Ballymaloe Desserts: Iconic Recipes and Stories from Ireland

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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. Cold butter pie crusts have a more pronounced butter flavor and a flakier, flakier, and rustic texture. 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. At the ripe old age of 13, he took his first cooking course at the Ballymaloe Cookery School — a present from his Mum. Year after year, during his school holidays he worked in Ballymaloe, in the desserts section, and eventually — having completed a Natural Science degree in Trinity College in Dublin — he accepted Myrtle Allen’s invitation to be head pastry chef at Ballymaloe House. The rest is history. Ballymaloe House, in County Cork, Ireland, is heralded as the birthplace of modern Irish cuisine. There, visitors are treated to acclaimed pastry chef JR Ryall's daily array of seasonally inspired treats, wheeled through the dining room on a vintage dessert trolley. In Ballymaloe Desserts, Ryall presents 130 recipes for his award-winning confections, tested and perfected for the home baker.

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 I've been visiting Ballymaloe almost annually since 2005, when I first moved to the UK. I immediately fell in love with the people, the place, and especially the food. JR's book is a testament to his love and respect of Mrs Allen and her recipes, that also manages to cement his voice as a great pastry chef.' - Claire Ptak, founder and chef of Violet Bakery Ryall’s palate craved what Myrtle taught him. And she, in turn, appreciated the “slightly modern edge” he brought to the Ballymaloe repertoire. Though Myrtle died in 2018 at the age of 94, he considers Ballymaloe Desserts a hybrid of them both. Put the 3/4 cup (150g) of sugar and the butter in a medium-size metal bowl. Zest the 2 lemons right into the bowl. Use a flexible silicone spatula or a spoon to break up and mash in the butter so it’s evenly dispersed in the sugar and there are no large visible pieces of butter; it’ll look like damp sand.In a cold butter pie crust, cold or frozen butter is cut into the dry ingredients (usually flour and sometimes a little salt) using a pastry blender or by pulsing in a food processor until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. A more mature visitor might not have thought twice about such a pratfall, but for the young JR, it felt formative. “As I placed the damaged leaves in the compost bin, I decided there and then that the professional kitchen was not for me!” he writes.

Lightly crush the cardamom pods and put in a pan with the sugar, water, saffron and lemon juice. Place on a medium heat, stir to dissolve the sugar and bring to a simmer. That’s one of the wonderful things about the world of desserts. I’m not an advocate for people eating more sugar — I’d be all about make it better and eat less of it. But if you’ve got a big gathering and you’ve got a bombe you can share with people, it’s just so much fun.” Now when I meet a four-year-old, I realize how young that is. It’s unusual. It was slightly odd, I suppose. And it’s not that I was a supertaster. It’s not like I could taste cucumber and couldn’t enjoy it or that sort of thing,” says Ryall. In a mixing bowl, cream the butter and gradually add the sugar. Continue to beat until pale in colour and light in texture. If you are using an electric stand mixer, use the paddle attachment. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well between each addition. Sift the flour with the baking powder and fold into the butter and egg mixture. Finally add the coffee essence and thoroughly mix. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/gas mark 4. Sprinkle the muscovado sugar over the bottom of a 25cm heavy sauté pan or a heavy cake tin with 7cm-deep sides. Add the butter to the pan and place on a low heat until the butter melts.

How to make Mary Berry's easy one-pot chicken and red velvet sandwich cake

When the self-taught Irish chef Myrtle Allen opened the dining room at Ballymaloe House in 1964 she employed not only fellow chefs and waiting staff from the regions surrounding her country estate in County Cork, Ireland, but also a local carpenter. That tradesman, called Danny Power, was commissioned to make a dessert trolley for the restaurant. 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!) I loved tasting. And because Mrs. Allen took time to teach me how to taste, she was really teaching me how to do the thing that I loved better,” he says. We're fools for rhubarb fool, thanks to J.R. Ryall's triumphant Irish baking book, Ballymaloe Desserts.' - Saveur

