Quince Marmalade

It's that time again!

Slices of Quince!

My friends have a quince tree!  I have never seen a quince, nor eaten one.  All I know about them is that the Owl and the Pussycat ate them with a runcible spoon.  However, on the reliable information that they can be poached, and with half a dozen quinces straight off the tree, I had a go at making my own autumnal dessert.

Er'abody lurve cake

Finally, FINALLY, I have made a sponge cake that has risen.  I've always had a problem with sponge cakes (bar lemon cakes, for some reason).  Anything larger than a fairy cake usually ends up like a dense brittle biscuit.

BUT NOT TODAY!!!  TODAY, I HAVE MADE THIS!!!

And before I forget how I did it, I'm going to write it down.  I got the recipe from a friend of mine, and clearly she knew something I didn't.

Ingredients for cake
3 eggs
Self raising flour
Caster sugar
Margarine
Cocoa

For icing
Icing sugar
Cocoa
Margarine
Dark chocolate

1)  Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C/ Gas Mark 4
2)  Weigh your eggs, still in the shell.  Remember that weight, because that's how much you'll need of everything else (this was my mistake before.  I used to measure the other ingredients by rote instead of matching them to the eggs each time).
3)  Weigh and mix your 'wet' ingredients, the eggs and margarine, and the sugar.  It will look like mush.
4)  Weigh the flour, but replace about 3/4 oz of it with cocoa.  When you add it to the mixture, don't swirl it in with the spoon, fold it in, in stages.
5)  Fold in one teaspoon of boiled water.
6)  Bake for about 30 mins, or until a skewer comes out clean.
7)  For the icing, mix together the icing sugar/cocoa and margarine in a 2:1 ration to make buttercream.  Then mix in a few lines of melted dark chocolate.  This will make the icing less tooth-rottingly sweet and more like rich fondant.  Once your cake is cool, cut it across the middle and spread your icing there, then put the rest on the top.

8)  EAT IT!!!  OM NOM NOM!!!

Time out!

Time is ticking down until I leave for Uganda after work tomorrow, but despite that I've still managed to have a very busy weekend.  As well as helping out at the Tigerlilies Cancer Research fundraising group's first ever Easter Craft Fair, I've been going places, having fun, and tying up a few loose ends.

Movies
First things first, I went to the cinema on Friday!  To watch this:



I only saw the trailer once and instantly knew it was just the kind of wacky time-wasting nonsense I'd been missing!  Managed to get my friend Disco, -also a connoisseur of the bizarre- to come with me, and wore my pirate hat in the cinema for the entire film.  It was great!  Aardman have a history of producing stop-motion films with a very 'British' sense of humour; Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run, and TV's Creature Comforts, however I was worried they'd lost the plot slightly with Flushed Away which kept the humour but tried to use CGI to replicate the look of the plasticine figures they are so famous for.  Even with today's high standard of CGI there's just nothing like a 'real' object or person to carry a performance and I felt it lost something in the attempt.  With Pirates! however, they were back on form, using plasticine models for the characters and close-up sets, while using CGI to enhance the performance with green-screen backgrounds and a very convincing ocean, rather than try to carry it the weight of the acting.  The first two thirds were very good, with some excellent laughs, and then it the final third it really stepped it up and accelerated into Outright Brilliant.  Disco and I were cracking up over and over, and may I humbly suggest to you that you simply haven't lived until you've seen an irate Queen Victoria arrive on scene by way of being folded into a Dumb-Waiter.  The expression on her little face was priceless!

Drawing
Also, I finally got round to drawing down what I remember from my night walk up Bradgate hill.  In the moonlight it was a very surreal sight and it really stuck in my brain.

Outdoors

This morning, after helping out with the kids group at church (always a fun challenge!) my friend Tatyana and I headed off to Bradgate Park for an aimless wander and some cookies sat in my favourite tree.  It's such a peaceful place to be, and a great spot for finding shots that just seem to jump out at you.  

Looking up - a tree trunk from the inside

I still can't believe how many deer there are there, and how chilled out they are about you wandering around - provided you don't get to close.  When they stop and look at you, you know not to go any closer or they'll just run off... although this wasn't obvious to everybody.  We saw one leash-less Scottie dog get out of hand and send the entire herd running, followed by two separate groups of wanderers who just didn't understand when to leave well alone.  It was both amusing and a bit pathetic, but became funny again when a hi-vis-wearing warden stomped over to give them what for.  Justice, we both agreed, had been served.

Tree climbing.  Naturally!

Tatyana's one of those people I'm always pleased to bump into,but don't often get to spend a lot of time with, which is a shame as she's such a fun girl!  What's that thing? -let's go find out!  The path goes this way? -we should go the other way!  You hungry? -I brought cookies!  Definitely doing this again :)

Dinner

And finally, tonight it was my turn to host a Come Dine With Me for my housemates.  My melty Camembert cheese with toasty bread and cranberry sauce, veggie-friendly Sausage Casserole, and Brownie goo with ice cream failed to beat Natalie's Peach Cobbler but I totally expected that because it was divine.  In the end I got a respectable score with extra points for presentation (I love my flowers!  Half of them came from the shop, half from an obliging bush) and for my entertainment being massive boingy balloons!!  We get along really well and always have a laugh, so it's nice to deliberately decided to have that time put aside just to hang out together, and to serve each other with tasty food.  

Adding a touch of class to the proceedings!

Never mind Christmas, I'm having these all winter long...

