Stash Avalanche

Damsons

Hello there. I've made it to the pc!

Since we've moved here, it's felt like non-stop madness, box shuffling, wood chopping and then jumping on the bike and hurriedly cycling off to work, so despite the fact that I work a (admittedly only slightly) shorter day, and only 4 days a week, it still took me three weeks of saying "I need to pick the damsons" before I actually managed to do it, and another week to make it to the blog. Sigh.

The rather unassuming bit of the hedge is a damson tree. If you peer very hard you can see fat, juicy damsons...

They look like giant sloes, and if you try them early enough in the season, are just as tart and unpalatable, but give them a few weeks and they develop enough sweetness to be eatable straight off the tree. Ours were mostly very sweet, so I don't know if they're a named variety (unlikely) or we just got lucky.

When I finally did get round to picking them, they were already starting to go over - by which I mean rot - so quite a few got left on the tree in a state of unappetising squidgyness, which was rather disappointing. I'd had some (probably fanciful) idea about stripping the whole tree and doing something useful with every single last one, but in retorspect, even if I do managed to get some more, that is a bit over ambitious.

I picked just under 3 kilos, which I though was not bad going, considering that I only picked what I could reach from the ground (next time, I'll be ladder wrangling) and ate about every 1 in 5 or 6. I put some in a 1 litre Kilner jar and covered them in gin (oooh, a whole 'nother post) and put the rest in the oven with a splosh of water to stew. I didn't really have an end plan, but I reckoned that stewing them was probably a good place to start.

The disadvantage of damsons is the stones, and there are plenty of them. The fruit are about the size of a large cherry so you can imagine how little I warmed to the idea of stoning them before they went in the oven. However, the alternative is a. spitting your way through a bowlful of damsons every time you have some (not ideal) or b. putting the whole lot through a sieve or muslin (tedious). I opted for plan b, and pushed the whole lot (in small batches) through a plastic sieve (I wasn't sure whether my rather aged metal one would like the acidity).

Let me tell you, it is jolly tedious indeed and I didn't have the patience to do it in one session, but I got there in the end and got just under 1.4 litres, so that's about half a litre per kilo - not too shabby if you consider all those stones. I did add a bit of sugar, probably about 100 - 150g in total, but only enough to take the edge off it. Isn't it a glorious colour? I read somewhere online that damsons used to be grown to make dye, so it probably pays to not undertake any damson cookery in your best white top or frock!

Stashlet tried some mixed into quark and declared it delicious, but was not so keen on it neat - too strong a flavour. I think it will be really good on vanilla ice cream, and did in fact find a few damson ice cream recipes online while I was trying to work out what to do with my hoard. Unfortunately our two (very small) freezers are full of Mr G's German noodles - Lidl were doing a special and he got a bit carried away so there is no room for anything else other than a few small tubs of frozen damson puree.

If I do manage to get some more before it's too late, I might make some jam, or do another Kilner jar, this time with vodka (purely for comparison, of course!).

As a slight aside, when I'm writing this post, Typepad provides me with a sort of running commentary of links that it thinks may be applicable to my topic (ah, the power of key words...) and one popped up that actually did look quite useful (as opposed to one on Dulux paint, and another on buying cows in Kenya), so let me pass on to you CrumbBlog's Damson Custard Tart which looks rather delicious and has the advantage of pitting the damsons before they go in the oven, a task which is quite achievable when you're only doing 3 cup-worths and not 3 kilos.

Enjoy!

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More Lewis and Irene!

Hello!

I must admit to not having done much since my last post, partly due to having the maddest two weeks ever and partly because I managed to half slice the end of my finger off on a piece of glass so was completely unable to knit or crochet. But...

I've been thoroughly Lewis and Irene-d, so much so that, whilst I try to work out how I want to finish that riverside strip quilt,  I've started another one...

Another strip quilt. Well, they're just so quick and satisfying.

