Summer Puddings

So many desserts seem to rely upon the use of lots of butter, sugar, cream and eggs in order to achieve something fitting for the end of a meal. The reality is that this doesn’t always have to be the case and these mini summer puddings are a perfect example of an alternative to all those rich desserts that seem to dominate.

Basically these puddings, which are served chilled are made from stale bread and very slightly sweetened summer berries. It is up to you which berries you use, but I like to use raspberries, redcurrants, cherries strawberries and some blackcurrants, but I have also made a version using dessert gooseberries and white-currants which I flavoured with a little elderflower syrup – a most unusual but very refreshing alternative.

This is the perfect dessert on a hot summer’s day and despite its inherent simplicity manages to look incredibly beautiful and extremely elegant.

At most, I serve these puddings with a small dollop of lightly whipped cream, but a chilled crème anglaise would also work very well and add a restrained touch of luxury to the dish.
 

Ingredients:

500g soft summer fruits made up of raspberries, redcurrants, cherries, strawberries and a small amount of blackcurrants
2tblsp sugar (or to taste)
8-10 slices of slightly stale white sliced bread, cut into fingers.
1tblsp cassis or framboise

Method:

1. Using a flavourless vegetable oil, lightly grease 4 mini pudding basins or dariole moulds and then line each basin with cling film, leaving enough to fold over the top of each basin when it is filled. Set aside.
2. Mix all the fruits and sugar together in a large bowl. Remove half of the fruits and roughly mash with a fork in a metal sieve set over a bowl to catch the juices. Return the mashed fruit to the bowl with the whole fruit and reserve the fruit juices.
3. Cut out four rounds of bread, the size of the base of each pudding basin. Dip each round into the juice and place one in the bottom of each pudding basin. Next dip each bread finger into the juice and use these, slightly overlapping to line the sides of each pudding basin.

4. Spoon the fruit into the bread lined basins making sure that it is tightly packed in. Finally curt out a round of bread to fully cover the top of each basin, again dipping each round in the fruit juices as before. Fold the excess cling film over the top of each pudding and sit something heavy on top of each pudding to weight it down. Refrigerate overnight so that each pudding has the chance to firm up.

5. When ready to serve, unwrap the cling film from the top of each pudding and invert onto a plate, removing the rest of the cling film. Serve with a dollop of softly whipped cream, if desired.

Serves 4.

Apple & Custard Puffs

Some of the dishes that I cook are created almost by accident, using ingredients from the back of the kitchen store cupboard or from leftovers. I love cooking like this, because there’s no specific recipe, just the germ of an idea which hopefully results in something tasty to eat. I have to admit that I am often surprised by how delicious some of these ad hoc ‘accidental’ creations can be. These pastries were absolutely delicious and could be easily adapted to include other fruits.

The following recipe is a perfect case in point. I had some leftover crème patisserie from another recipe that I was experimenting with. In the Western World, we are regularly given statistics about how much food we throw away and each year. I’m not going to get on my soap-box about this, except to say that I believe that there is something almost immoral about this considering how many millions of people in the world don’t have enough food to eat and face the horrors of real starvation every day. Consequently, I consider that there is an onus on us to respect the fact that most of us in Ireland have enough to eat and are fortunate enough to have a huge variety and choice of foods on offer. We can best do this by not immediately opening the rubbish bin every time we have some foods remaining or approaching their ‘use-by’ dates.

I had a few apples in the fruit bowl and decided to stew some to serve with custard, which would have been delicious in itself and a good way of trying to cajole the children into eating some fruit. I then remembered that I also had some puff pastry trimmings leftover from a tarte tatin that I had made the previous day, so I decided to use that up as well. Rather than bake my little apple puffs, I decided that I would deep-fry them…mainly because I wanted to see how the puff pastry would react when deep-fried.

I have to tell you these apple and custard puffs were a true revelation and reinforced many of my beliefs regarding leftovers. Previous generations were so adept at using everything they had to hand and created delicious meals to eat. In our consumer driven world with its throw-away mentality, we would do well to learn a few lessons from the past.

Ingredients:

Crème Patisserie:
2 large egg yolks
30g caster sugar

7g plain flour

7g cornflour

175ml milk

½tsp vanilla paste

Apple Compote:

1 cooking apple, peeled, cored and cut into 2cm chunks

2 eating apples, peeled, cored and cut into 2cm chunks

1tblsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

1tblsp caster sugar

To finish:

350g puff pastry

1 egg, lightly beaten

Caster sugar and ground cinnamon for sprinkling on finished pastries

Vegetable oil for frying
 

Method:

Crème Patisserie:
1. Place the egg yolks and sugar in a medium sized bowl and whisk until they are well mixed together. Add the flour and cornflour and mix again to fully incorporate. Set aside.
2. Separately, heat the milk and vanilla paste together in a medium saucepan over a moderate heat until just simmering. Remove the pan from the heat and slowly pour the milk on to the egg mixture. Pour this mixture back into the saucepan and place over a low to moderate heat. Stir continuously until the mixture starts to thicken and bubble. Allow to cook for one further minute and then remove from the heat. Transfer the contents into a clean bowl. Cover the surface of the custard directly with cling film and set aside to cool.

