I remember this one from my childhood, my grandmother always made it in the sweltering height of summer. It's so light and so fresh, and so very different from every other cheesecake out there, but what a difference: for starters it's made with ricotta, not cream cheese. This is mixed with strawberries and the juice and zest of one lime to give it an amazingly interesting and fresh taste. The base is a light, delicate yet crunchy egg mixture with hazelnuts, and that combined with the cool cheese topping forms the most interesting flavours and textures in your mouth. If I could take a bite out of summer, this is the epitome of what it would taste like for me.
This recipe is also one of the main reasons I love baking: placing one, two, three or more different individual ingredients together to make something completely new and fabulous. It's like alchemy, almost magical. I absolutely love it.
The flower ladies around the corner from where I live also had some gorgeous peonies saved up for me - a big thank you to them! There's something so awfully elegant yet tragic about peonies, but in a very good way, wouldn't you agree?
I also had some leftover elderflower cordial from last week's [ Gooseberry Fools ] so I made some refreshing drinks with the rest of the limes I had and some freshly picked mint from the window box - perfect to serve to guests on a hot summer's day.
Gooseberry season must be one of the shortest in the fruit harvesting world - blink, and you'll miss it! I think it starts sometime in June, and before you know it, they're all gone. I'd never made gooseberry fools before, and thought I'd missed the opportunity, but was glad to find some punnets on Friday (I checked today, and they'd all gone!).
I've had a few attempts since Friday, so you can imagine how much fool I've got in the fridge, but it's given me a chance to personalise a recipe: I swapped double cream for whipping cream, added a kiwi in with the gooseberries for more colour, and threw in a few walnuts for a bit of bite.
I know a flower girl that works around the corner from where I live and she gave me a massive bunch of chamomile flowers that I absolutely adore, so I went a bit wild and used them everywhere.
Orange posset is one of those desserts that instantly takes me back to my childhood. My Grandmother would whip up these beauties in no time and we'd eat it warm, straight out of the pot. I'd been craving it recently and had been putting off making it for quite a while now, but we had guests over last night and I thought I'd indulge myself and experiment on them:
The original recipe is really only meant to be the posset on it's own served in glasses, but I felt it needed something more, and I happened to have some ginger biscuits lying around, so I thought I'd turn it into a verrine instead.
They should only really be eaten after they've cooled and set properly, that's when the textures come alive and add so much more to the experience: the light, zesty and fresh fluffiness of the cream is a perfect balance to the crumbly, spicy and hard texture of the base. Ramekin happiness!
I'm a food and lifestyle photographer based in London, England. You can view my portfolio here, follow me on Instagram or join me on Pinterest to see what's inspiring me at the moment. This blog is my little space for personal projects, mainly food photography based on my experiments in the kitchen with new and interesting recipes. Grab a cup of tea, make yourself at home and have a good look around - I hope you enjoy it.
Mowie (mowie@mowiekay.com)