Make a caramel as above. Add coffee (made to drinking strength) instead of cold water. Cook and add whiskey. Myrtle's advice for making Carrageen for a Dinner Party: Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/gas mark 4. Brush the inside of three 20cm round cake tins with melted butter and line the bottom of each with a neat-fitting circle of baking paper. Dust the buttered sides of each tin with flour, shaking out any excess. He recalls an event they hosted at Ballymaloe where he made 20 ice cream bombes decorated with Amarena cherries and gold leaf — one for each table of 10. The guests carved up the bombes at the end of the meal, warm toffee sauce melting into the ice cream as they poured it over. Best eaten the next day. Note that double the amount of Carrageen is needed when cocoa is added. Caramel Sauce To make the coffee buttercream, cream the butter and icing sugar together in a bowl, add the coffee essence and continue to beat until the buttercream is light and fluffy, about 4-5 minutes.Others are of a “newer generation”: desserts that have evolved at Ballymaloe or been shared by guest chefs teaching at the cooking school and added to the sweet trolley’s rotating offering. By featuring the classic and contemporary side by side, Ryall hopes to breathe new life into the dishes he cherishes (some of which have been around for half a century or more) but are often overlooked. Ryall quotes a passage from The Ballymaloe Cookbook (first published in 1977), which he feels encapsulates her focus on culinary heritage: Perfect for: anyone with a sweet tooth or a love for beautiful books. Mezze by Nicola Crowley & Dvir Nusery Cream the butter and sugarin a stand mixer (or in a bowl with a wooden spoon) until light and fluffy. 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.

Like many young chefs, Ryall has staged (an unpaid internship) in some of the world’s top restaurants, taking a two-month break each year to travel, while Anne Healy and the team of pastry chefs in the kitchen take over in his absence. Spending time in Bangkok, South America, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Mexico, it seems almost surprising that none of these influences have crept into the dishes on the dessert trolley. Instead, discovering dishes that have a true sense of place in other countries has reinforced the importance in his mind of preserving the integrity of the classic dishes he cooks in the restaurant. Lastly, you don’t need an electric mixer to make this, but you’re welcome to use one. If making it by hand and you only have one whisk, clean it (and dry it) extremely well between uses as any trace of fat in the egg whites will prevent them from whipping properly. Everything can go in a sandwich” is one of the opening notes in this book — a very good sign that this is a book for people who love to cook and love to eat. It is written by Nicola Crowley and Dvir Nusery who run Mezze, a wonderful Middle Eastern-focused food business in Tramore, Co. Waterford. Their book is a collection of recipes and menus from Dvir’s native Israel and favourites from their deli, pop-up dinners and Middle Eastern feasts. Expect mouthwatering dips, herby salads, slow-cooked meats, colourful vegetable dishes and syrup-drenched desserts. Butter contains approximately 80% milk fat. This high-fat percentage helps coat the flour, inhibits gluten formation, and forms a crumbly, not chewy, texture. Place the butter in a mixing bowl, cream it with a wooden spoon and gradually add the sugar. It will seem odd trying to cream so much sugar into so little butter and the mixture will have a similar texture to damp sand.As a weekend job it was great, but JR wasn’t sure the kitchen offered him the kind of career trajectory that suited him best. When he finished school, he accepted a place to study natural science at Trinity College Dublin. Those taxis to Ballymaloe would have to stop. He discussed his new life with Myrtle, Ballymaloe’s founder chef, and reached a compromise with her, whereby he would return each summer and Christmas during his degree course to cook in her kitchens. “By the time I was twenty-one, I had been working the peak season in the restaurant’s pastry kitchen for six years,” he remarks. The butter your sister is sending us is very good,’ I said to my neighbour one day. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that field always made good butter.’ That is long ago and the fragrance is almost forgotten.” Pour the mixture into the baking dish and bake for 35-40 minutes, until the pudding feels set in the middle.