Merry Christmas!

Today I'm making a Nesselrode cream

and I need to choose a good mould.

I'm going to choose one with a pattern on it.

Ah! Pineapples are very fashionable.

For this recipe you will need:

water

caster sugar

chestnuts

gelatine

cream

vanilla

Lemon

cherries

and candied peel

This dish is mostly made up of cream and chestnuts.

Annie Chase, the scullery maid, and Sylvia have been helping me prepare the chestnuts

Firstly, Annie boiled the chestnuts to remove the hard outer shell

- it's very messy and very hard on the fingernails. Silvia then reboiled the

chestnuts again in a syrup of water and sugar to soften them. And now I'm going

to push them through a sieve.

Chestnuts have a lovely flavour, even if they are

a trial to prepare.

You can buy them in tins.

They won't be as nice.

There are lots of different recipes for Nesselrode pudding. Some of them are iced puddings

but this one is a blancmange, or a 'set cream', and altogether more suitable for

this family at Christmas.

Now I've warmed half the cream, I'm going to sweeten it

and infuse it with some lemon

and a little vanilla essence.

Now the cream is warm enough to melt my gelatine, which I've been soaking.

This recipe is from one of my favourite authors, Eliza Action.

I've even noted it in my own book, because I like it so much.

I'm now going to mix the rest of my cream with my chestnuts.

The sweet needs to be light and airy so we need to mix it well.

This is a seasonal dish.

We serve fruit and vegetables out of season - strawberries in December show a family is

wealthy and can afford a good gardener.

But sometimes it's nice to revel in things when they're at their best.

I'm now going to combine my two mixtures together.

You must wait until your mix is really thick

before you add your dried fruit

otherwise it will sink to the bottom

and we wouldn't want that.

So now I can add my candied peel

and my dried cherries.

And now it's ready to go into my mould, which I've already lined with a little oil.

And once it's full, it then needs putting aside so it can set.

Now that it's set, it's time to turn it out, so just work the edges a little away from the mould

and then let gravity do the rest.

This dish doesn't need any decoration. It looks splendid enough on its own.

But I am going to garnish it a little with candied peel and angelica.

And there you are - Nesselrode cream.