Busy girl’s no churn ice cream

As the mercury soars past 40C its time for ice cream.

Ready for simplicity? Here it is. Take one quantity of ultimate cream cheese frosting and freeze it. That’s it. I promise you. The secret to this is the air – because it contains meringue and therefore air it is a mousse and so when you freeze it, it will still be soft.

I must admit to a certain feeling of satisfaction when I make one technique actually evolve into two or even three dishes. I guess its the elegant economy of it. Whatever it is…its really time saving and economical as you can whip up some frosting , double it up and freeze half for ice cream

Improvs & Ideas

Add whole fruit or my fave – chopped up pieces of crystallised ginger.

Stilton Pate

There are some things that need little accoutrement and fussing with and Stilton would be one of those, yet this little recipe seems to tease out the best in this noble cheese. To learn more about this giant of the cheese world and the etiquette of eating Stilton (take note you “nosers” of Stilton…you know who you are!) read the excellent guide on the (who else) Cropwell Bishop website. The recipe I have come up with blends in things that have a natural affinity with the cheese: celery or celeriac, honey, dessert wine and so on. I’m glad to say the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

Gadgets & Gizmos

A bowl and a fork.

Ingredients

225g cream cheese
2 tablespoons/35ml dessert wine or white wine plus a teaspoon of honey (which is generally what is around)
2 tablespoons/35ml cream (“smantana dulce”)
170g Stilton (available at “Mega Image” in Romania now)
30g celery or celeriac (“telina”) chopped fine and a teaspoon of lemonjuice to prevent it oxidising
Half a clove of garlic – minced. This is important – you want the slight garlic nuance but it must be minced.
1 teaspoonfresh thyme

Half a teaspoon of smoked paprika
freshly ground nutmeg, to taste (I used 15 scrapes)
salt & freshly ground pepper, to taste

How To

Crumble the Stilton into a bowl and add all the other ingredients. Mash gently. While you could blend I like the grainy texture of this pate.

Ideas and Improvs

Eat with the pickled cherries as shown or quince paste or just a good Cox’ apple sliced.

Drink

Of course a fine port is never wrong but personally a dessert wine such as the Stirbey Dessert or the new Corcova Dessert are fabulous partners.

WHOLE ORANGE & CHOCOLATE CAKE GF (low sugar)

so so orangey. this is the chocolate version of the whole orange cake made with fructose.

This is the kind of cake that I like. It’s not all fussed up with cream and decoration, it uses entire fruit skin and all, it is not over-sweet, it uses nuts in place of flour, it improves after a couple of days – in short it is more than the sum of its parts. The cake recipe is adapted from a Claudia Roden recipe for a Sephardic Jewish orange cake and wows with its bitter orange/marmalade taste and for sensitive souls it happens to be gluten free too.

INGREDIENTS for a circular 20cm cake tin

1 orange plus the juice it was boiled in (I’ve sometimes boiled them dry and when that happens as long as you haven’t cremated the thing its fine to add a little boiled water – approx 100ml)
3 Eggs
125g Ground almonds (I blitz them in a blender and I often use almonds with the skins on)
35g good quality cocoa powder/ 30g polenta (“malai”)
120g Sugar or 100g Fructose or 100ml honey or 100ml agave syrup but you need to increase the almonds a little as this is quite a liquid mix to begin with. Note that if you do make your mixture a little too wet you can add a tablespoon of rice flour or cornflour.

HOW TO

Wash and boil the orange unpeeled, in water to cover for 1 hour or until it is very soft. Let cool then cut open, remove the pips and turn into a puree in a food processor adding the water that is left from the cooking pan – approx. 100ml of cooking juice.

Beat the eggs and sugar in a large bowl until they are foamy. Really do keep whisking until they leave a trail from the beater.

Fold in carefully, so as to just amalgamate the ingredients but not knock out all the air from the mixture. Pour into a cake tin with a removable base that you have buttered or oiled.

Bake in a preheated moderately hot 160C convection/ 180C non convection oven for about 1 hour. Check by inserting a skewer – it should come out clean. If it is still very wet, leave it in the oven for a little longer. Cool in the tin before turning out.

(I once was in a hurry and turned it out when it was still hot, burnt my fingers and dropped the entire creation on the floor…so please people! “do as I say not as I do.”)

To Decorate

I like the cake as it is but for a special occasion it is splendid to cover in chocolate ganache and decorate with orange confit slices. I made a birthday cake like this for somebody who didn’t want an over sweet cake and it was very popular.