Receta Dessert| Berries & Buttermilk Pudding … SRC with the delightful Lisa!
“For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
PAB is back! I got hacked, yet am somewhat back! Must be something in the air. First my computer got fried, yet again, obviously without warning. There I was typing a guest post for a sweet friend, and zilch… all gone! Got onto the laptop for food therapy and to my SRC assigned secret haunt, the wonderful Parsley, Sage, Desserts…and Line Drives. Bookmarked Berries & Buttermilk Pudding instead!Quickly jotted everything down, lest the recently replaced motherboard that died again last night might give me trouble again, then went to check what Lisa’s latest post was… read she suffered the same fate! She wrote ” First I just want to say that this post was almost set to go Wednesday, and then my computer crashed. It was fixed briefly, but then it crashed again. Thankfully I didn’t lose anything, but went through two days of no computer hell! You know how it is. Can’t live without them, really can’t live without them.“I had it worse. Got the computer fixed to lose my blog in the next few hours. Bluehost finally told me 24 hours later that the site had been hacked!! Numb with shock, I reached out to Mr PABs nephew who helped me stay calm, kept me guided and reassured. Googling for answers, I did read that the first step is to stay calm.That was easy thanks to past experiences. At work, we lived through the traumatic Gulf war with our aircraft and crew stuck in the Middle East, I’ve done years of ‘handling’ bomb scares at the airport, flight evacuations, sniffer dogs, cargo offloading etc that have taught me to stay calm at the worst of times, breathe deep!
The Secret Recipe Club, the brainchild of Amanda of Amanda’s Cookin’. The idea behind the club – Each month you are “assigned” a participating food blogger to make a recipe from.
Time for dessert! The minute I saw my assigned ‘secret blog’ for the month I did a little whoop of joy! Yes! It was Lisa’s blog, one that is full of beautiful pictures, droolworthy food and laugh-your-head-off tales! I spent half the day reading her ‘addictive‘ stories …I peeled myself off her tales and hit the recipe index. I wanted to make just about everything! Hamburger Buns, Char Siu, Ciabatta, Best Ever Brownies, Orange Pistachio Olive Oil Cupcakes and eventually settled for my first choice, Berries & Buttermilk Pudding!I had strawberries and buttermilk; the whole milk was replaced with low fat cream. No mixed berries, but a promising jar of blueberry preserves {Sylt Blabar} that I had got from Sydney last year would add to the flavours. Mine might not look as exciting and vibrant as Lisas, but hopefully would deliver the punch.Fruit is always inspiring, desserts in glasses even more. These are fun to make even though I thought they might be set puddings like a panna cotta as I read the gelatin in the ingredients. They are pretty much wobbly custard-like puddings, and the gelatin possibly acts as a thickener/mild setting agent of sorts.Make it for Valentines Day, or just for any day. Use fruit of the season … we are flooded with strawberries these days!
Recipe: Berries and Buttermilk Puddings
Summary: Light pleasing buttermilk puddings served with a perky fruit sauce.
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Total Time: 30 minutes {plus chilling & setting time}
Serves 6
Ingredients:
- For buttermilk puddings:
- 1.5 tsp unflavored gelatin {I would increase this to 2 tsp next time}
- 1/4 cup cold milk
- 1 1/4 cup low fat cream
- 1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise,scraped
- 9 tbsp sugar
- 1 1/4 cup well-shaken buttermilk
- 2tbsp berry preserve
- For sauce:
- 1/4 cup dry red wine
- 1/4 cup water
- 3 tablespoon sugar
- 1 (3-inch) strip lemon zest
- 1 (3-inch) strip orange zest
- 1 bay leaf
- 2 1/2 cup quartered strawberries
Method:
Buttermilk Pudding:
Sprinkle gelatin over 1/4 cup cold milk in a small bowl and let soften 1 minute.
Scrape seeds from vanilla bean into a small heavy saucepan and add pod. Add cream and sugar and bring just to a boil over medium heat, stirring until sugar has dissolved. Remove from heat. Add gelatin mixture to hot milk mixture, stirring until dissolved.
Quick- chill in an ice bath, stirring occasionally, until cold but not thickened, about 5-7 minutes.
Stir in buttermilk, then strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a large glass measure, discarding solids. Pour into glasses / bowls and chill until set, at least 8 hours.
Strawberry Sauce
Bring wine, water, sugar, zests, and bay leaf to a boil in a small heavy saucepan over medium heat, stirring until sugar has dissolved, then boil until reduced to about 1/3 cup, about 10 minutes.
Add strawberries and simmer 5 minutes. Discard zests and bay leaf, then purée strawberry mixture in a blender until smooth {use caution when blending hot liquids}. Force through clean fine-mesh sieve and discard solids.
Chill sauce, stirring occasionally, until cold, about 1 hour.
To serve:
Spoon sauce over puddings and top with remaining berries.
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