Tag Archives: heston blumenthal

strawberry crunch trifle

Posted by Gary in cream, food, hazelnuts, meringue, strawberry and tagged with

heston blumenthal's strawberry crumble crunch

Waitrose and Heston Blumenthal have released strawberry crumble crunch as a recipe card in store to help celebrate the Jubilee. Sounds a bit like Mr Tumble Jumble to me. I’ll be honest; I didn’t seen the recipe card before making this but I had seen the recipe video on YouTube. Based on that I slung it together at work; during my lunch break I wasn’t able to get everything possible and I had to make do with the equipment to hand (microwave, kettle and fortunately a George Foreman Grill!) All things considered I think I ended up with a pretty tasty dessert! Perfect for such a hot day and created lots of smiling faces in the office. Took about 15 minutes and is well worth it!

Heston’s a bit obsessed with trifles. If you’ve made the real thing I’d love to know how it ended up.

Heston Blumenthal’s strawberry crumble crunch (serves 8 – 10):

300g strawberries, hulled

1 tablespoon of sugar

400ml double cream

8 meringue shells

A small pot of strawberry yoghurt

A satsuma

20g hazelnuts

  1. Put your serving bowl in the fridge to get nice and cold. Put the sugar and strawberries in a bowl (keep back one strawberry) and mash roughly with a fork. Add a splash of water and microwave for 4 minutes. Once the fruit is mushy add a grind of black pepper, pop into the base of your trifle bowl and refrigerate while you do everything else.
  2. Whip the cream until thickened to where it barely falls off a spoon. Stir through the yoghurt and squeeze in the juice of ½ a satsuma. Crush the meringue shells and stir through.
  3. Preheat a dry frying pan or George Foreman Grill to its highest setting. Thinly slice the remaining strawberry, sprinkle with sugar and grill until starting to turn black, and then flip over and grill the other side. When they’re done remove to one side, bash up the hazelnuts and pop those on the grill for a couple of minutes until lightly toasted.
  4. Once the strawberry mix in the fridge is cold, layer on the cream mix, top with the nuts and sliced strawberry.

heston blumenthal santoku kitchen knife

Posted by Gary in food, kitchen gadgets and tagged with

heston blumenthal santoku 18cm kitchen knife

When people find out you write about food in a blog like this, after some initial shuffling embarrassment the questions start: why do you do it? What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten?

Slightly easier to answer is: got any tips in the kitchen?

Because the best answer I can give is to get yourself one or two really good knives. Bin the ones you picked up in Matalan; save up a bit and buy a good brand (and a sharpening steel!). I probably only use a small knife for fine cutting, a large one for general work like dicing vegetables, and a bread knife. What’s the best brand? Like many of these things it’s personal preference; I really like Henckels, lots like Global, others swear by Sabatier. But what do the chefs use?

For as long as I can remember Heston has been a fan of Tojiro knives. He even asked for a set of them as his luxury item on Desert Island Discs in 2006. I’d love to own one but they’re priced a little out of my range. Thankfully Grunwerg have released the Heston Blumenthal Kitchen Knives range, styled on the Tojiro knife, which is far more affordable.

heston blumenthal santoku kitchen knifeI was sent one of these Santoku knives, and they are absolutely beautiful. A lovely weighting, not too heavy but well-balanced. When I slid it out of the box after a quick sharpening I pounced on an onion, slicing, dicing and chopping. It cut through with no effort at all. If I had one criticism it is one common to many of this kind of knife, and that’s the steep angle of the blade encourages moist food to stick to it. As you slice through a cucumber for example the slices will stick to the knife and sometimes they roll off all over the place. What’s difficult to get across is just how much easier a decent knife makes things: you can cut quicker, cleaner and finer. You will genuinely save yourself time in the kitchen with a decent knife, and this blade is an excellent choice.

With thanks to Hannah for the knife and Helen for tipping her off!

heston blumenthal’s exploding chocolate gateau

Posted by Gary in cake, chocolate, food, passion fruit, popping candy and tagged with

heston blumenthal's exploding chocolate and passion fruit popping candy cake

AKA Heston’s chocolate and passion fruit popping candy cake.

