Christmas Day dessert

Christmas Day dessert, a photo by La belle dame sans souci on Flickr.

This is basically an individual chocolate cheesecake.

There aren’t many ingredients, so it is quite simple, but looks pretty impressive.

The base is made with liquidised Digestive biscuits mixed with butter and cooled.

For the filling you need:

Stoned prunes, I prefer Pruneau d’Agen, soaked in brandy overnight
A tub of mascarpone
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon of caster sugar
Half a bar of good quality plain chocolate
2 tablesppons of double cream

Place some chef’s rings on a flat base, a plastic chopping board is ideal and press some of the ground digestive and butter mixture into each one.

Then place a few prunes into each ring.

Take the soaking brandy and add the caster sugar, warm on the hob and flame off the alcohol. When the flames have died down, melt most of the chocolate (but save some for grating on top later) and stir in the cream and keep stirring until you have a smooth glossy sauce.

Allow this to cool slightly and add in the vanilla extract. Then mix this into the mascarpone and beat well until it is stiff and smooth.

Pour this mixture into the rings and cover with clingfilm and chill for several hours.

To serve, place each ring onto a plate, you will need to use a spatula, I think, and grate the remaining chocolate over the cheesecakes.

To unmould, I used a knife to loosen the cheesecakes, making sure I separated the base from the ring, and carefully lifted the rings off.

These are really very rich and luxurious so matching them with wine isn’t easy.

To keep a south-western French theme going I served a chilled bottle of Monbazillac, a rich, honeyed dessert wine from the Bergerac region.

Chocolate tart

This was an experimental dessert.

The ingredients;

1 pack of frozen puff pastry
1 tub of curd cheese
1 bar of plain chocolate (I used Green & Black’s Maya Gold)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
2 tablespoons of caster sugar
4 heaped tablespoons of ground almonds
1 glass of Bailey’s Cream liqueur

I melted the chocolate in a bowl over a saucepan of boiling water and amalgamated it with the Bailey’s. In a separate bowl I beat the eggs with the sugar and vanilla extract and then added in the ground almonds and mixed everything together.

Then I folded in the chocolate and Bailey’s and mixed it all until everything was smooth.

I rolled out the pastry and lined a buttered flan dish and then filled the pastry case with the filling. This was then baked in a Mark 6 oven for 45 minutes on the middle shelf.

The filling rose and cracked a bit, but I think that is OK really, because I served it dusted with icing sugar and with some cream poured over, so the cracks didn’t really show.

We had some raspberries on the side as well and I think that it turned out pretty well. The filling was thick, rich and fudge-textured in the centre, but more crumbly on the edges where the pastry was crisp and flaky.

Chocolate mousse

I did a pudding tonight, a simple one that I love.

It was a chocolate mousse and the recipe is so easy.

You need;

A standard bar of good quality dark chocolate
4 large separated eggs
An optional tablespoonful of alcohol (cognac, rum, whisky etc) I use Kahlua tonight
A knob of unsalted butter
4 serving dishes

You melt the chocolate in a bowl over a saucepan of boiling water with the alcohol and the butter. and once it is all amalgamated and slightly cooled, stir in the egg yolks.

Then you beat the egg whites to stiffish peaks and fold them into the chocolate mixture, making sure that everything is nicely smooth and there are no white bits left. Use a metal spoon or a palette knife and make sure you keep as much air in as possible.

Then, share the mixture between the four dishes and chill in the fridge until the mousses are set.

That is it. Simple.

I served the mousses with some raspberries dusted with icing sugar on the side.

A delicious dessert.

Yay! It’s Easter!

OK, so it is Easter. It is chocolate time and of course, as everyone knows, it is Lindt Bunny time.

Over the last three or four years these bunnies have done what all rabbits do and multiplied across the nation. We’ve got three this year, two milk ones and one plain. Last year we had two and we kept one until June before eating it.

Seeing as we also have two Green and Blacks eggs, I can’t see us eating ALL the choccy at once.

We have a Maya Gold one and a Butterscotch one. Yum!

Of course, we all know that Easter is the celebration of the Great Magic Rabbit, who lays her eggs to bring fertility and happiness to the world.