Showing posts with label baking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baking. Show all posts

18 Jul 2015

Biscuits, bees and lavender

A cookie jar rarely stays full for long in my kitchen; biscuits, as we like to call them in the UK, are a lovely thing to make in your kitchen at home. They don't take long to make, especially (or even) if you have children to help. This recipe uses fresh lavender from the garden but this could be replaced with shop bought lavender buds (from the home baking aisle) - or left out altogether and have vanilla or lemon zest added instead. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!




Shall we just pretend for a moment that the grey skies of the past week haven't happened?  It's not been very summery over the last week although, once outdoors, I've been surprised how humid it feels despite grey skies and drizzling rain. But enough of all that.  Let's pretend that it's a glorious warm and mellow summer's day - a perfect day for relaxing in the garden with some iced lemonade and homemade biscuits, listening to the bees busily collecting nectar from the nearby lavender bushes. Hmmm.  Biscuits + Lavender. Now there's a thought.

Lavender is definitely the top summer plant in my garden for attracting bees, the bushes are in constant motion with bees landing and taking off again from the flowers.  But they're not just a pretty face - there's a lot more that lavender is good for.

  • The dried leaves and flowers can be mixed with rice to make aromatic microwave-able handwarmers; 
  • fabric pouches filled with lavender flowers can scent clothes or be tucked under a pillow for good night's sleep; 
  • the oil is soothing, calming and healing; 
  • lavender spikes make lovely cut flowers (cut when half to one-third of the flowers are open and cut above a pair of leaves) and, of course, 
  • the flowers are edible.


I discovered this recipe while skimming through a Mary Berry book due for return to the library: Lavender biscuits, how intriguing.  And there's something so dependable about Mary Berry that I instinctively trust her recipes.  This recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of fresh lavender flowers and/or leaves.  Ever one to expand my repertoire of what to do with edible flowers, I decided to make a batch for teatime (and other moments when a snack is required).

First task was to gather flowers and photos. This part of making the biccies took a while; I'm easily distracted from the task in hand when watching bees and hoverflies and came back with many photos, mostly of blurred bees.




Back indoors, I'd left the butter to soften and already weighed out the other ingredients so it was just a case of stripping the stems, finely chopping the flowers and putting it all together which took hardly any time at all.  Don't waste the stems - when used as skewers for grilling meats they'll add subtle flavour and can also be used to gently fragrance the dying embers of the barbecue or winter fire.

The biscuits should be baked on two trays but, instead, I used one tray twice.  Just as well, as I thought the first batch (lavender only) tasted a bit 'soapy'. I added a grating of lemon zest to the second batch which made a much better and very tasty biscuit.  Of course, that could just be me.  I recommend you try them.  Even without lavender, the biscuits are a lovely open 'shortbread' texture and keep well in an airtight jar.  Oh, and don't skimp on the Demerara sugar - it gives a lovely sweet crunch to the biscuit.

Recipe here on my Google drive - download for printing, if you wish.

12 Jul 2014

Stoned!

So we're having a summer of festivals, sunshine, music, happiness, flowers in your hair and chilling… but don't get excited - when I'm talking about being stoned, I'm only talking about cherry stones (or pits/pips, whatever).

You might remember that the cherry trees under my custodian-ship are both Morello, bought at the beginning of the community garden when there were quite a few of us. I'm not sure how the decision was reached to buy two sour cherry trees but every year those two trees are my best producers and, ironically, I don't even like sour cherries. Neighbours were told to help themselves as the fruit ripened but it didn't happen. I returned from a few days away to find deep dark cherries on the point of spoiling with none picked.

Not being one to waste good food, I checked through my cookery books (so many recipes for sweet cherries!) and googled for more inspiration. Not fancying a cherry chutney or pickle (good with duck), I thought I might be safe with a cherry crumble from an American website. The country is renowned for its cherry pies and cobblers so what could go wrong?  Salt, as it happens.



But first, time to gather the fruit in. I popped down to the garden with scissors and a trug. Having this year got wise to the fact that ants love the fruit juice and were swarming all over the fruit (unlike my experience last year), I returned home with just under a kilo of fruit and, it turned out, 4 small spiders, numerous teeny tiny caterpillars and 2 ants. As I picked, I'd discarded another kilo of fruit as it had little boreholes in it - either something had crawled in or out of those holes, best not to risk it - or had just become too overripe. With home-grown, it's always wise to check and wash, then check again. Yin/yang, there's a balance to everything with organic, pesticide-free gardening.

Back in the kitchen the cherries were weighed and picked over again - on a black surface so that I could see any bugs crawling away -


more had to be thrown, the remainder washed, dried,


weighed,


stones removed, kitchen washed down (they were very juicy!)


and, finally, I was able to get on with the business of being a domestic goddess. The recipe was translated (almond flour?  eh? (ground almonds) - and cups versus grams) and about half an hour later, this was ready to go into the oven


with one spare for the freezer.

One word of caution: this should have been utterly delicious; ground almond crumble over vanilla scented sweetened cherries … BUT! why oh why did the recipe call for salt? In both the crumble and, more bizarrely, in the cherry mix. Also, lemon juice and zest in with sour cherries? With hindsight, no, not good. (Unless, of course, you're a big fan of Heston Blumenthal.) I blame my obsession with following a recipe to the letter the first time I make something; next time I'll trust my judgement.  Looks nice though, doesn't it?


So it's bye, bye American Pie but I'm going to see if I can rescue/start again with the second crumble and cook it with sugar and a good slosh of last year's delicious sloe vodka.

Just in case I haven't totally put you off, the recipe I used is here on the Epicurious website:  Sour Cherry Crumble 
It wasn't unpleasant, it's just that the hint of salt enhanced the 'sour' element of what I was eating and I was kinda trying to get away from that.

With a few amendments - if you have sour cherries to use up and want to give this a go - the crumble top would be sublime if the salt is omitted. The filling needs adjusting - leave out the salt and lemon juice, use 2 spoons of cornflour or arrowroot instead of 3 spoons of 'flour' (I did) and add a touch more sugar and vanilla - and possibly some booze.  Then, I think, it would be crumble-icious.

Finally, having stripped the tree of its fruit, now is a good time for pruning.

Edited to add: If you don't have your own cherry tree and have to buy cherries in, look for cherries that still have the stalks attached. The stalks should be green, indicating that the fruit is freshly picked and therefore still full of healthy goodness.