Plum and Pecan Crumble

This plum and pecan crumble (which can just as easily be made with walnuts) is comfortingly autumnal - Nigella Lawson


The verdict: We had an abundance of plums from our backyard tree this year and after I'd made chilli plum sauce (also a Nigella recipe) I had to do something with the rest if i was to avoid having a bucket of rotten fruit to dispose of. This was a first step towards using them up.

Unusual or substituted ingredients: None. I did everthing as written, down to the Demerera sugar which I think is barely distinguishable from raw sugar, but you know, I like to things properly.

Special utensils or cookware: I have a great big pie dish I rarely use. It got a work out for this recipe although you could just as easily use anything that's wide and flat.



I was pretty happy when I pulled the plums out of the oven after their first bout of buttery, brown sugary roasting before adding the crumble!

Repeatability: Oh I'll do this again. And again. A plum crumble like this one uses 1kg of plums. That's 1kg less to deal with!

Sauciness: Rich, juicy and oh so flavoursome. Yep.



Overall pleasure level:

It was gorgeous. The finely chopped pecans in the crumble really add a lot of texture and flavour. Next time I'll work on improving my crumble making skills. I loathe the job of rubbing cubes of butter into flour. I got lazy and stopped way before the point where it reached a state of being 'like fine breadcrumbs' and as a result, I think it didn't cook quite well enough. It still had a bit of that raw flour taste. And I'd probably add a smidge more demerera sugar to the mix as well. Otherwise, lovely!

Rhubarb Grunt

I hate rhubarb. You can do all of those recipes - RoseRed

**

A grunt is like a cobbler or a slump: at its most basic, fruit stewed in the oven with a scone-like topping - Nigella Lawson

Cobbler? Slump? Gosh there are some funny names for desserts out there. I had a hunch that the terms would be mystifying to the American readers. I wasn't even sure I knew what those vaguely old fashioned sounding words meant and I was raised by an English woman!

Wikipedia, however, tells me that these are terms that should be known to all of us if we are from English speaking countries.

Right. Got that? Just funny names for fruity, doughy desserts. On we go.


The Verdict

Unusual or substituted ingredients: Rhubarb. I've never cooked with it. I don't remember eating it since I was seven and living in Tasmania. Even then I have no real memory of how it tasted. On the basis of this dish, I'm going to grow it in my garden! I love the slightly acidic, tangy flavour of it.

The scone-y stuff on top wasn't very scone like, if you ask me. It's flour and cream. What a weird combination! Although I guess it had a certain heaviness that you might find in scones.


Special Utensils or cookware: None. I cooked it all in a square pyrex dish. Nigella suggests pyrex so you can see if the rhubarb is bubbling. It worked.

Repeatability: Sure. When I have a massive rhubarb plant in my garden, I'll add this to the myriad of ways I'll be looking for to get rid of it. I think, apart from the sugar and cream, it was probably quite a healthy dessert. OK, a sort of healthy dessert.....


Sauciness: Put it this way. I made this for my father in law and he loved it. I suspect it's of his era. So, it's a good, solid, old fashioned dessert. Not real saucy.

Overall pleasure level: Absolutely delightful, really. The brown sugar, butter, cream, doughy, crunchy top and bubblingly soft rhubarb combines to make a really satisfying winter dessert. Served it with ice cream. I imagine I'll make this one for many winters to come.

Bells

Pain-au-chocolat Pudding

It looks beautiful and tastes divine - Nigella Lawson

Just for Bells' birthday - a lovely wintery choccy custardy pud. Mmmm mmmmmmmm.
The verdict:

Unusual or substituted ingredients: This is really a bread and butter pudding. However, unlike your standard B&B pudding, this uses pain-au-chocolates (chocolate croissants) rather than bread and sultanas. As I was buying the ingredients late on a Saturday afternoon in a rush (as I was making it for dinner at friend's that evening) I couldn't actually find 4 pain-au-chocolat, so I bought 3 (from 2 different places) and a plain croissant as well.

Other than that, nothing particularly unusual. Unless, that is, you count half a litre of milk and half a litre of double cream as unusual. That's a litre of pretty creamy dairy in there!! Oh and 4 egg yolks and 1 whole egg. Oh my. I think it's going to be creamy custard! And since I have 4 egg whites left over, my next Nigella recipe will give you a very easy way to use them up.

Special utensils or cookware: None - just a big bowl to hold the creamy custard as you are making it, before you pour over the previously sliced p-au-c that you've put in a casserole dish. Repeatability: This is a very easy dessert - I would definitely make it again. Sauciness: Well, you know with a litre of creamy stuff, this is quite saucy. And once you cook it all together, the chocolate from the p-au-c oozes out into the custard and gives it a delicate, not overwhelming, chocolate taste. Overall pleasure level: As Nigella says: "I can't tell you how comforting this is". It is truly a comfort food. A point or two off for looks (because, really, Nigella - it might look "beautiful" straight out of the oven, but there is no way to serve this to make it look even remotely attractive!

So for me, an 8.

