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WITH THE BLINK of an eye we’re back at the same old crossroad, trying to make the decision whether to buy or make Christmas Day dessert.
Now, if you’re on top of your head and the thoughts of whipping up a Pavlova or baking a sponge make your heart race for all the wrong reasons, it’s completely ok to pop to your local bakery/shop and pick something up ahead of time.
On the other hand, if the 26 different types of potato you’re planning to serve are not enough of a challenge for you, let me give you some ideas. For me, there are a few golden rules to get you across that finish line.
Most importantly, keep it simple, no one is expecting a choux bun tower or individual chocolate fondants. After the fanfare of the stuffed turkey, a light simple dessert is absolutely perfect. If at all possible make your sweet ahead of time and chuck it in the freezer or fridge a few days before Christmas. There is nothing more satisfying than taking your dessert from the fridge, dusting it with icing sugar and serving it up.
I have a few “Do Ahead Dessert” that are guaranteed to make your life and Christmas Day all the sweeter.
1. Oreo Ice-Cream Cake (no Ice-Cream machine needed)
This Ice-Cream cake is utterly delicious and can be made well ahead of time and kept in the freezer. Don’t let the Ice-cream part throw you off, it’s just whipped cream and condensed milk.
2. Mince pie filo parcels
This dessert is an assembly job, use store-bought filo pastry and a jar of mince pie filling and bake in the oven for 10 minutes. Serve with some whipped cream.
3. Mini Pavlovas with lemon curd
Again, another dessert that can be made well ahead of time. Make the meringues and leave them in the utility a few days in advance. Top with a spoon of store-bought lemon curd and some berries.
Serves: 10
Prep: 25 mins
Freeze: Overnight
Cake base
40 Oreo biscuits
50g melted butter
Cake filling
300g condensed milk
170g dark chocolate
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
dash vanilla
360ml single cream, whipped
10 Oreo biscuits, crushed
Cake topping
200ml cream
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa
1 tbsp icing sugar
10 Oreo biscuits
Method
Line the base of a 23cm loose bottom round baking tin with parchment paper.
In a food processor, add the 40 Oreo biscuits (& filling) to a food processor and blitz until a fine crumb is reached.
Add the melted butter and mix.
Pour this Oreo crumb mixture into the prepared tin and press down to cover the base and sides.
Pop this into the fridge for 15 minutes.
For the filling, melt the dark chocolate, add the condensed milk, vanilla and cocoa to this and mix to combine.
Add this chocolate mixture to the whipped cream and fold together.
Finally, add the crushed Oreos and spoon this mixture into the line cake tin.
Place this in the freezer overnight to firm up.
To serve, for the topping, add the cream, cocoa and icing sugar to a bowl and whisk until thick.
Place this into a piping bag fitted with a large star nozzle.
Pipe 10 rosettes around the top of the ice-cream cake and place a whole Oreo in each one.
Serve straight away & enjoy.
Makes 12
Ingredients
3 sheets of filo pastry
100g melted butter
400g store bought mincemeat/pie filling
Method
Preheat your oven to 200C/180C fan/ Gas 6/ 400F
Cut each filo sheet into 8 x 4.5” squares, this will give you 24 squares in total.
Using the melted butter, brush a square of filo and place another filo square on top, brush this with butter too.
Place these buttered squares into a muffin tin cup.
Repeat the process until you have 12 filled.
Spoon in some of the mince pie filling and pinch the top of the pastry to create a small
parcel.
Place in the preheated oven and bake for 8-10 minutes or until golden brown all over.
Remove from the tins and cool slightly before serving with a side of semi whipped cream.
Makes: 5
Prep time: 15 minutes
Baking time: 45 minutes
Ingredients
4 large egg whites
210g caster sugar
210g icing sugar
10g cornflour
1 jar of lemon curd
10 fresh raspberries
1 passion fruit
5 sprigs basil
Method
Line a baking tray with parchment paper and set to one side.
Preheat your oven to 120°C/100°C fan.
Into a clean dry bowl add the room temperature fresh egg whites.
Whisk for 2 minutes on full speed until doubled in size and start adding the caster sugar.
Mix until thick.
At this point start adding the icing sugar and cornflour and mix on full speed again until thick and glossy.
Spoon the meringue into a piping bag fitted with a large star nozzle.
Stick the baking paper down to the tray with some of the mix and pipe 5 meringue nests on the lined tray.
If you don’t have a piping bag or nozzle, you can simply spoon 5 large meringue mounds onto the tray instead. Hollow out the centre to allow space for the curd later.
Bake in the pre-heated oven for 45 minutes and then turn the oven off and allow to cool fully inside.
To serve, simply spoon some of the lemon curd into the centre of the meringues and top with passion fruit wedges, raspberries and fresh basil.
Tuck in and enjoy! Happy Christmas to all.
Shane Smith has nearly 22 years’ experience working in some of the world’s most celebrated pastry kitchens across the globe. Over these years he has received numerous awards from “Best Bakery Manager in Ireland” by Shelf life magazine to “The top 10 best pastry chefs in Ireland” by Food & Wine Magazine. Shane also has a regular cookery slot on RTÉ’s The Today Show. Check out more recipes on his Instagram or at www.chefshanesmith.ie.
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My wife is deaf and to see our 2 sons aged 3.5 and 22 months using sign to communicate with their mother is nothing short of amazing .my wife also has a sister and brother who are also deaf and a sister who is hearing and watching them in flow of conversation is unbelievable . ISL is a fantastic language and I consider it the most important language I have as without it I would not the woman I married in my life today .
