Sofia turns three

Yesterday was a special day for our big grown up girl - she turned three! She got quite a few books and puzzles but her favourite present was her new scooter and she has been learning to ride it up and down the hallway. (Excuse the blurry photos - some of them are "action shots".)

Zoom!

It takes a while to get the hang of steering and stopping it, and there have been a few bumps...

Crash!

Of course Otto never wants to be left out. You can see him in the background above following Sofia with the toy stroller and here he is trailing along behind with a great big smile on his face.

After presents we had a special breakfast.

Yummy pancakes

No need for a label on this photo.

After breakfast we went to Sofia's favourite cafe, Bookcoffee, sometimes known as Ginger Brown. Then we went to the playground nextdoor to the cafe for some more scootering and a swing. In the afternoon some friends came over for a special chocolate birthday cake featuring mulberries from our tree.

Sofia's birthday cake

Sofia certainly has the hang of blowing out candles this year

 

and the kids all loved the cake.

Sofia had a lovely birthday and slept very well afterwards. Thanks to everyone who sent along a present - she loves all of them.

Using our preserves

One of the things that we tried to consider when preserving the summer bounty from the garden was how the end product would be used - no point making a whole lot of something if it just sat in the cupboard.

This post is just to comment on some of the hits and misses.

• The dried plums and pears were a big hit, we have run out of both and will definitely do more next season
• The various jams (cherry plum, berry, crabapple) are all delicious and while we don't eat a lot of jam ourselves, they have been easy to give away. Plus having yummy jam means that I have been forced to try scone making and revisit pikelets (both being good jam and cream vehicles)
• In comparison, the plum sauce, while very tasty has been languishing

The large quantity of quince paste sitting in the bottom of the fridge had been bugging me until recently. You can eat the paste with cheese or use it as a glaze, but we weren't really getting through it.  Then I was flicking through a recently acquired cookbook (I like Heidi's blog a lot so thought I would buy her book) when a recipe for membrillo cake caught my eye. The cake uses 225g of paste - a bit of an extravagance if you are paying Maggie Beer for her paste, but ideal for me with our glut in the fridge.

The cake turned out quite well.

I didn't have the recommended size tin and used a smaller one which resulted in a thicker cake so the edge was a bit overdone and dry before the middle was cooked. Also, the cubes of paste in the cake were not very evenly distributed (I was worried they would break up when I mixed it) so some pieces of cake had lots while others were lacking. Overall it was still pretty yummy - I think I will have to make it again with a few tweaks (maybe some yoghurt in the mix and definitely a shallower profile).  The recipe is available online here.

Apple pie

An old favourite. Take a bunch of apples freshly picked by Sofia. These are the cooking apples from our yard, but they are not a really hard cooking apples like a Granny Smith and are quite nice to eat. Some of them looked a bit buggy from the outside, but there was barely a bug in the whole lot.

Still life with orange laminex

Chop them and stew them for a little while with some sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. They could have done with a bit less cooking to keep some more texture.

Ready for the lid

Cover with some puff pastry and decorate with the leftovers. The decoration is essential.

Bake until golden brown - the photo makes it look slightly overdone but it was just right.

Douse with really thick cream.

Yum.

Apple and walnut palmiers

It was Stephen's birthday at work and time to do some baking for his morning tea. Apples and walnuts are two current ingredients fresh from the garden so, after a bit of searching, this recipe for Apple & Walnut Palmiers looked like the best choice. There was a bit of interpretation as I hadn't prepared at all and didn't have all of the ingredients.

The first step was to chop up some walnuts. No need to chop them too fine as they get chopped more later in the process.

Coarsely chopped walnuts fresh from the garden

Miranda stewed a few apples and this was all mixed together with some honey (and maple syrup because we ran out of honey) and some cinnamon. This was then spread on a sheet of puff pastry,

Puff pastry ready to roll up

rolled up and put in the fridge for a while to firm up. The roll was chopped into 16 slices per sheet

Roll being cut into slices

and each slice becomes a palmier. These are spread out on the baking tray (sans plastic, of course).

Plenty of room just in case they expand

Half an hour or so later they came out looking totally delicious.

The finished product

Actually the first batch was a little burnt caramelised underneath as our oven is a bit fierce, but the second batch was just right. Very delicious. The walnuts were subtle combining beautifully with the honey and the apple offset both of them perfectly.

"bread"

While Ian has been industriously drying pears (another batch completed yesterday), I have also been looking for more calorie laden ways to make use of the fruit.

Smitten Kitchen (one of my favourite cooking blogs) has a recipe for pear bread that looked up my alley.  It was very easy and especially delicious served with some Saint Omer butter.

Oh, and when did they start calling cake "bread"?

Nice pear

The bosc pears are ripening.

Sofia likes them unadorned.

 

Unfortunately they are a bit buggy.

 

Ian volunteered to cut out the bad bits and I peeled them ready for use in an upside down cake.  Previously I had used this recipe when making upside down cakes with apricots, but I decided to try this one instead.  It says to use two small pears, but we had bits from lots of pears (which added up to more than two, I don't think two would be enough).  This is my attempt to "Place the segments of pear decoratively".

 

It is not a pretty cake (upside downs rarely are), but it was good - especially with a dollop of marscapone.  Next time I will probably combine the two recipes.  I like the caramel in the first (cooked in a skillet) and the cake in the second (a bit lighter than the first).