Rosehip and apple jelly

I've gone from the sublime to the ridiculous, I post nothing much for over 18 months, and then two posts in one night! I suppose it's all about time, when you've got it, you should use it, which brings me to rosehip and apple jelly (neat huh?!). We have rosehips in the garden, there they are in front for the moobours:

and we have cooking apples from the tree that hangs over the fence from our other lovely neighbours, so I thought I should do something with them. It also gave me the excuse for getting yet another kitchen gadget!

I followed this chap's instructions. He explains things very simply, so simply in fact, that I was feeling confident!

I topped and tailed the rosehips, chopped up the whole apples, put them in the pot covered them with water and boiled the whole messy mixture up, just like that:

Then I used the newest addition to my kitchen gadgetry (is that even a word?!), a jelly sieve:

 

I put all the mush into the bag and let it drip through all day and all night:

 

It was a long, slow process, and I was very careful not to touch the bag, as it seems that squeezing the bag will make the jelly cloudy. All the juices had to be boiled up again,

 

 

with  sugar:

 

 

The recipe called for 1kg of sugar for every litre of juice. Luckily, I had exactly 1 litre of juice and 1kg of sugar in the cupboard. I am now the proud owner of four jars and one small pot of very set jelly:

 

 

 I can't quite believe I made this:

 

New neighbours, or should that be moobours?

We moved house in June, and we've gone from being townies to finding ourselves out in a tiny village (with only 300 inhabitants!). I can't lie, it's lovely. We are still finding our feet and the house doesn't feel like home yet, but we all seem more relaxed. The highlight of this week was meeting our new neighbours, who just moved into the field behind us. The Little People love running out to say hello to them as they peer over the hedge:

Food for Thought

I have been busy being busy recently, so my blog has been sadly neglected. I wasn't sure what to write about, until this cake taught me some valuable lessons.

We have a glut of these at the moment:


So I surfed the net and found a recipe for raspberry cake. As I was making it I started to have misgivings. You know when you're making something and you have a nagging feeling that you should change it, but then just follow the instructions to the letter? Well that's just what I did. As I took the cake out of the oven, it looked beautiful and I started to doubt those feelings, but I can now safely say 'I was RIGHT!'. The Little People and Big Man each had a slice. They eagerly sank their teeth into the soft sponge, but soon pronounced it disgusting, it's not often a cake grows mould in our house...

So what did I learn from this little episode? Well, if something doesn't feel right, trust your instincts; just because something looks good doesn't mean it is and of course, don't follow random recipes from the internet and expect to get fabulous results every time. Not bad for one small cake, maybe I'll make it again...!

The recipe for silent children...

The English strawberry season has started! The ones in our garden are still green, although Little Miss (otherwise known as the Strawberry Locust) announced that one was 'almost born!' today. I thought we should fill her up with shop bought ones quick, to make sure we get to taste at least one of our own this year! Little Man asked (very nicely) for chocolate cake tonight as well.

I couldn't disappoint either of them, could I? Silence reigned as the Little People feasted, so I thought I should pass on the recipe so that others could enjoy the silence too!

Banana Chocolate Brownies

175g butter
300g light muscovado sugar
175g dark chocolate (broken up)
2 eggs, beaten
2 ripe bananas, mashed
100g self-raising flour
2tbsp cocoa powder
1tsp baking powder

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Centigrade.

1. butter and line a square tin or a swiss roll tin.
2. Stir the butter, sugar and chocolate in a saucepan until they are melted and the mixture is smooth
3. Switch off the heat and stir in the bananas and the eggs.
4. Now add the flour, cocoa and baking powder and stir in.
5. Pour the mixture into the tin and then into the oven for 30 minutes.
6. Allow to cool a bit then cut them into pieces and Enjoy!

Apparently they'll last up to a week in tightly wrapped tin foil, although I don't think they'll last that long in our house!

Nesting for Easter

I promised the Little People we'd craft for Easter, and when I mentioned chocolate I was swept into the kitchen. After paying a visit to Attic24 earlier in the day we were inspired to get these out (thanks Lucy!):


We melted about 100g or 4 oz of chocolate (in the microwave) then poured about 100g or 4oz of All Bran into it, and stirred it round until everything was chocolatey.
Then we melted more chocolate in a bowl, and dipped the Mini Eggs into it to stick them onto the nests. Obviously, not all the eggs made it to their intended destination, hence the distinct lack of them in some nests:


After all that I still had some melted chocolate left, so I dipped pieces of banana into it, here they were:


They didn't last long!

Going bananas...