This one is a mixture of Flo's Wildflowers, Salisbury Spring, and Enchanted Forest with a bit of pale grey (can't remember whose) thrown in to break up the busyness.

 

And if you peek closely enough, you'll see there's a general theme of rabbits.

We're pretty big on rabbits in this house, so I just couldn't pass by these fabrics without buying.

Somewhat uncharacteristically for me, I think I even have a plan for the sides - as with the riverside one, it's too long and narrow to leave as it is, so there will be some additions to sort out the proportions.

There is a third pile of L&I to work on so I think I can officially put this in the Frenzy! category. But that will have to wait a while. I think it would be too dangerous to start a third before I have at least one quilt top finished; too much temptation to get even more distracted than I am already.

And now, back to the cutting mat.

 

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Felt a bit bunny at the weekend...

They look so pretty all together.

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MumsNet WorkFest 2014

Eeek! Just booked my ticket to the MumsNet WorkFest 2014 in London. Anyone else going and want to meet up?

Might be nice to have some friendly faces in a crowd.

They're doing an Early Bird ticket until Sunday 27th April, and the event itself is on Saturday 7th June. There are also reduced price tickets for unemployed people, which is nice.

The event is billed as "advice and inspiration on going back to work, changing your career and starting your own business". There will be a variety of talks/workshops through out the day (with different talks aimed at different needs: returner, business starter, etc) from an impressive list of speakers, and one-to-one sessions if you want/need them. The programme looks great.

And just for the record, this post is not sponsored (or anything else-ed) by MumsNet, I'm just gushing with enthusiasm.

I baked...

Traditionally in Mr G's part of Germany (and probably elsewhere too, but he's not here to ask) people bake a selection of little biscuits around Christmas time for family and visitors. We had some friends around yesterday afternoon so I thought it wold be nice to try again at Christmas biscuit making. I did this a couple of years ago and instead of dainty minatures, got galumping great monsters, especially the pin-wheel cookies which turned out about 4" across instead of 1"! How did I never manage to post about that?

I was in a bit of a hurry this time so I went the easy route, making shortbreads and using biscuit cutters. I still aspire to 1" pinwheel cookies but not at 11pm on a Saturday night.

I used a vanilla shortbread recipe to make pigs (which also looked a lot like wombats if you're feeling Antipodean) and flowers, a spiced Christmas tree biscuit mix for the men, and  chocolate shortbread for the hearts. Chilling everything in the fridge really helped, especially for the chocolate shortbread which was a really crumbly dough. Stashlet being in bed helped tremendously too; he loves to help with baking but when you've got a deadline you need to be able to think!

If you'd like to try all three mixes at once (which works fine so long as you don't have any distractions), my advice is to make all the doughs, putting them in the fridge as you go, then get the first-made one out, cut out the biscuits, put them in the oven and work on the second dough as the first lot bake.

If you have a variety od oven temperature requirements like these three resipies, go for a lower oven setting rather than a higher one and allow a little extra time if necessary (higher temps =  prone to burning). This seems to be the most time-economical way of doing things, rather than making and baking one batch as a time.

If you only have two baking sheets like me, it means finding some space to keep the cut out biscuits until the sheets come out of the oven, but I was rolling everything out on the kitchen table so there was plenty of room.

Vanilla shortbread - flowers and pigs

original recipe came from somewhere on the internet ages ago but I never saved the link (eeek!)

325g plain flour

200g chilled salted butter

125g/4½oz golden caster sugar

2 tsp good-quality vanilla extract

2 large free range egg yolks

Preheat the oven to 180C. Tip the flour into a food processor. Cut the butter into small pieces and drop them into the bowl, then whizz until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs. Add the sugar, vanilla and egg yolks and whizz to a small dough. If you haven't got a processor, rub the butter into the flour in a large bowl, then add the remaining ingredients and mix to a dough with your hands. Roll out to about 5mm thick and cut out biscuits, re-rolling the trimming to make more. Bake for 15-20 minutes until pale golden then transfer to a wire rack to cool. Decorate as desired.

