Introducing your guide to cooking up the ultimate festive season with us. Inside, you’ll find ideas for dressing up, setting up, merrymaking and gift-giving, alongside everything that’s happening at Selfridges this Christmas.
DeadHungry (aka London-based Alex Paganelli) is the photographer-chef setting the fashion world alight. In honour of our Season’s Feastings celebration, DeadHungry set a few other things on fire – namely, a Selfridges Selection vegan panettone, a handful of marrons glacés and an orange. Read on to try Alex’s recipe for the ultimate Christmas dessert: a vegan Mont Blanc...
Follow DeadHungry’s step-by-step guide to create your own Mont Blanc pudding.
'Place the marrons glacés into a pan and add the Grand Marnier. Heat it up and flambé the s*** out of it. Then blend the seeds from 1 vanilla pod with the zest of an orange in a food processor. Add 2 tablespoons of plant (or dairy)milk to loosen it up.'
'In a separate bowl, whisk the cream and the seeds of the other vanilla pod with 4 tablespoons of icing sugar until it forms hard peaks. I’m using vegan cream, but you do your thing.'
'Segment your orange into pieces, then slice and peel the pith off and place on a heatproof tray. Blast them with a blowtorch until lightly charred.'
'Tear up the panettone. Put a dollop of the whipped cream on a dessert stand, layer with pieces of panettone and repeat until dome-shaped. Add the orange segments and torch the whole thing for extra flavour. Pipe cream around the outside of the dome. Smooth and refrigerate for an hour.'
'Now it’s time to use the chestnut cream you made at the start. Pipe this around your dome into a spiral-kind-of-thing all the way to the top.'
'Sprinkle with the leftover icing sugar and top with a chestnut. OK, this is banging.'