Well I hope your Honey doesn’t . I whisked these up for a little teatime snack. They go great with a hot cup of a tea or a cold glass of milk. With the cold weather at the moment I have the tendency of snuggling under my duvet with a big cup of tea, something to nibble and a good book or dvd. For me it’s preferably an old classic with Cary Grant…sigh. They just don’t make men like that anymore.

Honey Bites

175g butter
60g brown sugar
60g runny honey
2 eggs
100g ground almonds
80g wholemeal flower
20g plain flour
3 tbsp of milk
2 tsp baking powder
1 handful of chopped almonds for garnish

Makes 24 bites (mini cupcakes) – alternatively you can bake in one large tray and a cut into small squares. Allow for extra baking time though.

Preheat the oven to 180°c.
Beat butter and sugar together. Add eggs, honey and milk while beating the mixture. If the mixture curdles, don’t worry. It will come together once you add the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl sift the flours, baking powder and almonds together. Add the dry ingredients to the batter. Spoon into mini moulds and sprinkle with chopped almonds (if you have an extra sweet tooth you could drizzle some honey on top too). Bake for 15-20mins or until bites bounce back when you touch them.

When I saw the recipe/photos for the sweet sushi in two books in the same week I thought they definetly must be worth making. We so happened to be launching the book “Humeur Gourmande” at La Cocotte two weeks ago which has this recipe. For the launch we served a La Cocotte adaptation of the recipe, made with dulce de leche. They went down a treat. I’m not much of a fan of dulce de leche since I bake all the biscuits at La Cocotte with it.

The other recipe appears in Sushi box which is very well illustrated by Hisayuki Takeuchi (founder of the nouvelle japanese cuisine in Paris) with photos showing every step. His recipe for sweet sushi is slightly more “haute cuisine/japanese” with the use of nori (dried seaweed) paper and plain sushi rice.

I’ve gone with the Humeur Gourmande recipe but used the traditional hand method of making the forms. I was also lazy and made the rice pudding with my rice cooker (I love my rice cooker, it’s so useful!). Once you have the rice pudding base which you could flavour with vanilla, almond essence, orange flower water, cinammon, cocoa powder…You can combine the rice base with any kind of fruit you fancy. Although mangoes, tinned peaches, apricots and pears look more “raw fish” like.

Sweet sushi

inspired by Bruno Viala from Humeur Gourmande – serves 6

250g sushi rice or short grain rice (risotto rice will work too)
500ml milk
100ml double cream
50g sugar
3 tsp almond essence (but you could whatever flavour you like)
selection of fruit – I used tinned apricots

Wash the rice well. Combine the rice, milk, cream, almond essence and sugar in a pot. Place on a medium heat and stir occasionally as the sugar may cause the rice to stick to the bottom and burn. This should take approx. 15 minutes. Leave the rice to cool slightly but keep it covered with a clean tea towel.

For the easier option:

Pour the rice into a rectangle dish/container which is 2/3cm deep and chill. When the rice has set solid, run a knife around the edge of the container and then turn it upside down onto a board. Cut into rectangles and place slices of fruit on top.

For the more traditional option:

Leave the rice until it’s cool enough to handle. Have a large bowl of cold water and a plate to place the sushi on next to you. Dip your hands into the water and take a small amount (a little less than the size of a golf ball) of rice and form into the sushi shape. It’s important that your hands are wet otherwise the rice will stick to them. Make sure you press the rice together well. Once you have all the sushi shapes made, add the fruit slices on top.

These little spoons make fancy canapés with not much work effort and a small budget (total ingredients 7.23€). If you want to see some of the stuff which has been keeping me away from blogging. Take a look here and here.

Credit crunch cucumber & Snow white mousse spoons

200ml whipping cream
150g soft goat’s cheese
1 cucumber, washed
2 tsp of lemon juice
1 small jar of “fake” caviar (i.e. Herring roe)

Makes about 15 spoons.

Chop 3/4 of the cucumber into small cubes and mix with lemon juice. Keep the rest for the garnish.
Whip the cream until stiff. In a separate bowl whip the goat’s cheese until soft and smooth. Beat a couple of spoons of the whipped cream into the goat’s cheese and then fold in the rest of the whipped cream. Scoop into a piping bag with a star shaped nozzle.
In each serving spoon add a tsp of chopped cucumber. Pipe the mousse on top and garnish with a little of ‘fake caviar’ and a slither of cucumber.

If you don’t have the spoons, you could either use squares of dark wholemeal bread or a thick round slice of cucumber (instead of chopping the cucumber up).