When I lived in Scotland I never heard of Cranachan. I suppose I only ate out in cheap curry houses, University cafeterias and chippies. About 3 years ago there was a recipe from Nick Nairn in an Independent supplement which we tried out at home. The result seemed to have different proportions from the photo in the supplement. The family complained that there was not enough oatmeal so we adapted the recipe a bit. We have also tried the same recipe with strawberries and blueberries.
Serves 4-6
Ingredients
250-300 g raspberries
300 ml double cream
100 g pinhead oatmeal (coarse oatmeal if you are outside Scotland)
50 g soft brown sugar
clear honey
whisky
Method
1. Heat a heavy frying pan on a medium heat
2. Mix the oatmeal and soft brown sugar thoroughly, breaking up the sugar lumps, and add to the pan
3. Keep stirring with a spatula
4. Ensure that the temparture is just high enough to met the sugar. If you move the spatula across the pan you see that where the spatula moves the sugar is just molten. If the sugar starts to smoke then reduce the heat, if the sugar is not melting increase the heat.
5. Keep stirring until there are no visible sugar grains. The sugar should now coat the oatmeal. Remove from heat.
6. Put the cream in a bowl. Add 1 tsp whisky - for my children I normally leave this out. Whisk until firm but do not turn the cream into butter!
7. Serve in glasses with layers of oatmeal, cream and strawberries
8. Heat honey (and optionally some more whisky) and squirt on top of the cranachan.
9. Finish with a little more raspberries and oatmeal.
NOTE: I have used other sugars when I was out of soft brown sugar. It did not work out well. For example muscavado sugar melts but does not coat the oatmeal like soft brown sugar does.
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2007-08-13 @ 22:39