My amazing hubby treated me to a lovely spa break for my birthday last week, which also included a meal in the hotel restaurant. For dessert, I chose to have a lemon posset and it was, quite simply, one of the most amazing and delicious desserts I have ever had.
I had guests over for a birthday meal for my hubby and New Year’s Day, and I knew I had to try and recreate this amazing dessert. Having looked at a few recipes, it really is quite easy to make, and if you love lemon puds, this one is definitely for you.
Ingredients for Posset
600ml Double Cream
200g Caster Sugar
3 Lemons
Method
Pour the cream into a saucepan and add in the sugar. Put onto a medium heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved, then leave to simmer.
Whilst your cream and sugar mixture is simmering, begin preparing the lemons. You will need the zest of all three lemons and then 80g of the lemon juice – this is roughly 1 and a half of your lemons. Make sure you are keeping an eye on your posset mixture.
Return to your posset mixture, once it has simmered for about 5-10 minutes, it will start to go onto a rolling boil. Boil for one minute, then remove the pan from the heat.
Give the mixture a stir until all the bubbles reduce and you are left with a lovely thick mixture. Add to this your lemon zest and juice and mix in to combine. Once done, ladle into your serving bowls and leave them to cool at room temperature. Once completely cool, pop into the fridge for an hour or so for them to set completely.
Whilst you are chilling your possets, you can make your shortbread biscuits.
Ingredients for shortbread
250g Softened Butter
50g Caster Sugar
125g Cornflour
250g Plain Flour
Demerara Sugar for decoration
Method
Pop the butter into a bowl and soften using a wooden spoon. Once soft, add in the sugar, cornflour and flour. Give it a quick mix using your hands (or wooden spoon if you prefer), and then turn out onto your work surface. Bring together until you form a dough ball. The shortbread dough is best used once you have chilled for an hour, however I have used this dough straight away and it’s always turned out fine.
Roll out your shortbread dough and using any cutter you wish, cut out your shortbread biscuits. For extra decoration, I rolled the edges of my biscuits in Demerara sugar before popping onto a baking sheet.
Bake at 170°C/325°F/Gas Mark 3 for 12-15 minutes until evenly baked and are a light brown in colour.
Once you are ready to serve your dessert, crush 1/2 a meringue nest on top of the lemon posset (I used supermarket brought meringue nests which I always have in my cupboard as they make up a quick scrummy dessert with your favourite yogurt), and add in a couple of strawberries. Lemon and Strawberries go amazingly well together and is one of my favourite flavour combinations.
This is a very simple and easy dessert to create from scratch and it tastes amazing. Give it a go and enjoy!