Christmas Day Dessert

Love, love, love Christmas.  My family is huge and has an abundance of children so Christmas is always very loud and very over-indulgent….bit like myself.  Coming from a family of feeders this joyous time of year becomes an unadulterated feeding frenzy and offers the opportunity to showcase new recipes.  And so we neatly arrive at the point of this post….Christmas Day Dessert.  No, no typo.  This clever little trio of delights deserves a capital letter on every word. I’m not usually one to blow my own trumpet, but Ta Dah!!!

So, the desert is made up of a Champagne Sorbet, Chocolate covered Ice Cream ball (the little Christmas pudding thingy) and a Chocolate Ganache.  The plate is garnished with chocolate shavings, chocolate stars, edible glitter and mini toadstools (made of marzipan).  The astute amongst you will notice a little cheat…..I bought the Ganache *shame*.  Well I love GU products so I was happy to plate it along with the home-made bits-and-bobs.  Everything…..and I mean EVERYTHING can be made in advance.

My preferred ice-cream recipe comes from the Good Food website and was developed by Angela Nilsen.

Ingredients

284ml Double Cream

300ml Full-fat Milk

115g Caster Sugar

1 Vanilla

3 Egg Yolk – please use free-range eggs

Method

Pour the cream and milk into a medium heavy-based pan, then tip in half the sugar. Slit the vanilla pod down its length and scoop out as many of the seeds as you can into the cream mixture, add to the pan along with the scrapped pod.

Heat the cream and milk over a low heat, stirring occasionally, until it almost boils - you'll see a few bubbles at the edge. Take off the heat and set aside for 30 minutes so the vanilla can infuse.

Put the egg yolks into a bowl with the rest of the sugar and beat with an electric hand beater for about 2 minutes until the mixture has thickened, is paler in colour and falls in thick ribbons when you lift the beaters. Using a measuring jug, scoop out about 125ml/4fl oz of the cream mixture and beat into the egg yolks to slacken them. Reheat the cream until it just comes to the boil, take off the heat and stir in the egg yolk mixture.

Cook mixture in the pan until the custard is thick enough to coat the back of the spoon – about 8-10 mins.  Watch that it doesn't boil.

Let the mixture cool then place put the bowl of custard in the fridge for 3-4 hours, preferably overnight, so it gets really cold.

Churn the mixture in the ice cream machine according to manufacturers instructions.  Put in a container and freeze for at least 3 hours.

Once the ice cream is made it can be formed into balls then placed back in the freezer.

Remove from freezer after 1 hour and roll in melted chocolate (I used Terry’s Chocolate Orange) then roll in Chocolate flakes. 

To remain in-line with the Christmas theme I topped the balls with a blob of white Chocolate and a few snippings of Glace Cherry (holly berries).

For the Champage Sorbet I followed a recipe from the Daily Mail website.  Never read the paper but the recipes available on-line ALWAYS work.

Ingredients

225g (8oz) granulated sugar

Juice of 1 small lemon

300ml (½pint) champagne or sparkling wine

Method

Place the sugar in a medium-sized pan with 500ml (18fl oz) cold water. Bring to the boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Simmer this syrup gently for 10 minutes, then remove from the heat and cool. Add the lemon juice and champagne or sparkling wine and stir well.

Pour into an ice-cream maker and churn until it is almost frozen, then turn into a freezer container and freeze overnight. (Alternatively, freeze for 8 hours, whisking with a fork every few hours to break up the crystals).

I served this in large shot glasses and decorated with edible glitter.

And now to plate…….

The Ganache should be topped with gold leaf and edible glitter.  The plate is prepped by drizzling melted chocolate over most of the plates surface.  Sprinkle the plate with chocolate shavings, chocolate stars and edible glitter (this step is optional).  Place the Ganache, Sorbet and Chocolate ice cream ball in a triangle formation.  Place two tuille biscuits at the front of the plate – side of the plate which will face the person eating it.  Finally place two small toadstools on the plate randomly…they add a nice splash of colour.

I used a bog standard tuille recipe.  Half vanilla and half coco, then I piped leaf veins onto each tuille.

(These toadstools are made out of Marzipan, red food colouring and topped with edible glitter)

Phew, sounds exhausting right? Wrong!  Everything can be made in advance so all you have to do on the day is plate up.  Meaning you can concentrate on the Main event.

Please, please, please try this…..had loads of compliments and it took hardly any effort.