Ballymaloe Desserts: Iconic Recipes and Stories from Ireland

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Dissolve sugar in 1/3 cup of water over heat and continue cooking to a caramel. Remove from heat. Pour in 1 cup water and continue cooking until caramel is dissolved and smooth. Do not stir. Irish Coffee Sauce (that coffee sauce strongly laced with whiskey!) Plain white flour is mostly used in cakes, shortcrust pastry and biscuits. I much prefer plain to self-raising; if a raising agent is required I add the necessary amount for that dish. Sugar Yes, this Ballymaloe Creamed Butter Pastry is excellent for blind baking, which is fully or partially baking a pie crust before filling so that it doesn’t get soggy. This debut cookbook from the Ballymaloe House head pastry chef JR Ryall is stunning, featuring 140 seasonal Irish recipes from his kitchen and the famous dessert trolley at Ballymaloe. More than just recipes, it’s also full of Ryall’s gorgeous insights, seasonal observations and a homage to Ballymaloe founder and culinary icon Myrtle Allen, who trained him. Photography by the wonderful Cliodhna Prendergast elevates this beautifully designed book so it will sit just as well on a kitchen counter as a coffee table. Remove the baking paper from the bottom of each cake. Sandwich the cakes with the coffee buttercream, reserving about three tablespoons. Pour the glacé icing over the top of the cake and use the tip of a small palette knife to ease it out to the edges, allowing any excess to run down the sides. Using a piping bag fitted with a plain nozzle, pipe the remaining buttercream around the top of the cake and decorate with walnut halves or chocolate coffee beans.

Paying attention to small details and taking care when presenting each dish makes cooking and eating these desserts a very special experience,” he writes. And for that presentation to work best, JR would be mad to veer off his trolley. Scrape the egg whites over the lemon base, then fold in the whites with a spatula just until they’re incorporated. The mixture will still be quite liquidy. Eye-catching, elegant, and a bit magical, these inspiring yet accessible recipes range from the delightfully retro Ice Cream Bomb to the showstopping Irish Coffee Meringue Gateau to a Classic Strawberry Shortcake made modern with an edgy geometric presentation. You can also freeze the pastry after you shape it into a disc (or discs if you double the recipe!) and wrap well—it will keep in the freezer for two months. Defrost the pastry in the fridge before using. It may well be the only book I ever write. I’m not trying to make a career move. But I did then feel like there was a book that could be written. And a lot of it, from a very deep personal level,” he says.

ALMOND PRALINE POWDER

All starches need salt: without it, they taste bland. Flour is the main starch used in the pastry kitchen and always benefits from salt. Proceed as for plain Carrigeen. Blend cocoa with a little milk and add to hot, strained Carrageen before adding the egg. Chill well. There’s quite a line-up already — confirmed speakers to date include 30-year-old Rasmus Monk, of Copenhagen’s Alchemist Restaurant, recently named as OAD’s Best Restaurant in Europe 2021, Paolo Casagrande of Barcelona’s 3 Michelin star Lasarte, Calum Franklin ‘the pie king’ who heads up the popular The Pie Room in the Holborn Dining Room in London and Søren Ørbek Ledet co-owner and sommelier of 3 Michelin-star Geranium, Denmark. In JR's own words: "The idea for the project came about almost 10 years ago when Hazel Allen asked if I’d be interested in writing a little book to sell from the hall table in Ballymaloe House. I waited a few years, until I felt the time was right and I was ready, and now the idea for that little book has become something a bit bigger, and I’m very excited to share it with the world. I hope you all enjoy using this book as much as I enjoyed writing it"

By focusing on seasonality and what was around her, she set an example,” he writes. “She championed the best-quality produce, always looking for natural flavour. Her statement was feeding people food in which she felt thoroughly confident. Working with Mrs Allen was always exciting and often unpredictable. Her approach seemed eccentric yet it always made sense. She believed in her ideas, knew her own mind and, through her life, became an expert problem solver. Myrtle had a clear vision and she shared it with everyone around her. I feel very fortunate to have learnt from her.”A cold-butter pie crust relies on water content in cold butter evaporating to make the crust rise. The key is to keep the butter as cold as possible to create distinct buttery layers in the crust when baked. Myrtle Allen may have passed away, by JR, as head chef in the restaurant’s pastry kitchen, continues to keep this practice alive, reproducing Mrs Allen’s Carrageen Moss Pudding, a silky soft-set seaweed dish that is a Ballymaloe speciality, while working with the incredible produce that finds its way to his kitchen door. It was an unlikely relationship, he adds. Myrtle was in her late 70s when they met, Ryall a teenager. She became his mentor and, despite the age difference, one of his best friends.