However pricey I hold dessert, it’s hardly ever on my thoughts as Sunday lunch draws close. I commonly cease after the primary dish and take hold of a piece of cheese, a rectangular, skinny, darkish chocolate, or a peach. I think it is more amusing to wait multiple hours and then carry out something sweet while 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, crunchy peanut cookies. You can roll the sandwiched ice in coarse, pastel-colored sugar or beaten cookie crumbs if you desire; however, I opt for a more impromptu affair wherein the ice cream peeps 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 usually head for the citrus services in preference to the chocolate. (I do not understand how everyone could end a meal with chocolate pudding.) Lemon cakes come and go – possets, syllabus, or a conventional lemon tart. But the only thing that continually beckons is the traditional lemon mousse, both as a stand-alone dish or as the filling for a pie.
The biscuit crust right here is sensitive, so I recommend using nonstick tartlet tins. It is a great concept to loosen the crumb cases in the tins earlier than you fill them; they’ll be less complicated to remove later. He often switches some ginger biscuits for sweet rice cakes (Clearspring makes an amazing model with black sesame seeds). The wafers make the crust lighter, even though it is truly more fragile.
Makes six brownies
For the crust:
butter 120g
ginger biscuits 300g
For the mousse:
eggs three
caster sugar 70g
gelatine two 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. Using a meal mixer, beat the yolks and sugar to a thick, pale cream. Soften the gelatine leaves 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 it 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 remove the bowl from its stand. Lightly beat the cream until thick, stir into the mousse mixture, and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
Beat the egg whites until stiff. Fold into the lemon-cream mixture with a massive steel spoon, ensuring that each white 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 may be brought out as a daily treat or reduced into quarters with a heavy kitchen knife and served with espresso. Vanilla, chocolate chip, and chocolate are the ice cream flavors that are probably the maximum at home with the peanut cookies.
