hazelnuts Archives

strawberry crunch trifle

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

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.

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.

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.

Once the strawberry mix in the fridge is cold, layer on the cream mix, top with the nuts and sliced strawberry.

popping candy chocolate cake

That old wizard Heston Blumenthal has done it again. I’d seen a recipe on his Times column for a chocolate cake that contained popping candy in the base (also known as “star dust”, “space dust”, “pop rocks” etc depending on your generation). It sounded like too much fun not to do and the perfect opportunity cropped up this weekend so I grabbed the chance to make it. The recipe is here so I won’t regurgitate, I’ll give them the satisfaction of the hits. But I recreated it exactly as described.

Getting hold of the popping candy is pretty easy; there are dozens of eBay sellers who have it and generally sell it in packs of 24 for £2 – £3. It arrived at work and anybody who came into my office immediately had some pressed into their sweaty palms. Generally it was met with squeals of “I haven’t had this since I was TEN!” and people alternately opening and shutting their mouth to hear the crackle echo off their skulls. It was already fun, and I could see it was going to work well.

The cake itself is reasonably labour intensive as it requires three stages (base, mousse, icing) and various amounts of bain maries. It worked a treat though; I said nothing as I handed out plated portions and waited for the giggles and gasps which were worth every melting point. Great fun. In all seriousness what I’d also take from it is using pure roast hazelnuts as a base for a cake – very tasty. Heston as ever is right on the nose when he recommends adding salt – the tang sparks off the creamy chocolate very nicely.