Quick & Easy Desserts - A Beginners Guide To Baking

1. Course Trailer - Quick & Easy Desserts: Desserts aren't just the end of the meal. They're a dish that everyone's looking forward to. They're something to be celebrated, they look beautiful, and they taste incredible. But most of all, they can be quick and easy. Hi, my name is Grant and I'm a home cook and baker from England. I have over 10 years experience cooking in the kitchen. I love creating meals and sharing them with family and friends. I also love a delicious dessert. For me, cooking can be a lot of different things. It's ingredients, flavors, textures, assembly, and finally, presentation. In this class, I want to show you how to make mouth-watering desserts, that taste incredible and look beautiful. I've chosen recipes that are easy, full of flavor, and fun to make. They can also be made personal and unique to you. These recipes are base recipes. They're recipes that you can play with or customize once you understand the fundamentals. I've intentionally structured this class so you can learn one of the fundamentals of baking during each lesson. Throughout this process, you'll learn how to combine flavors and textures. Reactions to expect when mixing your ingredients. What's the correct consistency? When are things ready? What happens if something goes wrong? The art of assembling and plating. What's on our menu? First up, we have a classic tiramisu, which has a lovely blend of sweetness and bitterness. We then have chocolate brownies, soft, and gooey in the center served with a phenomenal chocolate sauce. Next, a light, refreshing summer pavlova. Finally, a classic French dessert, the lemon tart, which for me sums up everything a dessert should be, stunning to look at and wonderful to eat. This class is absolutely perfect for beginners and also people juggling busy lifestyles. The recipes are simple and fast, but they can also be made well in advance and stored. You can freeze the flavor, and impress your guests, by bringing them out and adding the finishing touches right in front of their eyes. To make this even simpler, I've put together a course guide that you can download and keep forever. These are foolproof recipes and after this course, they'll belong to you. By the end of this, not only will you know how to make four incredible desserts, you'll also have the confidence and knowledge to continue your baking journey. I can't wait to see you in class. 2. Class Project - Quick & Easy Desserts: I am super excited about this class project because I want you to go away and develop your own chocolate brownie. Now, the whole point of this course is to give you the skills, the knowledge, and the confidence to look at deserts in a new light. You've got some fantastic recipes now and I want you to take them and elevate them to the next level. We're going to focus on the brownie. I want you to post them, share them on the course. I'll take a look at them and I'll give you feedback, and I want you to really make it your own, so you can add your own personal flavors to it, you could make it for a friend or a loved one. You could ask them what their favorite flavors are and just try and take that recipe that you've got that basic recipe now and adapt it to make it your own. A few examples or ideas. I've got one of them could be you could add chocolate chunks. You can add some white chocolate chunks, some milk chocolate, or you could even have both, the more chocolate the better, you could add fruit to your brownie, you could some some strawberries and raspberries, they'd go really well with that chocolate, or you could also add a surprise, which could be popping candy, so people could take a bite and they've got a lot of pops in their mouth, they would just add to that flavor explosion in the mouth. I want you to go away, plan, sit down, make a warm drink or a cold drink, and just make some notes of what you want from a brownie, and then off you go, adapt it. I want to see the pictures, share them. I will look at them all and I'll provide you with my feedback. That's your class project, make the most incredible brown you can. I can't wait to see what you come up with. 3. Italian Tiramisu: Tiramisu, for me, is just a classic dessert. It's got that bitterness from the coffee, but that sweetness from the mascarpone and also the chocolate. I love making it, I love serving it after dinner. I want to show you how simple it is to make, but also we're assembling ingredients, it's all bought in. There's no cooking, we're mixing few things together, and then just making it look beautiful. For me is that last part of the meal, and if I'm cooking for anyone, I want them to just leave on a high and just think, wow, that desert look fantastic. It tasted great. Also, it mainly looked phenomenal. Also, you can add your own personal flair to it. In this course, I'm going to show you a lot of different ways to present your desserts but I also want to encourage you to think outside of the box and just make it your own. This is the recipe for tiramisu. We've got our mascarpone cream, we've got our sweetened condensed milk. We've got our vanilla bean paste, we've got sponge, we've got our coffee. Then it's also optional if you want to add some alcohol, you can. I'm going to add a little bit rum to this. Then finally we've got our dark cocoa powder, and we've also got a little bit of dark chocolate, just the top with. Like I said, this is super simple to make. We're literally going to mix a few things in a bowl and we're going to assemble it and that's why it's the first lesson in this course. I'm going to teach you that we can make stuff very quickly. It can taste incredible and it can look amazing so let's get started. We've got our mascarpone here. All I'm going to do is I'm just going to add this mascarpone to the bowl. All of it in here and mascarpone is incredible. This was made in Italy so tiramisu is an Italian dessert. Basically, tiramisu is sponge that is soaked in coffee. Add some alcohol if you'd like to and then it's just layered perfectly with this lovely cheese. I've got this here, and I've also got my sweetened condensed milk. I'm going to add that to the mascarpone and basically condensed milk is milk that had a lot of moisture removed, so it's a lot thicker. The colors a lot darker, but this is very sweet as well. This adds the sweetness to the mascarpone. Finally, I'm going to add a little bit vanilla. You can use vanilla essence, you can use vanilla extract. I've actually got a little vanilla bean paste here. I like that because you can see the the vanilla beans in there. For me that just looks, when you're eating the desert, it looks phenomenal because you've got the little speckles of the vanilla in there. Again, in this course, I want to show you and teach you to think about how things look. Think about when you add ingredients. The fact that it'll have on the final look of everything. What I'm going to do here before I get my whisk in. I'm just going to break the mascarpone up a little bit, mix it in, and when it's a little bit combined like that, I'm going to get my whisk and just start to whisk. This is very easy to do. If you don't want to use a hand whisk, you can put it in your home electric whisk if you've got one. It shouldn't take too long. You're literary just combining it until it's smooth. It's about 15 seconds. We don't want it to be lumpy, but also we don't want to over whisk it. When that's all combined like that, I'm going to get my spatula back in. Just get out of the whisk. I want to make sure there's much off the whisk as possible just because I want it in the bowl, because it's going to end up on my dessert. I don't want to waste anything. Now I'm just going to fold it through and look at that. That looks delicious. I'm resisting trying it already. Next, I'm going to get a piping bag. I want this in here because like I said, I'm thinking about the presentation, I want this to look fantastic. All I'm going to do, little tip for getting stuff in a piping bag, is to fold it backwards. I'm just going to fold the top down. Basically that means if I spill any, it's not going to go on the top and come out, it's just going to fold in the middle. But also it means I can sit it in an empty cup. I'll sit that there. I'll keep the structure of the bag and it will just help me add stuff to it. I'm going to put this in here, big dollop