Yearly Archives: 2010

Einkorn Bread and the Hand Mill

Those of you who habitually grind your own grain bear with me while I write this post. This was my first time!

The einkorn goes in

Blueberry Muffins here too!

In the best (worst?) tradition of see something and want it now a post from Sally BR at the Bewitching Kitchen hit my inbox last night. Some not so sublimal message went straight to my brain…..

Copycat muffins

‘Oh yes!’ , I thought, ‘Blueberry muffins, I want them and I want them now!’ – (after a virtuous light supper of broadbeans and tomato passata on pasta). Thank you Sally! Sometimes reading my friends’ blogs is just what I need to prompt getting out the mixing bowl!

I went outside and inspected my very small blueberry plant, there were exactly 6 ripe blueberries on it. Not quite enough for a batch of these, in fact, let’s be honest, I have never grown more than a handful of these and the dogs have a habit of hoovering them off the plant anyway when they think I’m not looking.

As I have a mild phobia about translating cups to grams, I made them this way…

and I made them very fast.
250 grams plain flour
170 grams golden caster sugar
2 tsps baking powder

2 eggs
150 grams full fat yoghurt
grated fresh lemon zest
100 ml unsweetened soya milk
50 grams melted butter (as used full fat yoghurt reduced the butter- but you could use more like 100 grams if you are using low fat yoghurt I guess)

200 grams big fat blueberries

I sieved the dry ingredients together.

Beat the eggs, yoghurt, and soya milk together gently. Didn’t have buttermilk or much yoghurt left so added soya milk which seemed to work fine.

Added the lemon zest.

Melted the butter in another pan.

Then mixed the dry ingredients with the eggy/milk/yoghurt mix, drizzled the cooling butter in on top, gave that a quick stir, till the butter was just mixed in, folded the blueberries in. Plopped it into 11 muffin cases. I’ve realised that if you use one less muffin case, you get bigger muffins and they look more convincing.
Baked them at 160 C on Fan setting for 25 minutes.

Eaten approx 15 minutes after they came out of the oven.

Watered the veg bed, admired the rainbow, went to bed.

Rainbow at bedtime

Wild Cherry Jam

2nd July 2010

As I trailed around the local woodland with the dogs I looked at the wildflower meadows planted by the schoolchildren a few years ago and thought that I must get better at flower identification. It’s on my list of things to learn…

Wildflowers sown by the local infants school

Then I noticed something…

What’s that in that tree?

A quick investigation revealed:

Cherries – billions of them!

Small, sour-sweet, dark and juicy, trees full of them! I don’t remember seeing these at all last year…and they’re everywhere, trees full of them, dark red, bright red, big ones, small ones…

Never being without a bag, I’m a dog walker remember? I stood and picked a dog bag full, about 3lbs in weight. I looked as if I was a member of the cast of the recent promenade version of Macbeth the students did here with my hands stained red with cherry juices.

At home, I washed and sorted my cherries out.

Beauty in a colander

Then consulted Pam Corbin; no cherry jam recipe. Cherries, high in acid and medium pectin it said though. So I de-stoned them, one of those contemplative activities, in which one half of the brain says, ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this’, and the other half says, ‘Yeah, yeah, but once in a while it’s fine to do this and you started this by picking them in the first place so just get on with it. ‘

Then I washed the fruit, put them in a pan to heat up and gently cooked them till the skins had softened. Don’t add sugar till the skins are soft. Added the sugar, heated it till it dissolved, completely, added the juice of a lemon and a little commercial pectin and then brought it to a roiling boil (I love that word!) and it was ready in about 7 minutes. I use a sugar thermometer to monitor the temperature, usual setting point is 104 – 106 C. Test for a set by putting a teaspoon of jam on a cold saucer, turn off the boiling jam while you wait to see if it has set enough. It should wrinkle slightly when you nudge the test spoonful once cooled. If it hasn’t then turn the heat back up again and bring it up to temperature once more.

Tip: the time to stir is when you are slowly dissolving the sugar, once you start boiling the jam, don’t stir as it stops the jam coming up to temperature quickly which is what you want, in order to have a nice fresh tasting jam.

This first batch pictured here was made with 50 percent sugar to fruit weight and was destined to go in the fridge and be eaten quickly. I wanted a tart jam that really tasted of cherries. I made a second lot later with 1 kg of sugar to 750 g fruit that was hopefully to be kept longer. But I was guessing here as to what the correct ratio is. Edit: I have done a little bit more research and the most commonly advised proportions are : 60 per cent sugar to 100 per cent fruit weight. If the cherries are sweet then add a tablespoon of lemon juice for each kilo of fruit. You will probably need to add some pectin, either home made or commercial. Suggested proportions and lots more useful information can be found here where I found it on the Allotment Vegetable Growing site.

Bubble, bubble…

I love cherries and cherry jam is my joint favourite jam along with damsons, and I’m down to my last jar of that, so the cherries should keep me going for now :)