Charlottes- spectacular desserts your way

Do you want to achieve the wow factor with desserts when entertaining for  festive gatherings? Charlottes technically refer to a mould lined with either bread, sponge, biscuit and then filled with either fruit, mousse, ice cream or gelato. Charlottes can be hot or cold. Simple or extravagant, but once you understand the basics you can experiment to create the wow factor your way.

A simple charlotte that is hot and can be prepared with four everyday ingredients is Apple Charlotte. Your ingredients are white sliced bread (the square mass produced variety), melted butter, stewed apple and cinnamon sugar ( castor sugar mixed with ground cinnamon).  Your first step is chose a mould, which can be a dariole mould ( for a single portion), a pudding basin or loaf tin ( for multiple portions). With the bread, trim off the crusts, brush with melted butter and sprinkle lightly with cinnamon sugar.

Then line your mould. Start with the base, if using a dariole mould or basin, cut out a disc slightly smaller than the base using a cutter. Then line the sides, allowing some overlap and cut the bread higher than the top of your mould so they can be folded over to form the base. Remember that you will invert the charlotte when serving so think about how you arrange the slices. Fill the centre with your stewed apple and fold over your bread. Cut a disc and place on top to seal your filling. Weigh down with a plate for a few minutes, to set the case before baking. Bake on a moderate heat (180⁰C) till brown and crisp. Immediately turn out onto a plate and serve with custard or ice cream. The flavour of this is hot apple puree with sweet buttered toast, textures crispy on the outside with a moist filling- real comfort food on a cold night.

Once you’ve tried this, it’s time to get more adventurous.

Apply the principles of the apple charlotte but with other ingredients. Let’s get classical.

Charlotte Royale: line your mould ( you can use a basin or a cake tin) with Swiss roll. With mini rolls you get more into your mould and the presentation is best due to the repetition of the Swiss roll design. Pack your rolls in as tight as possibly because any gaps will show  when the filling oozes into them. A homemade Swiss roll is great but shop bought is fine.

Fill your mould with mousse. Vanilla bavarois is traditional but you can substitute this with chocolate mousse, mascarpone mouse ( in a style of a Tiramisu) ice cream or layers of gelato. Remember you will turn out your charlotte so the filling needs to hold its shape. Then cover the top with more Swiss roll or a disc of sponge. When serving, turn your Charlotte Royale out on to your serving plate and decorate it. Brush with rolls with hot apricot glaze ( apricot jam boiled with a little water and strained) and decorate it with cream, choc cream or simply fresh berries and dust with icing sugar.

Charlotte Russe: or a Russian Charlotte. Use a cake tin. A spring form is best as it is easy to release the set charlotte from. Cut a disc of sponge a little short of the width of your tin. Line the sides of your cake tin with sponge fingers ( shop bought Savoiardi or homemade piped Biscuit Cuillierie AKA Lady fingers). Insert the sponge disc into the centre and brush with liquour flavoured syrup ( Grand Marnier, rum depending upon your flavourings). Fill with your mousse and leave to set. Release your Charlotte Russ from the cake tin. Decorate the top and then around the side, tie ribbon around the outside with a bow.

Summer pudding: This traditional British pudding is technically a charlotte. You can use a ceramic pudding basin (avoid using a metal mould as the acid in the berries will react to the metal and turn blue) and if you line it with cling wrap, turning out the finished pudding will be easy.   A mould is lined with bread which is a couple of days old. Line the mould overlapping the bread as for the apple charlotte. The centre is a mixture of berries which have been heated slightly to soften them in sugar syrup flavoured with citrus and vanilla. Heating the berries releases their colour which is important to colour when the juices soak into the bread. Make the mixture wet to allow for plenty of juice to soak into the bread. Then leave your summer pudding overnight to firm up. An alternative to using bread is to line the mould with sponge. This gives the summer pudding a flavour reminiscent of a berry trifle. Once the summer pudding has set overnight, turn it out onto a platter and coat it with raspberry coulis and decorate with a mixture of fresh berries. When cutting into your summer pudding the filling should be tightly packed with softened berries to help hold the shape. Serve with double cream or mascarpone flavoured with an orange liquor.

If you want to get adventurous, you can create decorative sponge sides by layering chocolate and vanilla sponge ( use boiled apricot jam to glue the layers). Do this in advance and allow the sponge to set in the freezer prior to slicing to line your mould. Alternatively stencil raw chocolate sponge onto baking paper, set in the freezer and spread vanilla sponge on top and then bake. This way you can create polka dots or heart designs.

Bon Appetite!