The great 3-ingredient dessert - Lemon Posset!

Lemon Posset is one of my favourite desserts. Right up there with Lime Posset. I like it for two reasons beyond the obvious one, and the obvious one is, of course, because it tastes lip-smackingly delicious. Next is that it is absolutely dead simple to make: this is a classic three-ingredient, do-in-advance dessert.

But I also like it because it is English and the English tend to get grief about their cuisine. The French in particular - regarding themselves as Kings of the Dessert - rather pooh-pooh sweet English offerings, a tad mean since the English can claim everything from a raft of steamed puddings to the Crème Brûlée, which conceivably originated as the humbler-sounding Cambridge Burnt Cream. But even Britain's legendary Spotted Dick pales for me in comparison to the mighty Posset. Take that Monsieur Frenchie!

It is actually a dessert so simple that I wouldn't have though of sharing a recipe except my son asked me to show him how to make it. So we did. And now I pass it on to you. If you haven't ever made a posset, prepare to meet your new best friend for dessert! And the hardest thing in the recipe is boiling the cream. But that process - boiling the cream with sugar - breaks it down so that when you then add lemon juice and chill, it naturally sets to a wonderfully smooth sweet tangy dessert not too far in texture from pannacotta or crème brûlée.

WARNINGS: before we start, a couple of things. If you for any reason have a problem with cream or sugar, best to move on right now. That's two of the three ingredients. And one other warning - if you want to see a pic of the finished dessert, sorry, you won't find it here. Of all the things to forget... 

One more thing - the pics show a half-size of the recipe, three servings, because I happened to only have a small bottle of cream... 

Here's the regular 6-serving recipe:

Ingredients

• 600ml cream
• 160g caster sugar
• 10 Tbs freshly squeezed lemon juice

 Method 

• Heat cream and sugar together in a large saucepan, stirring to dissolve the sugar. 

 

• Boil for 3 minutes 
• Remove from heat, stir in lemon juice
  

• Leave to cool for 5 minutes then pour into 6 glasses (or tea cups, or any vessels of your choosing). It's about 150ml each serving. I'm a sucker for cheap thrills so lean towards the martini glass.
  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Cover with gladwrap, allow to cool, then chill in fridge to set for 3 hours

And that's it. This is where the pic of the final product should go. But I forgot and we ate it. Bugger. Instead I took a pic after we finished...

 

We regularly have this just on it's own which is all it needs but I've also served it with macerated blueberries, madeleines, and other things. Imagination and good taste are your only limits - give it a crack!

 

ONE IMPORTANT FINAL NOTE: As I mentioned, the hardest thing here is actually boiling the cream. If you haven't previously had the pleasure of boiling milk or cream you will discover that when it starts to boil the cream will rise up the saucepan and immediately boil over. It's quite quick and dramatic (and messy). So you need to be pretty active for the three minutes of boiling. 

 

But it's not a problem. Firstly, use a much bigger pot than usual, like cooking pasta. Then, each time the cream starts rising to overflow, lift it off the heat and stir (I use a long wooden spoon) until it subsides again. You'll need to do this several times. It's only three minutes but keep an eye on it - things can get real messy real fast.

 

***************************************

 

And please - if you enjoy the stuff here follow the A Debt To Pleasure Facebook page - I can't keep posting to every community group and relying on their generosity to spread the word so I'll eventually switch to just having updates there.

                                                            All the best,