Chocolate shortbread - hearts

original recipe from Cookies, Biscuits and Biscotti by Linda Collister

200g unsalted butter

100g golden caster sugar (I used normal)

260g plain flour

40g cocoa powder

pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 180C. Beat butter until light and creamy. Add sugar and beat again. Sift the flour with the cocoa powder and salt. Mix into the butter/sugar mix  - you can probably start with a spoon but you'll need to bring the dough together with your hands. Press the dough into a 23cm round greased cake tin, mark into 12 sections and bake for 15-20 minutes. Once out of the oven, cut into sections but leave in the tin until completely cold. Decorate as desired.

My version: I wrapped the ball of dough in cling film and put it in the fridge for half an hour, then rolled it out to about 5mm thick. You'll need to flour your rolling surface and rolling pin, and be gentle with the dough as it tends to crumble.

This shortbread is quite fragile when it comes out of the oven so leave the biscuits on the tray for about 5-10 minutes to allow them to firm up before you transfer them to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Tip: the recipe says do not allow it to get brown as it will be bitter, however it's already brown so that can be a difficult thing to judge! Don't leave them in any longer than 20 minutes - they will probably look exactly the same as they did before they went in but that's fine. Err on the side of caution. They will crisp up as they cool.

Christmas tree biscuits - men

original recipe from The River Cottage Handbook No.8: Cakes by Pam Corbin

275g plain flour

1 level tsp baking powder

1tsp ground ginger

1tsp ground cinnamon

100g soft brown sugar (I used Muscovado)

75g unsalted butter

1 egg

50g golden syrup

Preheat the oven to 170C. Sift flour, baking powder and spices into a bowl. Add the sugar and mix well. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. In another bowl or cup, beat the egg with the golden syrup until combined, then pour into the dry mixture. Mix together until the dough forms a ball - you might need to use your hands to get the whole thing to come together. Wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes. Flour a rolling surface and rolling pin, then roll out to about 5mm thick. Cut out biscuits with cutters or just cut squares, diamonds etc. with a knife. If you want to use these as Christmas tree decorations, make a little hole in the top of each one witha skewer to put a hanging ribbon through. Put on a baking sheet (I lined mine with baking parchment) and bake for around 15-20 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. You might need to re-do the hanging holes too.

My version: By the time I'd found the ground ginger, I'd already put in a tsp of mixed spice, so my final mix was 1tsp mixed spice, 1/2 tsp ground ginger and 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon.

Decorating: I tried to give the pig/wombats and spice men icing eyes but the water icing wouldn't stick (which was weird) so I gave up in a grump, and will have to do some icing research before the next batch.

The chocolate shortbread got a drizzle of white chocolate. I used about half a bar (50 g), melted and put in a little greasproof paper cone - using a spoon straight from the bowl of melted chocolate only made drops and not lines.

The flowers got a coating of orange flavour dark chocolate. I used one 100g bar of Lindt (which I had forgotten has lumps of almond in it) which I spread on with a knife. The result is lumpy looking chocolate so I sprinkled some flaked almonds over the tops. For these biscuits, I needed 100g of chocolate. I think mint would also be nice.

You could also try half dipping biscuits in chocolate, or simply sprinkling with icing or caster sugar.

Tall Ships 2012

Stashlet is at the childminder and I'm supposed to be booking b&bs for a quick trip to the UK but here I am posting instead. So much to post about, so little time to post...

I've been wanting to go to the Tall Ships Festival for a while now and for the last few years it was in Belfast - which is only a train ride away - but I never had time time. But this year it was in Dublin so we managed a quick visit in the middle of frantic packing for a trip to Germany.

It was manic, and I think if I'd known in advance, I would have waited until it came around again - getting through the crowds with Stashlet in a buggy was a real fight at times! But it was lovely seeing all the ships and we only got (gently) rained on a couple of times!

You can find out more about the Tall Ships Races here.