At New year I treated myself to Heston’s popping candy cake, which costs an absolute fortune, even on half price sale, but the results were amazing: bitter, sweet, chocolatey and of course popping! I was contemplating recreating it when it pops up on How To Cook Like Heston.

With my sister popping over for dinner this was the perfect opportunity to try it out. It had the desired reaction: one mouthful in and my niece squeals with surprise as the popping candy kicks in. The next few minutes are spent with people making ‘o’ shapes with their mouths, allowing the candy to echo round the room. Great fun.

Heston’s version has some crazy paint-gun antics; I skipped that and just shaved some dark chocolate on top instead. There’s also some madness involving rings and baking trays but I strolled past all that using a springform tin instead.

It was really close to the supermarket version. Making it again I would skew the chocolate ratio and add more milk chocolate, it was a shade too bitter. Maybe using better quality passion fruit would help. I’d also modify the base slightly – when I’ve made popping candy cakes before I used hazelnuts and I think they work really well here.

Heston’s original recipe is here

Heston Blumenthal’s exploding chocolate cake (serves 10):

For the base

150g shortbread

30g unsalted butter, melted

2 tablespoons white caster sugar

25g popping candy

For the chocolate ganache

175g double cream

Pinch of salt

Pulp from 6 passion fruits

50g custard

110g dark chocolate, plus a little more for decoration

50g milk chocolate

  1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Place the shortbread biscuits on a baking tray and bake in the oven for 10 minutes until golden brown.
  2. Whizz the biscuits in a food processor with melted butter and sugar.
  3. Gently stir in the popping candy. Place the mixture inside a 21cm springform tin. Flatten using the back of a spoon then put in the freezer to set.
  4. Add the cream, salt and passion fruit to a small saucepan and place over a medium heat. When it comes to the boil remove from the heat and allow to stand for 5 minutes, then stir in the custard.
  5. Melt the dark and milk chocolate together. Strain the infused cream and add to the bowl of melted chocolate a third at a time, making sure to incorporate the cream thoroughly after each addition. Allow the ganache to cool to room temperature.
  6. Use a pastry brush to spread some of the ganache on top of the biscuit base and around the edges then place in the freezer for 5 minutes. This will ensure that the ganache will not seep through (great tip!). After 5 minutes, pour the remaining ganache into the ring and place the tart in the freezer for 4 hours.
  7. Place a slab of dark chocolate on a chopping board and drag a large knife across it to create shavings. Top the cake with these decorations and return to the freezer.
  8. Remove the cake from the freezer 1 hour before serving.

heston blumenthal’s macaroni cheese

Posted by Gary in cheese, food, parmesan, pasta, truffle oil, wine and tagged with

heston blumenthal's macaroni cheese

Yes eagle-eyes, you’re right: that’s not macaroni in the picture. But this recipe is full of substitutions. What it tells me is this recipe has a great base from which to build on.

This is Heston’s recipe for macaroni cheese from How To Cook Like Heston, and is predictably very, very tasty. Like most people I usually kick cheese sauces off with a roux, but this approach melts cheese into reduced wine and stock. I’m amazed it works. I think I let the cheese cook a tiny bit too long and it started to split on me, but just about caught it in time. I also veered off from the recipe as I didn’t have a posh cheddar, nor cream cheese in the house but instead let it down with pasta water. That’s another bonkers bit – in the original recipe the pasta is cooked in a very shallow amount of water but I didn’t quite have the attention to monitor that one today. I boiled it in the usual way and it worked just fine.

I’ll definitely be making cheese sauces from this base in future – no more floury rouxs for me.

The original recipe is here, and you can find it in Heston Blumenthal At Home (as “truffle macaroni”) as well.

