Few things make me happier than being asked to bring dessert for a party or gathering.  It’s an opportunity to pull armfuls of cookbooks off the shelf (and we all know how much I love my cookbooks, right?)  I pore over them, meeting recipes that I have somehow missed on my first read-through and re-discovering old friends.

The recipe I settled upon for last week’s Murder Mystery evening as hosted by my friend Sam, was an old lust of mine.  In the new and especially exciting days of food blogging, when everyone knew each other and Google Reader hadn’t been invented yet, my friend Alberto of Il Forno (now very, very sadly defunct) baked Pierre Herme’s Nutella Tart from Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme, of course, with stunning results.  I’d had the cookbook for a few months and had been particularly pleased with the chocolate macarons, but hadn’t found an occasion to make the sexy Nutella Tart.  An evening in with a juicy murder to solve and a crowd of girlies seemed just right to try the tart for the first time.

Tart-making is probably easier if you’re (a) not in a rush and (b) not beleagured with a small child loudly demanding pudding when they haven’t eaten any of their dinner.  I opted not to make Pierre’s sweet tart dough recipe as he insisted on making a very large batch so as not to overwork the dough.  Of course you could freeze the excess for a month.  A month?  I make one or two tarts a year these days!!  So, I just bought a pack of excellent sweet pastry from the supermarket.

While your tart crust bakes, multi-task!  Use this time to toast the hazelnuts, cool ‘em, and then chop them in half.  Then flip your board over and industriously chop your chocolate finely.  Stick the butter in a separate bowl and fiddle around with some eggs.  Once that’s done, put your feet up. (If you’re lucky!)

There’s a bit of waiting around involved once the crust is fully baked.  The Nutella needs to be slathered on, but you can’t do that while the crust is hot!  And you can’t make the ganache until the Nutella is in place.  It’s a bit This Is The House That Jack Built, really.

I found the ganache to be quite difficult.  I suspect that my chocolate siezed as I ended up with a thick, plasticy mass in the bowl which only improved very slightly as I gently drizzled and stirred butter into it.  Seriously, it looked truly awful.  I poured it into the crust anyway and as I scattered hazelnuts artistically, I reflected that it wouldn’t take long to detour to Sainsburys if it all went pear-shaped.  Eleven minutes later, I opened the oven door and was greeted by a tart that looked like the picture in the book!  I love my wonky oven—it really saves the day sometimes!

While I transormed myself into the seductive Fleur Tashious, famous humanitarian actress, the tart cooled to room temperature.  There was just time for an artistic drizzle of Nutella zig-zagged over the whole thing before I had to dash.

Pierre’s Nutella Tart was a big hit.  A really, really big hit, in fact.  I served it with some extra-thick brandy cream which went beautifully with the chocolate and hazelnut decadence of the tart.  And while it was amazing at room temperature, I think I actually liked it better chilled the next morning…

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“Nun, meine Kinder,” Frau Mieders said, beaming on them, “today we make the puddings for Mittagessen. And for the puddings , they are Apfelstrudel.”

The girls beamed back at her upon hearing this. Apfelstrudel was a favourite pudding with everyone at school. *

I grew up on a steady diet of school stories, loving their sheer escapism and wishing that my school was more inclusive and accepting.  By far, my favourite was The Chalet School series by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer—now there’s a mouthful of a name for you!  The Chalet School was a wonderful place, full of titbits of knowledge about languages as the girls had to speak English, French and German on alternate days (with Sunday being a ’speak your own’ day), and there were always thrilling adventures around every corner!

One of the most memorable aspects of the Chalet School books was the food.  Oh, how wonderful the food always sounded!  Even the names of mealtimes were different: Frühstück , Mittagssen, Abenssen.  And there were always such vast quantities of food.  When Miss Ferrars joined the Chalet School her first meal consisted of creamy soup sprinkled with herbs, followed by veal in a picquant sauce and then a huge hollow bun stuffed with jam and cream…and that was just for lunch!  Breakfast by contrast was simple with rolls, honey and fruit, all washed down with milk or milky coffee.  I think the coffee was what sealed the deal for me… I wasn’t allowed to drink coffee as a little ‘un, and it seemed so grown-up!  And the girls always, always had afternoon tea or Kaffee und Kuchen (coffee and cakes) which always sounded luscious!

