Home brewing antics can now be found at my other blog; http://gettinggrist.blogspot.com/

Thursday 23 June 2011

Gooseberry Fool


Apologies for two posts in the same day, but work has been busy the last couple of weeks and I haven't had chance to report on the gooseberry harvest.


We picked plenty and made several pots of jam, but saved a few to make Gooseberry and Elderflower fools, based on HFW's recipe.


The combination of sharp goosegogs and musky elderflowers combine rather well.


We set aside 500g of the fruit and put them in a stockpot, together with about ten Elderflower heads, freshly picked from nearby trees.

To this we added a chunk of lemon zest and splash of orange juice and gently stirred in 4 tablespoons of sugar until dissolved.

Then, we simmered for about 15mins until the fruit softened and began to break up.

We passed it all through a sieve into a bowl, while whipping up a tub of double cream to soft peaks in another.

We then combined the contents of the two bowls, before dishing into glasses and chilling for a couple of hours.


Quite a rich desert, best served outside in the early summer sunshine (if you can find any).  It's quite amazing how the flavour of the elderflower comes through after just 15 minutes in the pan.

The downside to the gooseberries was that we left over half the fruit on the bushes - but when we returned a week later, the lot had gone to the birds, so no goosegog crumble :(

I'll get some netting sorted out for next year.

4 comments:

  1. Delicious!!

    Birds love the fruit just as must as us which is a real nuisance, as they always seem to get their first!

    Martin

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  2. That sounds lovely!! :) Wish I'd managed to get hold of some elderflower before they all went over.

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  3. Sounds wonderful. I wish we had elder flowers here. I tried growing gooseberries and the plants grew well but never produced anything.

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  4. I haven't tried gooseberries since I was a child and hated them. Perhaps I should give them another try, my tastes have changed since I've got older.

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