[Also, to demonstrate the level of obsession with dessert here, let me offer up the example of a certain booklet entitled "Suffolk Cooking: A Collection of Favourite Recipes," which I found on the bookshelf here. There are 10 pages dedicated to meat and poultry, fish, and cheese and egg dishes and close to 30 pages entirely about dessert. Seems a bit out of balance, if you ask me.]
1. First, let me introduce something I made last week. I wanted to make carrot cake, but instead of carrots, only discovered an over abundance of parsnips in the pantry. Rather than forgo baking, I looked up an Alton Brown recipe from the episode about getting children to eat more vegetables by sneaking them into baked goods. You can watch them on youtube or just follow the third link right to the recipe.
Foodnetwork.com Recipe (It's for muffins, but I just stuck the batter in a loaf pan and baked it for about an hour. After all, muffins are just tiny versions of quick breads.)
If the idea of eating parsnip bread/muffins doesn't appeal to you, do what I did, and rename the thing Breakfast Cake. It'll be eaten before you know it.
2. Now on to panna cotta, which is Italian and not British, but this is my pudding post, so I can post what I want. We ate panna cotta several times while in Italy, but I'm pretty sure that each time we had it, it was from an instant box mix. This is a pity, because it turns out that panna cotta is really, really easy to make. It takes about 15 minutes to assemble and 2-4 hours to cool and solidify.
I served this for pudding with two sauces:
My Mother's Chocolate Sauce
4oz dark baking chocolate
2-3 tablespoons water
In a small sauce pan over low heat, melt the chocolate with the water until it is a nice, smooth consistency. Add a little sugar if the darkness is too scary for you.
Mixed Berry Sauce
2 cups mixed frozen berries (or fresh, but this is a sauce you'll want to make more than just in the summer)
1 orange, juiced
3 tablespoons white sugar
Mix all the ingredients together in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Simmer gently until the fruit starts to break apart and the liquid thickens a bit.
3. Finally, something that's actually British. Matt, our fellow wwoofer, made this delicious horror for us a few days ago. I say horror, because it really just amounts to fatty, sugary flour that's been nuked in the microwave. I know that's a terrible way to sell this thing, but if you understood the UK's national obsession with dessert, you would know why this kind of thing is so appealing to them. It tasted awesome, I'll give him that. But afterwards it sat in my stomach like the unhealthy lump of pudding that it was.
Steamed Pudding
4oz suet (butter will probably suffice)
4oz sugar
4 eggs, beaten
8oz all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 oz golden syrup (or jam)
Place the syrup in the bottom of a microwavable bowl. Whisk all the other ingredients together until they are smooth. Carefully pour the batter over the syrup. Cover the bowl with cling film. Microwave on high for 4-5 minutes. Let the thing rest for a few minutes before up-ending into a bowl. This is traditionally served with custard, which we made following the recipe in Jaime Oliver's Cook with Jaime.
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