And so it was that the Chalet School was my first introduction to apple strudel, or apfelstrudel to give it its proper name.  Making my own strudel has always been something that I’ve wanted to do, so imagine my delight when I saw that this month’s Daring Bakers’ challenge was to be strudel! The May Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Linda of make life sweeter! and Courtney of Coco Cooks. They chose Apple Strudel from the recipe book Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague by Rick Rodgers.

The first thing to do when making strudel is to make your dough.  Frau Mieders, the plump and jolly Domestic Science mistress in the Chalet School books, always bade her pupils gather all the necessary ingredients before beginning work.  So, in a bid to be a good Chalet girl—something that was always the “ideal” to strive towards in the books—I followed her wisdom.

In Frau Mieders eyes I undoubtedly fell at the first hurdle by using my food processor to make the strudel dough. She says on a number of occasions that “cookery is not for idle girls”!  however, the food processor is a great way to make strudel dough as it encourages long strands of gluten to form in the dough which is exactly what you want for stretching it out to paper-thinness.

Hopefully I redeemed myself by kneading by hand until all traces of stickiness were gone and the dough was incredibly elastic.  I can highly recommend hurling the dough at the unfloured worktop at least a hundred times!  Not only is it fun, it also develops the gluten further and faster than just kneading alone.

With the dough resting, it was time to gather together the filling ingredients and set to work on that.

“Peel, core and slice the apples,” the mistress said.  “Peel thinly, please and also slice thinly.” [...] And then Frau Miediers caused consternation among them by announcing that she was coming round to see how thinly they were all peeling and slicing.

Frau Miediers would be horrified at my idea of peeling apples!  I absolutely loathe doing it, so I try to get it over and done with quickly and end up with very thick peelings.  Still, it was slightly less arduous than usual as I was so excited at the prospect of strudel!

I made a couple of small tweaks to the filling recipe, which I would probably roll back for next time.  I used challah for the breadcrumbs as I’d baked one a few days previously and the rich crumbs browned awfully fast when I fried them.  Plain white bread would definitely be best, I think.  I also tripled the cinnamon called for, which made the filling mixture awfully brown.  Oh, and as I don’t particularly like walnuts, I used flaked almonds which I adore.

The dough had to be uncovered and placed on the floured cloth and first rolled out and then stretched on the backs of their hands until it was almost wafer-thin and transparent and fitted the cloth exactly.  There must be no breaks in it and this made it worse.

I made a double-batch of the strudel pastry as I was pretty sure that I’d either poke a hole through it, or it would stick fast to the sheet, and I’m really glad I did.  It was still a little sticky when I tried to roll it onto the sheet and then when I resorted to just stretching it out, holes kept appearing until it looked like aged lace.  So I tossed it away and started again with the second half.  What really made a difference was brushing the top of the dough with melted butter and also buttering the rolling pin.  It stretched out like a dream and you could definitely read through it!

“And now,” said the mistress when the apples, sugar, raisins and currants had all been placed on the pastry.  “We roll him into a long, thin sausage—this way!”  And she took two corners of the cloth in each hand and deftly rolled it up.  “Now you try it.”

The less said about the shape of some of those sausages, the better!  Some were twice the size and more of Ruey’s.  Some were thick at one end and thin at the other. Primrose Trevoase cleverly rolled her cloth in with the filling and had to undo it, find a fresh cloth for herself and stand to one side, looking rather silly, while Frau Miediers transferred the remarkable result to the new cloth.

This was the part I was dreading.  Even though I had liberally covered the sheet with flour, I could totally see everything going wrong when I rolled up the strudel.  Interestingly enough, did you know that strudel means whirlpool in old German?  The name comes from the rolling or whirling action when you finally get brave enough to just do it.

And would you believe it? Nothing went wrong!  The pastry was so incredibly thin that you could see each slice of apple ghost-like underneath the layers.  Beautiful.

The last touch was to brush them over with melted butter.  After that, each sausage must be carefully bent in the middle and put on well-greased baking sheets before being slipped into the big ovens to bake till they were golden-brown.