in. I'm going to fill this all up to be honest. The reason it's in a piping bag, I'll show you in a minute is, again, I'm thinking about the presentation. I want to impress people. This is super quick to make so that's there. I can literally fold that. Give a little shake so it comes down. Just with my hand, I'm just going to spin it. As I spin it, that seals off the top. Also it stops it from coming out. I'm going to leave that there. I going to come back to that in a minute. Now, the sponge, we're going to soak this sponge in coffee. I've got my coffee here. Now this is a room temperature. I made a coffee earlier on. I let it go cold. You can use decaf, you can use caffeinated, whatever you'd like. But make sure it's cold, if it's going to be hot, it's going to really, almost like cook the sponge a little bit. The sponge will go really funny. I'm going to add a little bit of rum to this. Now, I love the flavor of rum and literally, it's just a splash. There we go. But I really think it just elevates the desert. You don't have to, if you don't drink alcohol or it's for kids. If you use decaffeinated coffee, don't use alcohol. Basically I've got this lovely mix here. I've got my sponge. I'm going to just start to break my sponge up just so it fits in the bowl and just dip it in. Basically that's going to absorb all this coffee. See that, it's super quick. Tip in, if you want to try and avoid getting your hands really covered in coffee, you can use a spoon. But I'm doing this super quickly. I don't mind getting coffee on the hands. It's a little treat before I assemble, the coffee in it. There we go. It almost absorbed all the coffee there, which is perfect. You want to make sure you don't let the sponge absorb too much coffee because I love the texture from the sponge, it's that the softness, but also from the edge of the sponge, there's almost that little crunch which goes into the desert. Then finally, we're going to assemble when they're ready, it's that quick. Basically with this, I want to make individual portions because I can either freeze them, I can have them for later, or I can make one big portion where I've got a big bowl and I could put loads cream in, I could lay it with load sponge and then I could serve it up on the table so it depends what you're doing. Either a dinner party for lots of people, or if you want it to be more intimate, maybe it's a romantic meal for your loved one. Or you just want to keep low individual ones that you can put in the fridge or freeze for a later date. I'm doing these at once because I think they look incredible. I've got my piping bag here. What I'm to do is I'm going to chop the end off. I haven't got fancy nozzle. I'm not going to make any amazing shapes. I'm just going to pipe it in on the bottom of each one. There we go. Leave that there. Now I've got my sponge which is falling apart already, which is great. I'm just going to push this in, it's actually this simple. Again, thinking about the presentation. There we go. I've got this lovely coffee that's oozing down. Push that in, get a little bit more in there. There we go. A little bit sticking out the top, I don't mind that because I'm going to pipe little bit on top. It adds that height. Then finally, this is going to be, really careful with this. I've got my mascarpone. I'm just going do like little blobs. It's really on so they're sticking up. There we go. I can see the vanilla beans in there. Now, like anything, practice makes perfect. I'll show you why I'm not using a fancy nozzle in a minute. You'll see why. I've got these little peaks and just push very gently. Then right at the end I'm just pulling up so a little pushing up. Now, I'm going around until the outside is done. I'm going to right in the middle. They look fantastic. Now to finish, I've got my cacao powder. I've got a little sieve and purely just add a very small amount just over the top. This will add to the flavor. Just a little bit more. Who doesn't love chocolate? There we go. Then finally, just some dark chocolate and very fine grater, you should grate this over the top. Just coat with these lovely flakes in the mascarpone mix and look at that. Super quick to make. If you've got people around eating. What I would do is I would put the mascarpone on top before you put the cacao powder or the chocolate, I put it in the fridge or the freezer. Then when they're there, if you want to impress them, you can just get out, takes a minute to just put the chocolate on top and it looks fantastic. I'm going to try this. I've been very excited about this. I'll take this one here. I mean, look at this. It just looks incredible. These little pots I love, they're just recycled from other deserts that we bought from the shop and they come in little glass pot and you've got the cream, the coffee. It's so good, it really is. Now, when you're making this at home, I encourage you to follow the recipe, follow it to a T. As you've seen, it's very easy to follow. Then once you've done that, you can become more adventurous. You can try different coffees. You make the coffee stronger, weaker, different flavors. You don't necessarily have to use coffee. That's a traditional way with the tiramisu, but you could use a raspberry, a jam, you could add a bit of hot water to it so it waters down and you can add a bit of jam in there to the sponge and the cream and top with the strawberries. You can be really creative. But one thing I'll say about this, you can keep them in the fridge and store them for two days, if you're going to eat them so you can make them two days in advance. But also you can keep them in the freezer for up to a month. You can keep them there and take them out, just let them defrost. We keep them out for about half hour to an hour and you can enjoy them. They're incredible desert to make well in advance. It's super easy to make, super quick to assemble and I can't wait to share more with you in this course. Here is a recap on how to make tiramisu. In the next lesson, I'm going to teach you how to make the ultimate chocolate brownie. Now, these brownies can be used for snacks, they're perfect to take out on picnics, or just have a snack in the afternoon. But I'm going to tell you how to elevate it and make it into a show stopping desert that's truly memorable. 4. Chocolate Brownie: Chocolate brownies, who doesn't love them. They're fudging they're gooey they're chocolaty. They're just delicious. I'm going to show you how to make them, five ingredients. It's very very simple but this time we're going to take a step up and we're actually going to do a bit of cooking, going to heat few things up. I'm going to teach you a method that is used in traditional French cooking, which is the bain marie method. But first, I'm going to talk through my ingredients. I've got some dark chocolate, I've got some plain white flour, got some eggs, golden caster sugar, and I've got some butter. First off, I'm going to start by chopping the chocolate up. Basically, all we want to do is we want to chop this chocolate up to make it as fine as possible. This basically means when we heat it up, it's going to melt a lot quicker. Which is great. Once chopped up, I'm going to put it in the bowl. When you're using a knife, just be really careful that your fingers aren't under the knife because you don't want to push down and drop your fingers. Just make sure they're far away. You not soaring the knife at all when you're chopping chocolate, all you're doing is you're just pushing down really hard. Don't move it, just push down and it will cut through. There we go. That's all chopped up. I'm going to add that to a heat proof bowl. Next up we're going to chop our butter. That's exactly the same reason just to speed up melting process basically. I've got butter here. I'm just going to slice them as fine as you can. Do it length ways and then down the other way. There we go. I'm just going to add that to the chocolate. Now this is the Bain Marie method. Basically bain marie method is to heat this up without cooking over direct heat. I'm going to cook it over steam. That basically makes it a little bit more gentler and that avoids us burning this chocolate. What we've got here is I've got my pan that's full of boiling water and that's on a very low similar, so very low heat. You might not see here there's a little bit of steam coming off of it. That is perfect. That's