Heston Blumenthal’s macaroni cheese (serves 4):

300g fusilli

300ml white wine

300ml chicken stock

140g cheddar, grated

1 heaped teaspoon cornflour

A few drops of truffle oil

A little grated parmesan

  1. Get the pasta on to boil in a large saucepan of salted water and cook according to the packet instructions.
  2. In a separate pan reduce the wine down to “30ml” (I have no idea how you can easily tell what level you’re down to without a lot of faff so eyeball it and trust your gut). Add the stock to this wine reduction.
  3. Preheat the grill. Toss the cheese with the cornflour and add to the winey stock. Turn the heat right down low, add some black pepper and stir until thoroughly combined. As soon as it’s smooth turn the heat off.
  4. Drain the pasta and reserve some of the water. Trickle over a tiny amount of truffle oil, toss and add to the sauce, then transfer to a baking dish. Top with the parmesan and pop under the grill until bubbling.

heston blumenthal’s roast chicken

Posted by Gary in chicken, food, lemon, salt, thyme, wine and tagged with

heston blumenthal's ultimate roast chicken

Heston’s latest series, How to Cook Like Heston, is probably the one that could finally convert the non-believers. It’s vintage Heston treading familiar recipes, but taking them just far enough, and just explaining enough to make them accessible for those that want to try. The best example of this is roast chicken: I’ve previously cooked his perfect roast chicken (from In Search of Perfection) and it’s a brilliant recipe. But despite its relative simplicity there are a couple of stages in it that could be intimidating: plunging into water a few times, trying to cook a whole chicken in a frying pan, and chicken wing butter. So I was intrigued to see him show an even further simplified version on the show.

chicken roasted to 71°The brining is still there; an absolute necessity in my book. A low solution of 6% keeps the meat moist without making it too strong and cure-like. The slow roasting is also there, “low and slow” as Heston puts it, and after a simple resting back into your hottest oven to finish off. For the roasting itself, you simply have to use a meat thermometer to be sure that it’s done. I recommend Salter’s Heston-branded one but any one will do. It is recommended that you take the meat to 75°C; Heston admits that but says 60°C gives you the perfect succulence. If you have bird of spotless provenance that would probably be fine but I took my mid-range supermarket bird to 70°C.

And it’s tremendous of course. In fact I’d possibly argue that the extra stages introduced by the Perfection version are unnecessary. You get a fabulously juicy, tasty chicken, plump with flavour and intense chickenness. It’s well worth giving a go once – it takes no more effort than a regular roast chicken, just the brining the night before and a bit longer time blocked out for the oven. If you love your Sunday roast chicken, you owe it to your dinner table to try this one out.

The link to the Channel 4 recipe is here. An even more developed and detailed version of the recipe is in the book Heston Blumenthal at Home.

Heston Blumenthal’s roast chicken (serves 4–6):

6% brine (I used 240g salt dissolved in 4 litres of water)

1.4kg chicken

1 lemon

1 bunch of thyme

125g unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus extra for rubbing into the skin

30ml dry white wine

  1. Remove the trussing from the chicken to allow it to cook more evenly then place it in a container. Pour over the brine ensuring that the chicken is submerged then place in the fridge overnight.
  2. Preheat the oven to 90ºC. Remove the chicken from the liquid, rinse with fresh water and pat dry with kitchen paper. Place on a wire rack over a baking tray.
  3. Roll and pierce the lemon then place it in the cavity of the bird with half the thyme. Rub some softened butter on top of the skin. Roast the chicken until the internal temperature in the thickest part of the breast is 60ºC (for mine to hit 70ºC took 2 hours 20 minutes but there’s so many factors involved you should check every half hour from about 2 hours onwards).
  4. Remove the chicken from the oven and allow to rest for 45 minutes. Turn the oven temperature as high as it will go. This is a good time to use the oven if you’re doing roast potatoes.
  5. In the meantime, melt the butter in a pan and add the wine and a few sprigs of thyme. Bring to the boil then remove the pan from the heat and use the melted butter to baste the chicken before browning. Grind over some black pepper.
  6. Once the resting time has elapsed, put the chicken back in the roasting tray and return it to the oven for approximately 10 minutes or until golden brown, taking care that it doesn’t burn.
  7. Once coloured, remove the chicken from the oven and carve. Serve with Heston’s perfect carrots and my perfect roast potatoes, a combination of methods including Heston’s.

heston blumenthal’s beef and dijon mustard sauce

Posted by Gary in beef, food, ingredients, mustard and tagged with

heston at waitrose beef and dijon mustard sauce

I took a rare trip to Waitrose armed with gift vouchers, which meant I could spoil myself a bit buying things I wouldn’t usually reach for. I picked up some of this which at £2.29 for a little sachet of sauce is bit pricey. I picked up some sirloin steak too and thought it would be a good match. So I pan-fried the steak and while it rested warmed the sauce through in the same pan, and served it with some potato wedges.