I can’t say that I managed to bend the strudel into quite the right shape, but it all fitted on the baking sheet which was a relief.  My only problem came during baking the strudel…

I liberally daubed the strudel with melted butter, so much so that there were a few little puddles on the baking sheet, which then started to smoke in the oven.  I’d say I was about two minutes away from a flaming strudel.  Whoops!  So after whipping the strudel out of the oven and drying it and the parchment, I bunged it back in and hoped for the best.  Which explains why my strudel is a tad over-browned.

Still, once I stopped grousing about it and actually cut a slice, I felt redeemed.  (Well, I got the third slice.  Lucas was sitting at the dining table waiting for the first slice while I was photographing the whole thing, and then Dave came downstairs for his slice, and *sigh*)  The pastry was so incredibly light and its plainness provided the perfect foil for the gorgeously soft spiced apples.  I served the first few plates Chalet School style with “a positive featherbed of whipped cream” and the remainder was eaten with some vanilla ice-cream.

I’m so pleased that I have finally fulfilled a childhood dream and made my own strudel.  It was definitely worth all the work and I’ll be making plenty more strudels in the future.  (I’m thinking that a savoury one with roasted squash and dolcelatte cheese would be awesome in the autumn….

Thanks so much, Linda and Courtney for this wonderful challenge!

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It’s that time of the month again… Daring Bakers time!

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

As much as I love seeing what all the hundreds of Daring Bakers can do with exactly the same recipe, I have a real soft spot for our more creative challenges… where we can pretty much do what we like.  They have an exciting, last day of term feel to them.

I make cheesecake quite frequently, so I wanted to try and do something different with the decoration.  (I should probably confess that my idea of decorating a cheesecake is piling a few truffles in the centre!)  Jenny mentioned in her challenge announcement that we should “make it unique, make a showstopper of a dessert” so that’s what I tried to do.

Originally I wanted to wrap a vanilla-bean laced cheesecake with some white chocolate plastic and piling the centre high with fresh and chocolate-dipped strawberries.  But… it isn’t strawberry season yet, and the few berries I’ve pinched from Lucas have been a bit watery, so I just couldn’t.

So, it was time for Plan B, for which we need a little background.

I am a real coffee-lover.  So much so that I have to ration myself.  Case in point: the last time I bought a bag of coffee, I disappeared into a week-long high and drank jugfuls upon jugfuls of cold-filtered coffee.  (If you have slightly more self-control than me, then you can find the method over at Smitten Kitchen.)

But all good things must come to an end, and now our coffee machine sits on top of the larder (no space on the worktops) and apart from that week when I buzzed around like a hummingbird on crack, the only coffee in the house has been the Visitors’ Jar of instant coffee.

Deciding to make a cappuccino cheesecake was therefore a risky move, but if it tasted as wonderful as I expected it to, then it would be totally worth it.  Plus, bouncing off the walls was bound to burn off all the calories from the cheesecake!

To make the cheesecake look even more special, I decided to wrap the cheesecake in chocolate plastic.  This… did not go well.  Maybe I didn’t manage to scrape all the liquid glucose into the melted chocolate, or perhaps I cooked the chocolate too much, but the but instead of ending up with a pliable and slightly sticky ball of chocolate, I got chocolate crumbs.  No matter what I did, I just couldn’t rescue matters, so I wound up wrapping the cheesecake in some chocolate sugarpaste that I had lying around.  It didn’t turn out as whisper-thin as I’d hoped, but it still looked and tasted pretty damn good.

Since I was playing dress-up with the cheesecake, I added some little gold buttons and some seam details before completing the cappuccino effect with a dusting of cocoa powder.  Oh, and because I couldn’t resist gilding the lily, I made some fanciful sugarpaste flowers,

In case you couldn’t tell, I was really pleased with the cheesecake and it tasted almost as good as it looked.  The coffee flavour of the actual cheeesecake was great, and the whipped cream really made the frothy, extravagant cappuccino effect work.  I’ve got to say, this isn’t my favourite cheesecake recipe ever.  I know that lots of Daring Bakers loved it, but I just liked it.  I found myself missing the distinct tang of cream cheese; it felt like the double cream smoothed out the texture and the flavour.  More tang, please!  However, this didn’t stop me from hoovering it down with Dave.  Poor Lucas didn’t get a look in at all; probably a good thing, really.  He bounces off the walls enough already, thanks!!

