Concord Grape Parfait

I’m very lucky that I’m the only one who is so obsessed about making dessert among all my friends. People knows my obsession and always let me bring dessert to all the parties, pot-lucks and ladies night-“in”. At one of my usual gathering with my girl friends, I brought this Concord Grape Parfait which everyone loves.

This is one of the concord grape recipes from Claudia Fleming’s book. I find that Fleming’s recipes looked more complicated than when you were actually making it. This book trained me to have everything ready before getting my hands wet. Once you have all ingredients measured out, the action time for most of the recipes is less than 20 minutes (not including baking time).

The bottom layer of the parfait is grape mousse, then topped with a layer of grape gelée and a thin layer of gelled cream. I particularly like the grape gelée which the flavour is very sharp and stand out from the mousse and the gelled cream. It truly is the soul of the parfait. However, without the grape mousse as the background and the gelled cream to balance its sharp flavour, the grape gelée will become too tart to enjoy.


Fleming suggested to compose a dessert using this Concord Grape Parfait, the Concord Grape Sorbet and Cornmeal Nut Biscotti. Still, I’m not crazy about adding the biscotti to neither the parfait nor the sorbet.

Concord grape’s season is now over. I’ll wait patiently to make the rest of the grape recipes next year. But in the meanwhile, I’m going to keep myself busy on trying all the other wonderful recipes from the book.