Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Chocolate Cranachan

So putting up a recipe for Burns Night may bring to mind words such as “stabledoor” “horse” and “bolted”, but I didn’t get a chance to write it up until Sunday night, and then we seemed to have broken podbean again so it didn’t happen. It’s not like you're required to wait until next January to make it anyway…

The traditional Scottish pudding to have at Burns night is cranachan, which is basically raspberries with cream and toasted oats. This is a variation that I made for my brother’s Burns Supper on Saturday – I feel that by increasing the sugar content it at least stays within the principles of Scottish cookery…

Chocolate Cranachan.
7oz rolled oats
5 ½ oz toasted hazelnuts
3 ½ oz light muscovado sugar
6 oz dark chocolate
3 oz milk chocolate
1 pint double cream
¼ pint Drambuie
18 fl oz crème fraiche
1lb raspberries (or you can use half raspberries and half blackcurrants for a tarter flavour)

Grate all the chocolate and mix in with the hazelnuts and sugar. Toast the oats in batches under a grill for 3-4 minutes, turning every 30 seconds or so (nb if you’re like me, you really ought to start off with about 10 oz of oats because chances are you’ll burn at least one lot. If you’re not such a kitchen numpty, you can ignore that), then tip them all into the same bowl, so they melt the chocolate and it coats everything nicely. Beat the cream (though not too stiff), then add the crème fraiche and Drambuie to it. Put a layer of the oat mixture into the bowl for the pudding, then a layer of cream on top, then a layer of raspberries, and repeat until you’ve used everything up. Stick it in the fridge for a few hours to let the flavours combine and there you go.

And for listening accompaniment - Looking through my mp3s, I discover that I have a paltry single Burns track within: the Delgados cover of Parcel Of Rogues. So I’ve filled out the playlist with a few contributions from the godfathers of Scottish traditional music: Aly Bain & Phil Cunningham, fiddle player and accordionist respectively.




8 comments:

treefrogdemon said...

A pound of raspberries? Jings! How many people is this for?

NB to our US buddies - your pints are smaller than ours.

Anonymous said...

ah - should have said it'll feed about 10 people. If it's not for a party, you'll need to halve or quarter the quantities otherwise you might find yourself eating it for rather a long time...

steenbeck said...

Sounds delicious. I read somewhere that chocolate and oatmeal are natural antidepressants, and the drambuie couldn't hurt, either.

treefrogdemon said...

(ahem) actually alcohol is a depressant drug...But never mind that! I'm now thinking of throwing a party so I can use the whole quantity. Lovely music too, el d - I'd never heard 'Parcel of Rogues' done like that before.

.... said...

Thanks for posting this - missed out on dessert on Saturday night. We were so full of haggis. I'll give it a try!

steenbeck said...

So, TFD, you're saying I should stop self-medicating with oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookies and massive quantities of red wine. There go my plans for the winter.

treefrogdemon said...

Nope - I'm saying you can do exactly what you want - they'll cancel each other out anyway.

TonNL said...

...nice one, looks like it does have the right amount of calories to get you to the top of Mount Everest and back again without any problem...