Stone me it was good. Lick-the-plate good. A smooth mustardy flavour but packing seven shades of umami moreishness with each mouthful. According to the man himself it’s a version of sauce Robert bolstered by one of Heston’s favourite ingredients, konbu. I’d love to try making this at home sometime, but if I couldn’t be bothered I’ve been convinced this is worth the money for a special dinner.

heston blumenthal’s pea and ham soup

Posted by Gary in food, gammon, ham, peas, stock and tagged with

heston blumenthal's pea and ham soup

“You don’t like small food, do you?”

That’s something someone said about my eating habits a few years back. It’s not completely accurate but did draw together a few of my food hates: sweetcorn, baked beans and peas. Baked beans remain the work of the devil, I’m still not really sold on sweetcorn (why does it always end up in tuna?) but over the years I have grown to accept peas. And if any recipe is going to fully convince me of the power of the pea, it’s a Heston one. I was sent this recipe by someone who knows of my Hesotn obsession, and comes from his new book Heston Blumenthal at Home.

peas defrostingIt’s refreshingly free of bonkers twists, as long as you discount defrosting frozen peas. Oh yes, frozen peas – I think most chefs now accept frozen is the way to have peas if they’re not straight from your garden. And the peas are barely cooked so they retain their vibrant colour and fresh taste.

The finishing touch, as is so common with Heston recipes (I’m looking at you, vanilla salt), the thing that just makes it. A few drops of mint oil is a crystal clear note among the comforting, meaty flavours.

It’s absolutely delicious. Creamy and fresh, with a round, savoury flavour that is amplified in all directions. Do try it, it’s brilliant.

Heston Blumenthal’s pea and ham soup (serves 4):

1kg gammon joint

1 onion, peeled and sliced

1 carrot, peeled and sliced

1 leek, white part only, rinsed and sliced

8 mint leaves

30ml extra virgin olive oil

900g frozen peas

65g butter, diced

75g shallots, finely diced

1 clove of garlic, minced

160g unsmoked bacon, cut into lardons

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 85°C. Pop the gammon, onion, leek and carrot into a casserole and barely cover with water. Bring to a simmer on the hob, pop a lid on it and transfer to the oven for 5 hours.
  2. While the gammon cooks, put the mint in the oil and leave in a warm place to infuse. Line a baking tray with kitchen roll and layer the frozen peas on this to defrost and absorb excess moisture.
  3. When the gammon is done, let the meat cool in the liquor. Sieve off the solids (Heston then says to discard the veg, but I squeezed out the excess juice and mixed with mash the following day for fab bubble ‘n’ squeak). Then shred 180g of the meat for the soup – the remainder you can keep for another day.
  4. Get a large frying pan over a low heat and add 25g of the butter. Ad the bacon, shallots and garlic and sizzle for five minutes so they soften but do not colour.
  5. Add 750ml of the gammon stock and bring to a simmer for 5 minutes. Add all but 75g of the peas and the rest of the butter and remove from the heat. Liquidize then strain through a sieve, squishing thoroughly to get as much good stuff in the pan as possible. Season to taste and reheat gently.
  6. Use a hand blender to aerate and thicken the soup, then add the reserved gammon and remaining peas. Allow these to warm up and then serve, drizzling with mint oil.

competition – win a heston blumenthal measuring jug [closed]

Posted by Gary in competition, cooks, kitchen gadgets, prize and tagged with
This competition is now closed. Many thanks for all your entries, there were some really fantastic ideas! The winners have been notified by email.
heston blumenthal digital measuring jug

