Though I love to bake, I also like to cook from the most fresh and unprocessed produces with a preference for organic.
But are these two notions incompatible? I mean is it possible to make a delicious mouth watering dessert using only organic unprocessed and homemade produces?
This is the challenge for this month’s Sugar High (Low) Friday hosted by Sam from Becks and Posh.

Nowadays, it’s very difficult to come across good organic produces. It’s accurate that now most of the supermarket stock them but I prefer to get my produces from local farmers and this is a hard task.
First you’ve got to find the farm – which is not easy.
Then you’ve got to immerse into the farm’s world – not easy either (see here – my immersion into a goat cheese making farm).
But once you’ve achieved that you can access to a new world – the world of true taste!

Have you ever tasted homemade butter? Or homemade cream? Can you taste the difference? I definitely can.
Homemade organic produces may cost a little more than regular products, but by buying them you know:
- the origin of what you get
- that it’s going to be good
- that the animals are happy (and this is very important for me – could you stand buying eggs when you know the hens are like sardines in a tin? I can’t. I want my chicken to be bred outside and I want him to eat good cereals… You may think it’s a ‘cliché’ but that’s the way I feel.)

For this month’s Sugar High Friday I decided to make a honey semifreddo.
I already know what you’re thinking: ‘Ice-cream? Full of fat!’. OK I’m not going to lie to you, this recipe calls for double cream; but actually I feel far less guilty when eating homemade organic cream than when eating industrial cream. And I suspect I am not the only one…
This recipe is from –guess who?- Nigella Lawson.

Indeed as soon as I saw SHF theme I remembered the nice honey semifreddo Nigella made for one of her TV series. I mean this has no bad ingredients – cream (see above), honey, eggs and pinenuts.
A semifreddo is an Italian dessert between a mousse and an ice-cream. I think Neil Perry describes it very well in The food i love: “Semifreddo is a flavoured mousse that sets in the freezer. It has a texture that is icier than ice cream or sorbet, but is at the same time very light.”
The peculiar thing about semifreddo is ‘la panna che lo rende spumoso e soffice’ [the cream that makes it moussy and soft].

Semifreddo al miele [Honey Semifreddo]
serves 6

Note: all the produces I used to make this semifreddo were organic. The eggs were from a small farm ‘de Fouras’ (where my grand parents live), the honey is from Les ruchers du Freussin in Beurlay (a small town of Charentes Maritimes) –it is not your usual runny honey but more a golden paste with a charming smell- and the cream and the pinenuts are organic.

1 egg
4 egg yolks
100g best quality honey + few tbsp to drizzle
300ml double cream
½ cup pinenuts

Line a 1 litre loaf tin (fanny: I used 6 cooking rings) with clingfilm.
Beat the egg and egg yolks with the honey in a bowl, over a saucepan of gently simmering water, until the mixture is pale and thick. I use a wire balloon whisk for this, but if you feel like a bit of culinarily aided whirring, it will certainly be quicker with a hand-held electric whisk (fanny: and indeed it was).
Whip the double cream until thick, and then gently fold in the egg and honey mixture.
Pour into the prepared loaf tin, and cover carefully with cling film before putting it in the freezer for about 2-3 hours.
When it is ready to serve, turn out the semifreddo onto a suitably sized plate and drizzle this manilla-coloured log with honey, and sprinkle with the toasted pine nuts, before slicing.
It thaws quickly as it stands, but that is part of its heavenly-textured charm.

Posted by fanny who loves to forget labeling posts