Blueberry Boy Bait

Aromatic custardy sponge, sweet gooey fruit and meringue, sugar-crisped - boy-bait Brit-style.' - Nigella Lawson

I'm assuming there's some corny story behind the notion of a boy bait pudding. To me it screams 1950s America with girls baking this dish for the dream boy they longed for. A quick google search told me the dish dated back to the 1920s, although Nigella says it was the result of a teenage girl's entry for a baking contest. Anyone know for sure?

Either way, it seemed appropriate as a dessert to cook on a night when we were having a celebratory, romantic night in. Sean got steak with blue cheese sauce for mains, then blueberry boy bait for dessert.

The way to his heart? I think so.

The Verdict
I had two enormous servings of this marvel. My God. I'd say 'words defy me' but let's face it. We all know that would be a lie.

I have to say I was curious to make this pudding, but more than a little skeptical. A base of eggs, milk and breadcrumbs? I was imagining a gooey, sodden lump. Oh no, no. I was so wrong. This one's a winner in every sense.

So what is it? It's, as I said, a base of breadcrumbs, egg yolks (5), caster sugar and milk. You bake that layer first while preparing the fruit and meringue. You make a jammy mix of blueberries for the middle layer and top it off with sweet (very sweet) fluffy egg whites. Heaven.

Unusual or substituted ingredients
I was skeptical about a base made by mixing fresh breadcrumbs into milk and eggs. Nothing unusual about those ingredients as such, but the combination made me unsure. I needn't have been. They're like a bready cake at the bottom and not overly sweet (unlike the rest of it!).

I used frozen blueberries instead of fresh. No problem there.

And don't be put off by the meringue top layer. I've never made meringue before but there's nothing to it, I now know.

Special Utensils or Cookware
Nope. Nothing in particular. As long as you can blitz bread for fresh breadcrumbs, you're going to be fine.

Repeatability
You know what? I'd do this for a dinner party with friends or again for just us on a weekend. It's old fashioned and amazingly so. It's a pudding in every sense of the word. I'd probably cut back on the sugar though next time. It's intensely sweet. Especially the bucketloads that are added to the blueberry mix in the middle. That's just blueberries, lemon and sugar. Cut back a little on the sugar there and in the meringue, and it's perfect.

Sauciness

Oh boy. You can't beat it. Decadent and delicious - and it's got real fruit in it so it can't be all bad!

Overall pleasure level

An absolute delight. Sean loved it. He gave it an 8 out of 10. That slightly crispy, golden meringue topping is the real surprise. I didn't expect that to turn out nearly so well.

And around the edges, later, when you're supposed to have finished gorging yourself, those extra crispy edge bits....well, there weren't many of those left!

Bells

New York Cheesecake

I ate a cheesecake just like this in New York once - Nigella Lawson

Wanting something that husby's family will like (for our mother's day lunch) I decided upon cheesecake. Husby's mother has made it in the past and I know his brother likes it too, so this was a safe option (although m-i-l doesn't make a baked cheesecake but rather a refrigerated one, if that makes sense).

looks a little dark on top I know - it wasn't that dark in real life!

The verdict
Unusual or substituted ingredients: Nothing unusual, except I have to say, I was slightly grossed out when I realised that the recipe calls for over 1 kg of cream cheese/sour cream/double cream all together - oh my that's a lot of dairy and a lot of fat...and that doesn't even count the butter used for the base!!!
I did choose low fat cream cheese and low fat sour cream, and just used thickened cream (my corner store didn't have double cream at 7pm on a Saturday night, which is when I did the shopping for this!). Fortunately, it did have proper digestive biscuits - they aren't really an Australian thing - I usually use Arnott's Marie biscuits, but in this case, used actual digestives, and I think it really did make a difference to the base, which was not crumbly at all (which has been my experience in the past with cheesecakes).

Special utensils or bakeware: You do need a springform tin for a cheesecake, make sure it is the right size, as this is a big cheesecake - my tin was full to the brim of mix once I got that kilo of cream cheese mix into it!
I used an electric hand mixer to mix the filling. Do leave yourself enough time to make it though (I had to get up at 7.30am on a Sunday - a SUNDAY! to make this and I still couldn't leave it in the oven for the suggested cooling time (1.5 hours to cook, 2 hours to cool with oven door shut, 1 hour to cool with oven door open)). It's best made the day before I think if that is possible.

Repeatability: I would make this again. It is, for a baked cheesecake, incredibly light and fluffy. Nigella says the secret is in the whipping of the egg whites (shhhh don't tell!) and folding them into the filling mix.
Sauciness: There are a few dishes with this one, separate bowls for making the base, the filling and the beating of the egg whites. In terms of the eating, it is not too rich, and not too solid or dense (as some baked cheesecakes can be). My 9 yo niece (who "doesn't like cheesecake") loved it - yay!
Overall pleasure level: Hmmm. I think this is an 8.5. Pretty much everyone likes cheesecake so you can't go wrong. Would be good served with berries or coulis (heh, coulis!) or both, and is equally delicious on its own.