Next year it's in Szczecin so we'll probably be giving it a miss!

Apple Sharlotka

Foof! A belated Happy New Year to everyone.

I haven't mentioned cake in a while but this weekend saw me baking a new cake, and baking it twice at that!

One of the blogs I read is Smitten Kitchen and on Saturday Deb posted a recipe for Apple Sharlotka which her Russian mother-in-law makes. It is so simple and so full of fruit that I went off there and then to bake it, and trial it on Mr G's friend Mr C.

This is what was left:

I'll take that as a positive response.

On Sunday, we had another visitor so I made a variation of Deb's recipe. I have to say I prefer my version but it is probably not very Russian anymore.

Deb's original version is here and mine is below.

*******

Apple Sharlotka - the probably-not-very-Russian variation

7  large Granny Smiths apples

4 medium eggs (or 3 large depending on what you have in the fridge)

120 g caster sugar

80g muscovado sugar (or dark soft brown)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

 1 cup (125 grams) all-purpose flour

about ½tsp ground cinnamon

small handful of flaked almonds

Preheat oven to 180C. Line a 9"/23cm springform tin with parchment (not greaseproof!). Butter the  sides of the tin. Peel, core and quarter the apples, then cut each quarter into slices about the thickness of a pound/euro coin. Sprinkle the apples with the ground cinnamon, turning as you sprinkle to coat all the slices. Tip the apples into the tin.

Make the batter by beating the eggs with the sugar (break up any lumps in the brown sugar before you start) and vanilla essence until thick and you can lift the beaters out and make a trail in the egg mixture. Fold in the flour until just combined (a bit like making brownies) to end up with a very thick batter.

Pour the batter over the apples making sure they are all covered with the batter. Sprinkle the flaked almonds over the top. Bake in the preheated oven until a skewer come out clean (about 55 minutes). Cool in the tin for 10 minutes or so then turn out onto a plate, peel off the parchment and turn the cake right side up again onto a second plate. Eat warm or cold with a dollop of cream.

*******

A few notes:

Deb specifies Granny Smiths and that's what I used with my variation. For the first cake I used Pink Lady apples. I think Cox's Orange Pippins would be better than both of these, and will try that next time.

Deb descries this cake as a bit like a cloufouti although the 'sponge' reminded me more of British trifle sponges, but don't let that put you off!!

Both times my cakes came out well browned but with slightly crispy apples. Rereading Deb's recipe I see that she cuts her apples into little slivers rather than slices; also my oven runs ridiculously hot so even though I compensated, perhaps I should have turned it down further.

Happy baking.

oh. Ps. I finally added a photo of the cut Canadian fruit cake to the post from a while back. So full of cherries - heaven!

 

I baked...

(an embarassingly half-hearted attempt at food styling...)

Firstly apologies. I'm having a blogging-like-buses period. You wait for hours and then three turn up at one. My excuse is pregnancy lethargy and lack of decent light to take photographs, but guilt has give ne a kick up the backside so today you get three posts to make up for things.

So. Baking. Somewhat surprisingly, given the speed at which I move these days, I had a really productive weekend. For starters, I baked a cake and two lots of shortbread, having had a decent-kind-of-biscuit craving all last week.

I'd been having minor sponge cravings too. The kind you used to be able to buy at Broomfield's (or was it Bloomfield's?) Bakeries - a 4" square of sponge with thick pink icing on top. So why I made an orange sponge is beyond me - I'm not really that keen on orange cake, but I have to admit it looked pretty. It was just a bog standard sponge recipe with a couple of teaspoons of orange oil thrown in and a clementine zest for interest. It has not satisfied my craving at all but we're working our way through it (oh! what heroes we are!).

More satisfying was the shortbread. Both recipes (with minor adjustments) were from Cookies, Biscuits and Biscotti by Linda Collister (ISBN 1841725331) which is currently my main source of biscuit recipes.

