Christmas spiced mini desserts with salted caramel & ginger tuile 

Pre-heat oven to 180°C

Remove mascarpone from fridge 30 mins before to soften.

Best made in the morning.

1 packet Speculaas Dutch spiced cookies broken into small pieces; you’ll need about 200g for this recipe

Spiced mascarpone cream

• 250g mascarpone
• 600ml thickened cream
• 160g icing sugar, sifted.
• 3 tspn cinnamon
• 1.5 tspn allspice

Salted Caramel

• 50g unsalted butter, diced.
• 90g brown sugar
• 85g maple syrup or golden syrup
• 125ml cream + extra
• 1/2 tspn flaked salt.

Ginger tuile 

• 25g plain flour
• 25g melted butter.
• 1 egg white
• 25g castor sugar
• ½ – tspn ground ginger
• Pinch of salt

To serve: sifted Icing sugar

Method

For the salted caramel, place all ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir until the sugar is dissolved, bring to the boil then reduce to a simmer for 10-12minutes or until caramel thickens. Cool, then set aside until ready to use. When ready to assemble, add more cream to loosen to the desired consistency. Pour into a sauce bottle or small jug for ease of pouring.

For the Christmas spiced mascarpone cream, combine all ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk on high until soft/medium peaks form. If you over whip, add some more cream to loosen. Adjust the taste by adding more sugar and spices.

To Assemble: pipe (or spoon) a small amount of mascarpone cream in the bottom of each dessert glass followed by one tablespoon of crumbed biscuit. Drizzle over some salted caramel, pipe mascarpone cream on top. Add another layer of biscuits, caramel, and mascarpone. The number of layers will depend on the size of your dessert glass. Finish with the mascarpone cream. Place in the fridge until ready to serve. Allow a minimum of 2 hours for the biscuits to soften in the fridge. Get onto making the tuile whilst the desserts are in the fridge.

For the tuile, combine all ingredients in a small bowl, stir to combine until a thick paste forms. Spread a tablespoon onto a lined oven tray. Spread with an overset spatula or knife to an even thickness. Bake in oven for 8-10 minutes. Remove from oven, transfer to a rack to cool before breaking into freeform shards.

To serve: place a tuile shard on the top of each dessert, finish with a dusting of icing sugar.

Adjustments: substitute speculaas with gingerbread, Biscoff biscuits or panettone. Substitute home made tuile with a small gingerbread star of simply a sprinkling of shaved chocolate.