Chocolate and what??

Chocolate avocado mousse. It is a thing, apparently. And not just a thing as in weird recipes you find on wacky websites - no, this was in a genuine published cookery book. Entitled, since you ask, River Cottage Light & Easy by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Although I'm sure you can find it on any number of wacky websites too.

So I had a couple of avocados that had been sitting in the fridge for ages, and I was convinced they were about to dissolve into slushy puddles if I didn't use them soon. Of course, one of them turned out to be rock hard. Another root in the fridge produced about 100ml of pureed tinned pears, left from an experiment in making pear and elderflower ice lollies. So, into the food processor went the one ripe avocado, 3 tbsp of cocoa powder, the pear mush and a couple of teaspoons of honey. One good whizz later, it had amalgamated into a pretty good mousse-like mixture that tasted much more like chocolate than avocado. Success!

Come dessert time, each of us got a little cupful. Each of us? Uh-huh. You can see where this is going, can't you? Want to see what a baby can do with two spoonfuls of chocolate mousse?

This.

And this.

How about this?

Man, this is good.

Don't forget about me!

Um... success?

Comments

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions. The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?" This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them. Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone. That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of. Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died. And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was. His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...

Baby Language

For some reason baby equipment is an area in which American English differs markedly from British English. As well as learning how to care for a baby, we had to learn a whole new vocabulary! Fortunately we are now fluently bilingual, and I have compiled a handy US-UK baby dictionary for you. Diaper n. Nappy Mom says if you can read this change my diaper. The first time you change one of these you will be all thumbs and stick the little adhesive tabs to yourself, the baby and probably the changing mat before you get them where they ought to go. A few years later you will be able to lasso a running toddler and change them before they even know what's happened (yes, I have seen it done). You will also get through more diapers than you ever thought possible, creating scary amounts of expense and waste. Hence we are now mostly using: Cloth diaper n. Reusable nappy Cool baby. No longer those terry squares, the main drawback is that there are now so many types it can be qu...

Speedy Steamed Pudding

One of the highlights of being in catered halls for a couple of years at university was the sponge puddings. Great big sheets of chocolate or vanilla sponge, carved into hefty blocks and doused with thick custard. The main courses were edible at best, but those puddings would fill you up for a week. Good solid puddings, whether baked, steamed or boiled, have been a mainstay of English cooking for centuries. Something about the cold, damp, dark winters inspired British cooks to endless variations on suet, jam, currants, custard and other comforting ingredients. Once I left the nurturing environs of my parents' house and university halls, pudding stopped being an everyday affair and became a more haphazard, if-I-feel-like-making-any event. And steamed puddings especially, with their two hours over simmering water, don't really lend themselves to spur of the moment dessert-making. However, technology has moved on since those first days of puddings. I'd been vaguely ...

Martha's Marvellous Munchies

Search This Blog