I think a big thank-you is in order for Jenny, for making me be creative and have fun at the same time!

Don’t forget to check out the other amazing Daring Bakers creations via the blogroll.

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Sunshine is blazing through my windows, brightening my world and making me smile.  And even if it wasn’t a sunny day, I’d still feel bright as I have finally managed to buy some blood oranges.

Blood oranges, like quince, are one of those things that I have had real difficulty tracking down in recent years.  But, after my triumphant purchase of a tray of quince last year, my luck seems to have changed.  I managed to buy four juicy blood oranges at Sainsbury’s this week!

As you can see my blood oranges weren’t incredibly red.  I had expected garnet juice to start flowing as soon as my knife sank into a fruit.  But… not so much.  Maybe some varieties are redder than others?  While my oranges may not have fooled any vampires into taking a bite, they definitely produced juice that was more red than orange.

It’s hard to describe what blood oranges taste like.  They’re still orangey, but yet different.  More of a floral flavour, if that makes any sense?  It was such a beautiful and unique flavour that I decided that the best way to showcase it would be in a sorbet, letting me show off the colour, too.

Sorbet is so easy to make, especially if you have an ice cream machine.  Citrus sorbets are the easiest of all to make as you just need freshly squeezed juice, sugar and a tiny bit of vodka if you’re not planning to serve the sorbet straight away.  Even if you don’t have an ice cream machine, and mine is on its last legs really, it isn’t difficult to make.  You just need to tip the mixture into a shallow tub, freeze and whisk every 30 minutes or so until you have a mixture which is too stiff to whisk any more.  (An immersion blender works really well for this, but even a fork will do.)

Once churned, the sorbet lightens by a few shades and becomes a gorgeous sunset red and keeps all of its unique flavour.  Every spoonful is bright, refreshing, citrusy and floral.  Sunshine food.

It’s a shame that blood oranges have such a short season, but that just makes them even more special when you finally manage to lay your hands on them.  Well worth keeping an eye out for!

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I was thrilled to discover last week that Maria of The Goddess’s Kitchen had nominated me as one of the inaugural recipients of her new blog award: The Adorable Blog Award! Thank-you so much, Maria!

The rules of the award are as follows:

• Include the award logo in your blog or post.
• Nominate as many blogs which show adorability, cuteness and charm.
• Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.
• Let them know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
• Share the love and link to this post and to the person from whom you received your award.

In return, I would like to award The Adorable Blog Award to the following:

Ivonne of Cream Puffs In Venice
Ellie of Kitchen Wench
Christy of 5 Types of Sugar And Other Treats
Alicia of Bread & Honey
Aran of Canelle et Vanille
Veron of Veronica’s Test Kitchen

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This month’s Daring Bakers challenge, a Chocolate Valentino, was terribly apropos for February, the most romantic month in the calendar.

The Chocolate Valentino is a deceptively simple flourless chocolate cake that only has three ingredients: chocolate, butter and eggs.  The idea is that you use your favourite chocolate and are gifted in return with a cake that tastes exactly like the chocolate.

I must confess that I didn’t particularly like this cake.  Perhaps I did something wrong as it didn’t taste anywhere near as sweet as the chocolate I used and rather than having fudgy texture in the centre, it felt wet.  (There was some fudginess going on, but the unpleasant wet texture wiped it away.  I don’t think it was under-baked, though.)  Still, Lucas was a big fan, so I had at least one happy camper!  I wonder if I’m going off chocolate?  I seem to be leaning more towards nutty or fruity desserts these days…

I did however adore the ice cream.  As our hosts gave us a free rein on that subject, I took the opportunity to try a recipe I’ve had my eye on for a while: Toasted Almond Gelato from Gina DePalma’s Dolce Italiano, one of my favourite baking books.  The scent of toasted almonds lingered intoxicatingly around the house for several days, making me smile every time I came home.  It was just wonderful, and slightly less calorific than many other ice creams I’ve made in the past.  I couldn’t bear to throw away all of the almonds used to infuse the cream, so I added a few (finely chopped) spoonfuls into the gelato mixture before freezing which gave great texture to the gelato.

