167: Lemon trifle, p140

A triumph! This one will definitely be repeated. Many times. It's already been requested by several people who were at the party in the Cotswolds we went to this weekend, for future parties. 

And I don't like trifle! I really don't like soggy cake/biscuit bases/etc in desserts and have never 'got' trifle and have therefore always avoided it... but this really was something else. A relatively small amount of the sponge fingers, with the inspired addition of lemon curd, and then the lightest, most delicious lemon custard on top, and a thick covering of whipped cream. The custard was wonderful - creamy and light but the acidity and zestiness of the lemon cut through and stopped it being too sweet or fatty. I could eat bowls of just the custard. Yum.

Decorated with orange zest and some little yellow and white sugar flowers I found in our Aunt's pantry, it was the first pudding to be finished at the party, out of a dining table full of desserts, and the people at the end of the queue for desserts didn't even get to see it. Hurray!

152: Lemon amaretti pots, p162

An easy peasy, quick pudding to make - a good one for future dinner parties when there's not much time... and anything with lemon curd in it has to be a winner! I don't particularly like crumbled biscuits/cake mixed in with softer ingredients, find it an odd texture, especially when they get soft themselves - ick, so I think if I did this again I would put a layer of crumbled amaretti biscuits on the bottom of the glasses/ramekins and/or on the top of the cream/yoghurt/lemon curd mixture. And swirl the lemon curd in last, so you get streaks of lemon curd throughout the creamy mixture - think that would look prettier too.

141: Lemon ice-cream, p172

Oooooh my, this was REALLY good. Wow. Definitely to be repeated. Yum. Yum. Om nom nom nom.

Easy peasy to make, even using the freezing-stirring method - this froze to a soft ice-cream with only two rounds of stirring during an evening.

Wasn't sure how much to crush the meringue, left some quite big lumps, but I think they got crushed up a bit more during the stirring, and couldn't detect them in the finished ice-cream. Curious. But it was delicious! Sweet but not toooo sweet, sharp and rich and supremely creamy. Yum. More please!

95: Passion fruit roulade, p389

AAArgh. I don't make roulades. But had to make this one at some point... damn damn damn. Stupidly promised to make it for a team BBQ, the day after we got back from hols, which turned out to be the hottest day of the year so far, so ideal for making a roulade!!

First (minor) problem was that I suddenly realised the recipe specifies a 30x36cm tin, which I don't have in my collection of bakeware, damn damn damn. But I do have two 30x16cm tins, so I improvised and made two, thinking I could roll them together.

Recipe otherwise started off okay, egg whites whipped up fine, as did the cream, roulade cooked and rose gorgeously, and then it started to go wrong... roulade stuck to the baking parchment (which was specified - not greaseproof) and started to tear, but I stayed calm and managed to remove the paper from the cake, bit by bit... Spreading on the lemon curd, then the cream, and then the passionfruit seeds and juice, all fine... and then the rolling was the real disaster. How does one roll a roulade, filled with squishy stuff, without all the squishy stuff splurging out?? I didn't manage to stop this happening, and joining the two together just wasn't going to happen. The roulades kind of collapsed into squidgey messes - and ended up looking like a pair of a frogspawn omelettes!! It was too late to make/find another pudding, and we took them to the BBQ, very apologetically... where everyone was very sweet and said they looked lovely (ha!). But they all ate the pavlova that was offer first, before trying the roulade... And phew, it tasted better than it looked, and the whole lot disappear pretty quick. Phew. Phew. Phew. Not to be repeated though... Way too stressful...