what I want. I'm going to add my heat proof pan on top of that. The steam is going to slowly rise, it's just going to hit the bottom of the heap proof bowl and that in turn will melt the butter and the chocolate together. It's a very controlled way of doing it. I'm going to talk to you more about this technique later on in the course because we're going to use it again. But this is just a perfect way. It's like I said before, it's a French technique and it can be used in lots and lots of different things to make Hollandaise sauce, to create incredible things. But this is a perfect way to control the heat and melt a chocolate and our butter. Whilst that's doing that, I'm going to get spatula I'm just going to put next to it, just make sure I don't forget about it. But while it's doing that, we're going to cream together our eggs and our sugar. I've got another bowl here. All I'm going to do is clean down, it's a little bit messy. All I'm going to do is I'm going to crack my eggs. Now, if this is the first time you've cracked and egg, please don't be worried about it. It's very straightforward. All I'm looking to do is I'm going to crack just under halfway. The fat bottom I'm going to hold in my hand and then the pointy top that comes at the top. All I'm going to do is I'm not going to crack halfway down, I'm just going to crack just below the halfway line. That's my marker. You want to crack quite hard. Just once will do it and it splits perfectly open. Now, don't worry about getting shell in there because you can fix that out afterwards. The advice I'd give is to crack all the eggs before you start getting the shell out. That goes there. I think I'm pretty good at cracking eggs to be fair, but I can already see there's a little bit of shadow in there, so please don't be worried it happens to all of us. All I'm going to do is I'm just going to get a spoon and just really gently fish out. There we go and that's it they would just avoid when people are eating your brownies that they'll get that real crunchiness. Now, I've got my sugar here, my caster sugar, and it's a golden caster sugar. I like that just because it's adds a bit more depth. There's a little bit more flavor to it, which I love. All I'm going to do is I'm going to whisk this together. I've got my three eggs, I've got my caster sugar, and I'm going to slowly bring it together. Now, I'm quite often an advocate of whisking by hand purely because I like the idea of the more work you put into it, the more energy you put in, you feel less guilty when you're eating a lot of dessert afterwards. If you don't want to waste by hand, you can use an electric whisker, that's absolutely fine. There's room for that. I do use electric whiskers from time to time, and I'm sure you'll see that in the rest of the course. All I'm doing here is I'm just moving my hand left to right, I'm letting the whisker do the work. Often I'm just spinning the bowl so that instead of moving my whisk in trying to incorporate every single angle of the bowl and let you move it from side to side. That's all this hand has to do. Then I can get a good mix just turning the bowl. The more you do this, the more air that gets trapped in the egg and sugar mixture. That's what we want. Now, I'm going to have a little break there just because I don't want to be sweating on camera. I'm sure going to check bain marie. I can see it started to melt here. What I'm going to do with my spatula, is just mix it around. Give it a little mix. Butter will keep melting, which will in turn melt the chocolate. Leave it at that. We back here. We should give it really a good whisk. Now for me with brownies, the reason why I love them is it was the first dessert that I learnt to make. It brings back so many memories, they used to make them as snacks, to make them as gifts for people at Christmas time, holidays. I would just wrap them up in a little bit of grease proof paper. I attend school, I give to friends, I just absolutely love it. I love the process of doing it because it's so straightforward. The whisking is just incredible because you can use this technique when you're making cakes. You do not whisking there. But for me, the start of show is the bain marie, is the melting of that butter, is melting the chocolate. I would say it keeps it controlled, gets much air in it is possible. You can see when I stop and see all these air bubbles just coming out and that is what you want. It shows that we've injected loads and loads of that sugar and egg mixture. We're going to check this now. I can see it's melted loads and that's perfect. I'm just giving it a little stir, to make sure there's any little bits of chocolate or butter that haven't melted, probably chocolate will get mixed in. What we're going to do, it's going to remove that from here. I'm just going to put that down and just leave that for five minutes just to cool down slightly because what's going to happen is if we mix that in to our egg mixture and don't mix quick enough, we're going to have chocolate, these scrambled eggs, and we do not want that. I've just let the chocolate butter mixture rest for five minutes. That's cool down ever so slightly. It says, absolutely perfect. All we're going to do really quickly we going to give this one more little whisk. There we go. I don't need that whisk anymore. I'm going to put that to one side. I'm going to add my chocolate mixture in. All I'm going to do is I'm going to pour it and as I'm pouring it, I'm going to try and fold in the mixture. I've got my spatula here. I'm just going to fold it into not whisking because if we're going to whisk, that's going to remove all the air that was put into the eggs. What I'm going to do is just gently fold it. All that will involve is me pushing this down to the bottom and I'll be lifting up and around so you can see here. I'm going to add this in. Adding quite quickly and then straightway and you can start mixing. As I said, I'm bringing the spatula down to the bottom and bring in some movement quickly as well. I just do not want any scrambled eggs each to each their own. I've said to try and personalize these desserts to you, but I can't think of anyone that would like chocolate scrambled eggs. There we go. Once that's all mixed in, you're not really going to run the risk then of chocolate, see scrambled eggs. Then I'm just going to add the rest of this chocolate then, just so I don't miss any. Now once that's in there, I'm going to give it one little final fold. There we go. Perfect. Next up, I've got my flour. You can sieve this if you want. I don't just because I know that the way I'm going to mix it, it'll distribute it nicely, but you can sieve it. I'm just going to add this in right on top, 90 grams there, and I'm just going to add a pinch of salt as well. Again, this salt with chocolate, it just massively intensifies the flavor. That's what I love about it. I love the dark chocolate. I love that salt brings out that incredible flavor. Again, just folding this and doing exactly the same. My spoon is just touching the bottom of the heat proof bowl, and I'm bringing it up around the sides. You can see this consistency here is just changing. Now, I don't add lots of flour to my brownies just because I love them to be gooey, I love them to be really fudgy. If you like your brownies more cakey, you can add a bit more flour. Again, I encourage you to follow the recipe, at least once through following what I've put in the guide, and then that's when you can become creative. See there's a little bit flour there, so I'm just going to pinch that, eat a bit of chocolate. Tastes great. Then continue to fold. There we go. That is our brownie mix there. Tastes incredible, really good. The only thing left to do is to cook it. The oven is preheated to 180 degrees, and I'm going to cook it for 25 minutes. I've got my baking tray here, and all I've done is just cut a bit of grease proof paper a little bit bigger than the pan, and I'm just going to push that down so it fits, and then the weight of this will push it down as well. I'm just going to pour this into the tray. Look at that. Yes. As much of that in as possible, and if you want to save a little bit in the bowl to a little lick, you can try it, you can. I'm just going to put that into the oven. Give a little shake so it's evenly distributed, and that goes into the oven for 25 minutes. Now, like I said, I