193: Nigel's delightful trifle, p234

The final recipe, and fit for a celebratory meal with friends, on New Year's Eve, to follow the goosehttp://mousemeals.blogspot.com/2011/01/192-roast-goose-juniper-sauce-and-apple.html! I still don't much like trifle, so wasn't looking forward to this one, but other people seem to love trifle, so I decided safety in numbers... and the Limoncello trifle from the book was amazing and the first trifle I've ever liked, so maybe, just maybe...

And it was a hit. Inspite of not being able to get blackcurrants (doh, it was December of course... I should have gotten some ages ago and popped them in the freezer if I wasn't going to do the trifle straight away), darling hubby whilst on his goose chase, found some mixed 'black forest fruits' in the frozen section - blackcurrants, blackberries, cherries, and black grapes. So we used them instead. Near enough :) How slapdash I have become!

The cream mixture on top, all though a faff (three bowls required - mix egg yolk and sugar in one, whip the cream in another, whip the egg white in another...), was divine - not too sweet, but light and fluffy, and picked out by several guests as being particularly noteworthy. And the cake below was a mixture of berry juice soaked and dry and fluffy. Very good indeed, and seconds all round.

Phew. So, it is done. Finished. The whole book, 193 recipes, in 365 days.

144: Strawberry mascarpone tart, p207

 

Om nom nom! Another  scrummy low-cal (ha!) pud from the book... and easy too, no pastry (hurray!) but a base made from crushed up oatmeal biscuits and butter. Wasn't sure it would set hard enough to hold together out of the tin, but it did after half an hour or so in the fridge. The mascarpone mixture was a bit of a faff, comprising a cheese and egg yolk mixture and whipped egg white - the egg white deflated quite a lot on folding into the cheese mixture but it didn't seem to affect the final result, which filled the biscuit case nicely. I made a bit of a mistake in not pushing the biscuit base up the sides of the tin a bit, and it was too late when I realised so I wasn't sure it would come out of my springform tin without splodging everywhere, but after another half an hour or so in the fridge it had firmed up enough that it was fine and I didn't have a biscuit base with a lake of squishy filling flooding out all over the place. Phew!

And the result was delicious - really light filling and not too sweet. Would make a very nice pud for a summer BBQ... even if the rain was lashing down on Saturday night after a gloomy grey day, when we had this :)

125: Orange and lemon cheesecake, p129

Marathon weekend of cooking is at an end! This was the finale to Sunday lunch, and nearly finished us all off... I was worried it wouldn't set properly, and it was awfully soft, but held it's shape when cut, hurray! Extremely creamy, and not as lemony or orangey as I though it might be, but Dad managed to polish off a good quarter of the whole thing. Not sure it's the best baked cheesecake recipe around as Nigel describes it (my friend Kirsty wins that prize), but it was jolly good nonetheless :)

109: Gooseberries with mascarpone cream, p187

Oooh, a surprise! These gooseberries came from the allotment of another reader - thanks! - and were hand picked by her lovely hubby and biked over to Waterloo just in time for the opening night of The Railway Children at the old Eurostar terminal (actually on the tracks!), to which we'd all been invited. What a sweetheart! I don't think I've ever prepared/cooked with gooseberries before... funny little things, like incredibly full water balloons, looking like for all intents and purposes that they are about to burst rather explosively, their translucent skins bulging ominously, and their veins stretched tight in their perfect little spheres. They looked like more like cartoon gooseberries than what I'd imagined real ones would. But soooo tart they are! Ouch! I wasn't actually looking forward to serving them - not a dish to savour when you've got a mouth ulcer... But gentle stewing with a bit of sugar worked a treat - no water added, the little balloons started to collapse and released plenty for them to bubble away in - and served with the sweet, soft mascarpone cream, they really weren't too sour at all. The mascarpone cream was definitely better than the fromage blanc earlier in the week - the mascarpone, egg yolks and vanilla giving the cream a delicious richness, and the whipped egg whites added in at the end resulting in a little, sweet froth. Lovely jubbly. Made to much of course, really should have halved the recipe again. Silly me... Might take the leftovers into work, wonder if the cream will be completely flat and inedible by tomorrow morning?