Apple Compote:

3. Put all the ingredients into a small saucepan over a moderate heat and bring to a gentle simmer, stirring occasionally. Once the apples have broken down a little (after about 5 minutes), remove from the heat and transfer the apple compote into a clean bowl and set aside to cool.

To finish:

4. Roll out the puff pastry until it is about 3mm thick. Using a 12-15cm round cutter, stamp out rounds from the pastry. Put a teaspoon of crème patisserie and a teaspoon of apple compote side-by-side in the centre of each round. Brush around the edge of each circle with a little beaten egg and then fold one half of the pastry over to meet the other side, pressing down and crimping the edges to encase the filling.

5. Meanwhile heat some vegetable oil in a deep-fat fryer until it reaches 170C. Fry the filled pastries in batches of 3 or 4 for about 6 minutes, turning them around with a metal slotted spoon so that they colour evenly. The pastries are ready when they have puffed up and are a rich golden brown colour.

6. Carefully remove from the heat and gently roll in caster sugar in to which you have added a little ground cinnamon.
 

Makes 8-10. 

Really Lemony Bars!

Yes…This IS yet another lemon recipe… but I just couldn’t resist posting it. These bars are so delicious and packed full of lemon flavour. For anyone who loves lemon, they are an absolute must to make.

The bars are made in two stages; firstly you pre-bake the shortbread like base and then a lemon custard is poured over the base and it is returned to the oven to finish cooking and set. Be warned, there is a quite a lot of sugar, lemon juice and eggs in this recipe and the bars are undeniably rich… but they taste so good… and as the old adage goes – everything in moderation! The bars keep extraordinarily well and I found that they were still as delicious a couple of days later. They would be prefect for a picnic, buffet of similar type of gathering.

I love the way that the custard sets into an almost stiff lemon curd on top of the buttery base – this combination is lovely. The base has a slightly cake-like texture which I liked, but I am going to experiment a bit more to see if I can achieve the same overall effect for the lemon filling but with a crisper, shorter base. I’m not sure whether this will improve the recipe because I am extremely happy with the results that I have achieved so far, but I do love testing different ideas out and will report back on my findings.

 

Ingredients:

Base:
185g butter, softened

65g granulated sugar

185g plain flour

Filling:

5 large eggs

450g granulated sugar

Finely grated zest and juice of 5 lemons

90g plain flour, sifted

To finish:

Icing sugar for dusting

 

Method:

1. Lightly grease a 23cm square traybake tin and set aside.
2. Place the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl and using a hand-held electric mixer beat together until light and fluffy. Add the flour and using a wooden spoon mix together until a soft dough is formed. Press the dough into the greased tin and prick all over with a fork. Refrigerate the base for at least 30 minutes.

3. Preheat oven to 170C/Fan Oven 150C/Gas Mark 3. Remove the base from the fridge and bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes until a pale golden colour. Set aside to cool, but leave the oven on.

4. Using a hand whisk beat together the eggs and sugar and then beat in the lemon juice and zest. When everything is thoroughly mixed together, add the sifted flour and whisk in. Pour this mixture over the cooled base and bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes or until just set in the middle.

5. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely in the tin before removing and cutting into squares.

6. Serve dusted with a little icing sugar, if desired.
 

Makes 16.     

White Chocolate Bread & Butter Pudding with Amaretto soaked Fruit

Bread and butter pudding is also one of the first dishes that I ever made in home economics (aka domestic science) when I was in secondary school. The reason we were tasked with making it then was because it illustrated how leftovers could be transformed into something truly delicious and pleasurable to eat. Traditionally, bread and butter pudding would have been made with stale bread and as such, I will concede that the recipe that I give here is very indulgent including as it does buttery croissants, chocolate and Amaretto soaked sultanas – but it still remains faithful to the original characteristics of a bread and butter pudding.

There is something so comforting about this dish. I could eat bowlfuls of it without hesitation. As the white chocolate custard bakes in the oven, the custard soaked croissants puff up and absorb the custard to create a pudding that whilst being comforting also possesses a certain simplicity.

Feel free to adapt the recipe to include different dried fruits or experiment with different liqueurs. Personally, I believe that there is something magical about the croissant, Amaretto and white chocolate combination. They just work so well together.