Image copyright HestonBySalter.com

Like most people who love being in the kitchen, I enjoy a good gadget. But better than that is a good gadget you use more than once. There’s the key. And this digital measuring jug by those clever folks at Salter is the business. Heston’s seal of approval has made this a very canny device. Yes, yes, it’s a measuring jug, but it’s more than that. It’s a measuring jug that can gauge liquids of different types (milk, oil, etc.), but it can manage weight too. And in a bunch of different units. One after the other. Let me explain.

heston blumenthal digital measuring jugI’ve made a bunch of things with it recently, such as white chocolate and blueberry muffins. The cool part is making it all in the one jug. Add your flour, zero it. Then add your sugar, zero it, change to liquids and off you go adding milk, zero, etc. etc. Similarly chocolate and rosemary ice cream was made by measuring stuff as I went along, adding and pouring out, then zeroing and adding something else to the jug. Less washing up and the mixture’s all there in one pot ready to go. Put simply – it’s a measuring jug and add-and-weigh digital scale in one gadget. Genius.

The good folks over at Salter have kindly passed on some of these measuring jugs for me to give away. Want one? Enter below.

In addition to the current range, there’s a brand new selection of Heston Precision products coming very soon. I had a chat with Caroline from Salter who gave me an idea of what it’s like working with Heston Blumenthal and what new products we can expect to see:

How did Salter get involved with Heston Blumenthal?

When we first started thinking about working with Heston and his team, we felt that it was important to understand the brand values for both Salter and Heston to ensure that the partnership had integrity behind it. While Salter has been around for over 250 years, and Heston is very much a forward thinking modern chef, the good news was that our values of Precision, Trust, Excellence, Innovation and “Britishness” bought the two brands together and ensured that our collaboration would make sense to our combined audience.

We approached him with a proposal, and he was very agreeable to collaborating from the start as he knew the Salter brand and was comfortable with our values and ethics. It took a while to decide the range, as we wanted to make sure that it most definitely wasn’t just a celebrity endorsement, rather that it was a range that reflected the methods and tools that Heston would use in his own kitchen.

Heston and Caroline

Heston and Caroline

To what extent has Heston and his team been involved with development?

From day one we have had access to Heston and his amazing team at the Fat Duck. The whole process has been remarkably easy as they are a truly passionate bunch, and Heston is a genuinely nice chap. He is both interesting and interested – he makes time for us, and I always look forward to our development meetings as we are always looking ahead to see what other products we could develop that would help people cook like Heston, at home.

What’s involved in developing one of these products and to what extent does Heston have sign-off?

Product development is a fascinating process as it involves a lot more thought and time than perhaps many people realise. If we know that we have a new category to think about, we will look at it from both consumer and catering viewpoints. We will get together to brainstorm new ideas and talk each one through – taking into account the brand values, and especially how true the product is to Heston’s processes. Once we have a firm idea of a product that we would like to bring into the range, I work with our in-house design team to come up with concepts, showing how the product could look and function. These are then taken to Heston and the team for reviewing and refining. Once we are all happy with the product concept we can get going on the manufacturing process. With any product that Heston is putting his name to, it is important that us that he is delighted with the product and that he has full sign off. Whilst people usually ask for his signature as an autograph, I ask for his signature in order to bring another great product to market!

There’s a new range coming in 2012, what can we expect to see in the future?

All I can say at the moment is watch this space… we are working on a 3 year product plan which will result in many more truly exciting products that will help people achieve great results in the kitchen.

Keep an eye on the HestonBySalter website for more info. Until then though, it’s competition time!

How to enter

There’s five ways to enter, and you can do all of them if you like:

  1. Leave a comment below answering the question what unusual ice cream flavour would you like to make?
  2. Follow me on Twitter, and leave a comment below to let me know.
  3. Link to this competition on Twitter using the Tweet button at the bottom, and leave a comment below to let me know.
  4. Like my Facebook page, and leave a comment below to let me know.
  5. +1 this post using the button below, and leave a comment below to let me know.

