Banana Blanc Mange

Blanc Mange is basically Europe's answer to pudding and I love it. Not only that, but as I have proved in previous posts, I love banana, so this was an obvious recipe for me to do. I actually found this recipe from a recipe book that presumably came with a fridge-freezer many years ago, back when people didn't really know how to use such mod-cons. Most of the recipe book is filled with enough jellied meat recipes to make you feel sick, but this one was actually rather delicious. Note that once made, these should be eaten within two days. I apologise for the brown banana chunks in the photo of the finished blancmange, I forgot to take a picture of it until the following day!

Here is the original recipe I was working with:

Banana Blanc Mange (makes 4 desserts)

Bare Necessities:
3 Bananas
1oz/30g Corn Flour
1 Egg Yolk
1pint/2cups/500ml Milk
1oz/30g Sugar
1/2tsp Vanilla Essence

1. Pour the milk into a saucepan with the sugar and slowly bring to the boil.
2. Remove from the heat and stir in the cornflour, careful to remove any lumps.
3. Place back on the hob and cook on a low heat for 10 minutes, stirring continuously.
4. Take off the heat and let it cool for a couple minutes.
5. Chop the bananas into small chunks.
6. Stir an egg yolk into the milk mixture and then stir over a low heat for another 2 minutes.
7. Take off the heat and stir in the chopped bananas and the vanilla.
8. Pour into small pots or ramekins and leave to cool in the fridge.
9. Once chilled, serve and enjoy!

Old School Rice Pudding

For Christmas, my mum gave me a really old cookery book called The Edinburgh Book of Plain Cookery Recipes which is an incredibly cool book published in 1932, and the official book for the Edinburgh School of Cookery and Domestic Economy, which is where her mum studied back in the day! This book contains recipes for literally everything you could ever need, from tea, to sponge cake to rabbit soup, and I've decided to give a few of these recipes a go.

As many of you may know, my search for the perfect rice pudding has been a long and arduous one, with varying degrees of success, so of course the first recipe I decided to try from this book was going to be rice pudding. It turns out that the recipe is not that different from the one my mum used to make my brother and me rice pudding when we were younger. It seems like a ludicrously long time to cook rice pudding for, and the skin on top can seem a tad off putting, but it's totally normal. I personally don't like the skin on top, but lots of people do, so eat it with your rice pudding if you want to, or push it to one side if you don't! Here is the recipe that I was working from:

Working from a very old recipe such as this one has it's difficulties, as I was beginning to realise. Firstly, I had no idea what Carolina rice was, and I didn't know what on earth a 'moderate oven' was. A bit of research told me that Carolina rice was simply a type of long grain rice, and that a moderate oven was approximately 180c. Also, as I don't like nutmeg, I decided to replace it with cinnamon.

Old School Rice Pudding (Serves 1-2)

Bare Necessities:
1 1/2ouces/45g/3tbsp Long Grain Rice
1pint/2cups/500ml Milk
1tbsp Sugar
1-2pinches Cinnamon

1. Preheat the oven to 180c/350F/Gas Mark 4
2. Grease a dish.
3. Wash the rice, and put in the dish, along with the sugar and the cinnamon.
4. Pour in the milk and give it a little stir.
5. Pop in the oven for 2 hours.
6. Once cooked, serve up with a dollop of jam on top and enjoy!