Chocolate meringue log

A very Happy New Year! Here's to lots of great baking.

After the success of the meringue on Christmas Day, I thought I'd try a variation as a dessert for New Year's Eve. I hunted through my cookbooks and folders and found a recipe for a meringue log in a Home and Freezer Christmas book. Anyone remember Home and Freezer magazines, littles ones which were always in racks by the checkouts?
Anyway I thought it sounded ideal, although it has a fewextra ingredients in it, like mini marshmallows.
You could use a chocolate sauce as the filling instead of the spread if you wanted, as this what was in the original recipe. I thought the spread would be more substantial when rolling up the log. I had visions of the sauce running out of the sides of the log! I know there's hazelnuts in the spread, but I don't think this will change the taste of the log very much.


5 egg whites, beaten
150g icing sugar, plus 1 tbsp extra
2 tsp cornflour, sieved
 1 tbsp cocoa powder
400ml double cream
1 vanilla pod, seeds scraped out
chocolate spread such as Nutella - or use chocolate sauce if you prefer
50g raspberries and a few redcurrants of you can find them
100g mini marshmallows

to decorate
extra icing sugar and cocoa powder, to dust
*chocolate sauce and raspberries or any red berries

Preheat oven to 150C/gas 1. In a clean bowl beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually add the icing sugar, beating till the mixture is creamy and gooey. Then whisk in the cornflour and cocoa.
Spoon the mixture onto a Swiss roll tin lined with baking paper. Bake the meringue for 1 hour then set aside to cool.
In a bowl whisk the double cream with icing sugar and vanilla seeds till it's thickened.
Sieve some icing sugar and cocoa powder onto a large piece of parchment paper then turn the meringue out onto the paper.
Spread the chocolate spread on top , followed by the whipped cream, then dot with raspberries and mini marshmallows.
Carefully roll up the log, using the parchment paper to help you, and dust with more icing sugar and cocoa. Serve with some *chocolate sauce and raspberries. I had some recurrants in the freezer, so added a few of those.

* I made a simple chocolate sauce using double cream and melted chocolate.

It was delicious. A lovely combination of flavours - the only thing I wasn't sure about were the marshmallows -they weren't really necessary to the filling, a bit chewy. The chocolate sauce gave it another kick of chocolate - you can never have too much chocolate imho, but again, it isn't absolutely necessary to the log.

Chococlate and raspberries are always a good combo, and this is a log I'll certainly make again.

Read More

White chocolate parfait

We don't like Christmas pudding, so I try a new Christmas dessert recipe every year. Last year it was sticky toffee pudd. and this year I wanted to do something lighter. The recipe said that this amount would serve 8, but it served 3 people who had seconds! I made it in advance and froze it.

The recipe comes from this year's 'Woman's Weekly Christmas special'.

100g white chocolate broken up into pieces
250ml ready made vanilla custard
3 tbspns Baileys liqueur
142ml pot double cream
2 tbspns grated dark chocolate
a few raspberries

small loaf tin lined with cling film

Melt the chocolate and stir in the custard.
Leave to cool then stir in the Baileys.
Whip the cream then add it to the mixture.
Spoon it into the lined loaf tin and feeze overnight.
When it's solid, cover and wrap and label it.
Take it out and put it in the fridge 20 mins before you want to use it.
Put onto a plate, sprinkle the top with grated dark chocolate and decorate with a few raspberries.

Note: it melts quite quickly!

Read More

More Gingers, Vicar? Summer Berry Cheesecake

Alas, we were pipped at the post in the Viewers' Choice Award by the lovely Helen and Lizzie - the Go Go Gin Girls. Huge congratulations to them!

Although the Nom Nom Nom 2009 competition is finished now, I couldn't possibly leave you with no recipe for our dessert of Summer Berry Shortbread Cheesecake...

Ingredients

For the shortbread:
6oz plain flour
4oz butter
2oz golden caster sugar

For the filling:
zest & juice of 1 lemon
zest & juice of 1 lime
300g cream cheese
150ml double cream
115g caster sugar
summer fruits (raspberries, strawberries, etc)

For the raspberry coulis:
Handful raspberries
1 tbsp caster sugar

Method

Combine the shortbread ingredients until the just come together. Roll out to 1/2cm thickness and cut into rounds using a 8cm straight edged cutter. Carefully lift the rounds onto a greased baking sheet using a palette knife. Bake at 180C for approximately 15 minutes until they are a pale golden brown. Leave to cool on the baking sheet and then transfer to a cooling rack.

Mix the cream cheese, lemon zest and juice, lime zest and juice and sugar. Whip the double cream and stir it into the cream cheese mixture. Cover and chill for at least 30 minutes.

Make the raspberry coulis by blending the raspberries and sugar together using a stick blender and then pass the puree through a fine seive to leave a smooth coulis. Put to one side and prepare your summer berries - leave the raspberries whole and slice the strawberries.