think this recipe is perfect for that gooeyness. I would check it after 25 minutes, but my fun assisted oven, 180 degrees, 25 minutes is the perfect time. It might look a little bit gooey when you take out, but you just need to remember that when you take out it's still warm, so it's still going to be cooking inside. This goes in, and we wait for 25 minutes. The brownies have been in the oven now for 25 minutes. I'm just going to take this out, be really careful because the pan is going to be incredibly hot. Look at these, these look absolutely phenomenal. It's baked to perfection. I'm over the moon with this. Like I said, 25 minutes, 180 degrees, you're going to get this result. It's incredible. What I'm going to do is you should probably leave it to cool down for pretty about 20 minutes. Let the pan cool down, they'll continue to cook a little bit. Then you can chop them if you want, or I usually let them cool all the way down, then they're easier to chop. But I'm just going to go for it because I'm so excited, they're going to be really warm. I'm going to chop these. That knife is just cutting all the way through perfectly. Now portion sizes, completely up to you. However you want to do it. I like a good wedge of the brownie and all I'm going to do. Now I've chopped these. I'm just going to lift one of these out. Look at this. These are gooey, chocolaty brownies, and now we're going to plate up. I've got this serving plate here. I've got my brownie there. All I'm going to do is top this with ice cream because I love how the hot, warm brownie and the cold ice cream go together, and chocolate sauce as well. Before I pour the sauce on, you can see the brownie here. All I'm going to do, is I'm just going to push my finger down into the middle of it a little bit. It's so soft it'll go. The reason is that will act as a perfect little holder for my ice cream. I've got my chocolate sauce here. I'm just going to pull that over. I'm just going to cover half the brownie, just let that run out. Then I've got my ice cream scoop, and I'm going to scoop some ice cream. But all I'm going to do, before I do it is I'm going to dip it in a little bit of water, and that just allows me a really smooth scoop and it looks great on presentation. I've got my ice-cream here, and I deep this in some water. It's all I have to do. Then really easily this will just scoop up. There we go. I'm just going to put that on, and for me, that is perfect. It looks incredible. Put it there so you can see it. The warm brownie, the warm chocolate sauce is melting the ice cream. I'm super pleased with that. I'm going to try it now. I'm going to try and get a bit of everything. I absolutely love it. That brownie, is honestly, it is perfect. You've got that bitterness of the chocolate bars and the sweetness, it cuts through perfectly. It's fudgy, it's gooey, and that's what I'm looking for with a brownie. But that ice cream as well. Like I said, you need to have the brownie as a snack. You can take it to work with you. You have it as a weekend treat, but with this chocolate sauce and just a little bit of ice cream, it just elevates it to that next level. It looks incredible. I can guarantee you if your having a dinner party and you brought that out in front of friends or guests, they would be very happy indeed. I love it. I'm really pleased with it. I hope you have success as always. You can store these brownies in the freezer for up to three months. What I often do is I'll have a batch of brownies in the freezer. Again, if people are coming around I want to do really quick desert, all have to do is take them out. I can pin them in the microwave for about 15-20 seconds. They'll defrost. They'll warm slightly in the middle and top it with that chocolate source. Again, it can be made well in events, a little bit of ice cream, and it's just perfect. I hope you enjoy. I'm going to dig in a little bit more to this, and here is a lesson recap of how to make an ultimate chocolate brownie. Thank you very much for watching this chocolate brownie lesson, I hope you have success at home. It is delicious. If you have any questions, just put them in the comments and I'll try and answer them. I hope you enjoy it. In the next lesson, I'm going to teach how to make a perfect meringues, which can be used for many different things across many different desserts. I'll teach you how to get the most perfect meringues. 5. Meringue: Meringues are fantastic. They're a very impressive dessert to make and they can seem quite daunting. But I want to show you some simple ways of how to make it. Basically is just egg whites and sugar but they're whisked together to perfection, to make an incredible, incredible dessert. In this lesson, I'm going to teach you how to make the base of the meringue. I'll be heating the sugar up, I'll be whisking the egg whites, combining it, and then baking it. First off, I've got some castor sugar, and all I'm going to do, I've got my baking tray, greaseproof paper, I'm just going to spread this castor sugar out quite evenly, over the greaseproof. All we're going to do then, once that's there, is I'm going to bake this in the oven at 200 degrees for seven minutes. Now that's very important, seven minutes, not over at all because if you cook it for too long or if it's too hot, it's going to turn the sugar into caramel, and that's not what we want. We still want it to be sugar, but we're just going to cook it through a little bit. I'm going to put that in the oven. While it stays in the oven, I'm going to start to whisk the egg whites. Now, all I'm going to do here is I'm going to crack my eggs and I'm going to catch the yolks as they go in. That seems quite impressive. It's really not because it's going to be quite messy. All I'm going to do is I want to crack these and as they crack, they're going to fall through my hands. As I crack I'm just going to try and let the yolk stay in there, slow down a bit. Then I'm just going to have my hand here, I'm just going to catch the yolk. You can see here actually, this one's cracked a little bit. I don't want any yoke in there so just move it out of the way. Then we'll go for the next one. There we go. I've said many times that I like to whisk everything by hand. The only exception is egg whites, especially when I'm making meringue and that's purely because of the amount of time I have to whisk for. My egg white is in here and what I'm going to do is I'm going to whisk this very slowly and then I'm going to increase the speed until I get very, very light and fluffy egg whites. After whisking the egg whites for about 2-3 minutes, they are light and fluffy. What we can do now is I've taken the castor sugar out of the oven. All I'm going to do is I'm going to switch this back on. Every so often I'm trying to spin a little bit of this mixture in. I just want to give it about 5-10 seconds whilst it mixes in and now spoon the next spin. You continue this and then once it all in, I'm going to switch this speedup. So it will start on by slow to medium and I'll switch up from medium to high and I'm going to leave it for five minutes. Basically, what that'll do is it'll allow all the sugar to dissolve and disperse perfectly in the egg white. Then we're going to have a lovely fluffy light meringue. That has been whisking now for five minutes and I can see it's incredibly smooth. It's really light and fluffy and it's just got a very strong consistency. One way to test if this is complete is to, I mean, this is a good way if you got any kids, you can get them involved, is to feel it. I can let you get a little bit in between my fingers and just feel it. If it's smooth, that means all the sugar has dissolved really well into the egg whites. Or the other way to test is you just tip it over your head. If it stays in the bowl, it's not going to come out, so that means it's perfect, it's ready to go. All I'm going to do now is I've got a baking tray and again some greaseproof paper. I'm just going to spoon this onto here. In the next lesson, I'm going to teach you how to make the most incredible pavlova. I want to cook these meringues with that in mind. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to have a few different nests they're called. They're basically like little clumps of perfect meringues. All I'm going to do is I've got my spoon here. I'm just going to put a big lump there. The thing I love about these, is I love how rustic they are, how authentic they look. That's a fact I want, and I like. All I'm going to do here, I've got this, I'm going to get the back of my spatula. I'm just going to push down a little bit. All I'm doing there, you can see there, I'm just creating a little indentation, that little hole. That is going to come in perfect use for my pavlova in a bit. If I want to add a little bit more I can, I'll just do that. Make this one a bit bigger. I'm just going to put a little indentation there. You can see that, it holds its shape perfectly. That looks really rustic. But honestly, in the next lesson with pavlova, it's just going to look incredible. These, because of the size, I'm going to put this in the oven for about 40 minutes on a 100 degrees. They're going to go in. All they're doing there is we're just cooking it incredibly slowly. That's what's really important because the slower you cook it, you're not actually going to brown the meringue off at all, it's going to keep that whiteness, but it's going to dry out. Then you're going to get a perfectly crisp outside. If you want a really soft like, marshmallowy middle, take it out after 40 minutes. If you want it to be a little bit longer, keep in between 45,50 minutes, it will dry that out and it'll be really crunchy. That's completely up to you. I'll leave that in your hands. I like a little bit of both, so I'll keep it in for about 45 minutes because in the pavlova over going to have some incredible creams and incredible berries and I think in contrast goes really well. That is how you make a perfect meringue. It can be used in many different ways. You can pipe it. You can either create a baked Alaska, so you get some ice cream, pipe the outside with meringue, bake that. Or you can top a lemon top with it, which we'll do in a future lesson. Please try that at home. Again, if you've got any questions, please leave them in the comments and I can answer them. Best of luck. That's how you create perfect meringues at home. I hope this has inspired you to show you how simple it is to do, of what can seem quite daunting. Hopefully is actually fairly straightforward and you can follow at home. In the next lesson, we're going to put this meringue to good use and we're going to make an incredible pavlova. It's could be sweet, it could be lovely like bitterness again from the berries but it's going to look phenomenal. It's like a summer dessert. It's very fresh, very vibrant, very colorful and I can't wait to share it with you. 6. Pavlova: I love pavlova. I have it every summer and usually, if people are coming out for dinner and summer or are having a barbecue, it's a perfect end. It's just light, it's refreshing and I'm going to show you how to make it. We've already made our meringue for our pavlova and it's been in the oven. It's dried out perfectly and you can see here, it's got this perfect nest that in here we can add all our cream and it's just perfect. I love it. I love how rustic it looks as well. As I said in the previous session, you can pipe it, so you make a nest but for me this looks like a big cloud or a big pillow that's just going to hold incredible goodness. To make pavlova it's super simple. Once you've made the meringue, that's the hard bit. The pavlova itself is really easy. All we can do is whisk some cream then we're just going to add some berries and just top it with a little bit of mint. I've got my cream here, my double cream. I'm just going to add that to the bowl. Literally in the recipe, we've got our cream, we've got our icing sugar and we've got our berries. You can follow it if you want but this is where you can go just completely rogue and you can go off-grid and just do it as you want. All I'm going to do here is I'm going to whisk this cream, whisk it by hand. As we are whisking, what you'll see is the cream starts to go quite thick. I mean, it probably takes about a minute and two minutes. Give your arm a little bit of a workout. But what we're trying to do is just watch and when it goes, it really does go. It happens quite quickly. I'm watching the thickness of the cream quite closely. Again, as you can see, I'm spinning the bowl as I do it and that's just a technique I've just developed really. I think works really well, instead of mixing round like a figure of eight, I'm literally just moving my whisk left to right. I'm spinning it, so it's getting everything. You can see it starting to go there, so what I'm looking for is almost it leaves a trail as I do it. It's a lot thicker now and when you get to this point, it's going to go very quickly. I'm just going to whisk it a little bit more and the consistency I'm looking for is for it to hold a peak. You can see there, if I pick it up, it stays but I want it to be quite thick. When I put it in my meringue, it's just going to hold there. That is pretty much there and when I say it goes quick, that's it. Once it starts to go, it's a few seconds, so I'm happy with that, there we go. If you go any more than that, it's going to go a little bit gritty maybe, the cream will separate and it just won't be very good. What we've got here, is I've just got a little bit of icing sugar. When I said earlier on, make it your own, literary put as much or as little as you want in there. I encourage you to try the cream and you can have a good idea of how sweet you want it, think about who's coming to visit. Are they really into the sweet dessert or would lots of icing sugar be too sweet? So I'm going to try it. I'll probably add a little bit more but really not much, tiny amount, and there we go. That's mixed in perfectly and now it's time to assemble, it's that easy. All I'm going to do, so I've got my meringue here. I'm going to take some of this cream and lay it in that nest we built, there we go. Like I said, I'm not making an excuse here, I like that it looks rustic. I want it to look just really like I'm on holiday and someone's almost like a grandma or a nanny has just made this in their home kitchen. It looks fantastic, so we've got this here and I've just got these incredible berries, got some strawberries, got some raspberries. I'm just going to chop them and again, chop them how you want, however big or small. I'm just going to stick these in here, change up a bit, have them there, I put these raspberries. For me raspberries ore just delicious. Now I can put a few down by the side, don't want to overload it. I've got these blueberries as well. Now definitely the blueberries, I'll put a few on the top. But it doesn't matter if a few fall down the side. It looks beautiful, all these colors, incredible, a few more. I'm now thinking about the plate and how that's arranged, so why not have a rogue berry on that little strawberry, a bit more, some thinly sliced strawberries just on top, around. All I'm going to do, I've got a little sprig of mint, I'm going to put in the corner there, that looks incredible. I've got a few mint leaves. I'm going to scrunch them together, really thinly, I'm just going to slice them, really thinly, you should be really careful. You want some just very quick short slices because then you're not going to bruise the mint and just there we go, on top. Look at that. If that's not summer on a plate, I don't know what it is. Then finally, is that final little bit of icing sugar that falls down a little bit more then and there we go. That to me is, like I said, summer on a plate. It's an incredible meringue, full of flavor, you top it with cream, fresh berries, you can't beat it. The only thing that's left to do is just have a little taste. I'm going to pick this up. Make sure I get everything, the meringue, mainly the meringue actually. Yes. Perfect consistency, crispy on the outside, chewy in the middle. I actually love it, really love it. It's an incredible desert. The mint just cuts through everything, the berries are fresh, it's delicious. Thank you for watching this lesson and here is the recap on how to make a pavlova. There we go. That is how you make an incredible pavlova. Absolutely love it, it's the freshness, it's the sweet from meringue, it is summer on the plate, as I've said. Good luck at home. I wish you best of luck and hope it goes well. Any questions, as we've said before, leave it in the comments and I will get back to you and good luck. I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson where I'm going to teach you how to make a shortcrust sweet pastry. This pastry is phenomenal and it can be used to create many, many different tarts once you've mastered the sweet shortcrust pastry, so I'll see you there. 