Ingredients Method About this recipe… I’ve been playing around with this recipe since Christmas. I treated myself to a jar of Roses strawberry conserve to go with festive croissants and needed something to do with the leftovers that wasn’t simply jam on toast. Nothing wrong …
You might have many reasons for choosing a mocktail – driving, dehydrated, just feel like something lighter – and this festive season I decided to give making some a go. I’m new to mixing cocktails and mocktails so do not have my own recipes ready …
I think we all need a little sweetness at the moment. Summer holidays, and the little dash of optimism and refreshment they deliver, feel like a long time ago indeed. Luckily, I have this spiced plum shortcake recipe stored up from my own summer holiday, which was pleasantly full of fresh summer fruit, including a bounty of plums rescued from a fallen branch.
As you may have gathered, I like to know a little history behind the things I cook. Googling for “shortcake” was a pleasant treat as it lead me to this delightful little excerpt on the website for an American bakery with a name that warms my heart. Zig’s Bakery and Café not only looks like a real treat to visit but also (nearly) shares a name with my darling little ginger cat Ziggy. But I’m diverting here….as Zig’s has informed me, shortcake has an admirable history, first appearing in a recipe in 1588, and being the namesake for a character in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor. There is even a National Strawberry Shortcake Day on 14 June in some US states to celebrate the strawberry harvest.
This plum shortcake is a little more tart than a strawberry version but is nicely sweetened up with a dusting of icing sugar…and a dollop of ice cream wouldn’t go amiss either. I hope you enjoy it if you decide to do some baking to warm your heart a little – the plums create a delightful and lifting aroma as they bubble away, and any leftovers are delicious with oats and yoghurt for breakfast. Take care out there everyone x
Ingredients:
For the spiced plums:
For the shortcake:
Method:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius. Grease a 25cm x 18cm baking tray and lightly dust with flour.
Place the plums, spices and sugar into a saucepan and bring to the boil. Turn the heat down and simmer for 20 minutes. If the plums are not releasing a great deal of juice, add up to 2 tablespoons of water so a thin layer of liquid just coats the bottom of the pan.
Meanwhile, make the shortcake by mixing the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt together in a medium bowl. Cut in the butter and rub it in with your fingers until the mixture is fine and crumbly. Add the whisked egg and combine. Then slowly mix in the milk until the mixture forms a stiff dough.
Roll the dough into a ball and turn out onto a floured surface. Divide into thirds. Press two thirds into the bottom of the prepared baking tin.
After 20 minutes or until the plums have softened but are holding their shape, remove from the heat and allow to cool for five minutes. Remove the vanilla and cardamon pods and cinnamon stick and spoon the plums over the shortcake in the baking tin. Use the remaining shortcake dough to dot over the top of the plums.
Bake for 25 minutes until the shortcake is golden. Remove from the oven and dust with icing sugar after five minutes.
Happy New Year! I was lucky to have a pretty decent 2021, and I know I am in the minority here. It was a shocker for many of my favourite people. Wherever January 2022 finds you (ideally somewhere relaxing and on holiday with many tasty …
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 further blood transfusions, some very strong medication and some rather distressing specialist appointments. During which, in another anaemia fog, it seemed a good idea to send the horrid picture of myself below to my family to reassure them all was fine. Yes, I look awful, or as my sister helpfully put it, like a corpse.
So yes, it’s nice to have a lemon thyme plant in the garden happily doing its thing while its owner it otherwise occupied, and even better to have a nice soothing cordial recipe to hand which takes very little work. Cordials were originally a health tonic prepared by European apothecaries, and then later a liqueur, so all and all I think cordial is a very appropriate thing for me to have to hand at the present time.
It was a delight to do my background reading on cordial because it introduced me to the EUVS online library – a collection of vintage cocktail books for the bar tending profession, carefully sourced, scanned and loaded online so we can all benefit from this treasure trove.
The historical authority on cordial is one William Terrington, author of the definitive “Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks” and spouter of excellent commentary such as “champagne wine has been recommended by the faculty as a valuable mechanism for keeping up the system during exhaustion” and warning that “bad or fictitious champagne is injurious to health.” If you say so, Mr Terrington. Only the best champagne for me on a regular, medicinal basis from now on.
This recipe is really easy, honestly you pretty much put it all in a bowl and leave it for a bit, then dispense into bottles. You can omit the lemon thyme if you don’t want that extra flavour.
Take care lovelies and I will be back sooner and in even better health next time.
Ingredients
1 teaspoon citric acid
1 cup caster sugar
2 cups lemon thyme
3 lemons – juice and peel
2 cups boiling water
Place the citric acid, caster sugar, lemon thyme, lemon juice and peel into a heat-proof jug or bowl with 2 cups or above capacity.
Pour over the boiling water.
Leave it to cool (perfectly fine to do this in the fridge overnight).
Strain and serve. Keeps well for up to a month.
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 …
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 of its name. In my travels through the internet, I was delighted to find Nigella acknowledges we call Russian Fudge in our little country, although she calls her version Vanilla Fudge.
This lovely Polish-authored food blog includes a recipe for Polish krówki, which translates as ‘little cows’ (how I love that!). Krówki is a sweet fudge very similar to our Russian fudge, and apparently Russia have a version too. New Zealand has a strong Polish connection, most famously through our post-World War II Polish refugee children. Could this explain it?
I won’t keep you all waiting while I trawl through the history of New Zealand confectionary in hope of an answer. Here is my preferred recipe for Russian fudge. The best tip I can give you is beat the fudge for as long as it takes in the final stage – it really is important for making it set.
Ingredients:
Method:
Place everything except for the vanilla essence into a pot and bring to the boil, stirring constantly. Once it is boiling, keep stirring and let it boil for about 20 minutes, until a blob of fudge dropped in cold water can be formed into a squishy little ball.
Take off the heat, add the vanilla essence, and beat the fudge until it starts to thicken (I’m always into doing things by hand but I can really recommend an electric beater for this bit if you have one!)
Spread into a baking tin and leave to set for at least two hours.
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 …