Desserts aren’t really my thing. I mean I love to eat them but I can’t really be bothered to bake or make treats, aside from the occasional batch of chocolate chip cookies or something. But England bloody LOVES their desserts! Just go into any grocery store and you will find more dessert options than fruits or vegetables. Seriously. There are 9-13 different sections of the grocery store where desserts can be found.
Only 7% of the desserts that can be found at Marks & Spencers
When I first moved here I went a bit nuts wanting to try out as many different desserts as I could but honestly, I started to get sick of them all. They’re all so grotesquely sweet and hilariously fattening.
So the other day I thought I’d attempt to make my own dessert inspired by one of Jamie Oliver’s magical creations. If I could recommend one cookbook that is just incredibly outstanding and a fantastic investment, it is Jamie Oliver’s 30 Minute Meals. Buy it. NOW.
It’s also a show. Sometimes I watch the show while browsing through the book. I’m cool like that.
Anyways so last night I made this cute little dessert that I’d been telling myself to try for a while. You should try it too!
What you’ll need:
- Marscapone cheese
- Ginger snap cookies, or any type of biscuit really
- Some nuts like almonds or hazel nuts
- Some fresh berries, I used raspberries
- Some dark chocolate
- Icing sugar
- Vanilla
- LEMON CURD
What’s lemon curd you ask? I asked the same thing.
I obviously thought it had something to do with ACTUAL LEMONS but when I read the ingredients it said: glucose-fructose syrup, water, palm oil, maize starch, dried egg, acetic acid, gelling agent, citric acid, lemon oil, colours, acidity regulator.
Pretty disgusting but whatever. It’s found near the jams and honey in the grocery store and my boyfriend says people here eat it on toast. England is so wacky!
What to do:
Crush up the cookies and nuts, either in a food processor or blender, or by putting them in a plastic bag and smashing it with a hammer or wine bottle or whatever is your weapon of choice. Put the crumble into the bottom of a glass.
Add a layer of lemon curd
Add some raspberries…
Add a few teaspoons of icing sugar and some vanilla to your marsacapone cheese and mix. You want to taste it and keep adding sugar until its sweet enough for your liking, but really, it doesn’t need to be that sweet, that’s the beauty of this treat.
Then add a layer of the sweet cheese, maybe some more raspberries, some more crumble etc. Top with some dark chocolate shavings!
Yeah, that’s a Jamie Oliver knife, wanna fight about it?
How cute are these?!
looks better than a battenberg!
Battenberg? Had to check it out – Shauna, you’re a riot. I agree – it does look better!
Mel, fyi, you can make lemon curd out of real lemons.
If you have a vitamix, or access to one, I have a very easy no fail recipe for lemon curd. It involves mixing butter, sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest and the seeds from one vanilla bean until blended, and then turning up the blender on high and adding eggs, one at a time. The vitamix gets hot enough that it cooks the eggs, while simultaneously taking out the labour intensive mixing. It’s a miracle.