To learn even basic ISL is so expensive, I know a group of friends who wanted to learn. I did basic level with seehear expressed interest in continuing to the next level but never heard back from them. I find it sad the excitement some deaf people express when I use even my basic ISL to help communicate its not that hard to learn or use. I know in transition year we did it and loved it and I could secretly communicate with my friends across the room, bus and in later years a pub/nightclub.
Helena, do you mean DeafHear? There are other places you could learn. Try the Irish Deaf Society.
ISL should be recognised as an official language and the Deaf community deserves this…..
I’ve worked with a deaf colleague and have, over many years, managed to pick up some sign language from what he’s shown me. I won’t say I’m fluent but we can communicate perfectly well and it has given me an insight to his world, noises we take for granted every day he obviously can’t hear. I’ve seen him stepping out onto a road when there was, to our ears, an obviously noisy car coming, I’ve heard him paged several times and while I doubt this was malicious, people genuinely forget. It can be extremely frustrating.
Maybe the pager also had vibration
Maybe paged as in bing bong bing bong can Joe come to reception, Joe to reception please.
I’m afraid it was paged as in Sandra’s version, which was why it was pointless but I don’t believe it was anyone being malicious but rather they simply forgot. He saw the funny side when told about it so, in a way, people genuinely saw past his deafness.
They just want to be heard
That’s terrible! Im a bad person! Please delete journal!
The sign language pic shown at the to of the article is clearly not ISL as only one hand its used for the alphabet in ISL. More than likely the UK Version which is totally different.
Hi Aideen,
It’s very hard to find images of ISL (which is possibly indicative of the larger issue) so hopefully you’ll excuse the use of a generic stock photo of sign language.
Yes Michelle you’re probably right that’s its an indication of the issues The Deaf Community have here in Ireland
Yeah agree with you
The sign language pic… it’s a shame that the Journal did not think to select one of the letters in the American Sign Language Alphabet that is also used in the Irish Sign Language alphabet. (only 8 letters differ between the Irish and American sign language alphabets.)
I recently designed an interactive website to learn basic ISL online for free. It can be found at http://www.learnirishsignlanguage.ie . The idea of the site was to tackle the problem this article presents and show how new media can offer more accessible means of learning this language. The site covers The Alphabet, Numbers, Days of the Week, Months, Colours, Greetings, School, Hobbies, Emotions, Prepositions, Transport, The House, and Weather. Please Explore, Share with friends and enjoy! To avail of all the site offers Chrome is a preferable browser but learning videos are available on all browsers :)
Great resource Kate. :)
Can you put all that into an app for iPhone or Android?
Thanks craig :). The site is created in HTML5 therefore the learning videos can be viewed on iPhones, iPads and android devices. It is not yet an actual mobile app though. I hope to develop a phone app for it in the future. This at least for the moment eliminates the problems of Flash. :)
It’s really good, I learned the ISL alphabet earlier, took me about half an hour! I’m going to keep practicing to get the speed up! Can’t believe how easy it is to memorise! Such a great thing to know! Will definitely pass whatever I learn on to my kids!
The App shown on Late Late show for signing was amazing
Michelle on Hands On was great! Hope you all saw it as we have very little voice in the media and the hearing world. We have huge problems in terms of equality which needs to be addressed badly which people are not aware about e.g a natural right to use ISL in education. This is just one example of many! Way too many problems and lack of awareness in this country.
Thanks a lot Michelle, I’m glad you liked it.
If anyone is looking for ISL Fetac accredited classes, we have them at the Irish Deaf Society http://www.deaf.ie
I personally as a mother would love to see sign language being thought in all schools as a important recognised language, I would love to learn it myself
Wow didnt realise 90k with hearing difficulties in Ireland that is alot of people.
@ Chrissy Buckley
I understand that some school does have ISL programme but it is not recognised by the dept of education. Would be nice if they did.
Just spent the last half hour learning the alphabet in sign! Purely out of guilt!
Well done Michelle you did brilliantly, hope you carry this experience forward.
Thanks a lot Laura!
5,000 ISL in Ireland ! Maybe some Irish deaf who emigrated it new life in England,Australia and USA it could more 10,000 ISL
You never hear them give out
Firstly, congratulations to you Michelle and The Journal for raising this issue and taking part in Hands On, well done. Yes, the pic is not ISL, tip for the future, you could take a photo of the hand of a person that uses ISL. The important thing here is ISL and Deaf awareness. Maybe our government will start listening and give ISL the recognition it rightly deserves.
Michelle, well done on Hands on and for addressing the issue. It was indeed an enjoyable clip to watch and hope to have our silent voices heard more often. Well done :-)
What’ s isl
FlopFlipU,
ISL = Irish Sign Language, the sign language used by Deaf people in Ireland who sign. No, it does not have any connection with spoken Irish.
Hi Michelle, I knopw it being a while however better late than never. I wana say many thanks for doing an article on the Hands on Program. We, Deaf people need allies like you to get the message across to the greater population. So in that way, it would produce positive perspectives on who we are as we are often underestimated despite our poor educational attainment but this does not inhibit our ways of thinking and contribution thanks to our beautiful language, ISL – Irish Sign Language
Good job Michelle
Thanks Pádraig!
When I was in first year in college I wanted to take ISL instead of a European one, and got a large group who wanted the same. At our induction there was a man signing so I though it might be easy enough to organise but no joy, unfortunately.
Hi Michelle
Contact me to meet my ISL learners ASAP.
People Power v Kenny’s Muppets
Let’s call a referendum whether the Rock and Rolling Itish Sign Language be recognised in this beautiful Emerald Isle as our third official language
have your say