Monday 25th January was Burns Night in Scotland, the annual evening of drinking whisky, eating haggis and toasts to everyone under the sun by the time we’re finished. We celebrated with Doug’s Mum this year and as well as the traditional haggis, neeps and tatties – those last two are turnip or swede, depending on your part of the world, and potatoes, we also had my favourite traditional desert in the world – Cranachan.

This is a desert that even when I was a useless cook I could still make. It’s easy to make, tastes delicious and contains so many calories that it’s not even worth counting them.

So shall we get started? First off you’ll need to gather your ingredients:

• 280ml/half a pint of double cream
• 300g of fresh raspberries (those are expensive so feel to substitute in another soft fruit. Blackberries are the best second choice but this year we used a combination of blueberries and raspberries)
• 1-2 teaspoons of honey
• 1-2 tablespoons whisky
• 3tablespoons oats

Yep that’s all. No extras. Unless you want to eat this with shortbread on the side like we did. I can’t give you my shortbread recipe because it’s an old family secret. Not my family secret I might add but my friend Kate has already broken the rules by giving me the recipe and she specificaly asked me not to share it with the internet. I can tell you though that it contains this much butter.

The first step with the Cranachan is to pour out the cream and whisk it until it has soft peaks. Careful not to overdo it or it goes bad and you have to open a whole new carton. I’ve done it, it wasn’t fun. Then it’s time to start adding the other ingredients to the cream. We used a whisky blend, to be specific this one:

Doug’s father actually owned a company that produced this whisky. This doesn’t count as advertising though because they don’t sell it anymore. Anyway Doug is a bit of a whisky freak and has some lovely malts but there’s not a bat’s chance in hell of him letting me use it for desert so we used a blend which tends to be a lot cheaper. To this lovely lush cream you then add your honey and whisky and stir to combine them into the cream.

Pretty soon the honey and whisky will stir in completely to the cream. Then take a dry pan and heat it, then add the oats and toast until they’re toasted and have changed colour.

Once it’s done take the pan off the heat and let the oats cool down before you stir them into the mix. Then it’s time for the last ingredient, the only attempt at healthiness in the recipe, the fruit.

When you start to stir in the fruit don’t be worried if it starts to break up a bit and stains the cream, that’s all good, in fact it makes it look prettier.

And that’s it. Nothing more to it. It can be made in advance and stored in the fridge but try and take it out a bit before so that it’s closer to room temperature for serving.

Doesn’t it look lovely? It’s so ridiculously tasty. We served ours with shortbread underneath the creamy layers to add a bit of bite. A very decadent desert that’s well worth the minimal time it takes to make.