Gooseberry Fools

Our gooseberries were ripe and ready for the picking on Saturday. I got the job, aow! darn thorny plant. It's the first time it has given us a berry and we did really rather well; I'm always surprised that these very cheap plants, bought in a discount shop (Poundstretcher) can do so well. Apart from my arms still looking all scratched and blotchy, the exercise was one of joy and pride. Though our other red gooseberry bush still resolutely refuses to bear fruit (cheeky), it gave us 1 last year which we shared, haha.

So this was our haul of berries, check out that bumper crop of Blackcurrants (I think there were 22 of them)!

Back home and as usual we can't hold our water. The gooseberries had to be used right there and then. Neither of us had ever really tasted green ones before, well Andrew did decide to eat one raw and his face was a picture I think his tongue shrink up whilst stuck to the roof of his mouth and his cheeks.

We decided to make Gooseberry Fool. Well, our own versions of it. There was a lovely recipe on Retro Food Recipes but Andrew's creative chef side came to fore and the magic began to happen.....

So here is our recipe for the gooseberry treatment:

• 440g gooseberries + some blackcurrants (washed, topped and tailed)


• plonk into a small saucepan with 2 tablespoons of castor sugar and 2 tablespoons of water
  
• put the lid on the saucepan and heat until squishy (approx 10 mins)


• sieve fruit, really squishing them hard through the mesh (good for anger management)


• add more castor sugar to taste (we added 100g)

Pretty colour, no? That's the blackcurrants for you

Basically this is a runny warm gooseberry jam. I suppose if you added a little more pectin you could easily store it in a jar but, well, again, we can't hold our waters! We poured some into a bowl each and put some (low fat, may-as-well-be-good-for-you) cream on top and added some much underrated sprinkles. Andrew also had some strawberries. Eh, viola, dish number one. Gorgeous!

I like low fat cream okay!

Then we had that look at each other, you know the one ~ the slightly guilty "I want more, do you; cause I will if you will" look. We did. And so to the kitchen again for dish number two. This time (against my better judgement) I let Andrew mix the cream and the rest of the jammy mixture together to make a proper 'fool' (it wasn't broke, so why fix it?!!). It wasn't as nice, though he added muesli to his and maybe more strawberries and thought it lovely. I had just settled for sprinkles again.

So there you go, what an exciting experience. May your gooseberries be plump and juicy and may you too enjoy them, whatever you decide to do with them! xx