Sweet Book of Deserts

“Lemon Raspberry Mouse”

I mentioned it before, when Episode 4 came out.
It’s a sour, yet fresh and light desert that takes less than half an hour to make.

easy to make, delicious, light desert

For 6 servings You’ll need:
1.5 tea spoon unflavoured gelatine
3 table spoons water
100 ml fresh lemon juice
225 g sugar
4 egg whites
3 tea spoons of grated lemon zest
250 ml whipping cream
250 g fresh raspberries
100 ml black currant jelly

For Raspberry layers:

Melt the black currant jelly in a pot over low heat, do not let to boil!!!
Pour it over the raspberries and mix everything together. If you jelly gets very hot, let it to cool for a minute or so, but make sure it’s not starting to go solid. Leave the raspberry mix somewhere to cool down.

For Lemon Mouse layers:

In a little bowl, stir the gelatine into 3 table spoons of hot water. It doesn’t have to be fully dissolved before you transfer it to a pot, but try your best at it. Then, pour the gelatine, lemon juice into a pot and heat it, over a low heat until it’s warm, do not boil!! Add sugar gradually, in about 2-3 portions, stirring well after each one, so it melts easier. After all the sugar (and the gelatine) has dissolved, bring the pot outside for it to cool a bit.

Meanwhile, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks are formed. While still beating, add the lemon zest. Turn off the mixer so egg whites can get a rest (overbeating with an electric mixer creates warmth)Go out and get your gelatine mix. Then add the now just warm (not hot) gelatine mixture to the egg whites in a thin, slow, steady stream. Make sure you gelatine mix is not too warm because if it is, the egg whites will go too liquid-y and your mouse will be a lot like mush. However, don’t have it too cold. You have to go out on a limb here, but something around 40-45 degrees should be about right. If it’s too cold, gelatine will start to go solid on you and that won’t work either, so just be careful, k? It usually works out ok in the end anyway.   Beat for a little while more. You’ll see when it becomes an even mass, turn it the mixer off now.

Now beat the cold whipping cream. I assume you’ll use the same mixer you used for the egg whites, so transfer the egg whites into a bowl carefully. Whipping the cream takes seconds. Do not overbeat or you’ll have butter. Ridiculously delicious butter, but butter none-the-less. You don’t need butter. It’ll take you less than half a minute. If it’s white and solid-ish you’re grand, if it starts turning SLIGHTLY yellow, you have butter. So store up on extra cream in case you mess it up the first time. Second time lucky rule applies after a failure here.

Fold in the cream into the egg whites.

Layer both Raspberry mix and the mouse in tall glasses, start with raspberries, end with mouse and decorate with either fresh raspberries or the raspberry&currant mix. Stash in in the fridge for an hour, or until you’re finished eating dinner and want to eat it.

Enjoy. And yes, it looks all complicated now, but I’m only looking out for you, I pointed out every possible pit fall you can make in this recipe. When you’re actually making it, it’s fairly simple.

“Vanilla Lemon Sponge Cake”

Ingredients:
2 and 2/3 cups of self raising flour (essential, don’t use any other kind)
0.5 teaspoon of baking soda
1.5 teaspoon baking powder
0.5 teaspoon of salt
180 g butter
3 eggs
1 and 2/3 cups of sugar
zest of 1 lemon
2 table spoons lemon juice, or a little bit more if you want a stronger flavour.
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
0.75 (3/4) cup of buttermilk

Butter and eggs have to be at room temperature!

Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl and set aside.

Beat butter with a mixer for about a minute. Make sure it’s warm and soft, otherwise it won’t beat into a soft mass.

Add sugar. Not all at once, but pour it in fairly slowly, with the mixer on. Beat the mixture until it’s soft and light (texture, not colour). Two or three minutes did it for me.

And one egg at a time to the butter mixture, with the mixer going. Beat the mixture well after each egg. If you mass goes far up around the edges, scrape down so everything is dispersed evenly in the dough.

Beat the mixture until it’s smooth. Add lemon zest, lemon juice and the vanilla extract.

Add dry ingredients to butter mixture in doses. Pour some buttermilk after each dose of the flour mix.
(TIP: start with dry, end with dry). Again, make sure your dough is in one place, scrape the sides of the mixing bowl so you don’t have any rubber-textured lumps in the cake. Don’t over-mix or your cake will loose the light airy texture which is the greatest thing about this cake.

Grease a 9×13 inch cake pan (or something similar in size) with butter(that’s aside from the butter included in the recipe, don’t keep some from those 180grams of butter to grease the pan, put them all into the cake) and dust it in flour. (TIP: Grease it with butter, then sprinkle some flour onto the cake pan, sift it around until all the grease is covered in a thin layer of flour, then dump all the extra flour into the sink or somewhere)

Pour the dough into the cake pan evenly, make sure you don’t get it all over the sides of the cake pan, above where all the cake batter sits, because those smears of dough will burn in the oven. If you made it a bit messy, you can clean little bits off before you put it in the oven. Remember to spread the dough evenly. Use a spoon, some prefer spatulas and such but I believe art of cooking isn’t hidden in fancy kitchen utensils, it’s in the skill and creativity, so be a rebel, use a spoon!

Bake at 180 degrees Celsius (that’s 350F for all you Americans) for 28-30 mins or until a toothpick comes out clean/dry.

Let cool for about an hour or two on a wire rack, so the cake doesn’t go soggy. Beware, let it cool in the oven for about 10 mins first, then take it out with the cake pan, wait another 15 minutes or so, only then attempt to take out. If you try to get a pipping hot cake out of a pan, it’ll be in bits.

Sift some icing sugar on top, forget the tea and enjoy.