Lovely

By popular(ish) request: Toffee Truffle Bombes. I have no idea about the quantities in cups and tablespoons - sorry. It sounds like a terrible fiddle but in fact it doesn't take up much cooking time - though you need to allow time for cooling, freezing etc.

You need for the toffee bit:
150g or 5oz toffees - but actually I use fudge
150ml or quarter pint milk (I used full cream milk but have used semi-skimmed also)
150ml or quarter pint double cream, ie cream that you can whip
and then for the chocolate bit:
another 150ml or quarter pint double cream
150g or 5oz plain chocolate, in bits.

The original recipe says to put the toffee in the freezer to make it brittle and then to chop it into little bits. But don't! I got Mr L to do this the first time. It took a lot of effort and Mr L and the kitchen ended up covered in tiny fragments of toffee. Very very sticky. So I now use fudge, which can be chopped in seconds and stays on the plate. You put the fudge in a saucepan with the milk and heat this slowly till the fudge is melted - see picture above. Let it cool and put it in the fridge to chill.
 

Then you whip the 150mls of cream softly, as above, and fold in the chilled fudge mixture, as below.

Then you put it in the freezer till it's solid: 1 - 2 hours.

Meanwhile you make the chocolate part by heating the other 150mls of cream in a pan till it's at boiling point, taking it off the heat and adding the chopped chocolate, so that it melts. Put in fridge to chill.

Ideally, you've left the toffee stuff longer than I did (which was about an hour - two would be better). In any case, you take it out of the freezer, beat it briefly and then spoon it into freezer-proof ramekins or cups. If it's amenable, then you make a hollow in the middle (for the chocolate layer) but this time mine was a bit soft and didn't co-operate. But it didn't matter. Then you put the cups in the freezer for 30 minutes...

 

... and then spoon the chocolate goo on top of the fudge layer (or in the hollow you left in the fudge bit, if you did). Then put them back in the freezer for as long as you like. 20 minutes before you serve them, move them into the fridge to soften very slightly.

 

When you want to serve them, float the cups briefly in hot water and run a palette knife round them to unmould the bombes, chocolate side down. You can sprinkle flaked chocolate or whatever on the top if you want to be fancy. I thought of taking a picture of the final effect but our friends were sitting there and it's quite hard to explain to a non-blogger why you're taking a photo of their pudding... .

 

They're very nice but not at all healthy - though we had strawberries with them, which of course cancelled out all the calories.

 

And this is a picture of the other grandmother and Grandson appreciating a book about Spot the Dog's birthday. Isn't he lovely too?

Swiss Appelrara

In fact, though for some unaccountable reason we call this Swiss Appelrara, its original name was Franca Appelrara. That's what it says on the messy bit of paper - now much splodged-on - on which my friend Gill wrote the recipe about 37 years ago. I have no idea why we've changed the name over the years and I don't know what it originally meant anyway. What's a rara and who are the Francs and if they're French, why did we change them to Swiss?

Gill and I were at school together. At the point that she made this pudding for us, we were in our early twenties and she was living near London. She'd just done a Cordon Bleu cookery course and this was one of the recipes. As she pointed out, it looks very boring but is in fact very nice - if you like apples and almonds.

Years later, I was saying how this had become a family favourite and Gill didn't even remember it. I'm sure there's a moral there somewhere about the influence we have on other people... but I can't quite think what it might be. Anyway, the pudding:

Franca or Swiss or Whatever Appelrara

1/2 pint cold water (in fact I use less)
1/4 lemon (I omit this because Mr Life is allergic to citrus fruit)
4 large cooking apples, peeled, cored and halved
3 tablespoons caster sugar (ie fairly finely ground)

Cook the apples till slightly soft in water, sugar and lemon juice. Remove while still intact, ie apple-shaped, and put flat side down in shallow dish. If the phone rings and the apples become mush by the time you've got back to them, it doesn't really matter. They still taste good. Spoon them out and put in the dish.

Then do the topping - in fact I usually double the quantity below because it's so nice! On the other hand, this makes it twice as unhealthy.

5 tablespoons caster sugar
4 ounces butter (would this be a cupful?) - no it wouldn't! See below from Thimbleanna:

(And btw, a stick of butter here is 8 oz. and also 1/2 cup, therefore, 4 oz. should be 1/4 cup.)

Thanks, Anna! Sorry to misinform you, Americans.

Cream this until it's reasonably fluffy.


Add 1/2 cup ground almonds
3 egg yolks

Then whip 3 egg whites and fold into the mixture.

Spread this over the apples and bake in a moderate oven for about 30 minutes, till it looks like the picture.

You can eat it hot, room temperature or chilled - it's nice any way - with cream, ice cream or not. We usually have it room temperature.

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Ann, who doesn't have a blog on which I can leave a comment, I sympathise completely. America is too far away for children to go.

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By the way, I actually like getting those Christmas letters. They would be rather nauseating if they were as boastful as people sometimes say, but our friends tend to be truthful, or at least sufficiently so. And anyway, I do rejoice in my friends' happiness. It's just some of those shiny happy blogs that occasionally make me question the value of my own existence - and yet some other shiny happy blogs are very cheering, like Thimbleanna's. It's all down to the tone, I suppose, and the humour and general loveableness of the blogger.

Anyway, I have marking to do, so thanks for all your kind comments and enjoy the pudding!

Millionaire's shortbread

This is my pale pink Christmas cactus.

This, on the other hand, is millionaire's shortbread.

I don't know how to count in cups or grammes, but this is the way I do it:

Base

8 ounces plain flour (ie with no raising agent) - an ounce of flour is about a tablespoon

6 ounces butter - this is about three-quarters of a pack

2 ounces caster (ie quite finely ground) sugar - a bit less than 2 tablespoons, since sugar is heavier than flour

Put all in bowl together and rub in till it sticks together. Using a mixer is fine. Press into Swiss roll tin. Cook at about 170 C (medium heat) for about 25 minutes or till pale golden (see picture).

Middle bit

4 ounces butter or margerine

4 ounces sugar

a small tin of sweetened condensed milk , eg Nestle's. I don't have the tin any more but looking at a tin of beans in my cupboard, I'd say the tin might have been about 200 grammes. Yes, I know this is metric, but that's all I have to consult. I use the smallest tin you can get, unless I do a double quantity, in which case I use the bigger size.

Put all this in non-stick saucepan over lowish heat. Stir continuously for ten minutes or so. Stop when the toffee mixture is fairly solid, rather like a very thick sauce. Actually, very thick custard made with custard powder would be a better description, though useless for those who've never made this. The mixture should come away from the sides of the pan for a few seconds before collapsing back into goo. If you make it too thin, it'll flow out of the middle of the shortbread when you cut it. If you make it too thick, it'll cool to a rather dry consistency. Experience is the key. Sorry to be so helpful.

Pour on top of the shortbread. You don't have to leave this to cool first.

Top bit

Good quality melted chocolate - maybe 10 ounces (ie a good big slab). Pour this on top of the toffee.

This is possibly not a very healthy food item. Maybe you should just look at the picture.