Gooseberry Fool & Gooseberry Amber Sweet Dessert

Chilled and Hot Pudding Recipes with this Season’s Fruit Gooseberry

Aug 12, 2008 Susan Morris

Easy cook recipes for gooseberry fruit desserts, including Gooseberry Amber and Gooseberry Fool, 'receipt book' finds, for eating hot or chilled in summer.

Gooseberries are summer fruit to treasure. With a short season, take advantage of experimenting with the hot pie recipe Gooseberry Amber and a recipe for the well established fruit Fool made with gooseberries.

Both recipes start off with stewing freshly picked gooseberries so cooks can try out both recipes with 2 lbs of gooseberries. If seasonal quality and quantity of gooseberries are absent, tinned gooseberries (420-450g cans for 1 lb of fresh gooseberries) can be used for Gooseberry Fool and Gooseberry Amber. Tinned gooseberries in syrup will bring additional sweetness so cooks can adapt the amount of added sugar in the recipes below.

Gooseberry Fool

Ingredients:

• 1 lb gooseberries
• ¼ pint of water
• 4 oz sugar
• ¼ pint milk
• 1 egg

Directions:

1. Wash the gooseberries and stew them until tender in the water.
2. Pass them through a sieve and add the sugar.
3. Heat the milk, pour it on to the beaten egg, return to the saucepan, and cook over gentle heat until thick.
4. Add this custard to the gooseberry puree and, when cold, serve in dessert glasses.

Gooseberry Amber

Ingredients:

• 1 lb gooseberries
• 1 lemon
• 2 medium eggs
• 5 oz short crust pastry
• 4 oz wholemeal breadcrumbs
• 1 oz castor sugar

Directions:

1. Wash the gooseberries and stew them until tender in the water.
2. Roll out the pastry until it is rather less than ½ cm thick, and line the sides and top rim of the pie-dish with it.
3. Cut out small rounds of pastry the size of a dollar with a tiny cutter, and ornament the edge of the dish with these, keeping them in position by moistening the underside slightly before placing on the rim.
4. Grate half the rind of the lemon for zest and then juice the lemon.
5. Separate the two eggs into a bowl of yolks and a bowl of whites.
6. Beat the egg yolks with most of the castor sugar. Save one tablespoonful for later in the recipe.
7. Melt the butter in a saucepan.
8. Add the stewed gooseberries, breadcrumbs, lemon zest and lemon juice to the butter and heat thoroughly in the saucepan.
9. Add the beaten eggs and sugar to the saucepan.
10. Pour the mixture into the prepared pie-dish and bake in a moderately hot oven until the pastry is cooked and golden brown.
11. Whip up the whites of the eggs stiffly, stir in a tablespoonful of castor sugar and arrange on top of the Gooseberry Amber pudding.
12. Cook the puding in a high temperature oven until top is golden brown.

About the Gooseberry Fool and Gooseberry Amber Recipes

The original recipe authors are unknown as these sweet dessert recipes were noted in a ‘receipt book’ without attributed sources. The hot pudding Gooseberry Amber recipe may have been published in the 1950s or 1960s.

The copyright of the article Gooseberry Fool & Gooseberry Amber Sweet Dessert in Seasonal Cooking is owned by Susan Morris. Permission to republish Gooseberry Fool & Gooseberry Amber Sweet Dessert in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Gooseberries can be Stewed for Hot & Cold Puddings