7. Sweet Shortcrust Pastry: Sweet short cross pastry is absolutely delicious. In this lesson, I'm going to teach you a foolproof recipe to guarantee a perfect pastry every time. Now, like I said a little bit in this course before, I encourage you to think outside the box, try with different flavors and experiment with your recipes, with pastry. Stick to the recipe. Honestly, there'll be lots of mistakes and lots of errors. This is a tried and tested formula and we've got to stick to this, is very simple we're using butter, we're using flour, we're using icing sugar to make our pastry sweet. We've got little bit of some egg and milk as well. Now, a top tip is make sure that the butter you use and the milk you use is extremely cold, itchy as you're making it, take it out the fridge and use it straight away because if this goes soft at all, that's where we're going to have some issues. We're going to start and we're going to mix our dry ingredients. We've got our plain flour here, which is perfect for pastry. We've got our icing sugar and we've got salt, and it's just going to do a little pinch of salt. These are quite large salt flakes so I'm just going to crush it a little bit. What we're going to do is just mix it in really easily. Then once that's mixed in, we're going to add our butter. All I've done with this butter is I've just chopped it up like we did with the brownies. I've just slice them in little cubes. Now I'm going to get my hands really messy. I'm going to get in there and we're going to make people call it breadcrumbs and what we're going to do is I'm going to put my hands in and just start to run the flour, the sugar and butter together. I'm not going to look for the butter, crush it. It takes a few minutes. It's very therapeutic. We're going to do is just cover the butter. Now am going to start to crush it in my hands. All this is doing is dispersing the butter. That's what we want. I can feel this very cold, which is perfect. I remember I used to do this at schoolwork when I was very tiny, probably about six or seven. I still love it. I used to just stand there and just that this is my favorite part of baking. I didn't really want it to stop. You keep going and you can see I'm kind of bringing it together. I'm just pushing my thumbs just to try and flatten it. The more I do that, that will break the butter up. It's mixing together with salt, the flower, the icing sugar. But this is really important. This is the same process you use when you're making normal short crisp pastry. This is a good technique to learn. You can see here, this is what it should look like. It's kind of formed breadcrumbs and what we can do is we kind of lift it up and bring big bits to the top and we should crush that. There we go. I'm really happy with that. Now this is quite messy. You can see here I've kind of made a bit of a mess around the bowl. That is fine because in a minute we're going to take it out the bowl and we're going to need it. We are going to get this work surface messy. But first, I'm just going to add my two egg yolks. Stay in there like that. I'm just going to add two teaspoons of cold milk. Now, I'm literally this isn't a teaspoon. I'm going by I here that's one. That's two. Now, the biggest advice I would give you here is don't add too much liquid because you can't go back from that. But if you use too less, you can make it more wetter by adding more. What I'm going to do is I'm mixing. Listen now. Once that's mixed in and kind of get off the spatula and get my hands. I'm really going to start to try and push this together. That's going to form our pastry. Now, actually, I think I've used too little milk, which like I said, is not a bad thing. I was trying to be over cautious. I'm going to add a little bit more, because what we want is for it to come together in a big ball. I can see here if I really squeeze it, it's going to start to form pastry. The main bit here is not to overwork the pastry because what you'll do if you've made bread before, you'll know that the more you need your bread, the more gluten is formed. Then it makes it very elastic. It will basically pull the pastry together. We do not want that. We want it to be as crumbly as possible because that gives us a lovely texture. You know what? Just feeling that I think there is enough moisture in here coming together. Yeah, there is. What we want here is I'm going to get everything that's on the worktop, bring it in together. We're going to push down and take whatever is on my fingers as well, get them in there. Again, don't want to waste anything. I'm just pushing it together. I can feel here that's perfect actually. What we want is I could really work this now and I can make it really smooth if I kept kneeling it, we do not want that. This is very crumbly and that is what pastry should be like. You can see it there. This is the perfect consistency we want now, what am going to do now is I'm going to get some cling film. I hate using cling film just because it's plastic, is not good on the environment. I try and avoid using it as much as possible. But hate to say it. When Craig pastry, you kind of need to use it just because it's going to keep this very, very tight together. What I'm going to do is use as little as possible, I'm going to kind of work out how much I need and a tariff. No more than that. What I'm going do is I'm going to cover it, kind of wrap it in this bowl. I'm just going to get this. I'm just going to twist it so it's really, really tight. Basically just by twisting it, making it really tight and it's going to bring it all together. I can put this in the fridge now. It should look like that. I'm going to leave it there. I'm going to leave it in the fridge for at least two hours. We want this butter to get really, really cold again, because it'll make it a lot easier when we're shaping our pastry and rolling out. You could put it in the freezer for about half an hour, 45 minutes depending on the temperature. But just to be safe, I put it in your fridge and leave it there for two hours and then we can roll out our pastry and make our top cases. My sweet short crisp pastry dough has been in the fridge for two hours now so it's properly chilled. What am going to do is I'm going to get it out of the cling film. I'm just going to put this on the worktop. Also on the worktop I'm just going to add a little bit of flour. Don't really use too much flour just because the more you incorporate the dry or get and also that flower isn't in the recipe. If I add an extra 30 grams of flour, let's say that's just going to really dry my pastry out. Just cover your rolling pin. What I'm going to do is just start to slowly roll it out, bring it together. What we can do is once it gets together, we can add it to our grease proof paper. Put it there. Really slowly now, start to roll. If your rolling pin needs a little bit more flour, you can do that. What we're doing is very slowly we're working it but we also want it to be quite thin and this takes time. Like I said, we're not going to rush it. What I've got here with me as well is two things. One, I've got my tart cases here that I'm going to put them in and I can basically use them as a guide, so I can see how thin I need to get it. But also as I mentioned before, I've got this grease-proof paper and it is amazing because it basically means it's not going to stick to my worked dough. I don't have to keep flipping my pastry over, adding more flour, it's perfect. What I'll do is I'll just take a rough guide, so I need to make this a little bit longer this way. So very slowly it will go, I'm just going to roll this out. Now, when you're first working with pastry, it can be very daunting and again, as I said before, practice makes perfect but just follow these guides because like I said, if we used the grease-proof paper it's not going to stick to your work top. You flour a little bit on your rolling pin, that's going to stop it from sticking. If you follow this and just slowly do it, don't put any pressure on yourself, you will get there. What we've got now is we've got this pastry, it's been rolled out perfectly and what I want is I want to put them in my tart cases. Now, what