Hello food-lovers! This post is a dedicated to my very good friend and neigbour, Maria, who recently said that if she didn’t know me, she would hate me because of my blog. Luckily she’s the type of friend who can get away with saying things like that. She does actually like my blog, but as some of you know I sometimes feature my kids and our garden and the (limited) produce we get from it. This can all seem so picture-perfect and “oh we’re so happy and wholesome” and “I’m that, yes that, mother who does all that cool stuff with my kids”. Maria knows though that our “garden” is about the size of a postage stamp, that my kids can drive me up the walls and, as often as they are included in the kitchen, I’m equally often relieved when they just leave me to it! So there you have it – the camera can actually lie, things are not always what they seem ;)
This leads me to this particular recipe. I dug it out recently as we, for the first time ever, got a crop of blackcurrants from our “garden”. We have had two blackcurrant bushes growing here for about 7 years now and every year, despite our intentions to put netting over them, the berries all get eaten by the birds before we do so. Not this year though, we actually stopped procrastinating and bought the said netting. So when we ended up with a nice hefty portion of berries, I remembered I had this recipe tucked away. I got it from my Mum, but I think it’s originally from Leith’s. I can really recommend it – it’s easy to make and really yummy! (I made mine for Maria ;)
450g blackcurrants (works well with frozen berries too)
170g sugar
4 tablespoons Crème de Cassis
1 teaspoon chopped mint (that came from my garden too – sorry, Maria)
325g mascarpone
440ml Greek yoghurt
icing sugar to taste
340g Amaretti biscuits (Danish readers, you can also use ‘makroner’)
30g flaked almonds, toasted
Wash the berries and remove any stalks. Put them in a saucepan with the sugar. Heat slowly until the sugar has dissolved. Then simmer until the fruit is soft. Remove from the heat, add the Crème de Cassis and the mint. Leave to cool completely.
Mix the mascarpone and Greek yoghurt together until smooth. Sweeten to taste with the icing sugar.
Break the Amaretti biscuits into pieces.
Layer the blackcurrant mixture and Amaretti biscuits in a large glass bowl or in individual glasses. Top with the mascarpone and yoghurt mixture. (You’ll see I included layers of the cream in my trifle pictured above, but that was only because I had extra cream that day.) Sprinkle the toasted almonds over the top.
