I was reminded of this today by someone mentioning “impossible pies” — an all in one mixture that produces crust, filling and sauce “by magic”. I love lemon-flavoured dishes, and lemon surprise is one of my favourite classic desserts, known since childhood — mix everything together and get a light sponge floating on top of a lemony sauce when it comes out of the oven. My version is even low-fat!
Once the HHDD cheesecake competition was over, Peabody posted her own cheesecake recipe with some mouthwatering photos. Once more I needed to cook something for supper after choir rehearsal so I ran out and bought some cream cheese right away.
Peabody’s recipe uses American cup measures and she also has a bigger tin than I do, so before I started I converted it to metric and shrank it by a quarter to fit my 8 1/2 inch / 22 cm springform tin. Then I made various other adjustments along the way. Verdict: success — it even looked almost as gorgeous as Peabody’s! I won’t repeat the method here, as you can find it at Culinary Concoctions, but here’s my heavily annotated ingredient list in metric measurements.
Early-season strawberries are often pretty tasteless, but sometimes you just can’t resist buying them because they remind you that spring is here. Usually I brighten up dull strawberries by halving them and marinating with a little sugar and a splash of Carthagène or Muscat for a few hours; this really brings out what flavour they have. I’ve also been known to use black pepper and balsamic vinegar. Today I found another way of enhancing them which made a very nice change.
From Good Housekeeping; a lot of work, but worth it for a special occasion, and you can make the cake ahead and freeze it. I think you could use lime instead of orange; I love the combination of lime and white chocolate.
This makes a very large cake — at least a dozen servings. Reduce by half for a 15-cm tin; baking time will be the same.
It seems a terrible oversight that I do not yet have an entry for ile flottante, my favourite French nursery dessert. This is ace home cook Louisette’s way of doing it. This is one large island — the spoon-sized blobs of egg white floating in a sea of custard are oeufs à la neige. Ile flottante is easier to get right in my opinion, and certainly more manageable when cooking for a crowd.
Just catching up with the backlog of recipes held elsewhere and not entered here yet. This is yet another Kaliyoga one. Tiny tartlets make lovely petits fours with coffee. Left-over poached plums can be eaten on their own, with cream, ice cream — or mascarpone of course.
Wow, my first attempt at a blog competition: Hay, Hay, it’s cheesecake all the way, courtesy of Peabody. Also my first attempt at food photography; ah well, I can only improve!
I often find cheesecake too sickly, but this one is light and delicious, and went down a storm for tea after choir rehearsal. As a bonus, it’s very easy to make, and an excellent way of using up home-made lemon curd. Ideally, make it the day before and chill overnight.
This classic Italian pasta dish is a good one for the pressure cooker, and substantial enough to serve as a balanced one-pot meal.
Tip: if you want to make a large quantity and freeze/reheat some, extract the part you are going to keep before you add the pasta. If you don’t, it will soak up too much liquid and go all stodgy.
This is a great dessert to follow a substantial one-pot meal (such as couscous, for example). In addition it’s healthy, low-fat, easy to do, and is prepared entirely in advance. What’s not to like?
All recipes in this blog tested using the most stringent quality controls (French guests). Read on ...
A note on weights and measures
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