I've done here is I've cut a very small bit of grease-proof just to go in the bottom there to stop it from sticking to the bottom but one thing I will do, so I'm just going to get a little bit of butter on my finger, put this down there and I'll show you. I'm just going to go around the edges with the butter and basically all it does is it stops the pastry from sticking to the sides. I'm not adding much, just adding it around the edge and that's perfect. This recipe for the short crisp pastry is enough for one large pastry case. As you can see here, I've got three smaller ones, I think you could probably get easily four, maybe even five small ones. I'm just going to make three today and what I can do is then roll up that pastry and save it for a later day. Now all I want to do is I'm going to get a knife, I'm going to go right to the edge and I'm just going to cut around the edge. You can see the amount that I'm leaving here, quite a big amount and what I can do now is I can gently pick this up off the grease-proof, I'm going to put it into my tart case and then all I'm going to do, is I'm just going to lift this up and almost just pat it in with my index finger and just turn this round. Now, if you see the case ripping anywhere, don't worry about it because the great thing with this pastry is you can just fill any gaps in, so it's absolutely perfect. What we're going to do now, now it's in there, is I'm just going to push down here. Now I'm going to come to my tart case and I'm going to take my knife and just right around the top I'm just going to very slowly, I can even do it with the back of the knife actually, take the edges off. They were falling off anyway but this gives you a really nice clean edge and you see the pastry's perfectly pushed into the middle there and there you go, that's it. What I'm going to do is I'm going to do that again just to show you so I'm going to say, that's what I need. Let's take that off there and I'm going to work quite quickly just because the but is cold and longer I leave it, the warmer it is going to get which will make it a lot more difficult. I'm going to pick this up, put it in, fold the sides over as I was doing and just push down and once it's in I can feel it's in and I can just push down a bit, push up to the sides, see all this cracking around the side that's just because it's falling over the edge of the tart cases it's absolutely fine. I'm going to pick it up again as I've done before, so I'm just going to use the back of my knife and just scrape this excess pastry off and this is lovely because it looks fantastic. As I said, it's really impressive if you serve this to friends, family and you said, I've made the pastry myself they will be GOP smack, they really will be. What I've got here now is just a fork and what I'm going to do is you can see here I've got my pastry case I'm just going to put a few holes in there. Basically, what this means is when it's cooking, it's not going to rise as much so this is perfect it's going to stop it from rising it's going to keep the pastry tart cases shape. Then once I've done that, I'm going to put on a baking tray, I'm not going to cook it, I'm going to put it in the freezer so basically, if I put it in the freezer, it's going to make it incredibly cold and then when I put it in the oven, the outside of the pastry is almost going to form a seal, so then the inside will just cook and it'll hold its shape. If I didn't do that it would just melt and then it wouldn't hold its shape round here and I want it to look perfectly like a tart case and I just want the pastry to be incredible. I'm going to pop that in the freezer for 45 minutes to an hour. The longer you leave it the better and once it's out of the freezer, I'm going to put it in the oven for seven minutes. It's going to be at 200 degrees for seven minutes, I'm just going to cook it and then once it's cooked, we can then move on to making our lemon tart filling which is in the next lesson. 8. Lemon Tart: In this lesson, I'm going to teach you how to make most perfect lemon tarts. It's citrusy, it's sweet. It's just fantastic and it goes really well with a dinner if you want a really, really light finish to the end of the meal. It's very simple to make. We've got our eggs, we've got our sugar, we've got our lemon, and we've got our butter. We're going to use a method that we've used before in this course, which is the bain-marie method to cook the eggs and make that lovely lemon top filling. Here we go. We've got our eggs here, I'm going to add the sugar. I've got some golden castor sugar. That's purely because I just love the flavors that goldness gives, that lovely caramelized flavor. Also, I'm adding a zest of one lemon. Basically, all I'm doing here is I'm just taking the outside of the lemon, off the lemon zest. This is going to add an incredible flavor. A bit later on we will sieve it. We're not going to have all these bits in our lemon tarts can be nice and smooth. Just be careful when you're doing this. Just you want to make sure you only take the outside off. See here it's just quite white. Don't want to keep grating it there. Because that is where it'll be very, very bitter. There we go. We've got our lemon zest there, and all we need in this recipe here is 50 grams of lemon juice. Now, you can buy lemon juice if you want, but I like to use fresh lemons. If we've taken the zest of a lemon, why not use it? It's going to cut the lemon in half. We see here there's like a little seed there, put that there, but also I'm going to squeeze it. I'm going to have my hands here. So I just want to catch anything that goes in. Like I said, we're looking at 50 grams. Now, of course, there's seed there, don't worry if one goes in. If you want to fish it out, you can. But as I said in a minute, we're going to sieve it. It's not the end of the world. Roughly it will take about two lemons. One thing you can do as well, a little tip, to get the most juice out before you cut it, just push the lemon on the worktop. I'm pushing down really hard. That's just going to soften up in the middle. When I cut it, the juice will come out easier. There we go. Just enough lemon juice there. Now we're going to cook this with the bain-marie method, as we've learned in the brownies, we're cooking over steam. It just means that it gives us more control and I'll have to cook the eggs very gently. In the brownies, we didn't want chocolaty eggs, and in this, we do not want lemony eggs. All I'm going to do is I'm going to it take over here and I'm just going to put it over the bain-marie, and very gently, heat it up. I'm just going to keep whisking. I want to make sure I keep whisking. Do not walk away from this. If you walk away because you want to get something out of the fridge or get a drink. That's where you're going to run the risk of scrambled eggs. Keep whisking. What you'll see is it'll go very, very smooth. Once it thickens, that's when you can take off the heat. After about five minutes of mixing, this is the desired consistency we're looking for. It's thickened up, it's absolutely perfect. All we're going to do now, I'm going to keep it moving, but we've got our butter that's been chopped and it's just softened. All I've done there is I've left it at room temperature for about half an hour, 45 minutes. That basically means it's really easy to melt into this lemon mixture now. Every so often, a bit more butter, keep mixing, don't stop mixing. Look at this. Don't want any of these lumps in. You don't have to heat this because the temperature from the lemon, egg, and sugar mix is just melting that butter really nicely. The mixing is just distributing it really well. This is a dessert you make in advance, so it's perfect if you have people around or you want to make something a few days ahead, it can freeze really well as well. Again, you can get it out. I'll give it probably an hour-and-a-half, two hours to defrost. Or if you're having people around or you want an incredible dessert, just get it out in the morning if it's in a freezer, put it in the fridge, and it'll be fine by dinnertime. Now, I'm checking for lumps. Pretty sure that there's nothing there, all the butter melted in. What we're going to do now, I'm going to taste it first. That is really, really good. What we're going to do is we want to get this into our tart cases. Before we do that, I'm just going to