After the closing date, I’ll use a random number generator to pluck out the lucky winners. So more entries means more chances to win.

Rules

  • Competition closes 10pm 25th July. Comments posted after then won’t be counted.
  • I’ll pick the winners at random using some fancy random number generator.
  • Entrants must be 18 years or older.
  • If the winner hasn’t replied within two weeks, someone else will get it.
  • Only people from the UK please. Additionally, I’ll only post to a UK address.

Good luck!

chocolate and rosemary ice cream

Posted by Gary in chocolate, cocoa, cream, egg, ice cream, rosemary and tagged with

chocolate and rosemary ice cream

Heston Blumenthal has recently created a range of ice creams for Waitrose, including chocolate and rosemary ice cream. I got the chance to try this, along with popcorn ice cream at Waitrose’s Summer party held at the V&A. I was mesmerised by the taste, deeply rich and chocolatey, but with a smooth herbal note. It’s reminiscent of choc-mint ice cream as it provides a similar mentholesque flavour, but remains distinctly rosemary-y.

At the event I also realised a big dream of mine – to meet Heston. OK, we didn’t swap phone numbers or make plans to go see Pirates 4. But I did manage to tell him what an inspiration he is to me and how much I enjoy his work. He seemed genuinely appreciative, not merely saying thanks and walking off but keen to express his gratitude.

Gushing aside, I had to try and recreate that ice cream flavour that I’d sampled. I was looking to marry that rich smoothness with a warm herb flavour. After some experimenting I’m confident that I’ve nailed it. It’s chocolatey, creamy and really interesting. It would be a good one to wheel out when friends are over for dinner as all the prep is well beforehand and you only need a little to satisfy. It’s really nice with crushed pistachios. A quick tip – this needs a good twenty minutes defrosting to get smooth and easily scooped, so remove it from the freezer just as you serve the main meal.

Be warned: bring your whisking arm with you.

You can probably make this with an ice cream maker but I’ve never owned one so I can’t help you there. A lot of people go for the ‘ break it up with a fork several times during freezing’ but it’s never made any noticeable improvement to me, so I don’t bother.

Chocolate and rosemary ice cream (makes about 600 ml in volume):

40g cocoa powder

1 large sprig of rosemary

500 ml whole milk

125g dark chocolate (about 70% cocoa solids)

¼ teaspoon vanilla salt

6 egg yolks

100g caster sugar + 6 tablespoons caster sugar

100ml double cream

  1. Put the milk into a saucepan and pop over a medium heat. Roll up the rosemary but leave it intact (this friction breaks the surface of the herb and causes it to leak more oil). Whisk the cocoa into the milk as it heats, and keep whisking until the milk just reaches the boil. Take off the heat.
  2. Melt the chocolate. You can use a bain marie for this if you like but personally I find it less faff to use a microwave on low power. Zap it for 2 minutes at a time until smooth.
  3. Whisk the egg yolks and 100g sugar together until a pale ivory colour and thick. Add the hot milk to the yolks gradually, whisking all the time. Return the mixture back to the saucepan and put back on a gentle heat. Keep on whisking and add the melted chocolate, and whisk for a further 5 minutes until thickened. Again turn off the heat and leave to one side while you make a caramel.
  4. Melt the 6 tablespoons sugar with 2 tablespoons water over a medium heat. Swirl the saucepan round to combine but do not stir. Keep it going until it turns a lovely amber colour, then add the double cream and keep on swirling. When the caramel is smooth add to the chocolate milk, again with the whisking. Pour through a sieve into a freezable container and freeze at least overnight before serving.

heston blumenthal’s royal wedding trifle

Posted by Gary in almonds, amaretti, cream, meringue, saffron, strawberry, sugar and tagged with

heston blumenthal's royal wedding trifle

As soon as I saw this article detailing Heston Blumenthal’s trifle made in celebration of the upcoming Royal Wedding, I knew I had to give it a go.

