Ginger Café Gourmand

Posted by Rosie

A popular dessert in France is a Café Gourmand, a cup of espresso (or tea/hot chocolate) served with a selection of mini desserts.  I love this way of eating dessert as you get to try more than one pudding without totally pigging out.  For the last few Christmases we have done a Christmas Café Gourmand and this year we continued the tradition but with a ginger theme.


So what did we have?

A cup of coffee/lemon and ginger tea or hot chocolate depending on taste!
A mini ginger cheesecake with rhubarb topping
Ginger cake
Ginger ice cream
Squirty cream with marrow and ginger jam.

Ginger Café Gourmand

It made a fitting end to a lovely Christmas meal, rich and creamy but small enough not to be sickly or too filling.

The cheesecake was a Waitrose recipe, the ginger cake was from my wonderful Farmhouse cookbook, the marrow and ginger jam recipe is here and the ice cream is my own invention.

Marrow and Ginger Jam

 

Ginger Ice Cream

Ingredients

• 400g tin condensed milk
• 500g pot crème fraîche
• 2 balls of stem ginger - chopped finely
• 2 tbsp syrup from the jar of stem ginger

Method

1. Mix all the ingredients together and stir thoroughly
2. Tip into an ice cream machine and set to whisk - if you don't have an ice cream maker the ice cream can be poured into a freezer container and frozen, then mixed thoroughly by hand when partly frozen.
3. Once the ice cream maker has finished the cycle pour the ice cream into a freezer container.  The stem ginger has a tendency to sink so a flatter container is the best to use.  Alternatively give the mixture a stir when half frozen to distribute the ginger.

Note - The syrup prevents this ice cream freezing solid like other home-made ice creams so it is not necessary to allow it to soften at room temperature before serving.

What did you have for your Christmas dessert?  Did you go for Christmas pudding or did you chose something different?