Ok, first thing's first.  Before I do anything else I need to write down the recipe for the pastry I made mince pies with (my Mum wants to know what it is).  These are the ones that were proclaimed 'Most Like Grandma's' at the carol night competition so they ought to be pretty good.  The mincemeat was shop-bought this year, although I'm keen to try making that myself next time as well, but it seems that doing the pastry yourself is the clincher to making some seriously yummy pies.

To make 12 pies you will need:

225g butter/margarine (cut into chunks about the size of playing dice.  You'll see why in a minute)
350g plain flour
100g caster sugar
280g mincemeat
A handful of milk
A pinch of salt
A rolling pin, pastry cutters/drinking glass, and one of those baking trays with dips in it for doing little pies and cakes.

1)  Preheat your oven to 180C/ gas mark 6.

2) To make the pastry you start by mixing the flour and butter together.  If you have a blender you can put it all in there but I think that's just boring!  Instead, make sure the butter is in small chunks, roll up your sleeves and get stuck in, using your fingers to pinch and rub the two together.  It will stick all over your hands but that's why it's fun!

3) When you're about halfway done with the rubbing, throw the sugar and salt (trust me) in and keep going until you get a firm dough.  If it's cracking too much don't add liquid, just put a little more butter in there to stick it all together.

4)  Throw down some flour on your worktop and roll out your pastry to about 1/2cm thick, maybe even less.  If it starts to stick to your rolling pin then throw some flour on that too.

5) Cut out your pie bottoms and tops.  If you don't have pastry cutters just flip a glass upside-down and use that.  The bottoms go straight into the baking tray, and when you've put 1-2 teaspoons of mincemeat into it you can put the top on.  Press round the edges with your fingers to join them.

6)  Dip your (clean!) finger in the milk, and 'paint' it over the top of your pies.  This glazes your pie and will go brown in the oven, helping you to see when they are cooked.  If you have spare milk you can have it with your pies when they are done!

7)  Stab your pies with a fork - for luck! (just kidding, for steam to get out)- and then they go in the oven for about 20mins or until they look a nice golden colour with some brown on the crust, whichever comes first.

*SECRET KNOWLEDGE!*:  Before you try and pull the pies out of the tray, put your fingers round the edge of each pie and give it a sharp twist.  That way you shouldn't pull the top off when you try and lift it.

8)  EAT THEM!!!  HOORAY!!!

Two tasters

Just today I got back from a well-earned holiday in the Lake District, so the next few posts will be updates on that.  In the meantime here's a taster...

A sunny day at Wastwater, about 10 mins away from where we were staying.  The day may have been hot enough to leave our skin pink and peeling, but the water was absolutely freezing!

...and a less sunny day on the side of Scafell Pike, England's tallest mountain.  That's my Dad sitting in front of that cloud bank, into which we had to trek as part of our climb.  Fortunately we passed through the cloud layer and were treated to amazing views from the summit.

And below, a taster of another kind.  I have recently discovered how to make meringues!  Far yummier than the shop-bought ones, crisp on the outside and chewy in the middle, and much easier to make than I expected, I've been having them with piles of strawberries on top.  However, having no electric mixer and being something of a stubborn food masochist, I had to whisk them all by hand.  Ridiculous? Unnecessary? Yes, maybe, but totally worth it!

It's COOKIE TIME!!!

Since having to make more of my own food (plus trying to buy less snacks) I have become majorly attached to making my own cookies.  They take about 20mins to make in total, are HUGE and GORGEOUS and I can stash them away for the next week or so.  Each batch I make gets better and I would even say that quite often they're better than a lot of shop-bought cookies I have tried ...not to mention much cheaper!

Wow, I sound like the quite the home-maker and I'm only twenty-two!

(I actually made about eight, but I'd eaten most of them by this point!)

And did we die?

No we did not!  I'm speaking, of course, about my own cooking :)

I'd say I'm not a great cook, but I do like good food and I'm finding it's cheaper to make it than to buy it.  Last week I bought some mince, and spent the week figuring out new things to do with it.  I subscribe to the 'Approximate School of Cooking', but the best recipe by a mile was

CUMIN!BURGERS
(Normal burgers with cumin in them, since I love cumin)

Ingredients to serve 2:
100g of mince  (get the decent stuff, you can always freeze the rest to use some other time)
1 handfull of rolled oats/breadcrumbs
1 egg
1 small brown onion
Mixed herbs
Salt and pepper
CUMIN!!

How to make them:
- Finely chop up your onion, and when I say fine I mean FINE.  I'm actually considering grating mine next time because I spent ages chopping and there were still some chunks in there
-Put the onion, oats and egg in a bowl with your mince and mix them well.  The key here is to get the consistency right.  If it's too stiff and dry then your burgers wont hold together, but if it's too mushy it's just splat everywhere
-Add your herbs, salt and pepper, and if you're me this is the time to put in as much cumin as you want.
-Mix it all in, then use your hands to form burger shapes.  Just roll a ball and flatten it until it's about 1.5 cm thick (half an inch)  You should get at least 2 good sized burgers out of your mix
-Now simply grill them for 15-20 mins, flipping them half way through, until they are cooked through.  Slap betwee some bread or a bun, some salad on the side.
- EAT THEM!!

I loved these, and I am totally making them again.  It's nice to have control over the kind of meat you're eating, plus the satisfaction of making the things yourself, plus the amazing taste.  They tasted way better than supermarket burgers, probably because they'd not been frozen in a tiny cardboard box for hours on end.  Plus, where else are you gonna get burgers full of tasty cumin!