Following the runaway success of Heston’s hidden orange pudding during Christmas 2010, Waitrose commissioned the Dinner proprietor to create a refreshing Summer dessert in celebration of the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. I can’t say I care a great deal about the wedding but I do appreciate the general buzz of excitement among people I speak to – rays of sunshine in these politically gloomy times are welcome. One thing definitely guaranteed to grab my attention however is a new Heston recipe.

Heston seems to have a bit of a thing for trifles, as In Search Of Heston has previously noted. His In Search of Perfection version is particularly mental, with typically absurd amount of stages involved. It did come in handy for one section however – the strawberry compote, which here serves as the “jelly” layer of a Seventies trifle. I incorporated fresh strawbs in with the compote, as I know Heston is fond of mixing the cooked and raw version of an ingredient together. In place of custard there’s a particularly intriguing saffron cream, topped with fragrant, crisp amaretti biscuits. The supermarket version is laced with Marc de Champagne brandy – well I checked my cupboard and I was fresh out (!) so I plumped for my old favourite dessert spirit, Marsala. Finally there’s a meringue topping, and a garnish of candied almonds and dried strawberries.

heston blumenthal's royal wedding trifle layers based on Waitrose recipeThere’s a few stages involved to be sure but none of them are particularly taxing and involve a bit of letting the ingredients sit about. I have no idea how close my version has come, as it isn’t in the shops yet at the time of writing, but I was very pleased with it. It’s creamy, fruity and the saffron sends in a festive, spiced note out of left-field, yet it’s somehow warming and comforting.

I’ll be fascinated to try the real thing when it’s around to see how I did but either way, I think it’s a lovely dessert with a lot going for it.

Heston Blumenthal’s Royal Wedding Trifle (serves 6 – 8):

For the strawberry compote:

1kg strawberries, hulled and diced

100g caster sugar

  1. Place the strawberries and sugar (reserving 4 for later) in a saucepan and gently heat, stirring occasionally. Cook down for about 15 minutes until you have a sticky puree.
  2. Pass the puree through a sieve to remove all the bits and crush well with the back of a spoon to get the most out of it.

For the saffron cream:

500ml double cream

About 20 threads of saffron

8 tablespoons caster sugar

  1. Pop the cream in a saucepan and add the saffron. Bring to a gentle simmer then turn off the heat and allow to cool. The saffron will infuse and colour the cream, turning custard-yellow.
  2. When the cream has cooled whisk, gradually adding the sugar. Keep going until you have a stiff cream.

For the amaretti:

150g crushed amaretti biscuits

4 tablespoons Marsala wine

  1. Mix the amaretti with the Marsala but don’t let it sit around too long – you still want them to have some crunch.

For the meringues:

5 egg whites

300g caster sugar

1 teaspoon cornflour

1 teaspoon white wine vinegar

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 150°C. Whisk the egg whites until soft peaks form, then gradually incorporate the sugar. Once all that’s in add the cornflour and vinegar. Keep whisking until the mixture is stiff.
  2. Pour into a piping bag and pipe 5cm blobs onto a lined baking tray, then bake for 1½ hours until firm but not browned. Turn off the oven and leave to cool in the oven for a further oven, then peel off and store in airtight containers until needed.

To garnish:

30g almonds

2 tablespoons caster sugar

2 large strawberries, finely sliced

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 100°C. Dust a baking tray with icing sugar and lay the strawberries out on the sugar. Pop in the oven for about half an hour, until the strawberries are slightly shrivelled and sticky. When cooled peel off the tray gently.
  2. Put a small pan over a high heat and add the almonds. Shake them around for a couple of minute until toasted all over.
  3. Add the sugar, a pinch of salt and a tiny splash of water. Keep tossing the mix around in the pan until the sugar starts to turn golden brown, then turn out onto a ceramic plate to cool.

To assemble:

  1. Place the strawberry compote in the bottom of a serving dish (a nice glass one would be traditional, try and use a prettier one than mine). Finely slice the last 2 strawberries, top with a small twist of black pepper and stir into the puree.
  2. Spoon the cream over the strawberries. Top this with the amaretti biscuits.
  3. Arrange the meringues on the top, and scatter over the almonds and dried strawberry slices. Serve with bunting.