Book:
The Four Seasons of Brambly Hedge by Jill Barklem
1990, Philomel Books
We are in the dog days of Summer. The garden is a jungle, and the freezer is full of popsicles. In The Four Seasons of Brambly Hedge, the Summer Story begins with a description of how the mice spend their time by the stream to keep cool.
By the banks of the stream was the dairy mill, powered by the flowing water. Poppy Eyebright looked after the Dairy Stump.
Further down the stream was the flour mill, run by Dusty Dogwood.
The two meet walking by the stream and eventually get engaged. What follows is the story of the preparations for the wedding, which is on Midsummer’s Day.
Brambly Hedge Wedding Menu:
Cold watercress soup
Fresh dandelion salad
Honey creams
Syllabubs
Merengues.
Huge baskets of wild strawberries
Primrose, meadowsweet and and elderflower wine
The first drama of the story is when the groom (“Dusty by name, dusty by nature”) accidentally gets flour all over himself and his best man. But of course, as in real weddings, once everything gets started those sort of things don’t matter.
The wedding is held on the stream on a bark raft. The second drama is that during the reception the enthusiastic dancing causes the raft’s moorings to break and they drift in to the stream. But this doesn’t cause alarm either, the dancing carries on and eventually they catch on some rushes and forget-me-nots and are able to tie up again. When evening falls, the party breaks up and heads home Poppy and Dusty slip away to the primrose woods, to a cottage surrounded by wild roses and honeysuckle, “the perfect place for a honeymoon”.
Summer Story is a sweet little story and the perfect representation of an old-fashioned Summer wedding. Like Spring Story, it is suitable for all ages and has very interesting illustrations. The flour mill and the dairy mill pages in particular are fun to pore over, trying to see how they work.
Poppy and Dusty’s wedding menu of “cool summer foods” offers a lot to choose from, but I decided to make honey creams, because I had never heard of them. It turns out most people haven’t! In the end the only recipe I found was this one, which reveals honey creams to be a sort of ice cream.
Honey Creams
Ingredients:
4 Tbsp thick honey
4 egg yolks
Half a pint whipping cream
1 Tbsp honey liqueur (optional)
The original recipe calls for grated chocolate, but i didn’t use it because I don’t think they have chocolate in Brambly Hedge.
Method:
Heat the honey in a pan until it is a bit runny. Let it cool slightly. Beat the egg yolks and drizzle in the honey, mixing until it is a bit thick and pale yellow. Whip the cream. You could use pre-whipped cream or thick cream as well, depending on how light you want your creams to be. I just put it in a jar and shook it until it was thick, which led to very set ice cream.
Whip together the egg yolk mixture and the cream mixture. At this point you can choose whether to add the liqueur. The original recipe calls for 4 Tbsp of whiskey, but I omitted that in case people wanted a less boozy dessert. I divided the mixture in two and made a plain a version and one with 1 Tbsp of honey liqueur. Divide into ramekins. I used silicone cupcake moulds for ease of removal. Freeze for at least 4 hours, until set.
Without the booze, this is definitely ice cream. I have never made a proper ice cream with egg yolks before, and the combination of the rich custard with the honey is delicious. Be aware that this does contain raw eggs. Here in the UK most eggs are safe raw, but be careful anyway.
The way I made them (without proper whipped cream) the honey creams are very dense, like those ice cream blocks you can buy for ice cream cakes, but they only take a couple of minutes to thaw enough to eat, and in fact melt pretty quickly, so if you are bringing these somewhere you will need a portable cooler. They are very sweet and taste strongly of honey, so I might recommend only using 3 Tbsp honey if you don’t have a sweet tooth. Both the plain and the liqueur version are equally nice.
You could add any topping you want; I added blueberries. Overall they are an amazing and luxurious Summer treat, perfect for a day on the river.
Take your ice cream outside and enjoy it in the Sun, preferably by a body of water, or even a paddling pool to rest your feet in.
The Rereader's Kitchen 