Dessert| Berries & Buttermilk Pudding … SRC with the delightful Lisa!
“For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
PAB is back! I got hacked, yet am somewhat back! Must be something in the air. First my computer got fried, yet again, obviously without warning. There I was typing a guest post for a sweet friend, and zilch… all gone! Got onto the laptop for food therapy and to my SRC assigned secret haunt, the wonderful Parsley, Sage, Desserts…and Line Drives. Bookmarked Berries & Buttermilk Pudding instead!
Quickly jotted everything down, lest the recently replaced motherboard that died again last night might give me trouble again, then went to check what Lisa’s latest post was… read she suffered the same fate! She wrote ” First I just want to say that this post was almost set to go Wednesday, and then my computer crashed. It was fixed briefly, but then it crashed again. Thankfully I didn’t lose anything, but went through two days of no computer hell! You know how it is. Can’t live without them, really can’t live without them.“
I had it worse. Got the computer fixed to lose my blog in the next few hours. Bluehost finally told me 24 hours later that the site had been hacked!! Numb with shock, I reached out to Mr PABs nephew who helped me stay calm, kept me guided and reassured. Googling for answers, I did read that the first step is to stay calm.
That was easy thanks to past experiences. At work, we lived through the traumatic Gulf war with our aircraft and crew stuck in the Middle East, I’ve done years of ‘handling’ bomb scares at the airport, flight evacuations, sniffer dogs, cargo offloading etc that have taught me to stay calm at the worst of times, breathe deep!
The Secret Recipe Club, the brainchild of Amanda of Amanda’s Cookin’. The idea behind the club – Each month you are “assigned” a participating food blogger to make a recipe from.
It’s a secret, so don’t tell them you are making something from their blog! Click here if you’d like to join!!
Time for dessert! The minute I saw my assigned ‘secret blog’ for the month I did a little whoop of joy! Yes! It was Lisa’s blog, one that is full of beautiful pictures, droolworthy food and laugh-your-head-off tales! I spent half the day reading her ‘addictive‘ stories …
I peeled myself off her tales and hit the recipe index. I wanted to make just about everything! Hamburger Buns, Char Siu, Ciabatta, Best Ever Brownies, Orange Pistachio Olive Oil Cupcakes and eventually settled for my first choice, Berries & Buttermilk Pudding!
I had strawberries and buttermilk; the whole milk was replaced with low fat cream. No mixed berries, but a promising jar of blueberry preserves {Sylt Blabar} that I had got from Sydney last year would add to the flavours. Mine might not look as exciting and vibrant as Lisas, but hopefully would deliver the punch.
Fruit is always inspiring, desserts in glasses even more. These are fun to make even though I thought they might be set puddings like a panna cotta as I read the gelatin in the ingredients. They are pretty much wobbly custard-like puddings, and the gelatin possibly acts as a thickener/mild setting agent of sorts.
Make it for Valentines Day, or just for any day. Use fruit of the season … we are flooded with strawberries these days!
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Recipe: Berries and Buttermilk Puddings
Summary: Light pleasing buttermilk puddings served with a perky fruit sauce.
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Total Time: 30 minutes {plus chilling & setting time}
Serves 6
Ingredients:
- For buttermilk puddings:
1.5 tsp unflavored gelatin {I would increase this to 2 tsp next time}
1/4 cup cold milk
1 1/4 cup low fat cream
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise,scraped
9 tbsp sugar
1 1/4 cup well-shaken buttermilk
2tbsp berry preserve
For sauce:
1/4 cup dry red wine
1/4 cup water
3 tablespoon sugar
1 (3-inch) strip lemon zest
1 (3-inch) strip orange zest
1 bay leaf
2 1/2 cup quartered strawberries
Method:
- Buttermilk Pudding:
- Sprinkle gelatin over 1/4 cup cold milk in a small bowl and let soften 1 minute.
- Scrape seeds from vanilla bean into a small heavy saucepan and add pod. Add cream and sugar and bring just to a boil over medium heat, stirring until sugar has dissolved. Remove from heat. Add gelatin mixture to hot milk mixture, stirring until dissolved.
- Quick- chill in an ice bath, stirring occasionally, until cold but not thickened, about 5-7 minutes.
- Stir in buttermilk, then strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a large glass measure, discarding solids. Pour into glasses / bowls and chill until set, at least 8 hours.
- Strawberry Sauce
- Bring wine, water, sugar, zests, and bay leaf to a boil in a small heavy saucepan over medium heat, stirring until sugar has dissolved, then boil until reduced to about 1/3 cup, about 10 minutes.
- Add strawberries and simmer 5 minutes. Discard zests and bay leaf, then purée strawberry mixture in a blender until smooth {use caution when blending hot liquids}. Force through clean fine-mesh sieve and discard solids.
Chill sauce, stirring occasionally, until cold, about 1 hour. - To serve:
Spoon sauce over puddings and top with remaining berries.
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BlueHost is a good company to be hosted with, the staff ever helpful. Lessons to be learnt!! For those of you who have been untouched by the miseries of the net, please change passwords often, backup now {download a database back up plugin if you haven’t already}, update plugins etc on a regular basis. I have no idea what went wrong, but don’t be complacent. Thank you Varun, Rekha, Katie, Suma, Sanjeetha, Gourmise & all of you who tweeted… thank you from the bottom of my heart!
