That was the first recipe I saw in the new Good Food and planned on making it last week, but ran out of steam on Wednesday afternoon. Today though, having cleaned the house, done the laundry,  an enormous pile of ironing, cleaned up the garden and relaxed in it for half an hour with a glass of apple martini- there were no more excuses.

I started with the caramel, done it for the first time ever using an actual recipe, rather than chucking lots of sugar into the pan and hoping for it to work. 70 g of sugar plus 2tbsp of water got nicely melted on the pan and some bubbling and colour- changing later I had some lovely caramel, that I poured onto 4 ramekins and got to the custard.

I used 2 eggs and 1 egg yolk plus 50 g of sugar that got beaten up until nice and light and then I gradually poured 250 ml of hot milk while beating still. It needed straining, after which I added some Cointreau for extra flavour and some vanilla paste and finally poured onto the ramekins with caramel. I baked it in bain marie for 20 minutes in 130 Celsius, then cooled and chilled in the fridge for 4 hours.

Very happy with the texture, will be more generous with Cointreau next time.

I felt like baking today, so I produced 4 little pastry cases ( recipe the same like in blueberry tartlets plus some ground almonds) , filled them with fresh custard, topped with strawberries and some jelly on top to keep them fresh and shiny. It was a lovely and light dessert, will put some more different berries next time. Nice.

I just realized I’m being a bit boring here, all there is for the last few weeks are desserts. Should maybe get back to savoury stuff some time soon. Tonight though I went back to  ” The Art of Pastry ” book and made a lime pie. Very pleased with it, I must say, it’s very light and limey, as expected.

The pastry base, baked in the newly purchased tin ( together with a new pair of jeans to cheer myself up ) was made with 225 g of plain flour, 115 g of butter, 2 egg yolks, 30g of sugar and a bit of cold water. Blind baked for 20 minutes.

The filling like this I tried for the first time ever, as I always associated condensed milk with things like toffee sauce and here they told me to whip it up with the egg yolks. And it worked a treat! 4 yolks, a 400g tin of condensed milk, a juice and rind of 3 limes, 2 tbsp of sugar I whipped together bit by bit, then added whipped egg whites and mixed in. I then baked it all for 20 minutes in 160 Celsius. It’s risen, but then sat down when cooled, still ended up with lovely, moist, light and fluffy texture. I finished it off with some whipped cream, bits of lime and mint. Will be making it again! 🙂

It’s Florek’s birthday today. I’ve cooked him a menu he asked for and even pulled off a proper Bento Box!!! The plan for green tea ice cream was far more ambitious, I did ask at work how to make it, I did go to Japan Centre on Picadilly to get the green tea powder, but eventually settled for Alex’s suggestion to simply mix the good quality vanilla ice cream with green tea powder. Yummmmmm!!!!!!! The fondant recipe is the same, today used Valrhona chocolate, picked by Florek in Waitrose.

It looked like this….

I love the way it looked in the latest issue of Good Food, so I made it tonight. Two small ones for us for dessert and a large one to take to work tomorrow to see what the Masterchefs of Dinings will make of it.

The pastry base I’m very happy with, it’s thin and crispy, just like it should be. Made with 200g of plain flour, 100g of butter and a bit of cold water, well worked and blind baked for 20 minutes.  The filling is made of 90g of soft butter creamed with 180 g of caster sugar, 2 whole beaten eggs, 180 g of almonds- that’s in the ideal world, but Oluta only had a small packet of ground almonds, so topped it up with ground pecans, worked great! I used about 250g of overpriced blueberries, mixed most of them into the filling, the rest scattered on top and pressed in lightly. It baked in 190 Celsius for about 45 minutes. Finished off with icing sugar. Nutty and sweet.