The (not) Demerara Shortbread came out slightly overdone  and the Chocolate Shortbread came out a bit underdone (mostly because my oven is really unco-operative, and it's really hard to tell (well, for me at least) when chocolate things are burnt). But neither suffered in the baking and both turned out to be rather too delicious. Did I mention that I have put on nearly 20kg in the last 8 months? I blame it entirely on the baby...

One word of advice - these are much easier to make if the butter is at room temperature or even a bit softer.

(not) Demerara Shortbread (original recipe from Cookies, Biscuits and Biscotti by Linda Collister)

200g unsalted butter  (I used salted)

100g light brown sugar (the original recipe calls for golden caster sugar, but I would have used muscovado if I hadn't run out)

splosh of vanilla extract

260g plain flour

40g rice flour ( you can also use ground rice or cornflour)

Pinch of salt (I didn't bother with this)

3-4 tablespoons of demerara sugar (I didn't bother with this either)

Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla extract together, then mix in the flours until you have a rough dough. Mine was quite crumbly until I realised I hadn't put enough butter in (duh!). Roll it into a log shape about 7cm in diameter then roll the log in the demerara if you're using it. Chill for about 30 minutes, then cut into slices about 1cm thick. You are supposed to prick the biscuits with a fork but I forgot and frankly it didn't seem to make any difference. Bake in a preheated oven at 180C for about 15 minutes. Don't wait for them to turn brown - as soon as they're vaguely golden but still pale they're done (the book says "firm but not coloured"). I think I got about 18 biscuits.

Did you ever get big plain or pinwheel biscuits at school? These taste a bit like them.

Chocolate Shortbread (original recipe from Cookies, Biscuits and Biscotti by Linda Collister)

200g unsalted butter (I used salted)

100g golden caster sugar (I think I used light brown sugar)

260g plain flour

40g cocoa powder

Pinch of salt (I didn't bother)

half a bar/about 60g dark chocolate (not in the original but what the hell!)

extra icing sugar for sprinkling (I didn't bother)

Well, you pretty much make this in the same way as the Demerara Shortbread. I chopped the chocolate into quite small pieces and mixed it in with the flour and cocoa powder. Instead of making a roll this time, you press the dough into a 23cm cake tin (I put a circle of parchment on the bottom but probably could have done without). Chill in the fridge for 30 minutes or so, score it into 12 sections, prick all over with a fork then bake for 15-20 minutes. The book says "do not allow it to brown or it will taste bitter"  - my question is how can you tell when a brown dough has browned, hence it coming out of the oven a tad too early.

Allow the shortbread to cool completely in the tin. The dough is very soft when it first comes out so leave it for 10 to 15 minutes then go over your score lines again with a knife. Sprinkle with icing sugar if you're feeling fancy.

Quilting + bump = progress

Last week's baking seemed to go down as well with you as with us. Mr G and I shared the jam pizza, and the rest didn't last very long.

I was going to bake again today but there's not enough time. So my clever idea will have to wait until next week. The clever idea is this - make a cake in a ring tin, and put a mixture of nutella and toasted chopped almonds in the centre of the sponge, so that every slice has a gooey chocolate centre. What do you think?

I was partially inspired by The Food Librarian (found via DeliciousDeliciousDelicious) who has just spent her second year celebrating National Bundt Day (only in the USA...) by making a bundt cake (that's a cake cooked in a ring tin if you're not being fancy) every day for 30 days (ok, well I think one was a meat loaf and one was a jelly but even so...). I think that requires more baking stamina than even I have!

Meanwhile, back at the Lila Tueller quilt....

I whaled around on the floor again, this time with my (allegedly) blocked and properly rectangular quilt top and pinned it to the wadding and backing again. Then I discovered that although the width was a lovely uniform 36" all the way along, the damned thing was an inch longer on one side than the other. I gave up! There's only so much hanging in mid-air that my bump can take, and I don't think anyone will notice unless they get a measuring tape out.

