Apricot & Chocolate Fool

Excuse the bad photograph, but I had to share this apricot and chocolate fool as it was so delicious. Even if the light was against me. It was a dark, dreich day here in Scotland with lots of rain.

What is a fool?

Sounds like a silly question but I am of course talking about the dessert and not a foolish person, although to be fair there are a lot of those about.

Traditionally a fool was an old English dessert where fruit puree was folded into custard, but these days it is more commonly fruit puree mixed with whipped cream and some sugar, usually icing sugar, to sweeten it. A posset (the most popular a lemon posset) is similar but the cream is heated and mixed with the fruit juice or puree and sugar, then chilled.

And if you add alcohol?

Well add alcohol to a fruit fool and you have a syllabub, which is usually made with wine, cream sugar and any flavourings like fruit puree you may add. It is whipped and chilled like a fool.

Here are a few of my fool recipes:

Coconut & Mango Yoghurt Fool

Lemon Dream
Lemon Honey & Pear Syllabub
Lemon Syllabub

Violet Apricots

I was very pleased to come across a punnet of rather lush looking red apricots. I haven't come across red apricots before. These were rather inaptly named Violet Apricots.

These jewel like fruits sat in the fridge for a week before I got around to using them. I know apricots don't have a long shelf life, but these were still beautiful. I settled on an apricot fool and decided to add the chocolate as a layer to the bottom of the glass.

Yield: 4Author: Jacqueline Meldrum

Apricot & Chocolate Fool

Apricots and chocolate. Mmmmmmm! A quick and easy jar dessert to use up any stoned fruit left over in your fruit bowl.

prep time: 20 MINScook time: total time: 20 mins

ingredients

• 10 apricots, halved and stone removed
• grated peel from 1 lemon
• juice from 1/2 lemon
• 1/4 cup water
• 6 tbsp icing sugar
• 300ml whipping cream
• 100g dark chocolate
• 150ml double cream
• 1 tbsp Cointreau, optional

instructions

1. First make the puree. Place the apricots, sugar, lemon juice, lemon peel and water in a pot. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer gently for 10 minutes until the apricots are soft. Set aside to cool a little before whizzing up in a food processor or with a stick blender.
2. Next make a chocolate sauce, In another pot over a low to medium heat, heat the double cream and break the chocolate into it. Stir the chocolate until it has melted, then remove form the heat and add the cointreau if you are using it. You could add orange juice instead or leave it plain.
3. Pour the melted chocolate into 4 bowls or glasses and pop into the fridge.
4. Now make the fool base. Whisk the whipping cream until firm. If you like, you may add a little icing sugar, to sweeten it up, but as you are adding some apricot puree, you really don't need to.
5. Swirl apricot puree through the double cream, leaving some to top the finished dish with.
6. Spoon apricot fool on top of the chocolate sauce in each of your bowls/glasses and top with some of the remaining apricot puree.
7. Chill well before serving.
8. Enjoy!

Created using The Recipes Generator

For more easy dessert ideas check out my recipe index.