White chocolate and roasted strawberry fool is a mouthful, isn’t it? Anyone who’s afraid of cream, stop now because this one’s full of it. And chocolate, got that too. To ensure that it can be considered a healthy dessert, there are strawberries both roasted and macerated. (however, I don’t honestly believe that the strawberries outclass the cream in the calorie department)
When my sister was here we visited Maleny Dairies high up in the hinterland of the Sunshine Coast for a farm tour. The dairy offers tours twice a day Monday through Saturday and you get a visit to the processing plant, get to brush and milk a cow (or get squirted), feed baby calves with a giant milk bottle and see the chickens and the goats. Once you’re finished you get to taste all their products from chocolate or strawberry milk, custard and yoghurt.
It’s a beautiful drive up the hillside and you can see all the way out into the ocean from up there. If it wasn’t so far from shopping I’d love to live there. Meet Millie, a Guernsey cow at the dairy. All their cows are Guernsey because of the high protein and cream in their milk.
I began chatting online with the dairy’s PR person Suzie Scovell and with Kay Hopper, one of the owners of Maleny Dairies and today they delivered some of their wonderful milk, cream, custard and yoghurt for me to cook with. I’ll confess that John’s dad has already gotten into the yoghurt. “That’s really good, Maureen, it’s not too sweet. I hate it when it’s too sweet,” he said as he dipped his spoon back into his bowl.
So I began thinking what I could make. John loves cream. If you whipped cream he’d want some pouring cream to go on top. His mum is the same way. I wanted to make something for him because he’s been working like a madman lately.
There’s this craze going on about some royal baby so I decided on an English dessert – a fool. Not that this baby will be a fool – I’m pretty sure it will be a perfectly wonderful baby.
The standard fool is either whipped cream or custard with stewed fruit folded into it. So maybe my fool is a bit foolish because I added white chocolate to the cream and I roasted the strawberries instead of stewing them. My house smelled like strawberry jam as they were roasting.
- ½ cup white chocolate (chips or chopped white chocolate)
- 375 grams strawberries (1½ punnets)
- 2 tblsp sugar
- 2 cups whipping cream
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- Preheat oven to 180C/350F
- In a small pan heat ½ cup of cream to just under boiling and pour over the white chocolate. Stir until it's completely melted and set aside to cool.
- Remove the green bits from the strawberries and place them on a baking pan. Roast strawberries for 15 minutes or until they start leaking juice. When they did this I flipped them over for about 5 more minutes to get roasting marks on both sides.
- When cool whiz in a blender or food processor for only a few seconds to break them apart. You want some strawberry bits in your fool
- When cream and white chocolate are cool, whip remaining cream to soft peaks and add the vanilla just at the end of whipping.
- Lightly fold the white chocolate mixture into the whipped cream.
- Fold half the strawberry mixture into the cream.
- Layer the cream and strawberry mixture into a serving dish and top with a whole strawberry.
As I was writing this, John came up and said, “I ate two bowls of that stuff, Maureen and so did Dad.” He laughed and said, “What’s not to like about cream and that was delicious.” Not bad from a man who normally says, “That’s all right,” when he means it’s spectacular.
Maleny Dairies provided the cream for this recipe along with other dairy products but my opinions are my own.