Leftovers? Just add custard and freeze, if you please

As mentioned in my last post, the standard Christmas over-catering back home meant that in addition to leftover goose fat, Christmas cake, turkey, ham, cheese, nuts, nibbles and even chocolate, I also had a large chunk of Christmas pudding in the food package I took home with me when returning to my place after the festive break. Tempting as it was to use it up with the goose-fat fried method, some time ago I'd seen a recipe making use of leftover pud that I was also keen to try. The source was greatlittleideas.com, a website of recipes all featuring one of the wide range of products manufactured by Premier Foods, from Angel Delight to Oxo.

The recipe I'd seen made use of Ambrosia custard - which of course, is available in tins - alongside Christmas pudding, not merely topping the latter with the former (how pedestrian; how vanilla!), but rather creating the far more original and intriguing-sounding "Christmas Pud Iced Logs".

All you need to do is break up a slab of pudding, add a couple of tablespoons of delightfully rich and creamy Ambrosia custard and a small quantity of brandy (which the recipe said was "optional" - an option I chose to go for), and then shape into a log, wrap in cling-film and pop in the freezer for at least four hours, before slicing it and serving with coffee.

Must say that prior to the freezing, it wasn't looking all that promising. I mean, yes, it did look like a log...but not so much the Yule variety as a rather less appealing kind. Still, perhaps some kind of alchemy would occur overnight in the deep-freeze...

  

...or perhaps not. Not only was it looking exactly the same, it didn't seem to have frozen very well, and was still very soft. Maybe I added a bit too much brandy - I don't really measure such things too exactly, so my tablespoon might have been a bit generous. As it was, it wouldn't even slice properly, the knife squashing it down into rather unattractive-looking blobs, nothing like the neat little rounds pictured alongside the recipe on the website. Tasty as mine were, I'm not sure you'd really want to have served these as an after-dinner treat, looking as they did like something the cat might have been responsible for. Oh well.

The other problem with this recipe was that it hadn't used very much of the tin of custard, so I now had a load of that left over. Still. there was plenty more inspiration on greatlittleideas.com of other things to try, one recipe that caught my attention was Lemon and Custard Ice Cream - essentially just stirring lemon curd into some of the custard, and freezing it. I didn't have any lemon curd, but had just bought a jar of Christmas Cake Curd from M&S - "inspired by the flavours of Christmas Cake". It had been heavily reduced in the store I visited - clearly they'd had a lot of leftovers themselves after Christmas that they were trying to get rid of. It had that same buttery, yolky texture as lemon curd, but with the warming taste of plums, raisins and Christmassy spices rather than the usual sharp citrus tang.

As it was quite thick, I heated a couple of teaspoons of the curd in the microwave to allow me to swirl it through a small container of the custard more easily. This ripple effect wasn't so noticeable when  I took it out of the freezer the next day, though I suspect this was due to the tub having fallen on its side after I shut the door, so the contents all slumped to one side. It had actually frozen properly though, which  was good, though would have benefited from being stirred up every hour or so to break up the ice crystals more. I had expected the custard flavour to be more pronounced, but in face the strong spicy fruitiness of the curd swirl was more prevalent. Not bad at all actually, and you can see how it would work quite well with a nice tart lemon curd too.

By this time, I was on a roll - what else could I combine with custard and freeze? Oooh, how about Custard Banana Pops - a piece of banana, skewered on a stick, dipped in custard and frozen. This particularly appealed (no pun intended) as I am a big fan of banana and custard as a (hot) dessert, and also the the TV show Arrested Development, in which a stall selling frozen bananas ("There's always money in the banana stand!") is a recurring location/plot device.

Here they are before and after freezing:

With only a thin layer of custard, and the banana itself not freezing too firmly, it was possibly to bite off chunks of it rather than having to lick or suck it like an ice lolly to get it to melt - probably for the best, given the look of the thing. Ahem. But as you chew, the banana-custard mush quickly melts in the mouth, creaing a king of instant banana ice-cream which is very nice indeed. You don't get the same comforting quality as hot banana custard, but it would be a good summer alternative.

But it wasn't summer, and bananas aren't at all Christmassy, which left me considering what else I could bung on a stick, dunk in custard and whack in the freezer. The answer came in the form of a Christmas Pud flavour "Nakd" bar, which like the curd from M&S had been reduced post-Xmas in Tesco, no doubt to get it off the shelves and make room for all the Easter goods. Nakd make a range of bars with indulgent-sounding flavours such as Pecan Pie, Gingerbread, Bakewell Tart and Cocoa Orange, but in fact they are all "raw fruit and nut bars" - this one was just dates, cashews and raisins with a hint of Christmas spice, all "smooshed together" (their term, not mine) without being cooked or with any added sugar or syrup. Given their ingredients and the way they're made, they aren't always the most attractive of snacks. Marginally better than my Iced Log, but not by much.

They're actually surprisingly tasty, but somewhat virtuous-sounding, so dousing one in custard rather appealed to me.

But the bar refused to be made less healthy in such fashion, wishing to remain "nakd" rather than clothed in the custard, which seemed to have all slid off while in the freezer. There was therefore only really any trace of it left on the flat top surface of the bar. Other than that though it had worked ok, with the bar fortunately not having frozen rock solid (maybe my freezer just isn't very effective), so it was still nicely chewy. Despite their lack of any added sugar, with their high dried fruit content I sometimes find these bars a little sweet, but this had been diminished by its chilling, and made the spiciness seem more intense.












With just a tiny bit of custard left, I went for one final spin on the "frozen Christmas leftovers" theme. As usual, we had gone completely overboard on the mince pie front too, so I'd put a whole pack of them in my freezer, thinking it might be some time before I got round to eating them with all the other remaining sweet stuff to get through as well.

Of course you should probably ensure that your mince pies are completely thawed before consuming them, but life's too short to wait around for that. How about a mince pie straight from the freezer, doused in hot custard instead? As it turned out, it made for a whole new mince pie taste/texture sensation - the frozen pastry snaps into shards rather than crumbling, and the mincemeat inside becomes almost like a fruity iced parfait. And then where both elements meet the hot custard, they begin to thaw into a lovely gooey, spicy, creamy, crumbly mess, which you can't help but smoosh together and shovel into your mouth. Not that I would normally advocate such behaviour, or the use of a non-word like "smoosh". But they do seem quite appropriate here - I don't think it pays to be too elegant, or eloquent, when it comes to leftovers.