Fruit Fool

My grandma always spelled it foule, decided my grandma couldn't spell ... or was confused over meaning of French word foule 'a headscarf' or 'a lot of or heaps of' ... maybe not confused, as I always make heaps or a lot of it. Anyway ... This is how I does it: - from RAH

Ingredients:

• soft fruit
• sugar
• custard
• double cream

Instructions:

Take lots of soft fruit, this time I used frozen blackcurrants, but gooseberries or rhubarb are also good.

Cook fruit and sugar to taste in microwave without any water. You need lots of fruit and no juice. Cook til it's soft and mushy, then liquidise it. [hand held blender is perfect] If using tinned fruit drain the liquid off or it's too runny. Do not use pie filling, as it is thickened with cornflour and therefore less 'fruity'. ... actually, I suppose you could try using pie filling, it should work, but I've always avoided it without knowing why.

Make some custard using double the amount of powder and sugar to milk that the instructions give e.g. 2 or 3 heaped tablespoons of custard powder and the same of sugar to 1 pint of milk. Ready made custard is not thick enough for my taste, but my sister always uses a carton of ready made.

Put cling film over the custard, touching the surface to stop a skin forming, and let it get cold.

Whip some double cream or double Elmlea[whipping cream goes runny again if left overnight, so is no good for this]

Put the fruit puree into a BIG bowl, Gradually stir in the cold custard ... stir it really well to combine the lot. [Hard work to start with as the custard is almost solid by this point]

Fold in the whipped cream. ['Folding in' means sort of doing it carefuly, not stirring it about too much or too rapidly, so the cream doesn't all lose the air you so carefully whipped into it.]

I don't know amounts ... you need to aim for about equal quantities of fruit puree, custard and cream... which always means more fruit than you think.

Put the fool [or foule] into a serving dish, reserving a goodly amount in the mixing bowl. This reserved foule is 'cook's perks' and tastes best when scraped from the bowl with a spatula or a finger and eaten immediately from said implement.