Almond and chocolate are a match made in heaven, so it was no surprise to me that the gelato managed to elevate the chocolate cake into something much more pleasant.  I can’t help wondering what I did wrong, and what it should have tasted like.  Divine, I should imagine…

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE’s blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

Don’t forget to check out the Daring Bakers Blogroll for other fabulous creations!

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I must admit that I’ve never had much success with tuiles in the past.  They were either too thick or horribly chewy; I never managed to achieve the dizzy heights of thin and crispy goodness.  So, I set them aside and mentally classed them as mere fripperies, never to adorn any of my desserts.

With that in mind, I wasn’t overjoyed to see that January’s Daring Bakers challenge was to make tuiles.  They were just too hard! I procrastinated like mad, and finally gave in last night and decided to have a go.  Plus, since we had to make something ‘light’ to go with them, it was a fantastic excuse for me to make some white chocolate mousse.  If it all went wrong then I could just console myself with some mousse… I am cunning like a fox!

This month’s challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

I opted to make the simplest recipe offered by our lovely challenge hostesses: vanilla tuiles.  The chocolate tuiles looked amazingly delicious, but also far too dangerous to have in the house, and the nougatine looked far too difficult.  Simple seemed like it would have the best chance of working out for me!

Making the batter was very easy.  I followed the recipe and my only problem was that I was 10g short of icing sugar, so I ended up blitzing some caster sugar to a powder.  It wasn’t as perfectly ground as the real stuff, but it seemed to work out.  So far, so good…

I made a very simple stencil out of a paper plate and used a butter knife to spread a thin—almost see-through—of tuile batter onto the baking sheet.  Every time I do something like this I think to myself, “I really must buy an offset spatula.  It would make everything so much easier.”  And it really would have.  If you have one, then I really would recommend that you use it for tuile-making attempts.  This recipe makes a really thick batter, much thicker than my previous attempts, which I think made it much easier to spread a thin layer.  If that makes sense?

And the good times just kept on rolling.  The tuiles baked in the specified time and actually looked like tuiles.  Surely the shaping would be where it all went wrong?  Nope… I lfted the tuiles off the baking sheet and wrapped them round little glass jars where they obediently set into pretty and crispy shapes.

I served my pretty, pretty tuiles with a cube of frozen white chocolate mousse—low fat!—and some raspberry coulis.  They tasted as good as they looked and had a satisfying crunch that was a great contrast to the smooth sweetness of the mousse.  Yum!

So, as you can see, I have somewhat conquered my fear of tuiles. They’re not impossible at all!  I shan’t be knocking them out every week, but as the occasional bit of frippery for a special dessert they’re okay   Thanks for helping me beat my fears, Karen and Zorra!

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As much as I love cheesecake—and that’s a lot—I hate that it typically is loaded with saturated fat and an excess of calories.  So, whenever it is possible, I start trying to pare it back to something approaching healthiness.  Mainly, it has to be said, so that I can eat more of it,  Did I mention that I’m greedy?

The latest cheesecake to go under the knife, so to speak, is Nigella Lawson’s Gleaming Maple Cheesecake from Nigella Christmas.

I had planned to bake this cheesecake as a dessert for New Year’s Day, but the flu put paid to that.  So, once I was better and feeling more enthusiastic about spending time in my kitchen again, I set to work adapting the original recipe…

To lighten things up, I’ve used extra-low fat cream cheese and substituted egg whites for most of the whole eggs called for.  I did keep one whole egg to ensure that the cheesecake set properly and to help keep the texture silky smooth.  The crust is, admittedly, a bit of a departure from Nigella’s recipe: I’ve used my standard cheesecake crust which is a mixture of Grape Nut cereal and amaretti biscuits.  It still has a slightly nutty taste and the flavour works perfectly with the rest of the cheesecake. And really… who cares that much about the crust?  We’re here for the cheesecake.  All my fiddling brought the cheesecake down from 13 Weight Watchers (UK) points per slice down to just 4.  Quite a difference, eh?

But… does it taste good?

Yes!!   I’m really pleased with this cheesecake.  You absolutely can’t tell that it’s a low-fat version and baking in the water-bath as stipulated by Nigella has kept it amazingly creamy all the way through.  The smoky-sweet maple flavour shines through and balances the creaminess of the cheese, yet isn’t sickly sweet.

