Sometimes, despite the best of intentions, fruit can go a little south in the fruit bowl. Things in general feel like they have gone a little south lately. This time a year ago our current COVID circumstances would have been unimaginable to pretty much all …
Wheewwww so another nearly two months since my last post with some more drama in between. Two further hospital admissions, including one particularly gripping visit to the emergency room with nurses running, grabbing wheelchairs and shouting ‘code two, code two’ into the PA system, three …
WOAH. That was a month and a half.
The first section was pretty damn fine. My husband and I treated ourselves to a week in Rarotonga to celebrate getting through some rather rubbish stuff over the last wee while, and gosh it was bliss.
Rarotonga is beautiful and delightfully laid-back. You share pristine beaches with dogs and chickens, crabs scurry down burrows beneath coconut trees and pet goats wander in mango orchards. Needless to say I did not do a lot of cooking, but thanks to the bountiful tropical trees in the garden of our accommodation, I had some fun experimenting with various home-made cocktails. Bad photo below of passion-lime and vodka. It improves the more you have.
The past wee bit has been a little less fun. Long story short, some long-term side effects of last year’s fertility treatment left me with a whacking great deficit in my iron. It all got a little dramatic, ending with admission to hospital where, being woozy with anaemia, I kept trying to introduce all of the nurses to my rather worried husband and mum. Can I just say the staff of Wellington hospital do an amazing job and, several blood and iron transfusions later, I am back in my own little nest and on the way to recovery.
So, I’m sure you’ll understand that I have not been whipping up a storm, or much of anything, in my kitchen to share with you today. While I have been gadding about between hospital and Pacific islands however, my garden has been busy.
My Cape Gooseberry tree is such a little trouper. It came to me from a friend who can’t bear to get rid of any excess seedlings and I have done pretty much nothing to it, save plonking it in a terracotta pot. Despite this, it never lets me down and is currently producing an impressive bounty of fruit.
Have you ever seen a Cape Goosberry fruit before? They are like beautiful little lanterns with a bright yellow berry inside. Their taste is lovely – fleshy and a little sweet, a little like a plum in flavour, witha cheek-sucking tartness at the end. I have it on good authority they are packed with vitamin C, so a handful for morning tea is just what I need at the moment.
I have lots of planned posts coming up, including pudding with hazelnuts and some dark chocolate and ginger creations. Thanks for your patience on this one and if you get a chance to try a Cape Gooseberry, do take it.
Lots of love as always x
I truly love posting about dessert. I am a huge fan of baking – we have a rich and rightly-celebrated baking culture in our little country and I am happy to leap in, butter, cream and all. It feels particularly necessary right now, as Winter …
If you fancy a sugar hangover, look no further. This fudge is mouth-suckingly sweet and all the better for it. A firm Kiwi favourite, it is dense and rich, comprised largely of sugar, sweetened condensed milk and golden syrup. I can’t get to the bottom …
Steamed pudding is like a sweet, jammy hug in a bowl. I love it. It’s a special favourite in our little country. I was recently introduced to a New Zealand specialty steamed pudding which is the queen of both steamed puddings and now of my heart…burnt sugar steamed pudding. Oh wow. Like hot, soft caramel made into a cake and served with lashings of runny cream. My mouth waters at the mere memory.
So, it’s not a surprise that steamed pudding features in that bastion of all that is cooking and kiwi, the Edmonds cook book. This particular version is jazzed up with a little apple, and all the better for it, as the tart apple partners nicely with the sweet apricot jam and the fluffy sponge.
To make this you will need:
Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and beat well. Stir in the jam.
Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into the butter mixture and fold in.
Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add to the mixture, along with the apple.
Grease a 2-cup pudding basin. Spoon in the sponge mixture and cover the bowl with some greased baking paper. Secure with string.
Steam the pudding for half an hour, or until it is springy to the touch. This took about 45 minutes for pudding.
Serve with cream and a cup of tea!
You can tell the state of the economy by the price of a lime, or so the saying goes. What it’s meant to tell you, I’m not sure, but I can reliably inform you that limes in these here parts cost a small fortune at the …
This idea came to me by accident, really. I’m always a fan of shortbread, so any excuse for that. But the orange part happened when a lonely orange, languishing in the fruit bowl, happened to cross my field of vision whilst I was enjoying a Sunday morning …
Lucky me, to receive this lovely baking book for my birthday from my similarly kitchen-obsessed little sister. Alice Arndell’s Alice in Bakingland is a treat for the eyes as much as anything, full of pictures of dainty plates, matching teacup-and-saucer sets, all showing off delightful mounds of delicious cakes and biscuits. Squeal!
Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I am fortunate to have parentals who kindly bring me ingredients from their travels, with which I can then experiment. And so today, I’m going to tell you all about my fun with a bottle of …