This publish initially appeared within the October 21, 2023 version of Eater’s Journey publication, a spot for Eater’s editors and writers to share their ideas for navigating the world’s most scrumptious locations. Subscribe now.
This previous summer time, in the hunt for cooler temperatures and gorgeous pure magnificence, my finest pal and I flew to Dublin for per week of exploring the Emerald Isle. Our journey really started in earnest in Northern Eire, the place we stayed for just a few days to discover the area’s tumultuous political historical past, the attractive sights of the Causeway Coastal Route, and naturally, the meals.
After just a few days spent on the northern coast, we hopped within the automobile to drive down south. Our first cease was Belfast, the capital metropolis of Northern Eire and residential to St. George’s Market, one in every of Europe’s oldest frequently working open-air markets, relationship again all the way in which to 1604. On Saturdays, native purveyors of produce, baked items, and freshly made sandwiches arrange store out there, so after all we needed to make a cease.
Upon coming into St. George’s, I paid £1 for an oyster caught that morning and shucked earlier than my eyes, and knew I used to be in a actually particular place. I downed a towering breakfast sandwich loaded with potatoes, and mushrooms, and sausage, and egg on high of a Belfast bap, the town’s signature crusty roll. I purchased among the finest strawberries I’d ever eaten from a lady who grew them in her yard. After which, I stumbled upon the chewy, crunchy dessert that I haven’t been in a position to cease fascinated about for months: a coconut-dusted tray of Fifteens.
Fifteens take their identify from the impossibly easy recipe for making them: 15 digestive crackers, normally store-bought McVities, 15 glace cherries, and 15 of these huge puffy marshmallows, all crushed (or chopped, as applicable) and blended along with a tin of sweetened condensed milk. The ensuing confection is rolled right into a log or pressed right into a tray, then coated with tiny shreds of coconut. Because the fifteens relaxation, the sweetened condensed milk softens the cookie crumbs, which come along with the marshmallows and cherries to supply a chewy, exquisitely gooey chew. At this specific stall, the fifteens have been lower into thick squares, every speckled with chunks of cherry and marshmallow.
Clearly, I purchased two and ate them just a few hours later whereas sitting within the lush rose backyard at Kilkenny Fort, marveling at how this large construction inbuilt 1260 continues to be, by some means, round. I additionally discovered myself questioning why fifteens don’t have a broader presence exterior of the area. They’re, objectively, an awesome dessert. They will not be as difficult to make or visually gorgeous as, say, a colourful macaron, however they’re proof {that a} no-bake dessert is usually a entire lot greater than the sum of its elements.
Since flying residence, I’ve thought of fifteens at least as soon as per week. I’ve Googled recipes, but it surely’s arduous to search out digestives and glace cherries in my residence state of Texas. Nonetheless, I’m this shut to breaking down and making an exorbitantly costly order on some grocery import web site, if solely to relive that reminiscence of sitting in a phenomenal Irish rose backyard, consuming an ideal deal with.
