Olympic Food Challenge: Mousse de Limão - Portugal

Yet another amazing day for Team GB.  Finally, Vicky Pendleton got the opportunity to shine and take gold.  More glory for the men's team sprint.  And sadly, I missed the lot as it's the Mothership's birthday and Olympics appears to be a dirty word in her house.  So much so that my step father keeps sneakily looking at the results on Teletext (or whatever the red button text service is now known as) with the same kind of furtiveness as an alcoholic taking sneaky sips from their stash of gin (he's a bit henpecked).

Summer on a plate

Still, Portugal were represented at tonight's birthday barbecue through a lovely lemon mousse from the fabulous Kerstin's Kitchen.  I met Kerstin through Twitter a while back.  She runs her own business, catering for dinner parties and selling amazing sounding home made products.  I so wish I lived closer to her so I could sample some of her wares.  Earlier in the week, we were tweeting about the OFC and she kindly sent me a couple of recipes to help me out.  The first being the aforementioned lemon mousse which was the perfect alternative to the calorie-laden, super-rich chocolate and coconut layer cake that I managed to rustle up as the star attraction.  I will write about the choc-coconut on my new blog which will be going live in October.

I was a little nervous about making a baked mousse - Kerstin likened it to a souffle, which is something I've managed to avoid making this year - but in all honesty, it was a complete doddle.  Whip up some eggs, flavour with lemon, pop in ramekins, bake et voila.  Fresh, light pudding.  I did have one small problem in that I appeared to lose my egg-separating capabilities and ended up wasting three (omelette anyone) by dropping a yolk into the whites and subsequently bursting it when I tried to carefully fish it back out.  But other than that, they rose beautifully and got rave reviews from my Uncle Jeffrey.

Because I'm still trying to be good, I forewent the cakeage too and was really pleased to have this light alternative.  After a rather meat-heavy meal, it was nice to have something sweet to cleanse the palate without feeling like my jeans were fit to burst with after a massive slice of cake.

Decorated with summer berries, this is really the perfect summer dinner party dessert and I will definitely be making this again when I want to impress.  The plus side is that you can also serve it hot or cold so you can make it ahead or eat it straight from the oven.  I would love to try lining the bottom of the ramekins with some homemade lemon curd, just to give it a little something else - but that will be a later experiment when I'm not trying to impress anyone other than myself.

Thank you so much Kerstin for the recipe and do please pop over to her website to take a look or if your on Twitter, give her a follow (@KerstinsKitchen).  She's a lovely lady to chat to.

As for Portugal, they've sent 77 athletes to London 2012 and are completing in 13 disciplines.  Rather sensibly, they too have avoided fielding anyone to compete in the track cycling.  Last time they were in London, they took a silver in Sailing and a Bronze in Equestrian. So far, they've failed to win any medals this time round, but who knows how they'll fare in week two?

If I was awarding a medal for the recipe, it would get a gold for showoffiness, ease of making and taste, however I'd award the gold to Kerstin rather than Portugal :o)