#97 Crème fraîche Panna Cotta, strawbs and Oat-y crunch.
... aka posh strawberries and cream.
I’m an actual joke.
I’ve been an anxious mess all week (nothing new about that, but there’s been a switch-up to the reason) because next weekend Mum and I are off on our annual trip to the British Grand Prix and whilst it’s something I look forward to with giddy excitement 9 months prior, my mindset as the weekend approaches is very much NOT excitement. Instead there’s been a mountain of anxiety; I’ve had nervous butterflies every day this week, because my routine is going to be upset - no baking for a minimum of 3 days is simply not acceptable, I’m overwhelmed by everything that needs doing (including a hair wash and leg hair prune-age - mega, I know) and my mind is feverishly imagining all the bad things that might happen whilst I’m away = obv more reason to be nervous.
FYI, If you ever need someone to really bring the mood down before a fun event, give me a call!!!
The reality is that I’ll (probably) thoroughly enjoy myself when I’m there, the atmosphere on race day is unrivalled and there’s something incredibly grounding about sleeping outside on a hilly golf course… but that doesn’t make the ‘now’ feel any less anxty (also the toilet smell is GRIM).
Amidst the pre-trip frenzy, I’ve spent a fair amount of time soothing my nerves (aka procrastinating) by mindlessly scrolling on social media*, researching new recipe ideas and excitedly testing new bakes… the plus side to this is that you get to hear my findings, the down side is that I still have ALL the things to do, my kitchen now needs cleaning on top of everything else, and I have many fewer hours left to do ‘ALL the things’. Not ideal.
*it just went from 10:57am to 11.21am in SECONDS, I tell you, life has sped up - really!
Catching my eye this week:
Wait… first you need to hear about the christening cake. Guys I was METICULOUS, I weighed everything out and photo-d the scales to reassure myself that all the correct ingredients had made it into the batter, I didn’t do any of that risky business like allowing the cake batter to hang perilously off the beater as I scraped the bowl around, I weighed my cake batter into the tins, got those bad boy cakes in the oven and…. ‘Why is that one browning super-fast and the one at the bottom looks like it might overflow? SHIIIIT’. You can imagine the tears. Now I can’t confirm exactly what I had done but my guess is that I didn’t zero the scales at some point while portioning my batter, so I ended up with too much cake in one tin and not enough in the other - I suppose one positive is that cake 3 was serendipitously a Goldilocks amount. What did I do? Well… instinctively I pulled the cake that browned quicker out earlier than the other two and after much fretting, I rationalised that they were all ok, I could just trim the bigger one to match the others and all would be fine, but I was distraught - I’m a perfectionist and I wanted it to be SO perfect. Anyway, this was the resulting cake and thankfully it went down well… although there’s always a possibility that people were just been being polite…
As for the Christening itself, oh my goodness what a wonderful day it was, I felt SO unbelievably lucky to be part of the family occasion (there was so much love in one room), and I’m overwhelmingly honoured to now be Elsie’s godmother!
Excuse the dodgy ancient chopping board I chose to 'display' it on here Watery beef tomatoes - those ones that are probably the reason you hated tomatoes as a kid? Yeah, I’m into them - why? Purely nostalgia, I used to spend a lot of time with my Grandpa during the summer holidays as a kid, for lunch he would usually have a sandwich comprised of some sort of bakery roll halved, heavily smeared with salted butter and filled with something meaty - never chicken, chicken was bland according to him - if it was ham or beef he’d also have mustard or piccalilli, then on the side - a quite insipid sliced beef tomato sprinkled with shaky low salt from his brown salt mill. Beef tomatoes may not be the sexiest, sweetest tommy out there, but for me they’re a whole lot more - they’re happy memories, comfort and love!
Elly pear - Elly is a columnist for Waitrose Weekend newspaper (which I love by the way - I pick a copy up every week at the end of my ‘Thursday big shop’ and thoroughly enjoy reading it). I’ve loved some of Elly’s recipes that have appeared in the newspaper but only just stumbled across her Instagram account this week… and I’m obsessed. She has some ace little tips and tricks for minimising waste and making meals from leftovers, honestly go check out her page, I had a thoroughly lovely time watching some of her videos - actually most of them, this was during my peak procrastination phase!
On the topic of Waitrose, the Chester branch outdid themselves this week with their tasters - I made notes of my two favourites for you
CHEESE: Shepherds Purse, Bluemin White - described as a ‘melt in the mouth, mould-ripened cheese, handcrafted from Yorkshire cows - I went back 3 times for a sample - don’t judge!
Moth drinks - Mojito. I love Moth drinks - can’t decide which is my favourite but I had a tot of the Mojito as a little energy boost mid shopping trip and felt suitably zen for the remainder of the supermarket experience. WIN.
Ruby’s new book - ‘One Bake, Two Ways’ - I’m so thrilled to finally get my hands on a copy - her recipes are filthy good, like indulgence to the max - I can’t wait to get baking from this one!
Dogs are (loveable) idiots - you provide them with all the cooling aids to help them cope in the heat and what do they do? Sunbathe. I swear they’re like ‘Gawd it’s warm today, I know what I’ll do, I’ll lie in it with my thick fur coat on and then pant a lot to make my humans feel guilty and worried’.
A celebration of Strawberries and cream with my new fave dessert and this week’s feature recipe below . We have a LUSH Crème Fraîche panna cotta, served with macerated strawbs & fresh mint PLUS a melt-in-the-mount oat-y crunch biscuit! I’m totally obsessed with everything about this dessert; strawberries are in their PRIME right now, the oat-y biscuits are just heaven, and the texture of the panna cotta is like clotted cream - I deconstructed the pudding on the third go and served it with a medley of fresh berries - also SO good!
DROOL-FEST OK friends, I need some book recommendations FAST, I’ve asked this before and loved some of your suggestions, so I need your help again! I have limited signal at the GP and will need a good book for the evenings. I’d love something that’s foodie but not a recipe book - I think that’s a bit niche though, isn’t it? Otherwise, I have a preference for non-fiction but don’t mind fiction if it’s not fantasy fiction (like wizards or dragons), oh and nothing too scary - I’m not picky really!!!! Anyway, hit me up with your recs.
I think that’s about it in terms of my week… a little heads-up - next week I’m going to send out a very brief mid-week newsletter (check your inboxes on Wednesday/Thursday instead of Sunday people - it’s those bloob muffins and you don’t wanna miss them). There won’t be the usual chat from me (phew! I hear you all say!), but rest assured, I’ll give you a full debrief when I’m back!
In the meantime, hope you all have a good couple of weeks,
Sending massive hugs and love as always,
Steph X X X
Crème Fraîche Panna cotta with macerated strawberries and an oat-y crunch.
This is my PERFECT summer dessert, it’s fresh, and light, but also feels a bit indulgent and soothing, it showcases the best of British summer berries and is SO on brand as we bounce into Wimbledon week. Also - it’s pretty simple to prepare which makes it such a winner for a summer dinner party pud. I’ve made this 3 times in the last week, and I’m still not bored of it.
As ever, I have some notes before we get cracking with the recipe, so here goes:
My suggested serving size is broad - I always find serving sizes really difficult to gauge, we all have different appetites, right? Anyway, it’s really up to you how much panna cotta you want per portion, I usually go for 8 small portions from this amount* but you could choose anything from 4-8 portions to suit your preference! For the small portions I like to use these dariole moulds from Lakeland, for larger portions, I suggest you go for little pudding moulds like these or just freestyle with ramekins or whatever you can lay your hands on. It’s also not essential to turn the panna cotta out of their moulds, but there is a bit more theatre to a wobbly panna cotta on a plate, isn’t there?
The texture of this panna cotta is unbelievable velvety, smooth and quite soft so there is absolutely no risk of rubberiness - a massive win as far as I’m concerned!
*I’ve halved this recipe before to make 4 small panna cotta and it works just fine so you can do that too!
In terms of the strawberries - they’re so good at the moment that I don’t suggest tampering with them much at all, just sprinkle with some sugar and a squeeze of lemon and leave them to macerate for extra flavour!
The little oat biscuits are optional - they’re not optional in that they’re very good but you could just as well serve this dessert with a handful of crunchy granola or crushed amaretti/biscotti… or just neat, if you don’t want to work your jaw much with crunching.
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