188: Lemon ice-cream tart with gingernut crust, p375

A pudding was required to take to the inlaws for Christmas Eve and this fitted the bill nicely - after a rich dinner, the freshness of the icecream and the sharpness of the lemons made a welcome palate cleanser. The gingernut base was incredibly solid, maybe I didn't need to pack it in quite so tightly, but I was worried it would be too crumbly and wouldn't cut properly when sliced. Halving the recipe made a shallower tart, in one of my smaller springform tins, but it was plenty for five of us to each have a generous slice and there to still be nearly half left over for another day.

185: Christmas pudding, p361

Finally made the Christmas pudding! Like the Christmas cake, this is the first time I've made my own Christmas pudding - and the first time I've steamed a pudding. I didn't have a suitable basin to use, so I ordered one from the wonderful Lakeland, but it only just arrived - the terrible weather having messed up deliveries over the past couple of weeks. Better late than never! I'm hoping it doesn't affect the pudding too much, not having so long to keep before Christmas. I'm probably going to save it for the day after New Year's Day when lots of the family are coming down to visit us - so made during 2010 but not actually consumed this year :) 

Easy peasy to make, but I halved the recipe - which called for 2x 1.5L pudding basins. Lakeland do a 1L and a 2L basin, so I decided that ordering the 2L and halving the recipe would be okay. One very shiny, scrubbed 50p tucked in the pudding, and it's currently bubbling away steaming for 3.5hrs in the biggest pan I've got. Fingers tightly crossed!

 **UPDATE 02/01/11: Absolutely spot on - definitely a recipe to repeat! Verdict from the massed family was that it was one of the best Christmas puddings they'd ever had :) And it also set light rather pleasingly (see below)...

178: A stunning orange sorbet, p134

Another sorbet, and bizarrely another orange sorbet - after the orange yoghurt water ice made in November. Not wildly different - just missing the yoghurt out, but this time I used our icecream maker (a wedding present which lives at the back of one of the kitchen cupboards, because there's hardly ever room for the bowl in the freezer - but there currently it, hurrah!). Normally whenever I've tried using the icecream maker it's ended in tears and tantrums - in spite of freezing the bowl for >24hrs - with the mixture refusing to freeze, but this time the churning worked and it was definitely sorbet after 40mins (not the 15-30mins on the icecream maker instructions and it was quite a soft sorbet, but just about there) - and firmed up properly once it was in the freezer. A much smoother texture than the previous handmade attempts, and super flavoursome, but, as with most of the other sorbets, a bit too sweet for my liking. Would definitely make this again - although probably the yoghurt version - but would reduce the amount of sugar made into the syrup at the start.

177: Christmas cake, p364

My first Christmas cake. Don't really like fruit cake, like Christmas cake and wedding cake, too dry and heavy I usually find, but maybe this will be the exception! Fingers crossed. The mix was very stiff and difficult to stir, once the flour was added, so I 'had' to slosh in a good extra glug of brandy to loosen it up a bit. It was only after I had baked it that I realised I missed out the second lot of dried fruit listed in the ingredients - ooops. Am trying to keep hoping that 350 missing grams of fruit isn't going to have made too much of a difference... Eek. Will keep fingers crossed and keep feeding it brandy until Christmas Eve when I ice it...

 **Update on 26/12/10: well, it sure is dense... even without the extra fruit... In the end I didn't ice it. My parents liked it, but none of us are big Christmas cake eaters so it's going to be taken into work next week to be finished off :)

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!

164: Orange yoghurt water ice, p254

Another sorbet-y, granita-y, water ice from the book and this one, like the strawberry water ice which I made back in September, was a winner. Intensely fruity and sweet but not too sweet like the melon sorbet was. Easy to make, and like the strawberry water ice, it had a much better texture than the melon sorbet. Curious. I like the addition of yoghurt, giving a little creaminess to the ice, but without losing the tartness of the orange. Could try adding yoghurt to the strawberry recipe...

107: Raspberry ricotta pancakes, p330

Meh, these are annoying... a variation on these pancakes from earlier in the year, this time with fresh raspberries from one of the readers of this blog, they are a lot of faff for a pudding which we'd probably both prefer made with normal crepe style pancakes, instead of all this whipping egg whites and folding it all together carefully so as not to lose all the air... They are a nightmare to turn over in the frying pan as well - too early and they just mush, too late and they are blackened. Grr! Tasty, but the ricotta gives a slightly odd grainy texture which isn't my favourite. Nah, luckily no more of these pancake recipes in the book.

96: Marmelade cake, p10

Another cake to take to work - am feeding up the team, trying to get them to all put on some weight... Another one of Nigel's super easy pound cakes, and another success. People grumble that they can't make cakes, or don't have time to make them, and yet these recipes are so so easy - esp if you've got a food processor. Just bung the sugar and butter in to cream, mix everything else in, splodge it in the cake tin, and bake for 40mins. Easypeasy! And I have two shocking cheats, to horrify the purists out there... firstly I don't bother sieving the flour most of the time (started when I bought that McDougall's 'so fine it doesn't need to be sieved' flour, and then went back to normal but forgot, and found it didn't actually make much difference...), and secondly I don't bother cutting out baking parchment to fit the tins, I just tear a piece to large than the whole inside area and scrunch it in, with the leftover uneven edges sticking straight out the top. Seems to work fine! And the added bonus is that you can just lift the cake straight out of the tin, no more turning out disasters, cool it in the paper, and wrap it straight up to take into work with the leftover edges. Lazy, moi?

26: Orange and ricotta pancakes, p156

Feeling a bit bad about making T eat squash again, and having been a bit grumpy and snappy at him for no real reason, I decided to make another pudding (two, in one weekend! No wonder we're getting podgy...) and made these pancakes for a late pudding/supper. T got a jar of gourmet handmade chocolate fudge sauce in his Christmas foodie hamper, so I thought these might go nicely... and use up the pot of ricotta in the fridge. An unusual pancake recipe - no milk! And the egg whites are whisked separately until firm and then folded in, eugh. It was 10pm and my initial enthusiasm started to wane slightly, especially when I split the egg whites all over the place when I started whisking. Damn damn damn. But they were whisked, and folded, and dolloped in the frying pan four at a time. Because of the egg whites they are fluffy and thick, and the cheese makes them very soft too, so it's difficult to tell when they are cooked - let alone turn them over. I'm not very patient waiting for little pancakes to cook, and couldn't quite get them at the right point - not cooked enough and they splurge on turning, too long and they're a little over-brown on the pan-side. Unfortunately I seemed to keep getting a combination of the two, even with the pan on the lowest heat. Hey ho! What's a bit of aesthetic carbonisation and raw egg between husband and wife? Eek.

The orange zest wasn't too strong and the pancakes soft and fluffy still at the end, if a little brown on the outside, and the chocolate fudge sauce melted gorgeously all over them. Yum! Happy T, and me, order and calm restored.

However... although they were extremely good, and it was a novel use for ricotta, I can't say I'd honestly be likely to bother to make them again - partly because I love normal crepe-style pancakes (which are so easy and quick anyway), and partly because if I want to make little scotch-pancake-style pancakes, a couple of months ago I discovered Jamie Oliver's recipe for apple pancakes and they are so so quick and easy, I'd make them instead. Sorry, Nigel!