So to quilting.  I was semi-tempted to hand quilt it but decided I would probably lose the will to live half way through, so machine quilting it is. And I feel that I'm making surprisingly good progress. I started quilting the centre last night, did a bit more this morning and suddenly it was done. So all I need to do now is the long band around the outside.

I'm doing double parallel lines about 1cm on either side ot the seams. Can you see what I mean...?

I didn't draw on any guide lines. I just shifted the needle to the far left and followed the seam with the edge of the presser foot. And then shifted the needle to the far right and did the other side.

So the back looks like this:

Now I need to finish off all the lose threads - probably one of the most tedious jobs in the world - and then I can quilt the border and bind the edge.

So (famous last words) by next weekend, it should be done. And then I can celebrate with cake!

Baking madness

I first learnt to bake bread when I was a child. It was a really basic recipe and I probably didn't even use strong bread flour. In recent years, I got into making Grant loaves because they don't require any kneading but lately I've become rather fed up with them.

Mr G always craves German bread and finds my wholemeal Grant loaves (with plenty of seeds) a reasonable substitute, but for me they have just become more and more solid. Sad as I can remember practically eating the first one I made in one go, it was so good (although that one was made with white flour).

Anyway,  Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's current tv series on Channel 4 recently did a bread making episode which made me think that I should a. go back to kneaded bread and b. try his method, so that's what I've been doing today.

I went out and bought the River Cottage Bread Handbook earlier in the week which spends a lot of pages going through the bread making process in detail. I love these handbooks - I also have the one on preserves - and I slowly intend to collect all of them. I really think they will become collectors' items in the future.

I'm not going to go into the bread-making process in detail because it would take so long I might as well reproduce the book in this post and then I'd probably get arrested for plagiarism! Suffice to say, there are three methods to start the dough. You can either shove everything together and get on with the kneading immediately, or you can mix the flour and water, leave it for a while and then add the yeast, or you can make a batter with all the water and all the yeast but only half the flour, then leave it over night before you add the rest of the flour and get kneading.

This last method (aka the sponge method) is the one that I chose to do, because it is supposed to cut down on kneading time, and kneading was the bit I wasn't looking forward to. So I actually started the batter last night.

It's not that I hate kneading, but the River Cottage method involves very sticky dough which sticks to everything. I was going to take a photo of the dough mid-knead this morning but by the time I thought of it, I was completely caked in dough myself. Note to self: perhaps a little less water next time might help.

My bread didn't rise a great deal when it was proving (I think that was due to it being a bit too wet), but it did rise rather spectacularly in the oven.

These rolls were about half an inch thick and looked more like mini pancakes before they went in.

I used a kilo of flour as suggested and got six big rolls and a tin loaf. But I think next time I'll only make 4 rolls and add a bit more dough to the tin for a taller loaf. (No photos of the loaf because it was still in the oven when I took these).

But six rolls and one loaf do not baking madness make.

I am really unconvinced that this pregnancy has created food cravings but for a week now, I've been thinking about jam tarts (in a Homer Simpson kind of way), so while the bread was proving, I made some in my muffin tin (which was far too deep but never mind) and a kind of jam-disaster-pizza with the left over pastry.

and yes, I know there aren't 12 jam tarts there. I had to do some sampling just to make sure they were ok. Judge me if you like - I don't care!

And, for about three weeks now I've been thinking about pineapple upside-down cake so I made one of those too for our post-squash Saturday tea and cake session with Mr G's friend, C (they play squash, I sensibly stay at home). But strangely, although it turned out very nicely, I had two mouthfuls and had to get Mr G to finish the rest. Perhaps that was hormones.

And then because there was no room in the fridge (don't get me started on the size of the fridge!) I made a bowl of coleslaw too.

Alright. I don't think you really want a photo of that.

So I feel like I've spent the whole day in the kitchen (cue over-dramatic hand to forehead). But I felt very efficient, and (bonus) supper will be bratwurst, River Cottage rolls and Stash Towers coleslaw, with jam tarts for pud, so it hasn't been all bad!