Lemon Posset Pudding

Ok, hands up, this isn't my recipe. I've stolen it from another brilliant food blog called Recipe Rifle. What drew me in at first was the name Posset. Because to me Posset was the milky sick babies bring up after a feed and I wondered who on earth would make a pudding out of baby sick. I won't lie, I was a tad disappointed to find that this is a non sick based pudding - I would have been so very impressed if some eco earth mother type had decided that all that baby sick was a waste and something could be done with it. Turns out that there are many milk based foodstuffs called Posset dating back to medieval times and that baby sick got its name from them. I found one called Sack Posset which seems to be basically a boozy custard, expect to see it here soon!

Anyway back to Lemon Posset. It's dead easy to make, quick and utterly delicious. It's perfect for a dinner party as you can make it well in advance and jazz it up with biscuits and coulis (posh fruit purée). I served mine in little pudding and sherry glasses that I picked up from charity shops. I think it would also be lovely served in shabby chic style mismatched teacups for added twee-ness. I advise doing a test run with half the amount of ingredients as lemon based treats can be divisive, some will prefer it to be tart and some will like it very sweet, it will also depends on the size of your lemons! My grandma swanned off to Sorrento and kindly consented to bring me back some of their famous fruits, I found I only need 1 large Sorrento lemon as Asda's don't pack the same citrus punch.

Ingredients

500ml Double Cream (Don't use a low fat alternative such as Elmlea as for whatever reason it won't set as well.)

100g Caster Sugar

2 Lemons - zest and juice of both


Method

Juice and zest your lemons - I used a herb chopper, or a mezzeluna for Nigella fans, to get my zest super fine and set aside.
Pop your cream in a saucepan and simmer gently for 3 mins then add your lemon juice, zest and sugar and whisk until the sugar is dissolved.

Pour into your chosen receptacles and chill for 3 hours.

I like to serve with butter biscuits or shortbread and maybe a raspberry coulis if I'm feeling dead posh.

Oh I just had a thought if you really, really wanted to impress you could decorate with edible flowers like viola's - I noticed the ever reliable Waitrose was selling little pots of them by the salad stuff this summer and they look amazing on cakes and such.