Dessert – Page 4 – Myfrenchkitchen

Turning 30 is a big occasion. Our eldest turned 30 this month and she had her friends from Toulouse come to Coin Perdu to celebrate. She wanted this chocolate cake which we have been baking for years in our home. Really a deliciously decadent cake and so easy and quick. I found it years ago in Annette Human’s Winning recipes 3. It is from Renie Conradie who got it from her husbands stepmother, grandma Polly. Well, there you go.. a recipe that withstood generations of baking and is still going strong.

Pincée de fleur de sel:

Baking the cake at 170 °C will prevent the cake from cracking and rising to a point in the middle.
Gently hit the the bottom of the cake pan on the table surface to get rid of air bubbles.
Add 1 tsp extra cacao to the cake mixture for a darker cake.
Serve with whipped cream or ice cream or créme fraìche.
The cake becomes tastier the longer it stands.

In his speech mon chéri said he remembered the day he turned 30 years ago.. He thought he was old then. With our first daughter turning 30, he wondered how he should feel now. the nice thing about having children turning 30, is that we felt 30 again too, being in the company of all the “20’s-going-on-30’s” and all the “30-something’s” for a whole weekend,
..

Preparations were done on Saturday by everyone for a rustic-shabby-chic evening, which lasted until Sunday morning at 4. I was just about to call the police to complain about the “kids” keeping me awake, when the last one crawled into the barn and a faintly familiar silence fell over Coin Perdu. It lasted only few hours before the first morning coffee announced the next chapter of busyness

..preparing gazpacho..

..Some British Pimms..

..the apero table..

..Serrano ham from Spain o,narustic shabby chic ham board..

..chilling..

..friends starting arriving..

..I want to sabre my own champagne!..

..1, 2, 3 et voilà!..

..oh dear…a little too much muscle!..

..joghurt marinated legs of lamb..

.. chickens basted with apricot puree..

..preparing the buffet table..

..fire and food..

..salmon fillet..

..old fashioned coke..

..always a fire..

..night falls..

..a chandelier in the walnut tree for some romance..

..eating...

The day after the night before always starts in slow motion. Crawling out of tents, coffee with brioche, and a shower finally opens up heavy eyelids. so much so that a rugby ball can be thrown about by the brave, others go for walks and pick wildflowers(which would find their way onto my dressing table, since it was mother’s day), some just hang around in a deep chair, and the real brave ones get onto a horse. Finally everyone gathers to fill stomachs on leftovers, tent pens are pulled out, cars wave goodbye and the sun sets on a 30th birthday. Long may she live to remember this year!

Apples and spices…only two words necessary to express winter. And the festive season. The markets groan under the weight of all the apples available and we are used to eating varieties picked recently here in our own region. We don’t even consider buying imported apples and pears when we can pick and choose between many varieties home grown. Which is exactly what I did to make this festive apple, pear and date compote. You can’t get it any easier than this..quick, simple, but so flavorful. It goes to show just once again that you don’t need complicated ingredients to get flavour into your dishes. The golden phrase in cooking is always…keep it simple and use quality ingredients.

La recette: Apple, pear and date compote:

Peel and cut 3 firm pears and 3 firm apples into cubes.
Place in a saucepan and drizzle liberally with the juice of 1 lemon.Add to the fruit mixture: 6 dates halved and seed removed, 1 vanilla pod with its seed scraped into the mixture, the grated peel of 1 lemon, 1 star anise, 1 bark of cinnamon, 1/2 tsp of Szechuan pepper(crushed in mortar and pestle, a tiny pinch of salt, 1 TBSP of maple syrup and 1tsp of cane sugar.
Simmer on gentle heat for about 30 minutes or until the fruit is tender, but NOT PUREED. The fruit must still have a slight bite. Strain the compote and remove the cinnamon and star anise. Keep aside.
Replace the juice on the heat and reduce to syrup.
Serve the compote in bowls and sprinkle with pomegranate seeds for a fresh crunch. Drizzle with the syrup and serve with a dollop of crème fraîche.

Serves 6 people (dessert)

Pincée de fleur de sel:

Instead of serving the compote as a dessert, it can be served as an accompaniment to meat like porc or veal.
As an accompaniment, omit the pomegranate seeds and chop a red onion into small dice. Add some of the meat juices to the onion and compote to make it more suitable for an accompaniment.
the compote can be served at room temperature or warm.
Serve with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream instead of créme fraîche.
It can be prepared a day ahead and reheated at a gentle temperature.

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This year has passed by so quickly, totally without my permission. I have the feeling I wasn’t even present at times. I am definitely present today, the 1st of December 2014…a day I usually enjoy, because it is the day day we put up our Christmas tree, decorate it, drink vin chaud and listen to our first Christmas carols.

Every year, since Myfrenchkitchen’s first December in 2007, I have posted on 1 December showing our Christmas tree for that year. It has just been a delight being able to share it with you these 7 years. Little has changed in these 7 years. From the beginning I had a recipe and then rambled on about some subject with words and images and bored you with my art. the only change is probably that I don’t write from Montlouis any more, but from a barn on a farm in the south west of France.

Some years I wrote a lot and some years my presence was few and far between. there were times I even thought of quitting. But My little blog(s) has become such a part of me, I don’t think I could let it go. I have many friends who gave it up for Facebook and Instagram, but finishing a post on my blog, still gives me such a big kick, every time.

I hope I can be more present in the near future, but if not, then that will be OK too. I am not going anywhere and I won’t desert this baby of 7 years. This is my own little “corner”, where I write for myself and for those readers and friends who have walked alongside me all this time. It is still fun.

And so, our Christmas this year is all in white and silver, my favorite colours for the festive season. the dry branch with moss from the garden, a pot filled with sand, candles and tea lights we burn every night for those gone, far away or just simply those we love. Birds are omnipresent on/in our trees. and there they are again this year, perched high on the branches I chose to hang a large brightly coloured painting behind the tree. I love the contrast of the simple tree in white and silver against the abundant colour of the painting. The painting depicts a scene in a church, which is quite fitting too. I wish you all a wonderful month of December. This is not the last you’ll see of me for the month, so I greet you as usual: