Raspberry, rhubarb and vanilla

(Sounds like a good name for a blog).
With family visiting, inspiration hit to make a nice dessert (it doesn't take much).

Vanilla icecream (made in my new icecream maker - yay), vanilla panna cotta, fresh raspberries in fresh raspberry sauce, raspberry jelly, poached rhubarb, toffee with freeze dried raspberry, and rhubarb jelly (made from the rhubarb poaching stock - just sugar, water and a dash of grenadine, but it was too good not to use!).

Plated up in the "spoon of this spoon of that" method that seems to be the thing of the moment.
Crunchy toffee, creamy panna cotta, cold smooth icecream, fresh raspberries, slightly tart rhubarb, the interesting texture of jelly, in fact quite the plate of contrasting textures and complementary flavours (well I think so...).

Caramelised white chocolate

I've been hearing about caramelised chocolate for a while so of course I wanted to see what the fuss was about. And I've always been a big fan of caramel...

Kiwi fruit sorbet!

Autumn and winter is the season for kiwifruit! A funny old fruit with its furry brown skin, that I hadn't entirely embraced for its taste or variety of uses. But a kind friend had given away some of her harvest when we visited and well, it was an offer too good to refuse.

It was my sister, though, who discovered THE BEST way to use kiwi fruit. She served me a dessert that was sublime.

Kiwi fruit sorbet. 

Make a sugar syrup with 150g of sugar and 150ml boiling water. When cold, blend this with 450g kiwi fruit pulp, juice of 2 lemons zest of 1 lemon.
Strain to remove most of the seeds, chill and then either freeze, and re-blend, or churn in an icecream maker.

To serve, a scoop or two on a plate with a contrast of vanilla ice-cream and a few slices of fresh kiwi fruit and some fresh blueberries.

It is AMAZING!!! I'm inspired to try a dessert on this theme, with maybe a layer of lemon ice-cream, kiwi fruit jelly, making a kiwi fruit gel would be interesting for a sauce too. Throw in a layer of sponge or a crunchy meringue layer...so many options. I now embrace the kiwi fruit possibilities!

Dessert time!

Oh my gosh time has been flying by and I seem to have been consumed with eggs and bacon! But not your regular eggs made out of eggs and toast made out of bread kind...no...
I've been testing out a recipe from Darren Purchese's book, "Sweet Studio" (note: must visit the store next time I'm in Melbourne).

Berry goodness

My sister, Cec and I were making dessert for my niece, Anna's birthday, which comprised:

A cookbook from 1871

This post isn't giving ideas...it's just something interesting!
Mrs Beeton was a famous English cookery writer from the Victorian era (mid to late 1800's).
I found this book, All About Cookery, when poking about in a little shop in Cygnet and I couldn't pass it up.

Photo by Sarah Ryan

It's like a dictionary of recipes, arranged in alphabetic order. Given it was from 1871, I was surprised at the range of quite fancy French recipes such as souffle or beef ragout.