Frustrated. Lots of work, passing the pears through a fine sieve, same with raspberries, decorating the plate like Janet Street-Porter in Masterchef, cooling and it hasn’t set. Grrrrr.

I used 2 ripe pears, chopped and cooked off with Poire William liquour, passed, like I mentioned, reheated and mixed with 3/4 of a gelatine leaf. DOUBLE THE AMOUNT OF GELATINE NEXT TIME. Mixed it with cream, lovingly whipped with icing sugar and lemon juice. Made a raspberry coulis which took that remaining quarter of a gelatine leaf and held beautifully on top.

While preparing the plate I used the same coulis, it worked great and looked great. Grrrrrr!!! Will be done again.

Darek and Beata came over for a week.  I love having them here, have been thinking about what to cook for them for a while and this evening decided to make tarte tatin, but with plums. Taste – wise, yes. When it comes to texture, shit. The plums released so much juice that the puff pastry stood no chance. It baked, but it had nothing of the delicious crunchiness on the edges. We ate it with vanilla ice cream, regardless. Maybe different kind of plums next time, me thinks.

I loved the way it tasted. I managed not to overdo the amount of Baileys, what I cocked up, was overcooking it. Although I followed the recipe guidelines, 50 minutes in 150 degrees, gas mark 2, the texture was not right. It had nothing to do with the silkiness a good creme should have. Damn. I’ll do it again, but will take them out after 30 minutes or so.

For 2 large cremes I used 160 ml of double cream, flavoured with some vanilla paste, a tbsp or a touch more of Baileys, all heated up till nearly boiling. I whipped 2 egg yolks with a tbsp of caster sugar and then – new and efficient!- I switched from electric mixer to a whisk, while slowly incorporating the hot cream into the egg mixture. What I discovered, was that there was no need for straining, as the manual whisk did not generate so much froth as the electric one.  But still- overcooked. Maybe on Saturday I’ll do it again. It needs to be perfect.

On the same flow as I have made the lasagne, I set to make the cake. It didn’t turn out spot on, but it was good enough to make it to the blog, though we did have a laugh with Florek, when I tried to release the tin.

First I made the jelly, as it takes hours to be ready. Then I baked the cocoa sponge. My sponge recipe comes from my Mom, it never fails. I made half a portion, as I only needed a base. I whipped 2 egg whites with about 4 spoons of caster sugar, then added the yolks. A poonsful of plain flour sifted into the misture, a spoonful of potato starch and a spoonful of cocoa powder. The last one, half a tea spoon of baking powder. All nicely folded in, went into the hot oven for half an hour. I’m really pleased with it, it’s not too sweet, it’s perfect.

My cream was the weakest point of this cake-turned-triffle. I cooked budyn with an extra spoonful of plain flour, as Mum’s recipe says, then I whizzed it with some margarine and threw a banana in as well, for extra, erm, character. It needed some fruit, so I emptied a can of apricots and finished with the jelly.

It tastes great, but the cream didn’t hold. Still, will not be wasted.

And I was so proud when I completed the white dots around the plates! So pretty, I thought! And if I had only paid as much attention to the mousse as I did to those dots, the result would have been awesome.

The inspiration came from the lobster dish I saw from L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon, but I made mine as a dessert, so an ordinary fruit jelly, the ring in the middle, before the jelly sets and the mousse in. I won’t bother with the mousse recipe from today, as it was totally and entirely shit, I will do it again though, with more attention to detail.

4 out of 10. Not happy.

From the recent edition of Good Food Mag.

I tried it, I like it, will make it again tomorrow and take it to work, but with more ginger and more spices and maybe with some pecan nuts too, I think it would make it even more awesome.

200 g of dates were roughly chopped for this recipe and simmered with 200ml of milk, then pureed nicely and added to the  mixture of 250 g of soft butter, 4 eggs, 280 g of self raising flour, 200 g of brown sugar, 2 tsp pf vanilla paste, and a touch of baking powder to lift it up. All this was beaten up and poured out onto a baking tray lined with baking parchment. In the meantime I cored 3 apples, red apples, all for the looks, did not peel them, but sliced thinly and arranged in the cake mixture into rows.

Baked in 180 degrees for about 45 minutes, then finished off with maple syrup and icing sugar.  Pat on the back. 🙂