Last of the summer....

I would love to claim that I spent the weekend out picking berries in the sun, but no. Thes closest berry farm is about 2 hours away and we had other commitments this weekend. That said I did have a lot of berries on my hands this weekend, why? Health efforts and health scares.

Last post I wrote about these healthy crackers. They are part of a number of different healthy changes. One of which was introducing more smoothies into my diet. This is not the first time I've started a habit of drinking smoothies and Every time I do there's another outbreak of hepatitis in frozen berries. I have so so much sympathy for those that have contracted hepatitis from frozen berries because it is deeply, deeply unfair. Each and every time I start drinking smoothies, it is due to a renewed desire to be more healthy. If, like me, those that have been affected by these outbreaks were drinking smoothies in an effort to be more healthy just to get hit by an illness that may affect them for the rest of their lives, well that is just plain unfair! So this is my way of saying to you - boil all your store-bought berries for at least a minute before eating!!

For smoothies,  I now buy fresh berries and freeze them myself. Expensive? yes, but worth it! However now I have a whole lot of berries that I can't use for smoothies. So what do you do with all these?

 

You guess it??! Jam!

I've made lot of jam before but always the quick kind that needs to be used within a month or two. However, with this many berries it's necessary to make something that is a little more long-lasting! So this time we will be preserving.

The jars need to be sterilized fully before putting the jam in, particularly as it needs to last a few months. To sterilize them, I washed them well with soap and water before putting them in an oven, that was brought up to 225'C/437'F, and heating them for 20 minutes. Put the lids in boiling water

Triple Berry Jam

1400g Berries (Blueberries, raspberries and strawberries)
1200g Jam sugar
Juice and rind of 2 lemons
1 tsp vanilla extract

1 - Mix all ingredients in a non-reactive saucepan

2 - Bring up the heat slowly until boiling, stirring constantly

3-  Continue to stire while maintaining a rolling boil

4 - Continue to boil until it reaches 105'C/220'F.

5 - Remove from the heat and let cool slightly before spooning into the jars

6 - Attach your lids, according to the instructions of the jar and let cool.

Then - and this is important - you must find multiple colourful strings. Choose two. Twirl them around the jar. Then - very important - make a homemade sign! Use the string to attach the sign and tie it off on the side! Why must you do all this?? Because it's jam and if it doesn't look pinterest worthy then what kind of baker are you???????! Oops, inner monologue, erm, please ignore that and decorate how you like!

Leave the jars 24hours to cool and then you can store them in a cool dark place for up to a year! Then enjoy them on toast with butter and love....

Blueberry Pie, cos Suits, obviously

Myself and my bf have recently gotten back into watching Suits. We watched it for a long time and I liked it but we reached a certain stage where you are a couple seasons in and we can't have a single episode without everyone talking about 'Mike's secret.' Ok, we get it, he doesn't have a law degree, stop talking about it and get a f**king law degree already! There's also an issue with Suits that exists in several major dramas (Grey's Anatomy, to name a huge culprit) where the characters supposedly work intensive, high stress jobs but spend the majority of their time on screen making emotionally driven, ill-conceived decisions and talking about their relationships. I enjoy it, don't get me wrong, but I probably wouldn't have them represent me in court.

So rant aside, We were watching the intro and we really enjoy the part of the intro music that says 'See the money, wanna stay for your meal. Get another piece of pie for your wife.' I reflected to my boyfriend how much this song really made me crave pie (something they NEVER eat in the show, just saying!). Hence we made pie.....

Blueberry pie is a classic summer dish and in this part of the world it is now, officially, summer. So we decided to go for a classic design and spice it up slightly with a puff pastry, which tastes amazing and has a rustic (read less than perfect) appearance.

Just look at those berries

The center has a B for blueberries, my boyfriend's idea; his name may or may not start with a B also, so that might have had something to do with it too! The puff may not make the perfect pinterest style pie image but it sure makes for a wonderful mixture of textures. The base pastry, as you can imaging absorbs a lot of the blueberry juice, so while it is certainly not soggy (respect Mary-berry), it is denser with juice and the fluffy puff pastry lattice really contrasts it nicely.

I made the short-crust pastry but used a store bought puff pastry, because who has the time for that?!
So make sure that your short crust pastry is chilled well before rolling out. Then push down into the pie-tin. Chill again after rolling and shaping. Then fill with pastry beads or rice and par cook.

Now the filling -

1200g frozen blue-berries
150g Caster sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
45g cornflour
1 teaspoon butter

Mix well together and fill the pie case when it's partially cooked

I added the butter to the top but you could mix it in, either.

