Mowielicious

Chocolate Clafoutis With Summer Berries And Some News

 

I've been slightly overwhelmed with work recently, but couldn't go another week without posting at least some photos on this blog. I'm happy to announce that I've been working on my second book - this time it's all about macarons - and I've also been busy shooting and putting together the Christmas issue of my magazine. In between all that I've been shooting for clients and a few magazines, so it's all left me a little short of time. I hope you'll bear with me through all this, and in the meantime, here are a few images I took recently of a chocolate clafoutis, friands and some summer berries.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Playing With Watermelons: Granita, Soup And A Salad

 

I’ve always been one to play with my food.

Even when I was younger, and much to my parents disapproval, I would always be building things with it, cutting it with scissors instead of using a knife, and mixing things that weren’t ‘supposed’ to go together.

Not much has changed.

 

 

 

It’s the height of watermelon season and I just can’t get enough of the stuff. It’s one of those fruits that’s quintessentially summer, along with summer berries, iced drinks and fresh cold salads.

I might have mentioned before that I don’t have an ice cream maker, and that’s made me seek out other ways to make and enjoy ice creams over the years. Although not technically an ‘ice cream’, granita is such a simple and fun way to enjoy an iced treat as it’s so easy to make, and is perfect if you have plenty of fruit, plus, it looks great served up in glasses. I’ve kept this recipe very simple as I didn’t want to interfere with the pure watermelon flavour, so the only other ingredient is sugar, as watermelon loses sweetness once frozen.

 

 

Another quick and easy dessert to make is this watermelon soup. I’ve used exactly the same recipe as for the granita, so it’s great if you have an abundance of fruit - you can make one big batch, and just split the juice between the frozen granita and the refrigerated soup.

Isn’t it funny how the taste and textures of certain foods change according to how they’re cut? For this dessert soup, I used a melon baller to make some watermelon balls which I added to the soup. For me, watermelon soup always tastes better when served with watermelon balls.

 

 

For the last recipe, I made a simple fruit salad using only 3 ingredients that work really well together: watermelon, starfruit, and dill. This was actually a recipe I tried to include in the fruit salad series in my magazine, but unfortunately I ran out of time, so couldn’t include it in there, but I did have a lot of fun making it for this blog post.

I couldn’t resist playing with the shapes of these fruits, and using a star-shaped cookie cutter to cut stars out of the watermelon to complement the shapes of the starfruit. You can also fix the watermelon stars onto the side of your granita glasses just before serving.

Enjoy!

 

 

Baking With Apricots, A Quick Survey And Instagram

 

 

Wow. Just wow.

What an amazing two weeks it’s been. The first issue of my magazine has been so well received and I’m very grateful to everyone for all the great feedback so far, and to all those that commented, re-blogged, re-tweeted and posted a link of the magazine to their facebook pages - it really means so much to me and I’m truly touched. I know many of you have requested print copies of the magazine, but these can be quite expensive, so I'm currently looking into more affordable options. Watch this space for more.

To all those that did read the magazine, I’d really appreciate if you could take this quick anonymous survey - there are only 7 questions, you can answer as few or as many as you like and it shouldn’t take more than 1 minute in total. Of course the more detail you can give the better, as your answers will help me improve and shape the next issue. Thank you so much!

Also, a quick reminder that all the giveaways end this Friday, the 15th of July, so you still have a chance to enter by leaving a comment on my last blog post.

 

I’ve been eating and baking with apricots non-stop for the past few weeks, I can’t seem to get enough of them, especially as they’re one of those summer fruits that disappear from the markets far too quickly.

One of the desserts I’ve made here is almost like an apricot fool, and it’s so simple to make, it doesn’t even require a recipe: just pour some custard into a glass, sprinkle with chopped apricots, add a tablespoon of whipped vanilla cream, sprinkle with more apricots and drizzle with honey. Quick. Fresh. Simple.

The other recipe is also very easy, and I’ve used ready rolled puff pastry for it, because let’s face it, who wants to spend hours making puff pastry from scratch in the middle of summer, when we can all be enjoying the great outdoors? These apricot puffs are so quick and easy to make, and the combination of apricots with marzipan and pistachios is to die for.

 

I also recently discovered Instagram (I know, I'm so slow with these things) and I thought I’d share some of the photos I’ve taken here with you (see below). If you’re on Instagram too, find me there (username: mowiekay) - I’d love to see your photos!