The Lemon Mousse Disaster

As I was confident that my cookery skills were developing at a rapid rate, I decided to venture into the more ambitious recipes and thus decided on the rather tangy tasting Lemon Mousse for dessert. Dahl introduces the recipe with a nostalgic look back into her childhood: " When I was a little girl this was the Sunday standard request. I use the recipe handed down to me featured in my grandfather and step-grandmother's cookbook, Memories with Food at the Gipsy House" 

Sophie Dahl is of course the granddaughter of the famous author, Roald Dahl whose equally famous residents, The Gipsy House is located in my village of Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire. Every morning and evening I would walk past his home on my way to and from school, and from the field next to his home you can just about see the beautiful hand painted gypsy caravan from which the house is named after. Even though Roald Dahl died before I was born, his home and his novels have played a major part in my childhood, which maybe why I was initially drawn to reading Sophie Dahl's work. I felt a connection to Sophie's comment about her younger years in my hometown and thus made myself nostalgic for times past. The Lemon Mousse seemed even more of a perfect recipe to round up my cooking fun. 

Perhaps with a little too much arrogance about my cooking abilities, I began. The first line dictated: "Dissolve the gelatine with the lemon juice in a bowl over simmering water". The action seemed simple enough until I tried to carry out the task, for the one and a half teaspoons of gelatine was a lot trickier to measure than I first expected. However, I dissolved a very rough estimate of gelatine into the lemon juice and hoped for the best. The rest of the recipe was pretty straight forward; I separated the egg yolks from the whites, whisking the yolks with the sugar and beating the whites into soft peaks. It was then the job of combining the different ingredients together at the correct time using the correct method. With a few hitches I managed to make a relatively tasting looking mixture, which I poured into a large glass bowl and placed in the fridge to set. 

I left the mousse in the fridge for the rest of the day. Evening came and I was excited at the prospect of delicious lemon mousse for dessert. I took the bowl out of the fridge and in my hands was NOT lemon mousse. I must of got the gelatine measurements very wrong because the cream had separated from the mixture and was floating on top of the sloppy gloop like scum on a river. I thought I would be brave and taste the unappetizing mess in the bowl... it was NOT nice. So the mixture went in the bin and I settled with boring old fruit for dessert.

The next day I popped round to my Gran's house for a cuppa and a catch up and proceeded to tell her about my disastrous attempt at making lemon mousse. My Gran and I are very much the same in many aspects, and she was determined to not give up on the lemon mousse. I took another visit to the supermarket and bought the ingredients, but this time we opted for powdered gelatine instead of the dissolvable silver leaf kind. Later on in the day I visited my Gran again and attempted for a second time to make the fabulous and fantastical lemon mousse... and it was a success! It is safe to say that my Gran's help was much needed and if left to my own devices I would have destroyed yet another kitchen in the process of trying to make a masterpiece. Below are some photos of the making process and of course some of my lovely Gran.

 And this is the finished article which was enjoyed by all my family, especially me!