Treat yourself to an extra drizzle of maple syrup on each slice… it tips it over into absolute luxury without breaking the calorie bank!

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As Comic Book Guy would say… Worst. Xmas. Ever.

This buche de Noel is brought to you by three festive doses (in varying strengths) of the flu—proper flu, none of this “I have a bad cold, so I’ll call it flu” crap—two aggrieved prolapsed discs (me), food-allergy triggered blotchiness & swelling (Dave), and a distinct lack of appetite for anything (all of us).  Even for dessert.

It probably goes without saying that I’m a little cranky, too.

At any rate, on to the challenge.  This month’s challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux.  They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand

I was so excited about this month’s challenge.  I babbled for days to Lorraine about it, and started it with such enthusiasm.  And then the ‘flu hit.  Now I have zero enthusiasm for the buche or indeed, any form of food.  (I don’t feel any thinner yet, but I’m still hopeful.)

My chosen flavour combinations were a coconut dacquoise, white chocolate ganache insert, mango mousse, ginger creme brulee, and a gorgeously glossy (but very tempermental) white chocolate icing.  I went all Blue Peter and created a mould out of an old plastic bottle, some cardboard and sticky tape.  I’m really happy with how ithe shape turned out and I’d certainly make my own mould again rather than buy a tin that’s only going to be used once a year.

Oh, I should mention that I added some popping candy to the coconut crisp insert and it stayed nicely pop-py, which was quite cool.  It was a shame that I didn’t like the taste of the rest of the layer.  I suspect, that gavottes aren’t quite my thing and I should have just bought a box of Rice Krispies or asked around and begged some from a friend.

On the whole, I did like the buche, but I was by no means blown away or impressed.  Which makes me really sad, considering how excited I was and also that I dragged myself through its creation when I should have been languishing in bed.  But I would like to thank Hilda and Marion for giving us such a wonderful challenge to end 2008 with!

Sparkling royal icing snowflakes adorn the top of the buche.

Today is the fifth anniversary (or should that be birthday?) of A Spoonful of Sugar!  I can’t believe that it’s been five years since I first posted—about my stollen, if you were curious.  I still remember how nervous I was, and how I wondered if anyone other than family, friends or colleagues would read my little blog.  And then, slowly, ever so slowly, people started to arrive.  Clotilde, Alberto, Renee (of the sadly now defunct Shiokadelicious.com), Deb… So many people have come and gone over the years, and I’ve loved getting to know them all!

This year has been particularly fantastic, with very special means at both The Fat Duck and Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, a weekend cookery course in Devon, and plenty of foodie outings.  I’m still thrilled beyond belief at the morning I spent at Perry & Son butchering half a pig—I’m looking forward to picking up my Christmas loin of pork—and I don’t think I’ll ever forget how wonderful it was to pick my own apples at Our Small Farm.  Definitely a great year!

So I’d like to say a big thank-you! to everyone who has visited A Spoonful of Sugar over the years, encouraged me to try new foods and techniques, suggesting suppliers and telling me about fantastic new restaurants.  Thank-you, all!

And now for dessert!  I did think about reprising the stollen for this birthday post, but when I spotted some incredibly early rhubarb in the farm shop, I knew I had to make something special with it.  I’m not a girly-girl, and you’d be hard-pressed to find anything pink in my wardrobe, however… I find the lurid pink of forced rhubarb impossible to resist.

The recipe which follows is a slight reworking of ‘Rhubarb and Custard’ from John Campbell’s fantastic book, Formulas for Flavour.  I tried the original recipe last year and unfortunately it didn’t go so well due to the wrong size of rings, a too-runny centre, and a rather horrid ginger sponge base. However, the flavours were fantastic!  So, I’ve swapped the frozen creme anglaise in the original recipe for a frozen creme brulee, replaced the ginger sponge with a thin slice of stem ginger cake and pared down the garnishes as I thought it was quite beautiful already.  I won’t lie to you, this dessert is a lot of work, but I felt the occasion warranted all the dirty dishes and utensils.