 

I usually associate bread and butter pudding with autumn or winter, but I genuinely believe that this version wouldn’t look out of place served at room temperature on an Irish summer’s day.
 

Ingredients:

50g sultanas
50ml Amaretto

350ml milk

300ml double cream

1tsp of vanilla paste

200g white chocolate, broken into chunks

6 croissants

4 eggs

4 egg yolks

25g butter, melted

25g caster sugar
 

Method:

1. The night before: soak the sultanas in the Amaretto overnight to give them a chance to re-hydrate in the liqueur.

2. Preheat the oven to 180C/Fan Oven 160C/Gas Mark 4.  Butter a 25cm x 20cm baking dish, place on a baking tray and set aside.

3. Cut the croissants into thickish slices and layer up in the buttered dish. Pour the mil and cream into a saucepan and heat over a gentle temperature until warmed up but not bubbling. Remove from the heat and add the white chocolate, stirring with a wooden spoon until it is completely melted into the cream mixture.

4. Separately, place the eggs, egg yolks and caster sugar into a mixing bowl and using a hand whisk, beat together until well mixed together. Still whisking, gradually add the warmed cream mixture. This is your white chocolate custard.

5. Drizzle the melted butter over the croissants and sprinkle over the Amaretto and sultanas. Pour the white chocolate custard over the croissants and press down the croissants so that they absorb the custard.

6. Bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes until golden brown and the custard is just set in the centre. Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly before serving.

 
Serves 8.
 

    

Saffron Cake

Saffron is an amazing spice which can be used in both sweet and savoury cooking to great effect. It is also a popular ingredient for use in baking in the British Isles and Scandinavia where it is commonly used in yeasted breads and buns.

Saffron is a much sought after spice made up of the stigmas gathered from a variety of crocus which are dried and used as a seasoning and a colouring agent in food. The colour that saffron imparts is a truly beautiful deep golden yellow and the taste is unique and hard to describe being fragrant and gently spicy at the same time. It is important that you don’t go overboard when adding the saffron because it can result in a slightly ‘soapy’ taste which can be overpowering.

Saffron is extraordinarily expensive to buy and it appears that you get a relatively small amount for the price you pay. Every time that I use saffron in my cooking I invariably tell my children that weight-for-weight, saffron is more expensive than gold – I think that they are getting rather fed-up of hearing it; but it’s true.

 

Saffron is an essential ingredient in Paella and also in a simple Risotto alla Milanese – two wonderful rice dishes hailing from Spain and Italy respectively. I have been experimenting with saffron recently and have used it in a sweet rice pudding and also in a syrup in which I poached some pears. Both dishes were absolutely lovely and once I have perfected the recipes, I will post them up on the blog.
 

The following recipe for Saffron Cake is a play on saffron bread (sometimes also called ‘cake’) which contains currants and is traditionally eaten in Cornwall in the south-west of England, where saffron was grown in the past. This cake is based on one that my aunt Barbara used to make and which I think she originally found on the back of a spice packet. This is essentially a light fruit cake with added saffron, filled and topped with a cream cheese icing similar to that you would get on a carrot cake. I find that the lactic tanginess and the hint of sweetness work well with the saffron and fruit in the cake.
 

This is a lovely, simple cake with an air of nostalgia about it.

 

Ingredients:

1tsp saffron strands
30ml boiling water

175g butter, softened

175g caster sugar

3 large eggs, lightly beaten

275g self-raising flour, sifted

75g currants

Icing:

50g butter, softened

100g cream cheese

200g icing sugar, sifted
 

Method:

1. Place the saffron strands in a small bowl and pour over the boiling water. Leave aside for a couple of hours.
2. Preheat oven to 170C/Fan Oven 150C/Gas Mark 3. Line an 18cm round cake tine with non-stick baking parchment and set aside.

3. Place the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl and using a hand-held electric mixer, cream together until light and fluffy. Gradually mix in the eggs, making sure they are well incorporated before adding more.

4. Add the sifted flour and using a large metal spoon fold in along with the saffron water and strands until everything is fully mixed together. Finally add the currants and mix through the batter.

5. Spoon the cake batter into the prepared tin and smooth the surface with a spatula of the back of a spoon. Bake in the preheated oven for 70-85 minutes or until the cake is well risen and golden brown and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

6. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for ten minutes before removing from the tin and allowing to finish cooling on a wire rack.

Icing:

7. Place all the ingredients in a mixing bowl and using a hand-held electric mixer, beat together until everything is thoroughly mixed together.

8. Using a sharp knife, divide the cake into two across the middle do you are left with a top and a bottom half. Spread half the icing over the bottom half and place the other half of the cake on top. Spread or pipe the remaining icing on top of the cake and dust with a little extra icing sugar. Serve.
 

Serves 6-8.