He's on a roll

Fin did more cooking last weekend: Another cheesecake and Sticky Date Muffins.



Good job I took this photograph quickly because they didn't last long.

Say Cheese

More of Fin's Fablious Food. He decided he wanted to make a cheesecake after we ate a ready-made one. He has become quite snooty about making things from packets: "That's not cooking; cooking has ingredients" so I bought the ingredients for cheesecake from memory while shopping - then had to find a recipe that used ricotta and cream cheese since that is what I bought and not gelatin which many seem to be based on. We used this recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/classic-cheesecake-recipe2/index.html, halved the quantities, and substituted ricotta for half the cream cheese.

Fin did all the mixing and measuring, and especially creating crumbs with the rolling pin. He was interested that we baked it in a bath of water.


He was very pleased with it - and especially enjoyed taking it out of the spring-form pan.


It was delicious! I was glad, however that we had made half the quantity - I think we will be eating it all week as it is.

Fin's fablious food

Along with the crafting Fin has a new-found interest in cooking. He received a very nice children's cookery book for Christmas and is working his way through it. Last week he cooked chinese beef.







It was delicious. He now thinks he might be a chef and open a restaurant called "Fin's Fablious Food".

Stir-up Sunday

Last weekend was Stir-up Sunday, traditionally the day to make your Christmas pudding. I followed tradition and made my pudding on Sunday, having made my Christmas cake on Saturday.

I used Nigella Lawson's recipe published in How to be a domestic goddess. Alison made our pudding for us last year as we were without a kitchen until Christmas Eve, she used this recipe and it was delicious. I hope mine tastes as good.



We all had a stir for luck. I added some cleaned dimes so please hope that we remember that they are in there and no one chokes at the Christmas dinner table. I feel rather industrious with the puddings made and the cake marinating in brandy.

In a jam

Our apricot tree has suddenly fruited, which means that we have buckets of apricots, but none left on the tree!

So on Sunday morning, before I even got dressed*, I made some jam.


I used a very simple recipe of 2lb apricots, 2lb sugar, and the juice of a lemon. I didn't bother extracting kernels like you are supposed to for apricot jam - because I don't like having to extract them when I spread the jam on my bread.



*I wanted to do it before it got hot - but it never got very hot which was rather nice!

Limoncello

A favourite local restaurant makes and serves their own home-made limoncello. It's a far step from the typically sweet store bought version.

Last time we ate there my mother asked them for the recipe which they happily shared. We went home and harvested some meyer lemons from our tree and started a batch.

Last week I finished it (it requires 2 weeks of soaking lemon peel in alcohol to extract the lemon oil flavour).



It tastes pretty good, and has a nice, not-too-sweet lemon flavour. My version has a very slight bitterness which I think is due to including too much peel rather than zest - but it's hardly discernable and won't stop me drinking it. I'm just makeing a note for next time I make it!!

I took this photo without noticing how messy my kitchen looks!

Toad for dinner

Adam and Finlay recently discovered from their grandmother that their Father's favourite childhood meal was toad-in-the-hole. This was a treat for the first and last day of school.

Since then they have been begging me to make them toad-in-the-hole and yesterday I obliged:


I couldn't find an actual recipe for toad-in-the-hole but I used Delia Smith's Yorkshire Pudding recipe with chicken and apple sausages that had been browned on the BBQ.



It went down well!

Paddington's favourite

I saw recently on the BBC that apparently Paddington prefers Marmite .

Although I like Marmite as much as the next man (which is Nigel, who likes it quite a lot), I still like a bit of marmalade on my toast. Marmalade seems quite expensive here, and since our neighbour has an orange tree, it makes most sense to make it myself.

The oranges are quite sour and really inedible raw, but they make great marmalade.

The first time around I made it rather runny, but after a second boiling up it seems a nice consistency, and tastes just like the real thing....but more orange-y. I usually pay a 1-jar tariff to my neighbour for the oranges - no idea what he does with the marmalade...maybe he even eats it?

Pumpkin pie

Our vegatable box this week included a pumpkin (a sugar pie variety).
Finlay was inordinately excited about this and wanted to cook it himself.
He couldn't decide between pumpkin pie and pumpkin soup. A favourite book is Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper in which 3 animals co-operate to make soup.

For lunch today we ate the completed pie, and it was delicious!

Finlay did all the mixing and measuring - a big advantage of cooking with American cup measures. We used this recipe from the farms which supply the vegetables.

There was enough pumpkin left over so I made soup as well - which we ate before the pie....a very pumpkin-y meal!