The rhubarb mousse is so light and fluffy with a great balance between sharp rhubarb and sweet, creamy mousse.  Nestling in the mousse is the custard component, beautifully speckled with vanilla, and silky smooth and pairing beautifully with the layer of rhubarb geleé below.  Last, but by no means least, is the stem ginger base which I loved, but Dave would have preferred something crunchy.  Perhaps some sort of feuillete?

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It always amazes me how a taste of a food can trigger memories and transport you back in time in an instant.

As I dipped my spoon into the freshly churned ivory tub of ice cream and tasted it, I suddenly became eight years old again.  I pushed aside horrified thoughts of, Omigod, my hair! and Why am I wearing the world’s geekiest glasses?  Did I want to be bullied? and tried to figure out exactly what I was remembering…

When I was a kid, we used to get ice cream as a treat from Danny Craig’s shop in town or Cardosi’s Cafe.  To us, this was just ice cream.  There was never a range of flavours; it was just ice cream, and it was delicious.  It was only special because it came in a cone and with a flake poked in at a jaunty angle—a ‘99—and you went to a special shop for it.  Sometimes mum and dad would even order big tubs for our birthday parties and everyone loved it.

Looking back with an adult’s eye… this wasn’t just ice cream. This was gelato. Now, I didn’t grow up anywhere fancy.  Far from it.  I grew up in the very far north of Scotland, and had absolutely no idea as a small child that our special treats of ice cream from Danny Craig’s, Cardosi’s or even Capaldi of Brora were anything remarkable.  I must have been very accepting, as it didn’t dawn on me that the proprieter’s names weren’t Scottish.  (Okay, so Danny Craig was as Scottish (and as grumpy) as they came, but he still made damn good gelato!)  I should mention that Capaldi’s was the place to break your journey south at.  Everyone stopped there, and an ice cream from Capaldi’s was the real beginning of your summer holiday as well as a means of consoling yourself on the way home when your wonderful holiday was fast becoming a memory.

It is only as an adult that I realise what happened and how Italian families came to settle in Scotland and open ice cream parlours.  They left Italy in search of a new life in the United Kingdom, in the late 19th century, and settled across the country. However, after Mussollini declared war on the Allies in 1940, many Italian men—those resident in the United Kingdom as well as those captured in battle—were interred in prisoner of war camps.  Most notably, in the Orkney Islands—off the north coast of Scotland–where they were set to work building an a series of barriers to protect the British fleet from submarine attack.  These barriers are now known as the Churchill Barriers.  A more beautiful and hopeful legacy of those times is the Italian Chapel on Lamb Holm in Orkney.  At the end of World War II, most of the Italian POW returned to Italy or their homes in the United Kingdom, however, some settled permanently in the far north of Scotland, opening ice cream parlours.

Gradually ice cream parlours and shops were eclipsed by the dizzying array of flavours available from the supermarkets that opened in town.  Cardosi’s Cafe became Cardosi’s shop that just sold sweets and cigarettes, and Danny Craig died with no one to take over his shop and keep the ice cream churning.  The only ice cream shop that remains from my childhood is Capaldi’s of Brora, which still looks unchanged despite having very recently changed hands and become part of a much larger food company.  I hope they keep the small producer spirit going in the shop, rather than just branding their own ice cream with a famous name…

I think that’s enough history and nostalgia for one day… Back to the ice cream!

This perfectly smooth, ultra-milky ice cream has exactly the same taste and texture of the ice cream I grew up with.  Not a speck of vanilla in sight to interrupt the purity of the milk flavour, just a beautiful,smooth taste of milk that rolls off the palate so cleanly, leaving you eager for the next lick or spoonful.  You might think that milk ice cream sounds boring.  You’d be wrong.  If you use the very best milk and cream, then you’ll create your best ice cream ever with an unmistakable flavour.  You’ll surprise yourself with how good it is.

You have to eat fast, though.  As it’s just milk, cream and sugar, the ice cream melts at an astonishing rate, but since you’ll be gobbling it up, this shouldn’t be a concern!

It is beautiful served alone, however makes a wonderful partner to a chocolate cake—I served it with the chocolate decadence I made recently—and drizzled with dulce de leche it is stunning.  Ambrosial, even.

What foods lead you down your own memory lane?

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