BBC Good Food Coffee Semi Freddo with Dan Lepard's Caramel Sauce

I'm known for bemoaning my husband's lack of interest in what I do.  Tonight was one of those nights when I wish he'd ignored what I was doing.  Because I had to end up sharing possibly one of my favourite dishes of this year.

With days to go and a whole heap of work and personal stuff going on, I've not had a minute to sit down and leaf through my cookery books and have to confess to increasingly resorting to t'internet to help me track down suitable recipes.  Instead of focussing on the end of this challenge, my mind has already raced ahead to future projects (writing for other blogs, Christmas hampers, my own new blog, getting back into running).  I'm probably in denial that I'm going to have a huge hole in my evenings between the child going to bed and my own bedtime and need to find something to fill it before the husband makes me do cleaning.

So this in turn led to lots of middle of the night 'window-shopping' on the BBC Good Food website where I happened across this recipe for semi-freddo.  I would love to visit Italy one day - it's something I doubt that will happen with my husband as he always gets to choose our holiday - but a girl can dream.  I want to stuff my face full of pasta although I'm less keen on gelato.  So the idea of making semi-freddo was a bit of a hit and miss chance.

Messy, but soooo tasty

For the uninitiated, semi-freddo is basically a frozen mousse so there's no faffy churning like you'd get with real ice cream.  It's texture is far lighter and it melts quite quickly so is more like an ice-cream that's been out of the freezer for a fair while.

The BBC recipe recommends using Toblerone but I could only get hold of a massive one and in my world, Toblerone is something you only ever buy in duty free and scoff on holiday (I did this once with one of the 2kg packs and it's pretty much put me off of Toblerone for life).  So I went with Green and Black's Burnt Toffee chocolate instead.

To complement the ice cream, and because I love caramel syrup with my lattes, I made Dan Lepard's Caramel Sauce from Short and Sweet and spiked it with a healthy dose of sea salt.  This stuff is lethally addictive.  I tested it several times to get the sugar/cream/salt ratio correct to ensure the slightly burnt flavour wasn't too intense but complimented the coffee and burnt toffee chocolate flavours.  Then I tested it several times more just to check for consistency as it cooled of course.  And a few more times for luck.  It's a good job I only made half the recipe or I'd be in a sugar-induced coma right now.

I did the same with the semi-freddo - making it in my 500g loaf tin.  The tin is long and shallow so the slices aren't as elegant as on the BBC website but it's all about the taste for this post.  Plus I thought I would be eating it all (over a few days of course) and semi-freddo apparently doesn't keep well with the egg whites forming little frozen blobs after a few days.

I won't be able to test this theory.  Especially now.  Because for the first time since last November when I made Mary Berry's chocolate roulade, the husband seemed hell bent on stalking my every move all evening.  He normally slumps in front of the telly until midnight but everywhere I went he was a couple of paces behind.  Consequently, he asked to try a bit of my pudding.  He ate half of one slice and said he liked it but then insisted that I make him his own bowlful.

I left him watching the X-Files to come and eat mine in peace and type this post but knowing him as I do, he will have licked the bowl completely clean.  And I when I say licked, I mean licked.

This is definitely on the make again list.  You can find the semi-freddo recipe here.  For the caramel sauce, you can use this recipe here although the one from Short and Sweet doesn't use butter or golden syrup and is flavoured with vanilla bean paste and a touch of salt (or a big pinch for the salted caramel I used)

Strawberry Meringue Ice Cream

My sous chef

My daughter is currently going through an obsession with 'I Can Cook' on CBeebies.  Before, she'd just watch whatever was on, but now we have to rely on Sky Plussed episodes of the Fragrant Katie and her band of merry helpers.  I feel like I've done nothing this past week but watch 'I Can Cook' (I've only seen about three episodes, but it feels like a hundred).  So I figured that alongside the weekly ritual of making some small biscuits or cake, we'd give the Strawberry Meringue Ice Cream a go.

Of course, it not being strawberry season, we stumbled at the first block with the strawberry mashing.  Miss A was given a large bowl, four strawberries cut in half and the potato masher.  They just got chased and chased around the bowl until I turned my back to whip the cream.  Less than thirty seconds later, the bowl was nearly empty and I had a suspicious looking toddler with strawberry juice running down her chin.  As fussy as she is, my daughter adores her fruit.

