A luxurious dessert that will add a healthy but sweet zing to that special occasion.

Ingredients
4 ripe figs
30ml/2tbsps liquid honey
30g/1oz unsweetened cooking chocolate
90g/3oz ground almonds
Cinnamon Sauce
280ml/ ½ pint single cream
1 stick cinnamon
2 egg yolks
60g/4tbsps sugar
Ground cinnamon and blanched almond halves to garnish

Method
Make a cross cut in each fig without cutting right down through the base. Carefully press the 4 sections of the fig out so it looks like a flower.

Melt the honey and chocolate together over a very gentle heat in a small, heavy-based saucepan.

Set aside to cool slightly and then mix in the ground almonds.

When the mixture has cooled completely, spoon an equal amount into the centre of each fig.

Meanwhile, prepare the sauce. Pour the cream into a deep saucepan and add the cinnamon stick.

Bring just to the boil; draw off the heat and leave to infuse.

Beat the egg yolks and the sugar together until light and gradually strain onto the infused cream.

Return the mixture to the saucepan and stir over a gentle heat until it just coats the back of a spoon. Leave to cool until just warm.

To serve, pour some of the custard onto a serving plate and tilt the plate to slowly coat the base.Place a filled fig on top of the custard, in the centre of the plate.Sprinkle around some ground cinnamon, topping each fig with a blanched almond.

© Judith Ferguson

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 15th, 2007 at 12:02 pm and is filed under lifestyle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.