Beating the January Blues

Bored after the Christmas holidays? Have the January blues laid you low? If you’re like me and desperate to recapture some of that Christmas pizzazz and sparkle, then do I have the over-the-top, festive pudding for you!

As we all know Christmas dinner is but a warm up for the main marathon event that is dessert. If your family is anything like mine then at least half of the dinner table will swear blind that they’ve never liked Christmas pudding, they never will and will never eat one morsel. Every year this leaves you with a dilemma – what can I make that is fantastic enough to fill the flaming void left by Christmas pudding? This year Mary Berry descended like a primetime Christmas miracle and revealed to mine eyes the fabulous “Rosace a l’ Orange”.

This is a great recipe to try if you want to practice some French patisserie, and everyone does. Every time the Great British Bakers whip up a quick creme pat I go a little bit green! The flip side of this is of course that if anything goes wrong then you have all the key ingredients for a great trifle! 

For the full recipe please follow this link 

The star of this desert is the orange, so make sure you choose a really nice and fresh one - it makes up the majority of the decoration as well as the majority of the taste. If you don't have a mandolin (I didn't) then choose a really sharp knife, if it's dull don't struggle on, sharpen it. You need really thin slices, both to get the most out of your orange and to help with the candying later.  

As you can see we went through most of our knives trying to find one that was sharp enough. 

Once you've sliced your orange, make a sugar syrup (see recipe).

Then place the orange slices in the hot syrup and then leave them there - for as long as humanly possible. Mine was in the syrup for a long as Mary Berry recommended but I think I should have left them in there longer. Don't get me wrong the slices were definitely saturated, but for me they lacked a certain something.

While your orange slices are having a sugar bath make your creme patisserie. I've always been slightly in awe of this, anything with a French name automatically jumps up three places in my estimation. If you're like me then prepare for a slight disappointment because this is basically just custard. I know right I felt so betrayed. But on the flip side, it's not nearly as hard to make as you might imagine - as long as you stick exactly to the measurement and timings then you will not go wrong.

This is my finished creme pat. To this day, custard or not, I'm still proud.

 Whereas creme pat is much easier than I expected, the perfect genoise sponge still eludes me. If your not sure exactly what a genoise is, it's basically a sponge made with no raising agent. Any rise you get comes from the air you manage to whisk into the mixture. I first tried to make this about two years ago, I followed a Paul Hollywood recipe to the letter and  for all my effort was rewarded with two cake-y pancakes (the perfect fodder for a trifle). Mary Berry got me closer to the perfect sponge, but there were still problems! I really struggle with mixing in the flour into my egg and sugar mix (if you look carefully at the cake below you will see little spots of flour. I know.) The only thing I can suggest if you don't fancy a genoise faff is to just make a normal sponge - no one will know, and crucially no one will really care. That's what I'm going to do next time. 

 In case this is all getting a bit much, here's a picture of a Christmas dog.

Now the fun bit, the assembly! Find a suitably sized bowl and line it liberally with cling film - being careful to keep the film as flat as possible (you don't want the imprint of the film on the pudding) Then retrieve your orange slices, and arrange them as prettily as possible. Remember, this is what everyone is going to see - make sure they will be suitably impressed, you worked hard damn it! Slice your genoise in half (again being careful) 

Then layer everything! I forgot to keep some candid orange back for my middle layer, so I just used some fresh chopped up orange - but I think that a mix of fresh and candied would be interesting, so maybe try that? 

Lastly, leave your creation in the fridge.  I would leave it in there overnight, plus a couple more hours - I was really dubious of the creme pat actually setting, but as you will see below I was pleasantly surprised.  then hopefully you will have a suitably fancy French desert! I apologise for the quality (or lack of of the below photos - it was Christmas day).

 It's a really nice desert to eat on its own - a nice light alternative to Christmas pudding. But it also a great accompaniment for a chocolate tart - you can never go wrong with the chocolate orange combo!  

Anna's Adventures in Cheese-Making: Goats Cheese

Ok so this recipe is similar to the last one I posted but it produces an entirely different sort of cheese! This is a simple recipe for a soft goats cheese. It’s a bit of a cheat recipe really, since real goats cheese involves using a mould culture and maturing it, but this makes a delicious sort of goat-y cream cheese, and is ready to eat immediately so I think it’s earned it’s place in this column. 

You can change this recipe up as much as you want, mix the cheese with black pepper, any combination of herbs, or garlic. Those are just ideas I stole from Boursin cream cheese haha, I’m sure there’s loads of other things to do with it!

It tastes like a mixture between cream cheese and chèvre goats cheese, so use it where you would normally use those. It's great by itself on toast or crackers and lovely in creamy pasta dishes!

Equipment:

Medium/Large non reactive saucepan

Colander

Cheesecloth/muslin

Large bowl

Cooking thermometer (optional)

Ingredients:

1 litre Unpasteurised goats milk (I got it from Exeter’s farmers market, from the goats cheese stall)

1 lemon

1 ½ tsp Salt

Herbs (I used thyme and sage)/garlic/black pepper/whatever flavourings you want

Method

• Start by heating the milk in the saucepan. Heat it to just below boiling (or around 90 C), stirring.
• Turn the heat way down and add lemon juice, 1 tsp at a time for about 4 tsps, stirring continuously.
• When the curds begin to separate from the whey, stop adding the lemon juice. The result will not look like anything you might recognise from making cheese with cows milk as the whey is less clear and the clumps of curd are smaller.
• Leave to sit for about 5 minutes to ensure the curds and whey are separated completely. Place 2 layers of cheesecloth over a colander, and the colander over a large bowl. Strain the contents of the saucepan into the muslin lined colander, then bring all the corners of the muslin together and tie the top, to form a “bag” for the cheese. Hang this either from the tap in your sink, or from a wooden spoon over the large bowl. Hang for 1 hour.
• Mix the cheese with chopped herbs or other flavourings, then shape into a sort of sausage for ease of cutting bits off. It is traditional to have leaves on soft goats cheese (I think?) so I pressed some sage leaves into the top.
• Refrigerate wrapped in clingfilm until use, and enjoy on crackers, toast, or pasta sauce. Beware, it goes off quite fast, and will start to taste a bit weird within about three days, so get eating!

Next on my list of recipes is mozzarella, so keep your eyes peeled for that!