The Ramblings of a Foodaholic: New Year Resolutions: Learn How To Bake

First blog of 2015 so I thought I’d attempt something a little bit spectacular, which naturally meant something with lots of components, and all of which need incredibly complicated procedures (for me to do anyway) and took up a whole 2 days, the whole time my mother having spasm attacks at the state of her kitchen. I got the idea from The Fox and Barrel’s New Years Eve menu: Dark Chocolate Delice, topped with chocolate jelly and brittle, with a white chocolate cylinder filled with raspberry mousse and scattered with honeycomb. Their version was absolutely delicious so I thought I’d give it a go myself.

The first part I tried was the actual delice, from what I gathered from the Fox and Barrel Chefs it’s kind of like an ice cream except instead of freezing and stirring and freezing and stirring; you just stir it and let it set once. Basically you heat milk and double cream, then add eggs, whisk and pray it doesn’t curdle, then add the chocolate and pour into a mould. Simple you might say, but as soon as that egg curdles, you’re screwed. Good luck.

Next was the mousse. Found a lovely recipe online which included raspberry liqueur, so I obviously picked that one over all the others. But after looking like an alcoholic wandering up and down the spirits isle in Sainsbury’s and not finding anything except raspberry sours, ew, I settled instead for Stella Raspberry Cider. Unfortunately, when I then went to get the raspberries the whole world and his mother had decided that they apparently needed raspberries too. So back to square one, I rang my dad and he said we had some crème de cassis somewhere so I should get some blackcurrants. But I misheard him and got blackberries instead. But oh well it still tasted nice, even if it was a bit seedy, but you can’t exactly sieve a mousse can you?

I was a little confused at how to make a chocolate jelly, but then realised it’s just a chocolate flavoured panna cotta, so that was simple enough. But the honeycomb was more caramel than anything else, whoops. But it was almost perfectly shaped like Australia, so I’ve got that going for me which is nice. Also did you know that honeycomb doesn’t actually have honey in it? Weird.

Making the chocolate brittle was probably my favourite part, although I had to restrain myself from popping all the bubbles before I actually made it. Make sure you wash the bubble wrap first, you don’t know where it’s been. The selloptape it to a baking tray, melt your chocolate, pour it over and let it set in the fridge. And then when it’s done, peel off the bubble wrap, smash the chocolate into pieces and pop all the bubbles.

After speaking to the Fox and Barrel chefs and watching about 100 YouTube tutorials, I decided that I had no idea how to make a white chocolate cylinder filled with raspberry (blackberry) mousse, so instead I made white chocolate and blackberry truffles. I filled up an ice cube tray half way with melted white chocolate, and let it set in the fridge. Then I piped in a little bit of the mousse and poured more white chocolate over the top. For some reason the chocolate went a bit gloopy, but once it was set you couldn’t tell.

I tried to copy the Fox and Barrels plating up, piping the jelly and the mousse onto the plate, but as I’m not very good with a piping bag yet, it looked really messy, so I hid most of it with the chocolate truffles and the rest I turned into ‘artistic smears’. Then there was a bit of trouble getting the delice out of the mould, I had to melt most of it to get it out so it ended up being a wonky cylinder shape, but if I angled it on the plate right when I took a picture you couldn’t really tell. Then I just scattered all the other bits on the plate with a couple of blackberries and tadaaaah! Dark chocolate delice and white chocolate and blackberry truffles, with chocolate jelly, chocolate brittle and bits of caramel. Yum.

As usual I made far too much of everything so used the leftovers to make mini chocolate pots, which disappeared from the fridge in hours. Thanks to the Fox and Barrel for giving the idea to make this delicious dessert.