Strawberries and sandcastles recipe

Details

• Cuisine: British
• Recipe Type: Dessert
• Difficulty: Medium
• Preparation Time: 45 mins
• Cooking Time: 0 mins
• Serves: 6

Step-by-step

1. To make the sand biscuit, preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4.
2. Add the flour, vanilla seeds, icing sugar and a large pinch of fine salt to a bowl or food processor. Add the diced butter and rub in until fine crumbs. Add the egg and just enough water to mix to a soft dough.
3. Roll the dough out between two sheets of non-stick baking paper, slide on to a baking sheet then bake for 20 minutes.
4. For the strawberries, add the chocolate, orange rind and olive oil to a bowl set over a saucepan of gently simmering water, making sure that the water doesn’t touch the base of the bowl. Heat until just melted then stir until smooth.
5. Strain the chocolate through a fine sieve into a bowl, if liked then dip the strawberries into the chocolate and put on to a tray lined with non-stick baking paper. Put in a cool place to set.
6. Crush the biscuit and ice cream cones into fine crumbs. Melt the remaining 55g of butter in a small saucepan, mix in 225g/8oz of the crumbs then pack into 6 small buttered mini buckets or dariole moulds.
7. Chill 10 minutes then loosen and turn out on to small plates. Scatter extra crumbs on to the plates then arrange the strawberries on top, adding little flags or plastic spoons if liked.