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Also find me on The Rabid Baker, The Times of India
Deeba @ PAB
About me: I am a freelance food writer, recipe developer and photographer. Food is my passion - baking, cooking, developing recipes, making recipes healthier, using fresh seasonal produce and local products, keeping a check on my carbon footprint and being a responsible foodie! I enjoy food styling, food photography, recipe development and product reviews. I express this through my food photographs which I style and the recipes I blog. My strength lies in 'Doing Food From Scratch'; it must taste as good as it looks, and be healthy too. Baking in India, often my biggest challenge is the non-availability of baking ingredients, and this has now become a platform to get creative on. I enjoy cooking immensely as well.
24 Comments
Happy Cook / Finla
Looks super yummy but then you do make everything looks beautiful and i am sure they taste delicious too.
shooting star
yummmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!
baker in disguise
oh no.. blogs can be hacked!??! damn!! poor you.. must have been horrible!! hope all’s well again!!
PS– you cant go wrong with a berry dessert!! lovely photos as always!!
s
deeba- i would be so cross and upset if my blog was hacked- go Deebz for being so strong and patient. i love this pudding you’ve made- it’s so lovely to serve desserts in little glasses. hope youre well now that the blog is up and running again. x s
Suma
Glad to see PAB back! It must be a terrible, terrible feeling to know someone has hacked your blog! Now I know realize(so slowly!) where all that calm comes from!
The pudding look and sounds light and delicious! Look forward to more and more such delights on PAB!
Rosa
Oh, I love IKEA food products. That is a wonderful dessert!
It must be terrible to have got hacked. Poor you!
Cheers,
Rosa
Lisa
Deeba, I received an email from Jane telling me about your situation right after coming home from Best Buy because I had another crash! I wasn’t able to get my post up until after 6pm last night! How uncanny is that? You have my blog, and we both have melt-downs of a different sort!
That said, your take on the berries and buttermilk puddings is yummy and gorgeous. I love the idea of blueberry jam with strawberries! I remember when I made them, the frustration of trying to get photos of them with my Ego Lights…I could not get the Ego Light glare off the glasses, no matter how much I moved them around! Your photos and styling are stunning and pure, delicious, art, as always 🙂
Tamara
Dear, glad to see your blog up and running 🙂 Talk to you soon and this recipe looks perfect!
Katherine Martinelli
Oh Deeba I’m so sorry to hear about your computer troubles! I can’t believe your website was hacked. That is horrifying! My motherboard also fried in December! Wonder what it was about that time of year?! I am now a proud Mac owner and LOVE it.
But on to more important things – food! I am absolutely bookmarking this to make. It looks divine and I happen to have almost all the ingredients! I just need strawberries, but luckily it’s the start of strawberry season here too 🙂
Lisa~~
Lisa’s blog does have so many wonderful offerings and the puddings were a great choice, they look delicious. Sorry that you had so many blog problems and happy that you’re back.
Kiran @ KiranTarun.com
So sorry about the technology mishaps — praying it won’t happen to you, me or anyone else!
That blueberry preserves is an Ikea product — I love it so much. It’s so delicious 😀
And of course, buttermilk pudding’s are divine. I am drooling just looking at the beautiful photos 😀
Indu
I was wondering what happened to PAB. Glad you are back and everything is up and running now.
Luuvvvvly pudding, btw!
Barbara @ Barbara Bakes
How fun to have Lisa’s blog. This was a great choice, but I’m sure it must have been almost impossible to pick just one. I’m so glad you didn’t have too much trouble getting your blog back.
Nisha
Oops … sorry to hear about all those troubles.
You know it’s like aate hain toh chappar faad ke … but glad everything’s good now.
Delicious looking dessert. Or may be your photography just made them more delicious 🙂
Sylvie @ Gourmande in the Kitchen
I’m so sorry to hear you had to deal with all those computer issues! I’ve been having my share of issues as well lately. 🙁
Catwoman
Hmmm…that’s what I’d like to call delicious… I love the fruity things so much… And at this frosty weather it’s very important because of the vitamins included. I just can’t wait to give your recipe a try, thanks for sharing it!
Jennifer Sikora
Love this recipe! Cannpt believe you were hacked.
nags
i can’t see any of the pics in this post Deeba. Is there an issue?
Kim Bee
Your pictures are absolutely gorgeous. I wish I had half your talent. You got assigned such a wonderful blog. And you choice is perfect. These look good enough to eat at least a dozen all by myself.
Jamie
Two of my favorite people? You and Lisa! And together – wow! What a pair! And these puddings are stunning! Wow! How is it every single thing you make turns out so gorgeous? I think I will try making these and see if some of your and Lisa’s talent for beauty rub off on me…
Margaret
This looks so refreshing. And such an elegant dessert. I would be happy to see these on my table.
Margaret
This looks so refreshing. I would be thrilled to see this one on my table.
Poorvi Laxman
Hi:). I really want to try this recipe:) looks pretty harmless on the waist line.please advice if I can use fet free plain yoghurt in place of the cream as in South Africa we don’t get low fat cream.
Also can I use orange juice instead of wine? Thank u:)