HHDD#21 - Tiramisu

I am barely getting my entry in for this round of Hey Hey it's Donna Day, literally by the skin of my teeth. I've been thinking about this all month and I've had so much stuff on with family and friends that I've hardly managed to do any cooking at all.

So seeing as today is a very beautiful day and it's supposed to rain tomorrow we decided to dine al fresco tonight a.k.a sitting inside the french doors as we were too lazy to get the patio table and chairs out. So homemade beef burgers and salad with goats cheese it was followed by a very deconstructed and simple tiramisu flavoured with orange, chocolate and honey. This was gorgeous, mascarpone is so good and I managed to get organic mascarpone too, lovely organic oranges slightly reduced to make a syrup, and the best chocolate - Cadburys flake!!!


So here's what you'll need for 2 people:

12 lady fingers/savoiardi biscuits, 6 per person
125g mascarpone cheese
1 tbsp honey
juice and zest of 2 oranges
cadburys flake or similar crumbled
1tsp galliano (or vanilla extract)

Zest the 2 oranges and then juice them. Put the juice in a pot and bring to the boil. Boil the juice for 2-3 mins until thickened very slightly. Cool.
Mix the mascarpone with the honey and galliano.
Place 2 biscuits on a plate, soak with the orange syrup and top with a dollop of the mascarpone.
Place another 2 biscuits on top, soak and top with mascarpone.
Do this a third time finishing with a dollop op mascarpone.
Sprinkle with orange zest and crumbled flake.

This was gorgeous, I was marginally worried it wouldn't be but it was light and sweet and perfect to enjoy sitting in the evening sun.

A very disappointing honey cheesecake

My name is Rachel and I am a honey addict!!! I love honey and would eat it on toast for 3 meals a day. It has a much rounder, smoother flavour than sugar and makes normal things like whipped cream just a touch more exotic. Because of this I have wanted to try the honey cheesecake from Bill Granger's Open Kitchen for as long as I have this book and as I've been thinking about cheesecake for weeks decided this weekend was the perfect time to try it. It's also been a while since I've featured a Bill recipe here. Alas, I was wrong!

This cake is made of ricotta and eggs, no creamcheese, no cream, no marcarpone. Now perhaps it was the quality of my ricotta which was some brand from Tesco and not the lovely ricotta from a deli that Bill always has on his programmes, perhaps not. The recipe was only slighty tinkered with which means I left out the marsala soaked raisins as bits in cheesecake upset me on a number of levels, perhaps not. Perhaps it's just the cake itself (which the husbag assures me it is ;-)), perhaps not.

The texture of the cake is slightly grainy, nearly like that of cottage cheese when you bite it - Not. Nice. At. All. Cheesecake should soft and smooth and almost mousse like in texture, and while this one manages to look delicious and soft and smooth, it's not!!! Boo to that I say!!!!


Here's the recipe should you want to try it, it does look pretty and I will definitely make honey flavour cheesecake again but not with ricotta!!!

60g sultanas (I didn't use these)
60ml marsala or cold weak tea (or these)
55g caster sugar
6 large eggs
finely grated zest of 1 orange
4 x 250g tubs of ricotta (or 1kg), mashed slightly and drained if it's got a lot of liquid in the tub as I did above.
90g honey

Preheat the oven to Gas 2/3, 160. Soak the sultanas if you're using them in the marsala/tea for 30 mins while the oven is heating.

Put the sugar and eggs in a mixer and beat for 5 mins until light and foamy. Drain the sultanas and fold through the egg mixture with teh zest, honey and ricotta.

Pour into a 9cm springform tin and bake for 80 mins or until golden. Allow to cool in the tin and serve with berries.

P.S check out the lovely sugar paste roses that my sister in law made for our wedding cake 2 years ago, still perfect and as hard as rocks. Thanks Jen!!! Rx

Of Cardamom pillows and honey drops..............

I was browsing blogs on Saturday afternoon as one does, and lets face it there was nothing better to do as it was pouring outside and himself was engrossed in a certain games console that is the third person in our marrige I think sometimes (along with Liverpool FC) when I came across this:

Oh wonder of wonders Ice Cream Ireland had set people a tasting/testing challenge to make various ice creams for their new book, sure what could be better than a challenge involving ice cream????? Nothing I hear you cry, nothing, and you're right nothing could be better than ice creamy goodness made by my own fair hands.

So I checked out the flavours on offer and lo and behold one containing my new favourite spice - Cardamom, and when combined with honey I would be in foodie heaven.

So off I started out on Monday night with my milk, suger, eggs, cardamom and honey. I made my custard and already it smelled divine and if there wasn't pictures to be taken I would have eaten it there and then!!!! Custard city baby!!!

Tuesday night I was home late but this was my priority, I sieved, whipped and folded my way to ice cream heaven, this really was the most fantastically smelling ice-cream imaginable, so into the freezer it went and already I was thinking about eating it on Wednesday when I came home.

So tonight is Wednesday night, I have a friend coming over at 8 for some tasting so I had to get my pictures taken before the delicious iced confection is decimated before my very eyes!!!

So here's my attempt, the light wasn't great and I broke my ice-cream scoop but over all not bad at all, the kitchen does indeed smell of Cardamom pillows and honey drops...............................

P.S my only thoughts were, I should have used my ice cream machine as the ice-cream seperated slighted as you can see in the two toned scoop at the bottom here, but hey I'm not picky!!! Oh and it melted like hell aswell but when the ice-cream is this good who isn't going to lick the plate???