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Continuing the tour of the U.K. via food, a common dessert is something called “blancmange”.  Tracing its roots back to the influences of the Ottoman Empire, when almonds were first brought to Europe, this a slightly sweet, nutty dessert.  Sometime in the past several decades a food writer for the L.A. times decided that hazelnuts would be good, too, and hazelnut milk is what was in the pantry, so here we are.

Blancmange is also a really cool British New Wave band from the eighties.

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons Argo Cornstarch  (gluten-free)

2 cups hazelnut milk

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp cinnamon

2 packets of plain gelatin

1  1/2 cups of water

Pam

(The chocolate sauce is Nesquick, which is gluten-free and uses sugar, not high fructose corn syrup.)

Kitchen Apparati:

saucepan

small container for softening gelatin

wooden spoon

stove

microwave

measuring spoons, if you’re that picky about measurements–you can probably just splash little bits into the pan, and it will be fine.

small ramekins or jell-o molds

larger microwave-safe casserole for decanting the blancmange

Directions:

Put a cup of water and a cup of hazelnut milk into the saucepan on the stove.  Turn the heat to medium high.  While you are waiting for the  water to boil, empty the packets of gelatin into a small container in about half a cup of water.  Add the vanilla and the cinnamon to the pan.  Stir.  When the water starts to boil, add the gelatin and stir until it is dissolved.  Add the cornstarch and simmer for ten minutes, stirring constantly to get out the lumps.  (Many cooking blogs insist that you can avoid lumpy cornstarch by moistening it with water first, but I find cornstarch to be lumpy in any form.)  When the mixture has started to thicken, cook it for another three minutes to make sure the cornstarch is really cooked, stirring the whole time.  Finally, add the last cup of hazelnut milk and stir.  Spray Pam into the ramekins, and then pour the entire mixture into the ramekins.  Chill for at least four hours.  When the blancmange is set, put a microwave safe casserole dish into the microwave, and turn the microwave to “high” for four minutes.  Take the dish full of hot water out of the microwave carefully and let one ramekin at a time sit in the hot water bath for two minutes, taking care that the water doesn’t go into the blancmange over the edges.  Then, take the ramekin out of the hot water bath and put the blancmange serving plate face down on top of the ramekin.  Flip the plate so that the blancmange is now upside-down on the serving plate.  Drizzle with chocolate sauce.

Cost:  About $2.50 for six desserts.

Soundtrack:  Blancmange, “Don’t Tell Me”, “Blind Vision”