Chocolate Mousse
600ml thickened cream beaten to soft peaks1/2 cup full cream milk
1 tablespoon of gelatin
5 heaped tablespoons of cocoa (adjust to how chocolatey you like your mousse, I like it quite chocolatey)
sweetener of choice ( I used between 1/4 and 1/2 cup of dextrose)
Put milk into a saucepan and sprinkle gelatine over the surface of the milk. As the gelatine soaks up some liquid, whisk it into the milk. Put the saucepan on the stove and turn on heat to medium. Whisk in your sweetener and cocoa. This makes a thickish paste. Heat just long enough to dissolve the gelatine. Meanwhile, whip your cream.
When the gelatin mixture is ready, cool slightly and then add to the beaten cream, continuing to beat as you add the gelatin mixture.
When completely mixed, cover the bowl with cling wrap and place into the fridge to set.
Variations to try in the future are replacing the dextrose with my own stevia concoction which will turn this dessert into a true low carb high fat extravaganza, and to use raw cream to replace the commercial cream that I used this time. The raw cream may not whip to the soft peas which will undoubtedly affect the consistency, but I will have to try it to find out.
Speaking of raw cream, our latest shipment of raw milk turned up at the beginning of the week. It was 50% cream which amounted to 2 litres of pure cream to get through while my main milk drinker was away at school camp for the week. Necessity breeds creativity, so I looked up some recipes that utilise cream and of course found the mother of all cream recipes.... ice cream.
Now the other thing that we have an abundance of at the moment is lemons. Our lemon tree has gone berserk this year with lemons. Last year we got barely any as it was severely attacked by the dreaded citrus stink bug. After a concerted campaign of eradication that involved physically vacuuming them off the tree, the lemon tree has bounced back with avengence. This photo of the tree is taken after a concerted effort of eating, drinking, storing, preserving, giving away bags and bags of them and using them in every dish we can think of, there are still a huge number of lemons sitting on the tree.
We are getting to windy season and it seems whenever I use up some lemons in the kitchen a gust of wind will blow up and knock at least double the number of lemons I have just used to the ground. Needless to say that we accumulating lemons on our kitchen bench at a great rate of knots.
So where was I?
Yes an abundance of fresh raw cream and lemons. My Googling lead me to lemon ice cream. Concerned that the lemons would curdle the cream and having only really experienced lemon sorbet before, I must say that I was a little sceptical of lemon ice cream.
I should have worried not. The ice cream was delicious and tasted just like lemon cheese cake, mmmmm.
Lemon ice cream
3 cups of raw cream beaten until it thickens.rind and juice of 2 -3 lemons
3 whole eggs
sweetener of choice ( I used 1/4 to 1/2 cup of dextrose)
Beat cream, add rind and then eggs one by one, beating well after each addition. Beat in sweetener and juice. Put into ice cream churner and churn until ready. Enjoy
The flavours were delicious, but there was a grainy texture to the ice cream which I wondered if it was due to the egg white part of the egg going more icy than the rest of the mixture. Many ice creams call for just the yolk ( the fatty part) to be used. I hate wasted egg whites so decided to throw the whole lot in.
This is another recipe I would like to try and remake this time with my stevia concoction as the sweetener.
So continuing the theme of lemons, I have been busy creating a few more recipes. One thing leads to another in this business. As there is also an abundance of strawberries in the shops for quite cheap, I had a surplus of them to use. I made a strawberry mousse similar to the chocolate mousse recipe above, using raw honey as the sweetener this time.
Strawberry Mousse
1 punnet of cleaned and hulled strawberries, chopped.1 cup of raw cream
1 cup coconut cream
squeeze of lemon juice
1 tablespoon raw honey
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon of gelatin.
Sprinkle gelatin over the water, add honey and heat just enough to dissolve the gelatin.
Crush the strawberries with a stick blender and add the lemon juice. Add the creams and continue to blend. Add in the gelatin mixture in a thin drizzle. Beat enough to combine and then refrigerate until set.
This was delicious, but was possibly a bit too firm, next time I will either lessen the amount of gelatin or increase the strawberries and cream component.
This recipe left me with some leftover coconut cream. So I opened two cans of coconut milk and made coconut yoghurt using this basic soy yoghurt recipe.
Then I decided to make probiotic lemonade to use up a fair whack of my lemons. For the lemonade I needed whey. How to make whey? With yoghurt of course, and the only yoghurt I had was the coconut yoghurt. I'd never heard of coconut cream cheese before, but nothing ventured nothing gained.
I drained the yoghurt through a clean cloth and then tied the cloth with string and hung it up over night while the remainder of the whey drained off. Voila whey for my probiotic lemonade, not that I had ever heard of coconut whey either, but I wasn't going to let a small thing like that stop me.
So I have followed this recipe from Wellness Mama and have 4 litres of lemonade brewing on my bench at the moment. I have made her ginger beer before, so here's hoping that it all works out okay.
But that left me with coconut cream cheese. My original idea was to salt and herb it and use it as a savoury cheese. But coconut is quite sweet, so I soon decided after a few taste tests that a sweet cheese cake was the way to go. So I invented a coconut and lemon cheese cake a perfect way to use up some more lemons and that coconut cream cheese.
Coconut cream and Lemon cheese cake
(At a guess) 500g of coconut cream cheese1 can of coconut cream
juice and rind of three lemons
1 tablespoon of gelatin
Sweetener of choice ( I used 1/4 cup of dextrose)
Beat together the coconut cream cheese and cream. Add the rind and beat some more.
In a saucepan pour in half of the squeezed lemon juice and sprinkle over the gelatin. Allow the gelatin to soak up some juice and then whisk it into the juice. Add the dextrose and then heat the liquid until the gelatin dissolves. Remove from the heat and whisk in the remaining lemon juice. Add this lemon juice and gelatin mixture to the coconut cream mixture and beat well. Pour into a dish to set. You can add a biscuit crumb base if you wish, eat it as is or do what my teenage son did and add blobs of it to digestive biscuits and eat it that way.
So with some inventiveness, access to Google, a surplus of produce and a bit of time it is amazing what wonderful creations can be concocted in the humble kitchen.
