already?! Grown in Kent they tasted like early strawberries do; some nice and sweet, some a bit sour and some a bit bland. But together with pouring cream and sugar they still taste fantastic! My favourite dessert, and something I will eat most evenings from now on.

We went out for a three course lunch yesterday (plus amuse bouche and truffles – report to follow) so we had a simple, but very nice nevertheless, supper consisting of Swedish style prawn sandwiches and strawberries and cream for dessert. Life is good. 🙂