However pricey I hold dessert, it’s miles hardly ever on my thoughts as Sunday lunch draws to a close. I commonly cease after the primary dish and take hold of a piece of cheese, a rectangular skinny, darkish chocolate, or a peach. More amusing, I think, is to wait multiple hours then carry out something sweet, whilst it’s going to get the eye it merits. On a roasting summer’s afternoon, this may be ice-cream held prisoner between self-made wafers or tender, sugar-dusted cookies; halves of apricots full of sweetened ricotta; or a little tart full of a cloud of lemon mousse.
When the solar is at its peak, I might sandwich lemon water ice among a couple of slim shortbreads, stuff strawberry ice-cream into crisp, skinny almond biscuits or spread chocolate chip ice-cream among two thick and crunchy peanut cookies. You can roll the sandwiched ices in coarse, pastel-colored sugar or beaten cookie crumbs if you desire; however, I opt for a more impromptu affair wherein the ice-cream is allowed to peep, teasingly, from its shell.
A citrus mousse also appeals on a summer season’s afternoon, possibly with a pot of lemon verbena tea. However, I want something crisp with it, too, a ginger biscuit or candy rice cake. Better nevertheless, that crisp detail overwhelmed to crumbs and used to form a tartlet case for the lemony fluff—a candy not anything with which to even as away what remains of the afternoon.
Lemon mousse brownies
Handed a dessert menu, I will usually head for the citrus services in preference to the chocolate. (I have in no way pretty understood how absolutely everyone could end a meal with a chocolate pudding.) Lemon cakes come and go – possets, syllabus, or a conventional lemon tart. But the only that continually beckons is the conventional lemon mousse, both as a stand-alone dish or as the filling for a tart.
The biscuit crust right here is sensitive; that is why I recommend using nonstick tartlet tins. It is a great concept to loosen the crumb cases in their tins earlier than you fill them; they’ll be less complicated to remove later. He often switches some of the ginger biscuits for sweet rice cakes (Clearspring makes an amazing model with black sesame seeds). The wafers make the crust lighter, even though truly greater fragile.
Makes 6 brownies
For the crust:
butter 120g
ginger biscuits 300g
For the mousse:
eggs three
caster sugar 70g
gelatine 2 leaves
lemons 2, large
double cream 200ml
You may also need six 10cm nonstick, loose-bottomed tartlet tins.
Melt the butter in a small pan and set it apart. Crush the biscuits to pleasant crumbs and stir them into the melted butter. Divide the crumb combination among the tartlet cases, pressing the crumbs firmly into the bottom, and up the tins’ perimeters with a teaspoon. Place the instances on a tray and refrigerate for 30 minutes until set.
Separate the eggs. Beat the yolks and sugar to a thick, pale cream using a meal mixer. Soften the leaves of gelatine in a bowl of cold water. Finely grate the zest of one of the lemons, then halve and squeeze each. Add the zest to the yolks and sugar mixture.
Warm the lemon juice in a small saucepan without letting it boil. Lift the softened mass of gelatine from the water and add to the nice and cozy juice, stirring until it has dissolved. Pour the juice slowly into the yolk and sugar mixture with the paddle turning, then take away the bowl from its stand. Lightly beat the cream till thick, stir into the mousse mixture, then refrigerate for 20 minutes.
Beat the egg whites until stiff, fold into the lemon-cream combination with a massive steel spoon, and ensure that each of the whites is incorporated. Spoon the aggregate into the tartlet cases, return to the fridge and leave to set for 4 hours before serving.
Peanut ice-cream wafers
Once stuffed and sandwiched together, those ice-cream wafers preserve well in the freezer and maybe brought out as a daily treat or reduce into quarters with a heavy kitchen knife and served with espresso. Vanilla, chocolate chip, and chocolate are the ice-cream flavors probably maximum at home with the peanut cookies.
