AWOL

So I've been a bit missing in December, but in my defence, it is December, and things are crazy busy.  However, I will blog about all the things we've been making and doing in January.

Some things to look forward to:

 More undies

 Felt food round up

Summer quenchers

Baby bonnet


Pipitea Shrug pattern
Bleach Tee top tutorial

Merry Christmas to all, and I'll see you again in the new year.

Plum Jam

 I had a project this week.  Lets pretend it was preserving.  My parents in law gave us a whole heap of plums off their tree, and I got stuck into making jam with them.  There is something deeply satisfying about preserving your own food, it makes me feel so good to be using (nearly) our own fruit to make something that my family will eat and enjoy.

 I used to be afraid of making jam, it seemed such a daunting task.  In fact I couldn't have been more wrong.  Jam making is super easy.  In essence, its equal parts fruit and sugar boiled until it sets.  Of course there is the science of pectin, and various kinds of things that can be added, but its really that simple.

My recipe was:
3kg plums
small amount of water
3kg sugar

Put the plums in a preserving pan, or large pot with a little water, and soften.  Skim the stones off as they come to the surface.  Once softened, add the sugar and boil until the mixture is at setting point.  Check for setting by putting a little on a cold plate, and see if it wrinkles when pushed with a finger, if it wrinkles then it is ready.  It should take around 20 - 30mins from adding the sugar.  Pot into sterilised jars.

Lemon Star biscuits

P and I also made lemon star biscuits.  They are only a little burnt on the edges.  People who know me in real life will know that my food often ends up 'only a little burnt', and I feel I must defend myself by pointing out that my oven has some kind of issue.  I never have to bake things for as long as recipes call for, and I often need to cover cakes or slices with tinfoil to stop the tops burning while the underneath cooks.  So when I bake something for the first time, I often don't quite get the timings right.  Although I also have to confess that I sometimes get distracted by the girls and don't check my baking quite as often as I should.

Anyway, P had a great time using the biscuit cutters and peeling back the dough to reveal our shapes.  She was quite keen on the man and duck shapes, and I'm just glad she couldn't find the pig shape when we were making these, since I'm not sure I could call them Christmas Pig biscuits with a straight face.

The recipe was just a basic biscuit dough:

125g butter

3/4C sugar

1      egg

2t     lemon zest

2C   flour

Cream the butter and sugar, add the egg and mix well.  Sift in the flour and lemon zest and mix until it forms a soft dough.  Chill the dough in the fridge for at least 30min before rolling out and cutting.  Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for about 12 mins until golden (not dark brown on the edges).

Feed the world

Do they know its Christmas Time

Well I did plenty of baking this week

 I made blueberry muffins using this recipe for my work Christmas do.  DH was very worried that I might take all of them to work with me, but I left him a few for his lunches.

I also made some lemon star biscuits (post to come soon) and then some Christmas cake slice.  This is an Alison Holst recipe, but when I pulled out my recipe book I found that I had lost the page that has this receipe on it.  This was a fairly major disaster, so I tried my best to recreate this from scratch.  It was alright, but not quite right.  DH said that the base was too dry and the topping not gooey enough.  It didn't stop him from eating several pieces however, so I can't have made too bad a job of it.

Our biscuit tins haven't looked this well stocked since I started work.

We have a glut of grapefruit at the moment. There were really high winds in the last couple of weeks and heaps of our fruit fell off the tree so I've been trying to make something with them. I've got a grapefruit cake recipe, but the juice of 2 grapefruit isn't going to cut it. So far I've made grapefruit cordial.

Grapefruit cordial
3 Grapefruit
1 1/2 C sugar
25g citric acid
1.2 L water

Dissolve sugar and citric acid in boiling water. Stir in juice and rind of the 3 grapefruit. Dilute to taste (about 3 parts water to 1 part syrup).

This cordial is great, because it doesn't have any artificial colours or preservatives (the citric acid is a preservative, but its natural).

So that has knocked off a few of my grapefruit, and I have tried my utmost to foist them on everyone I know, but most people have their own trees, or don't like them. I'd just eat them all the time, but they give me hives (I still love them, they just don't love me back).

If anyone has any other grapefruit intensive recipes, please let me know.

Baking

The weather this morning was pretty bad, just overcast and miserable, so P and I spent the morning baking. P loves baking, well actually she loves eating but when I bake she gets her own little bowl with ingredients to 'mix' and eat. We made some lactation cookies so I could freeze the dough for after the new baby arrives and then we made muffins. My muffin recipe is really easy and very versatile.

Basic Muffins
2 C flour
2 t baking powder
1/2 C brown sugar
2 t mixed spice
1 C wet fruit (grated apple, grated courgette, mashed banana, berries etc)
1/2 C dry fruit (sultanas, raisins, dried apricots, chocolate chips etc)
1 egg
2 T oil
1 C milk

Mix all the dry ingredients together and then add the egg, oil and milk (you should really mix all the wet ingredients together in another bowl and then add them to the dry ingredients but that's just another bowl to wash later). Pour into muffin tins and bake for approx 15mins at 200degC.

I know the muffins in the pictures are pink, this is because I used beetroot rather than apple for my wet fruit ingredient. We had some that went to seed and needed to be used up. I'm happy to report that the muffins tasted fine - a little beetrooty, but still yummy. The recipe is really really versatile, just use whatever you've got on hand.