Really Easy Cheesecake

A recipe from my friend Marie, she said it was easy and she was right......

Get a packet of ginger biscuits, crush them up. Remove small child from kitchen having a tantrum because she wanted to eat the biscuits. Melt some butter, mix with biscuits, press into cheesecake tin, chill.

Whisk up tub of Marscapone and tin of condensed milk (which I have managed to find in France, hurray!!) with juice & zest of some lemons or limes for a good 4 minutes. Apparently if you don't do this for long enough, it won't work. Not being prepared to take that chance, I whisked it for ages........

Pour into tin, chill

And that's it. Chuck on some chocolate curls if you're feeling really extravagent - we didn't have any chocolate :-(

My dinner guests loved it, the kids ate 2 lots each, I finished what was left for breakfast the next day, fantastic.

Trifling Trifle

I've never even attempted to make trifle before as it's one of those desserts that seem to have far too many things in it. However, last month I got roped into helping a friend make 170 of them for an English meal we were doing for the locals, and I realised quite a bit of cheating can be done.

So you need:

Sponge fingers (they call them boudoirs over here for some reason)
Jelly
Carton of Ambrosia ready made custard (to be found in the "Exotic Foreign Food" section of the supermarket over here along with such delights as Marmite and lemon curd)
Tin of mixed fruit cocktail
Tub of thick cream (best substitute over here is Marscapone mixed with single cream, the French just can't do proper cream)
Hundreds & thousands

Break up the sponge fingers, put them in the bottom of the bowl, chuck in the mixed fruit cocktail, make the jelly up (this usually involves pouring over boiling water and stirring, not too arduous), pour it over and leave to set in the fridge. Then pour over the custard, leave in the fridge a bit longer, then add a layer of cream and top off with hundreds and thousands to keep the kids happy. Or if it isn't for the kids, don't forget to chuck sherry over the sponge fingers before you add the rest.

Easy! And the French seem to love the stuff and think it's incredibly difficult to make so you can pretend to them that it was......