Blanc Mange (Almond Cream)
By: Mom's Flaming Foods, Char Farago - April, 2010
Almonds
Almonds are a great source of vitamin E, with 25g providing 70 percent of the recommended daily allowance. They also have good amounts of magnesium, potassium, zinc, iron, fiber and are a good source of healthy monounsaturated fat. They contain more calcium than any other nut. So I decided to add almonds to my diet via a delicious almond cream with fresh fruit dessert.
Here is the basic recipe which dates from the 12th century.
2 C. almonds, skinned (boil them for 1 min. in 2 cups of water; pinch the skins off).
Toast the almonds in a 350 oven for 15 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes.
2 C half and half
¼ C. sugar
Warm the half and half and stir in sugar until dissolved.
Grind the almonds with the half and half mixture in a blender.
Strain through a small sieve or cheesecloth. You should have 1 ½ C. liquid.
Add 4 drops almond extract.
3 tsp. gelatin
1/3 C. warm water
Dissolve gelatin in warm water for 10 min.
Stir the gelatin into the almond mixture over a bowl of ice so the blancmange begins to firm.
1 C. cream, whipped.
Fold the whipped cream into the blancmange.
Pour the pudding into molds to set under refrigeration for several hours.
Turn it out onto plates and top with fruit or sauce of your choice.
Prep time: 20 minutes.
See follow up post - "How it really went" from Chef Char herself.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Here's How It Really Went
ReplyDeleteFrom Chef Char
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Blanc Mange
2 C. of blanched, toasted almonds.
I put the almonds into a couple of cups of boiling water and simmered for 1 minute, per
instructions. Then I strained them and pinched each one as the skins slipped off.
After 20 minutes, I was still pinching and believe me, I was out of patience (and I am
generally a patient person).
Next, I put the almonds in a single layer on a jelly roll pan and put them in a 350 oven for 15 minutes, shaking and stirring every 5 minutes. They turned out good.
I poured the 2 cups of half and half into a pan and warmed it with the sugar. Then I
dumped that into the blender with all of the almonds. After blending for about a minute, I
had almond milk. Voila.
Next, I poured that into my fine mesh strainer – big mistake. Instead of the 1 and ½ cups of almond milk, I only got barely 1 cup. So I dumped the whole mass into a big piece of
cheesecloth and squeezed it with both hands. Finally! Another ½ cup of almond milk. I
ran it again through my tea strainer to get some more of the pulp out and ended up
having to add a little more cream to make up the 1 ½ cups required.
So far, so good, sort of.
4 drops of almond extract – how big is a drop? I just guessed at about 1/8 tsp.
Now I had to clean the kitchen because I had almond pulp all over everything after the
straining, dumping, and squeezing. I put the almond pulp into a zip lock and put it in the
freezer for some later use.
Whip 1 cup of cream. That went well.
Now for the gelatin part. O.k. put 3 tsp. of gelatin (1 small package plus a little of a
second package, which is irritating) into 1/3 cup of warm water and let it set for 10
minutes. How hard can that be? Guess again. After 10 minutes, I poked it with a spoon
and it was one gelatinous glob that would never mix with the almond milk. Hmmm. So I
decided to try it again, carefully sprinkling the gelatin over 1/3 cup of cold water. It appeared to be dissolved.
continued...
continued...
ReplyDeleteMix the almond milk and gelatin together and place the bowl into a larger bowl of ice
cubes. I went out on the back deck and filled up a large bowl with snow – same thing (I live in Minnesota).
I placed the bowl of almond milk and gelatin mix into the bowl of snow and after a couple of minutes of stirring, the gelatinous globs started to appear, floating in the
almond milk. I began fishing them out with a spoon, but they were appearing faster than
I could fish. All I could think about was Julie and Julia. Thank heaven I washed the
strainer. I poured the whole thing into the strainer and, yup, there they were – the globs.
Well, I still had the almond milk minus the globs, but now, of course, the milk had no gelatin in it.
So I decided to follow the instructions on the Knox gelatin package for Knox Blox, modified. I sprinkled one package of gelatin over 1/3 cup of cold milk for 1 minute and then put that into 1/3 cup of boiling water and stirred until it dissolved. So far, so good.
Again, the gelatin back into the almond milk which was cooling its heels in the bowl of
snow. I whisked it until it started to thicken and then quickly folded in the whipped cream before it started to glob up again.
I spooned it into 6 custard cups and put it into the refrig for its overnight stay.
Prep time: 2.5 hours
Take my advice – Buy some almond milk at your nearest Twigs and Berries store or pick up some almonds, blanched and toasted. Or just use 2 cups of almond milk with almond flavoring. As for the gelatin, you’re on your own.
Short recipe:
1/1/2 C. almond milk
1/8 tsp. almond flavoring
1/4 C. sugar
Mix and warm to dissolve the sugar.
1 C. cream, whipped
1/3 C. cold milk
1 pkt. Knox gelatin
1/3 C. boiling water
Sprinkle one packet of gelatin over the cold milk and let sit for 1 minute.
Put that into 1/3 cup of boiling water and stir until dissolved. Cool slightly.
Whisk the gelatin into the almond milk mixture over a bowl of ice so the blancmange
begins to thicken. Fold in the whipped cream, spoon into small bowls, and put in refrig for a couple ofhours.
Serve with fruit sauce.
Kristen’s comments: I froze some of it and it tasted like ice milk. It’s very good just refrigerated. If you put too much gelatin in it, you will have (per an 1856 New Jersey recipe) little rubber balls rolling around in your mouth, or as we know it, flubber.