To make the lattice top, We followed these instructions - they are straight forward and very helpful.
and then bake at 180' for 30 minutes.

Leave to chill for a few hours if you can resist or otherwise eat with ice-cream. Enjoy =)

Spring Cupcakes

Something different for your Easter table

Spring is really in the air around here and there's a part of me that is already in summer mode which basically results in me leaving the house in wildly inappropriate summer outfits and then shivering for the day. I'm not ashamed I love summer, summer heat and winter cold, both the extremes, not the middle seasons. However that said it is spring and I need to accept that. There is one part of spring that I absolutely love and that is Easter. During Easter chocolate is everywhere and I will not break the  with this tradition too much as I intend to have some delicious chocolate treat up next week. However sometimes it is nice to have an alternative and these delicious spring cupcakes could be a refreshing alternative to chocolate or a delicious (completely un-related to Easter) spring treat. They combine zesty moist lemon cupcakes with delicately sweet blueberry frosting. I went with my favourite rose frosting style but notice the little flecks making it look more like a real flower.

A Long Walk, Delicious Scones and the story of how we met Spot.

This past Saturday myself and my friend decided to redo a hike that we had done this time last year. It's a day long hike that covers c. 20km but that's 20km of constant hills!! The last time we did this hike it poured rain from the heavens, we got drowned and the whole experience was more akin to torture than our planned mini holiday. Therefore we set off to conquer this hike without carrying a paddling pool in our boots.




The walk was absolutely brilliant. It was quite tiring, some of those hills just go on forever, but it was a wonderful experience and the views were just amazing!

The view from the top of one mountain

A wonderful long hike like this deserves a delicious treat at the end though and this came in the form of my triple berry scones. Scones + Butter + hot cup of tea = best way to finish any day of outdoors activity.

 

Recuperation perfected!

Triple Berry Scones

250g    Bread Flour
150g    Plain Flour
25g      Dark Brown Sugar
75g      Granulated White Sugar
1 tsp     Baking Powder
1 tsp     Baking Soda
60g       Butter (Room Temperature)
2           Eggs (Medium)
100ml   Milk
1/2tsp   Lemon Extract
75g       Fresh Raspberries
75 g      Fresh Blueberries
50g       Chopped Fresh Strawberries

Preheat your oven to 205C/400F/Gas Mark 6. Sieve together the flours, baking powder and baking soda. Add the sugar and mix thoroughly.

Add the 1/2 tsp of lemon extract to the milk. Mix, let sit for a few minutes and then beat in the eggs.

Chop up your butter into pieces and then rub these into the flour. You will know it has been thoroughly incorporated when the mixture resembles very tiny bread crumbs with no big pieces.

Making a well in the center of the dry ingredients add the wet mixture and mix to incorporate. The mixture may seem a little dry at first but do not add any more liquid.  






At this point knead your mixture until it goes smooth. If using a stand-mixer, take care not to over knead, stop once the mixture is fully incorporated and coming away from the bowl up onto the bread hook.

 

Then flour your berries (plain flour) and, leaving a few raspberries to the side, pour the berries into the bowl and continue to mix just until they are evenly throughout the mixture. Stop mixing and add the rest of the raspberries in halfs, then mix gently with a spoon. The mixture will be VERY wet and messy but that's alright, just trust me on this one.

Gently divide the mixture into 9 even portions and roll these gently placing them on a lined baking sheet.

Let the unbaked scone sit for 10 minutes before smoothing with a damp pastry brush, egg wash at this point if you prefer. Then bake for 20 minutes or until they are browned and sound hollow when tapped on the base. Then Enjoy ;)

As close as I've ever come to the original avoca inspiration!

Could you say no?

So Spot! Well Spot(not her real name) was a little friend that we encountered at the end of the long day of hiking. As we entered the last hour, and the last big hill, myself and my friend were warmly greeted by the cutest little dog, jumping up on us and wagging her tail. We searched in vain for our little friends owner and even walked about 15mins backwards adding to our hike but unfortunately no-one could be found.  
We had a hard decision to make but we couldn't dream of leaving this little creature in the woods alone, so Spot joined us for the end of our hike.
She came home with us that night and spent one night away from home before we found the owner via a microchip registration. She was the sweetest most gentle little creature and only wanted love and attention. So although it added significantly to our hike and kept me from my scones for a while, this little face was the highlight of the whole walk.

This reminds me I must say a massive thank you to Lucy for giving me a Kreativ Blogger Award. I will be posting again tomorrow and will write further about her then. In the mean-time I hope you enjoy the scones and the story =)