Lemon Posset

Beautiful lemons taste of sunshine

Pour and chill overnight

Lemon posset

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Whilst I love chocolate I would nearly always choose lemon over it. Lemon is a fresher, cleaner, more summery option but still lends itself to gluttonous, comfort food (thank goodness).

This lemon posset is one of those desserts that impresses. Simply because one spoonful contains a heavenly balance of flavour vs sophistication and is unquestionably scrummy. Lemon posset rounds any meal off beautifully- lunch, dinner, meat, fish, vegetarian, outdoors, indoors……..whatever.

If you don’t usually make desserts, please do give this recipe a go. It is incredibly speedy and versatile. Looking through other posset recipes, several of them say “suitable for the arrival of last minute guests”. Hmmmmm! My lemon posset recipe has many virtues, one of which is that it requires near- zero skill, near- zero time and near- zero fuss. However, I would like to know who usually has this much cream lurking in their fridge for the arrival of unexpected guests! Also, the recipes that only require a couple of hours chilling are either plain lying or not doing the dish justice. Lemon posset does need chilling overnight. It should be well- set (but do avoid recipes requiring gelatine), properly cold and the chilling process brings out the flavour.

You could be delicate and serve this in individual long glasses with a lemon shortbread alongside. Indeed, this would be my choice for indoor entertaining. However, I made this dessert yesterday for an informal “early evening, dogs and children in tow after a day on the beach” BBQ in an idyllic country garden. A large bowl, some fresh raspberries to serve on the side and a big appetite was the level of sophistication required- phew!

This recipe will serve 4 good appetites or 6 after a heavier meal or for people with more decorum than I. The calorie content is horrific………..but worth it- no wasted calories here! (see my theory on wasted calories).

Ingredients

750ml double cream

200g golden caster sugar

The juice of 3 large lemons

Method

1. Heat the double cream and sugar together over a medium heat, stirring occasionally.

2. Bring to the boil and simmer very gently for 4 minutes. Don’t take your eyes far off the mixture during this time as it will boil over and leave you with a lot of cleaning to do. Also, the simmering should be extremely gentle. Vigorous boiling at this stage could curdle the cream.

3. Take the cream off the heat and stir in the lemon juice. Pour into a bowl and allow to cool to room temperature.

4. Re- stir the posset as it may have separated a little (don’t worry, after a stir and chilling it will be beautiful) and pour into the serving dish or individual glasses as preferred. Chill over- night.

5. I like to serve this with fresh raspberries and sometimes raspberry coulis.

Tip

I make this the evening before it is required. I do all the actual making (all of the 5 minutes- very arduous!) whilst cooking the children’s tea and forget about it for the rest of the evening as it cools to room temperature. I just have to remember to stick it in the fridge before going to bed. This really is minimum effort dessert that impresses people so much it is hard not to feel like a cheat (this is as close to feeling a rebel as I get, chuckle).