What to do with all the lovely gooseberries from my garden? Although some were ready earlier, lots were ready at once (and I was also lax in not picking them in stages), and so after a mammoth picking and topping & tailing session, I now have hundreds of gooseberries in my freezer. Although I make a nice gooseberry crumble I fancied something different and found this recipe for a layered vegan gooseberry fool.
I’ve just made it and it tastes as good as it looks! (Mine didn’t look as good as the one in the picture so I haven’t taken my own picture.) Having tried it, I would amend their recipe a bit – mine is below.
Layered crunchy gooseberry fool (serves 4)
- 8 oz gooseberries
- 1 tablespoon water (opt)
- 4 oz sugar
- 1/2 pint thick vegan cream (300ml or 10 fl.oz)
- 1/2 tsp ground ginger
- 4 oz ginger biscuits – crushed (I used Nairns’ ginger biscuits)
- 1.5 oz vegan margarine melted
1. Simmer the gooseberries in the water for 10-15mins. NB if you’re using frozen gooseberries, defrost overnight first, and, you probably won’t need the water either. Mine ended up a little watery because I added the water as well.
2. Stir in the sugar and leave to cool.
3. Later, melt the margarine and then add the crushed biscuits to it.
4. Add the thick vegan cream to the gooseberry mix and the ground ginger and whip or use a hand blender to make it lovely and smooth.
5. Place some of the creamy mix in the bottom of 4 serving glasses, then layer with some biscuit crumbs, then repeat. Finish with the creamy mix. Either serve straight away so the biscuit layers are still crunchy or chill and serve later (but the biscuits will go soft).
Notes: You can use the ‘thin’ vegan cream or maybe mix some with plain vegan yoghurt if you can’t get thick vegan cream. My fools were not thick (no pun intended!), so the layers didn’t show up very well in the glasses as it ran together a bit, but they were very tasty! I added the ground ginger to give it extra zing and it worked really well.
