An Auld Alliance of food for a delicious treat

Scottish Field loves to bring you recipes every week – and today we bring you Cranachan Parfait from Scot Jill Colonna in Paris.

Last week we brought you recipes from Christina Conte, an ex-pat Scot living in Los Angeles.

And now we continue our international recipes, courtesy of Jill Colonna, another Scot, who now lives in France and runs the Mad About Macarons website.

She said: ‘I’m Scottish, having lived in Edinburgh and Glasgow until I was 23 when I met a Frenchman at Strathclyde Business School (or our local pub in Candleriggs), and he whisked me to Paris – 27 years ago! For the past 15 years I have been living in the royal market town of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, just outside Paris. It’s twinned with Ayr and has a wonderful Scottish-French history to it.

‘As fate would have it, I was lucky to be published in 2010 by Waverley Books in Glasgow with my first book, Mad About Macarons and, since then, the name has stuck with my blog, even after my second cookbook, Teatime in Paris.

‘I develop many recipes on le blog: they’re either Scottish or French – or both. For example, the two latest posts was my revisited Cranachan dessert and Scottish Salmon served with a smoked tea beurre blanc, both inspired by the French yet using good Scottish ingredients.’

Jill begins her week of recipes with some tasty Cranachan Parfaits.

She explained: ‘Cranachan is the name of a classic Scottish dessert. It’s so easy to put together and is made with simple ingredients: cream, honey, oatmeal and Whisky and layered with fresh Scottish raspberries. Here I’ve revisited the Scottish dessert with a French twist by turning it into a Cranachan Parfait.

‘The Cranachan parfaits are soft honeycomb ice creams (no-churn) with a touch of Malt Whisky, topped with an oat praline crumble and served on a disk of Scottish shortbread then topped with raspberries.

‘The Scottish Cranachan dessert was originally served to celebrate the summer harvest festival. No matter how much people say their raspberries are better, there’s nothing to beat fresh Scottish berries! Even the best French ones don’t match up to them, in my humble opinion.’