Recipe of the week: Wild bramble mousse
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“Pick your own blackberries in the late summer for this perfect light pudding – and freeze some to use later in the year as well,” recommends Mary Berry.
“You can purée the blackberries in a food processor after cooking, as this makes it easier to pass them through a sieve.”
Simple Comforts by Mary Berry is published by BBC Books, priced £26. Photography by Laura Edwards. Available now.
Ingredients:
(Serves 6)
600g blackberries
Juice of ½ lemon
175g caster sugar
5 leaves of gelatine
150ml pouring double cream
2 egg whites
To serve:
50g blackberries
Icing sugar, for dusting
100ml whipped cream
Method:
1. You will need a 1.1 litre (2 pint) glass dish or six small dishes.
2. Tip the blackberries, lemon
juice and 75g of the caster sugar into a saucepan. Stir, cover the pan and simmer for five to eight minutes until soft. Pass the blackberries through a sieve
back into the pan, then discard
the seeds. Reheat until piping
hot.
3. Put the gelatine leaves into a bowl of cold water and leave for five minutes. Squeeze the water from the gelatine leaves and add them to the hot blackberry juice. Stir until dissolved. Set the mixture aside until it is cold and has thickened slightly.
4. Whip the cream to soft peaks. In a separate, clean bowl, whisk the egg whites, adding the remaining 100g of caster sugar a teaspoon at a time. Keep whisking until all the sugar has been incorporated and the whites are stiff and look like a cloud (as for a meringue). Take care not to over whisk or it will be tricky to incorporate the egg whites into the blackberries.
5. Add two large tablespoons of the whipped cream to the blackberry and gelatine mixture and stir in gently. Carefully fold in the rest of the cream and the egg whites until the mixture is smooth and light, with no white bits visible. Pour into the dish or dishes and place in the fridge for about six hours, or ideally overnight, to chill and set.
6. Decorate with a few blackberries, dust with icing sugar and serve with some whipped cream.