Yesterday was a bit manic.
Friday is, technically, my 'day off', but it's probably one of the busiest days of the week. It starts with getting the kids up, Big Man takes Little Man off to school. Little Lady and I then run around getting ready for the day. We do some drawing, a bit of reading and then she pleads, pitifully, to watch 'the telly'.
This time I gave in, she loves Cbeebies, but she is usually consigned to watching anything that appeals to her older brother, otherwise known as King of the Remote Control (adults outrank him, does that make us Dictators, Emperors or Gods?)
Then I scrubbed, polished and hoovered the downstairs of the house, while Little Lady's eyes became a little square. Eventually the lure of the 'telly' wore off, and I ended up with a little helper so we made this:

We always have a few blackening bananas in the house so this recipes comes in handy once a week. It makes a lightish, moist, delicious banana bread, and it's really quick. It's very loosely based on a bread in 'Making Fresh Bread' by Paragon.

Banana Bread
Line a 2lb loaf tin (I have those non-stick liners, so I don't grease the tin).
Preheat the oven to 180C.
215g self raising flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
125g demerara sugar
2 mashed bananas
55g mixed peel
50g raisins or sultanas or mixture of both
5-6 tbsp orange or apple juice
2 eggs
150ml vegetable oil
1. Put, or sift, the flour and baking powder into a bowl. Add the sugar, bananas, mixed peel and raisins and stir in.
2. Whisk the fruit juice, oil and eggs together, with a fork, in a jug.
3. Pour into the flour and bananas and mix with a wooden spoon, until you have a smoothish batter.
4. Pour the mixture into the tin, and put it in the oven. Cook for 1 hour.

While this was cooking, I got a phone call from a desperate friend asking if I could pick her two Little Things up from school - she was stuck in traffic. I took four children to Little Man's swimming lesson... After two hours trying to get home, my friend was really grateful for a slice of banana bread and a cup of tea.
This morning the banana bread is no more, and after the four children enjoyed themselves, the house needs scrubbing, hoovering...

Tomatoes, tom-toes and more tomatoes...

Every year, as soon as the weather starts to warm up and the days lengthen, my Darling Husband gets an urge to plant things, so about this time of year I am faced with his seemingly never ending (highly prised) supply of produce. Over the years, we've had fields of basil, mountains of raspberries, kilos of courgettes (often marrows when we've left them a day too long) and huge helpings of french beans. Although most of the produce varies from year to year, tomatoes put in an appearance every year. This year we've made tomato sauce and tomato and mozzarella salad as usual and then I got the urge to make tomato relish. I daren't put the recipe up quite yet, mainly because the whole house stank of vinegar for the hours the relish had to cook, and I can't imagine the result is going to be nice. We're going to wait a couple of weeks and then the sampling will begin, if it's any good the recipe will put in an appearance, watch this space! I'm off to skin more tomatoes...

The best chocolate chip cookies in the world!

I made 40 good sized chocolate chip cookies on Monday afternoon, and in a day and a half they've all gone. Whenever I bake I find things don't last long, but I had hopes for this last batch, I should have known. I have a lot of recipes for chocolate chip cookies, but this one is, without doubt, the most popular one in our family! Drum roll, here's the recipe, I've tried to give all possible combinations of measurements:

7 oz/175g/1 cup butter

7oz/175g/1 firmly packed cup brown sugar

7oz/175g/1 cup granulated (or caster) sugar

2 eggs beaten

7oz/175g/2 cups quick oatmeal OR porridge oats

1 teaspoon vanilla

8.5 oz/210g/2 cups plain flour

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1/2 teaspoon of salt

0.75oz/20g/0.25 cup wheat germ OR wheat bran

6oz/150g/1 cup chocolate chips (dark chocolate is better than milk)

Take the butter out of the fridge to soften a bit before you start, it makes life easier! Preheat your oven to 180C or 350F. Cream the butter and all the sugar together. Add the eggs, oatmeal and vanilla and mix, I use the back of a fork to mix everything throughout this recipe. Add the flour, soda and salt and combine. Add the wheatgerm or bran, and chocolate chips and mix. Now make walnut sized balls of dough, press them flat so that you have small, thick discs. Either grease a baking tray or line it with Baking Parchment. I can fit between 9 and 12 on one sheet. Bake them for about 15 minutes, but start checking after 10 minutes.

Warning: Wait 'til they have cooled down before trying them, if you have one warm, you won't be able to stop yourself...

Busy bees

The kids and I on holiday, so I'll be going back to work for a rest on Tuesday (I work four days a week)! My two little people haven't stopped all day. They watched a thunder storm in the morning and we all made our pizzas for lunch. Then we went into the garden and found a mouse Wicket (our cat) thought we might like, so we held a burial, a lot of time was spent 'decorating' the grave (you can just make out the cross little man made with sticks):

The somber mood and tears were soon forgotten as they blew bubbles in the garden and made a blueberry tart:

Then they wrote, they painted and they made a mess...

Tomorrow will be another wow of a day. My brother and his partner (the kids' two favourite people) are coming over, and then we're probably sleeping in the garden tomorrow night. We're going camping at the end of August with friends, so we've bought a tent and we need to practice putting it up. I can't wait.