Broken whisk :(

We ended up squishing the strawberries by hand.  An activity in hindsight that I wouldn't do again as once frozen, the lumps were very icy.

During this escapade, my expensive (well £11) dishwasher-proof, hard-anodized-saucepan-safe whisk decided to fall apart.  Not a happy mummy.  Still, the cream was just about whipped.

I'm not sure if I'm a fan of no-churn ice-creams or not.  I've made them before from a recipe on the Good Food website.  The first time I made it, it was okay.  The second time, using the exact same recipe, I found it greasy.  Today's effort was a little greasy, but the fruit and meringue helped detract from it.  It was a rich, easy recipe that did what it said on the tin.

In essence, it's really just frozen Eton Mess.  With the mood I was in this morning, it was lucky to make it to the freezer.  The recipe says to freeze it for two hours and then temper in the fridge for half an hour.  I found it was still soft enough to scoop after two hours without the need to temper.

Finished ice cream with Waitrose choc chunks

All in all, not bad.  For a quick, simple, faff free ice-cream, I'd probably do it again if I didn't have time to nip to our local farm shop for some.  But in lieu of an ice cream maker (I'd so love a proper CuisineArt one), the next best thing to proper home made has to be Marshfield Farm ice cream which is made just down the road from here.  I'm not sure where it's stocked nationwide, but if they sell it near you you so have to try it.  Especially my favourite - blackcurrants and clotted cream.  Slurp!

As for Miss A's opinion?  She absolutely steadfastly refused to touch it.  But she ate the rest of the strawberries :)

Recipe - serves 2 to 4 (or one!)

• 125ml double cream
• 2 heaped dessert spoons natural yogurt
• 2 level dessert spoons icing sugar
• 4 large strawberries
• 1 meringue nest or 4 mini meringues

1. Whip the cream then stir in the yogurt and icing sugar.
2. Mash the strawberries and crush the meringue.  Swirl through the cream mixture.
3. Pour into a freezer proof container and freeze for at least two hours.
4. Temper in the fridge for 30 minutes before serving (although you may not need to do this step)

Seville Orange Sorbet

Inspired by the Weekly Bake Off challenge of Farmhouse Victoria Sponge, replete with marmalade butter cream, when I was doing my weekly shop, I stuck a bag of Seville oranges in my virtual shopping basket.  My intention was to make marmalade, but having done some recipe research, I've now decided to freeze them for another day and give Dan Lepard's 'Dalemain's Three Fruit Marmalade' a go.  This specifically uses regular oranges - one of which is languishing in my fruit bowl - lemons and grapefruit.  All of which I have to hand.

I checked with some of the lovely Tweeple (that's Twitter People to the uninitiated) that I know how best to freeze them.  Apparently, you can either juice, them and chop and store the peel separately or just freeze them whole.  The time-constrained part of my brain has selected that option for the first trial freeze.

Check out all the pips!

But I did feel a bit guilty buying fresh fruit, only to sling it straight into the freezer so on the advice of the packaging 'Use them to make marmalade or sorbet' I duly Googled recipes for Seville Orange Sorbet.

Recipe of choice is currently freezing and being beaten every thirty minutes as I'm not lucky enough to have an ice cream machine.  This is tedious.  It's starting to set and I'm hoping it will be frozen enough to eat before bed, but the fruity syrup tastes beautiful and tart.  Just how I like it.  None of this namby pamby, over-sweetened nonsense.  There is definitely a little cheek tingling going on.  Was hard to resist just popping some in a glass and drinking it instead.

You can find the recipe here along with an amazing picture of the sorbet being served.  I'm so jealous as I have a tea set like that which I bought in Turkey about fifteen years ago (showing my age!).  Except when I left home, I was so afraid of breaking it in transit that nearly fifteen years later, it's still gracing my Grandad's sideboard.  Every time I visit, he reminds me to take it home and every time I leave, I always make an excuse not to do so.  It's like a little game now.  I'm sure he loves to hear what random reason I'm going to come up with this time.  I think he knows it will stay there until I have absolutely no other choice but to take it.  Or I have some amazing sorbet I want to show off.

As a side note to the recipe, with my trusty citrus reamer (which is still one of my favourite 'gadgets') I managed to get away with only needing four and a half oranges to get the required juice.  And I still can't get over how many pips they have.  No wonder people choose not to eat them in Spain.

Will post an update once it's fully frozen!