I adore craisins, that rubied portmanteau of Cranberry and Raisin, a gloriously pink dried sweetened cranberries that just seems so Christmasy to me. And whilst I love a hot Christmas pudding, given our 40C degree weather during Summer, an Ice Cream pudding is much more preferable. As soon as I saw a picture of Donna Hay’s ice cream puddings last year, I knew I had to make them. Except I had a year to wait to do this. Sure I could’ve cheated and made it for a Christmas in July celebration. My life went on, the recipe tucked inside the “sweets” folder, always near the top, lest I forget. And when December hit and the mercury reached in the high 20s, I knew it was time.

These remind me of those little Nougat Christmas puddings that come out around Christmas time (or around October it seems nowadays) at Darrell Lea. I used to get one every year but haven’t for the last 10 years or so, but the sight of the rounded plastic spoon and the holly and berries reminds me of a time before food blogging. B.B. if you will, when I could just enjoy a meal without photographing it, when I could go to a restaurant twice without a second thought and when I didn’t have to pause for photographs before tucking into a meal. And then I think about how wonderful life is now that I get to count eating as a hobby and hopefully a living and the amazing people I’ve met I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Merry Christmas everyone! Thankyou for reading – your lovely support, comments and readership make writing this blog a true pleasure I hope that your Christmases are filled with fun and good food!

Lots of love,

NQN
xxx

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When I first arrived in Japan, many years ago, no matter where I traveled (and I traveled alot for my job), everywhere I would see Japanese teens, usually schoolgirls, in their own unique uniform, crunching on little sticks of Pocky. It was a national epidemic and every day after school I’d see dozens of girls nibbling on these little sticks. I immediately had to try these and they were instantly addictive.

Mini M&Ms Pocky

Having made a batch earlier with about 100 of these sticks leftover (yes it seriously makes a lot), I sought another use for these sticks. I knew I was going over to M’s house and with 2 hungry growing boys, I decided that they would be Pocky recipients!

100s and 1000s Pocky

I wondered what would go well with these biscuity sticks that would appeal to kids…candy of course! And ice cream. A kid’s meal trifecta if ever I heard one. I bought some mini M&Ms, mini marshmallows, some colourful hundreds and thousands and crushed up some Jaffas.

Crushed Jaffa Pocky

Mini Marshmallow Pocky

For this lot of Pocky sticks (I coated 50 of them in this batch), I needed a 375g bag of white chocolate chips. The sticks themselves were from the recipe that I wrote about earlier and I melted the chocolate in two lots. While the chocolate was drying I sprinkled the toppings (the most fun part). You don’t need a lot of the candy toppings, a small 50g bag of any of them would be more than plenty to sprinkle on a dozen of these sticks.

A task for the “too energetic” child-crushing the Jaffas

Once the Pocky sticks are made, you could even get a little child labour involved by way of an assembly line with one child dipping (the organised leader) and the others doing whatever task suits their personality. The child with the excess energy could have lots of fun crushing up the Jaffas (and they do need quite a bit of crushing).

The wild free spirit child could sprinkle the 100s and 1000s haphazardly…

Whilst the precise and ordered child could place the Mini M&Ms just so…

Whilst the colour co-ordinated child could do the Mini Marshmallows in an alternating colour order. After all what better way to show children that hard work is rewarded?

I don’t know if sometimes I should be committed to an institution or not. I admit that there’s a part of me that looks at something difficult and rubs my hands with glee thinking “Hmm I’d like to try that”. And that’s the part of me that probably should be institutionalised. I’m studying for my Ps and my husband keeps telling me that it’s not that hard, that millions of people already have theirs and that that should prove that it is indeed something easily within reach to an able bodied person. However a perverse part of me knows that if only 5 people in the world had a Driver’s License, then I’d be more interested in joining that club than one where millions of people belong. It’s utter foolishness for the most part as if I try, I probably wouldn’t get in but it’s the want in me that desires it.

This item was the best looking of the very gorgeously photographed 3 Star Chef book by Gordon Ramsay in the section he calls “The Dark Arts” (so Harry Potter, love it). So naturally I wanted to try and make it. I knew that I would have to make some adjustments (I used strawberries rather than rapsberries, I made honey ice cream instead of milk and one mousse type was canceled based on the amount of time it took to do another part, but more on that later). So was I able to recreate a 3 Michelin star restaurant dessert? Not exactly really and not without some adjustments to his recipes. I have to say that there were some crucial details missing for those who have never made the tuiles before and some things were just so not possible that I abandoned the recipe and made my own version (the directions for Italian Meringue for the mousse).

I had some issues with parts of this recipe so I’ve included the easier version which I know worked. I wouldn’t want my readers to go through the trauma of a failed recipe. And this dessert was actually served at Royal Hospital Road as seen on the Stomach Expansion blog. So without further ado, please take my hand and I welcome you to the saga that was the Strawberry and Mint Mille Feuille with Honey Ice Cream!

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