To build the dessert put a tiny blob of the cream cheese mixture in the centre of each plate and place a shortbread round on top. Then add a good tablespoonful of the cream cheese mixture, some summer berries and a teaspoon of the coulis. Repeat with another shortbread round, cream cheese mixture and summer berries. Finish with a swirl of raspberry coulis around the plate.

It's a lovely dessert for a summer's evening with friends because you can make each element in advance (even the day before) and then just layer up the desserts at the last minute. Enjoy!

Read More

Nom Nom Nom 2009: Coming a close second...

Please vote for us - More Gingers, Vicar?

I think it was the Summer Berry Lemon Shortbread Cheesecake that did it. Clinched us that coveted runners up spot that is. Crisp, butter shortbread. Smooth, citrusy cream. Uber fresh English strawberries and raspberries, bang in season. Tom Aikens said it was great. Great. A Michelin starred chef thought our dessert was great! How cool is that?

I'd like to say that I arrived at the Cookery School on Little Portland Street relaxed and in plenty of time for the finals of Nom Nom Nom 2009 - 'the Masterchef of Bloggers'. But I would be lying. As anyone who knows me can tell you, I have absolutely no sense of direction. Spin me round 3 times on the spot in my own house and my parents used to say I'd be lost. My Nom team mate - Chris Dreyfus of More Tea, Vicar? - assured me it was simple. Come out of Oxford Circus tube, head up Regent's Street and turn right. But the map on my blackberry said something else. So I followed it. I found the street alright (eventually) but how does 15b not come anywhere between 1 and 30? Well on this street it doesn't. I was about to call home for Andrew to laugh at me and guide me in when I spied the distinctive purple sign. It was only 9.30am on a Sunday morning. How am I supposed to do anything at that ungodly hour?

Nom Nom Nom is a fun competition for bloggers, writers, photographers and food enthusiasts. It’s a cooking contest that takes places over one day and sees eight teams of two shop for ingredients and cook a three-course meal that is then judged by a panel of experts.

I shall admit to being more than a little excited. I've never cooked under pressure before and I usually cook alone (the obvious exceptions being when I cook with my Mum or with Not Aunty Lisa). Yet here I was about to embark on cooking an unfamiliar menu with someone I've only known (if you can call meeting face to face about 3 times 'known') for a few weeks.

After a much needed breakfast of the most delicious freshly baked cheese scones, first stop was Marylebone High Street and the Marylebone Farmers' Market for ingredients. What a choice! But with only £40 to spend on quality produce at central London prices we had to spend wisely.

The brief was to cook a 3 course meal for 4 people that was simple, sexy, sustainable and seasonal. Oh, and if that wasn't enough, one course had to be a cold course - no cooking allowed. What better time to cook with seasonal ingredients in England than in the summer?! Tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, peas, broad beans, strawberries, raspberries, everything berries....

After hours of planning, deliberation, recipe testing, consultation and ingredient sourcing (or perhaps over a couple of email exchanges and a drunken night in my kitchen), Chris and I devised our Sensational Simple Sexy Sustainable Seasonal Summer Menu!

Starter Gazpacho with Goat's Cheese Crème fraîche

The recipe is here.

Main Course Pan Fried Sea Bass with Aubergine Caviar

The recipe is here.

Dessert Summer Berry Lemon Shortbread Cheesecake

(recipes to follow soon...)

If our escapades in my kitchen during our trial run were anything to go by it should have all gone horribly wrong... Chris tried to flood my kitchen with gazpacho and, having got the quantities mixed up in the shortbread, I ended up making enough biscuits to feed most of my colleagues the following Monday. But it was remarkably calm. In fact the whole kitchen was calm. Eight pairs of amateur cooks beavering away, stopping only to have a quick chat or take photos for our blogs, and all managing to plate up just in the nick of time before the cries of "Stop Cooking". OK, so maybe there were a couple of moments when panic nearly set in, like when the judges came down to watch and talk to us whilst we cooked. Talking intelligently to and putting the final touches to our dishes at the same time was no mean feat!

You know what? It's exhausting work. Added to all that adrenaline, it wasn't until we all sat down together to share the leftover food that we realised how tired (and if we really admitted it to ourselves, nervous) we all were. The judges seemed to take forever as we waited with bated breath...

I think Chris was quietly confident, but I was totally bowled over when we were announced as the Runners Up!!! And proud of us both! The judges are all experts in their fields and they liked our food. You can read all about it here.

Having tempted your tastebuds with all of this talk of food, there is one little thing we'd love you to do for us and that's vote for More Gingers, Vicar? - VOTE HERE!

There is a serious side to all of this and that's to raise money for Action Against Hunger, an international humanitarian organisation, working in 43 of the world’s poorest countries. Its vocation is to save lives, especially those of malnourished children and to work with vulnerable populations to preserve and restore their livelihoods with dignity. There are some fantastic prizes to be won in the Nom Nom Nom raffle in aid of Action Against Hunger. Please spare £5 or more to support this worthwhile cause.

Did I mention that Tom Aikens loved our dessert?

Read More