sieve it, just to make sure all that lemon zest is out. I'm just going to do a little bit at a time. I'm just going to push it through the sieve. Any seeds that might fallen in, they're going to get caught here. Just keep mixing it through. See that consistency is just incredible. Sieving it through into a jug. Basically, that means it makes it really simple for me to pour it then into my tart cases. I've got this here, my tarts here. Look at that they're cooked to perfection. What you can do is completely up to you. I like to take them out at this point. They just come out perfectly. Just make sure the greaseproof isn't on the bottom. Because when you serve up, see the greaseproof is there, when you serve up the guests or you're eating it, you definitely don't want a nasty surprise of a greaseproof there. All I'm going to do now is just pour this in. Look at that consistency. I don't want it to overflow. I can always come back. I'll put a little bit less in. Take your time. I want it to be neat, tidy. Definitely save that for later. Just to make sure it's distributed really evenly, you're going to give it a little shake, you can see that, a little shake and it will just smooth out. See that pulls in. Just like everything, the best things come to those who wait. We're going to need to put these in the fridge for at least two hours. Now, if you don't want to wait, you can speed it up, put it into the freezer for about 45 minutes, but I want to see, the longer you leave it, the better the texture would be when you cut in. I'm going to put these in the fridge for two hours and I'm going to come back and we'll show you how to dress this dessert and dress the plate to make it look absolutely beautiful. After two hours of the lemon tarts been in the fridge, they're finally ready. Here they are. They look fantastic. They've set really well. Now all we need to is just finish them off. I put my lemon tart on this serving board here. I think it's absolutely beautiful. What we're going to do is I've got some meringue that we made in a previous lesson. I haven't cooked this, literally as soon as it was made, as soon as the eggs and the sugar been whisk for five minutes, put it into a piping bag. All I'm going to do is I'm just going to chop the end off. Probably about the size of one pound coin. All I want to do, I'm just going to pipe a really big spurt on top. Then I'm just going to get little spoon, dip it in some water, and really softly, I'm just going to spread it out. It looks great. Now, this meringue, I want to take it to the next level. I've got a blowtorch and I'm just going to really quickly torch the top of it, not much. There we go. It's almost like a toasted marshmallow basically, it's fluffiness, it's just absolutely incredible. Then finally, I've got some lemon zest. I'm just going to have that on top. It's just an added flavor. Finally, to have that pop of flavor, I've got a little bit mint here. Again, just very fine sizes. Take it easy. Just gives that really nice contrast to the lemon. From a height, there we go. I'm super happy with that and you should be too. It looks incredible. I can tell you now, I'm looking forward to tasting it because I think it's going to be really, really good. I've got the thinness of the sweet [inaudible] pastry. The top case, I've got the bitterness of that lemon. I'm going to go straight in there. It's got that lovely crunch. I'm going to take about, look at that. That's like a perfect texture. Tastes so good. Got a little bit of this meringue marshmallow. [inaudible] Try at home. Let me know how you get on. Again, as before, any questions, put them in the comments and I will answer them. If you make that, follow the recipe to a T. I'll be super proud because honestly, it's an incredible dessert that I would pay a lot of money for in a restaurant. Hopefully, you can make it at home and impress lots and lots of people. Here's a recap of how we made the lemon tart. 9. Chocolate Sauce: This chocolate sauce is a winner. It's a foolproof recipe, I make it all the time, and I just always store it in the freezer just in case I want a little extra treat on my ice cream or I'm making a dessert, it would just be perfect top with chocolate. It's super simple to make and it features in a lot of these recipes in this course. This is the recipe. It's dark chocolate, followed by some double cream, a knob of butter, and a sprinkle of salt. That is it. It's really that simple and also it's even simpler to make. I'm going to talk more about it as it's cooking. First off, I'm going to weigh my ingredients. You can see here, I've got my pan on top of my scale. I find that works really well actually, because instead of weighing it in separate things and then adding it to the pan, I'm just going to weigh all in here. The only thing I'd recommend is make sure your pan isn't hot, that's going to melt the scales. I tell you that from experience. I'm going to add my chocolate in here and I'm being pretty relaxed with it. I just want to show you that you don't have to be really precise. This is just a perfect example of that. I've got my chocolate in, add my cream. I'm just going to stop there, a little bit too much. That's fine. If you add a little bit too much, you can add a bit more chocolate, you can balance it out. As I've said all the way throughout this course, it's all about your personal preference. I'm giving you the guide. I then want you to take that and elevate it yourself. All I'm going to do is I'm going to put this on the hob, and I'm going to put on quite low heat. All I'm doing is I'm heating that cream, and then once that cream is heated, that's going to melt the chocolate. Then we're just going to stir it in, add a little butter, a little bit salt, and it's done. Is that simple and honestly, when he try this, I mean, you're going to struggle to save some back because it's that good. Now, here on the hob, I'm just really heating the cream up very, very slowly. The reason is I don't want this chocolate to burn. If I heat it too quick, the chocolate will burn and it will go very bitty and it'll become very bitter as well. The texture won't be that smooth, creamy sauce that I'm after. You can see it here, it's slowly heating. I'm just going to give a little stir, and there we go. This is all coming together really nicely. As soon as that cream heats up, and I said it's melting the chocolate away. Like I said you don't want to heat it up too quickly, I want to make sure that it doesn't burn. I'm going to take it off the heat now. I've got a wooden chopping board down purely because I don't want to burn it. I'm just going to add my normal butter, a sprinkle of salt, just a pinch. That salt will really bring the flavor out in the chocolate. I'm just going to mix it in, don't need any heat here now. The sauce is already hot, and that's just going to melt that butter and give that really incredible shiny chocolate. There we are look at that, it is that simple. I love this chocolate sauce. One, because it's so simple to make and it can go with anything, but two, it keeps really well. I can put that into a dish once it's cold, I can keep it in the fridge for up to two weeks or I can freeze it for up to two months. I've always got some in the freezer. If we get caught out and people are coming around that last minute, I can make it knowing that I can cover it in this incredible chocolate sauce. It tastes phenomenal and I wish you best of luck trying it out. 10. Final Thoughts - Quick & Easy Desserts: I just wanted to say thank you so much for taking part in this course. I personally have loved every single minute of putting the course together, developing these recipes, and sharing these recipes with you. Hopefully, now, you have more confidence about approaching desserts at home and also more confidence in cooking in your home kitchen. Now, you've got these recipes now, you've got them written down, take them, adapt them, and cook them for the world. I want you to share them with friends and family, get feedback, you can make them more personal to you, and as I said through the whole course, any questions you've got, please you've put them forward, I'll look at your creations and I'll answer your questions as best as I can. Thank you so much. You should be proud. Congratulations for completing the whole course and I can't wait to see you in another course soon. Thanks so much.