Lemon & Rosemary Posset with Green Peppercorn Shortbread

Being more of a savoury person than a sweet person, desserts are not often something I make the effort to spend lots of time on. As much as I love dessert, I think I’m just not a natural pastry chef. Plus, The Boyfriend is brilliant at them, so sweet is usually his area. However, I had another little free sample gem from The Spicery. See my Spiced Banana Loaf recipe for more info on The Spicery. This time round it was a recipe for lemon posset and shortbread, although being The Spicery there was of course a little twist.

This was a great dessert recipe for me as it was really simple, didn’t involve lots of complicated processes and was therefore really quick to make and turned out looking really impressive. This would be a really good one for dinner parties as you can do everything ahead in the morning or the day before leaving you plenty of time to get on with the rest of dinner and allowing you more time to spend with your guests.

This dish was very lemony so if you’re after something subtle maybe just use two lemons, this also might allow the rosemary flavour to come through a bit more as it was quite subtle. I was really pleased with how this dessert turned out, I tried it out on a family Sunday dinner this time round but I’ll definitely be using it for dinner parties, its also got me interested in looking into experimenting with different flavour possets as its something quite new to me that I’ve not really tried doing before.

Ingredients

For the posset:

350ml double cream

120g caster sugar

2 tsp dried rosemary

1 tsp green peppercorns

3 lemons

For the shortbread:

45g caster sugar

100g butter

8g crushed green peppercorns

120g plain flour

Method

1. Pour the cream into a small saucepan and add the sugar, rosemary, peppercorns and zest of two of the lemons.

2. Bring to the boil and then reduce down to a simmer for 5 minutes.

3. Stir in the juice from all three of the lemons and bring the mixture back to the boil. Remove from the heat as soon as it starts to bubble.

4. Strain the mixture into a jug.

5. Divide equally between 4 ramekins. Place in the fridge and leave to set for as long as possible, 2 hours minimum but ideally make these in the morning ready to serve as dessert in the evening.

6. Preheat the oven to 180°C.

7. Cream together the butter, sugar and ground peppercorns (reserving a little for sprinkling on the biscuits before baking) until thoroughly combined.

8. Add the flour and mix well, I find the easiest way is just to get stuck in with your hands. Bring the mixture together into a ball and tip out onto a floured surface.

9. Roll out to about 1cm thick and use a cookie cutter to cut into shapes. Place in the fridge for 30 minutes if you don’t want them to turn out like mine did in the picture below because I forgot this bit. Hardening them up in fridge will help them hold their shape when cooking. Also space them nice and far apart on a baking sheet covered with greaseproof paper. Sprinkle with the remaining ground peppercorns.

Alternatively you could use this method to cut into disc shapes for round biscuits.