I decided I wanted to make a ham for Easter dinner. We don’t really do anything for Easter, but I thought it would be fun to make a sit-down meal.
[This post contains affiliate links. I may make a commission for purchases made through links on this post.]
I bought a ham and decided to make a Thyme-Honey Glaze to go on it, rather than all the mustard-based glazes I saw. I didn’t use the ham-baking directions in the recipe, though. Rather, I set the oven at 325F, stuck my probe thermometer (affiliate link) in it, covered it in foil, and baked for a while. At some point (whenever I estimated I had one hour of cooking time left), I put glaze on it, and then after 30 minutes longer, I put glaze on it again.
I forgot to make the glaze until the ham had been in the oven for a while, so the glaze didn’t really get a chance to cool down before I used it. I was skeptical once I read that I would have to boil down a quarter cup of cider vinegar. I don’t like vinegar, and boiling it seemed like the perfect way to smell it more. My windows were open, though, and this wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I added the butter and thyme to the vinegar reduction separately, along with honey and the Worchestershire sauce. I brought this up to a simmer briefly to melt the butter and mix in the honey. This worked well enough, but like I said, I didn’t leave it enough time to cool down.
I’d never glazed a ham before, and doubted that it would ever add anything for me. This was tasty enough, though. It was tangy and not too sweet. I had my doubts before I put it on the ham, but I liked this glaze and I might make it again.
For our dessert, I wanted to make Lemon and White Chocolate Mousse Parfaits with Strawberries. Sounds delicious and springtimey, right? I’ve never made lemon mousse, but I figured it couldn’t be much more difficult than making pudding, and I’ve done that before.
I cooked the lemon mousse base on the stove exactly as specified, with no problems. I hadn’t bought enough cream (it was expensive!) so I decided to scale back the white chocolate mousse to ⅔. Also no problem. I decided to whip the cream separately, so I wouldn’t have to try to separate odd amounts of whipped cream to fold into the mousse bases. I whipped the cream for the lemon mousse second and that turned out fine, although I’m not sure that my folding technique is the best.
I wasn’t happy with the thickness of the cream for the white mousse, so after I added it to the white chocolate, I whipped it a little more – and turned it into butter.
I layered the lemon mousse with strawberries, and put the white chocolate butter in the fridge. I’m still not sure what to do with it.
These were good, nice and tart. I don’t think I’ve ever had lemon mousse before, so I don’t have anything to compare it to. The lemon mousse was tart, probably because it was supposed to be paired with sweet white chocolate. I don’t think I’d make this again, though. Honestly, the process of making the lemon mousse seemed to take forever – I felt like I was in the kitchen a long, long time without anything to show for it. If I’m going to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, I’d rather have an impressive cake or something there to enjoy. I’d be just as satisfied with a simple lemon pudding that would take half as long to make.
Leave a Reply