American Sugar Cookies

So as you do on a Monday Morning with nothing better to do I hopped around the link parties. (See where I party here.)

And I found this yummy looking sprinkle covered sugar cookie recipe over at Jellibean Journals. Now I’ve never made American style sugar cookies. Miss Emily and I decided we’d give it a go. (note to self: baby and gooey mix, not a good combination!)

I thought they would stay ball shaped like this:

Don’t they look so pretty? I spent so long coating every last bit of cookie ball with sprinkles. I wanted to put them on sticks like cake pops. I was quite excited about this, which means Miss Emily was excited too.

Who knew that what they actually do is this?

They didn’t come out nearly so pretty as Jelli’s but they did taste good! (and Miss Emily and I used up a LOT of half jars of sprinkles too… time for a sprinkle shopping spree?)

Not one of my best baking moments, but we’ll certainly try it again…

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Lego Treats…

During one of the warmer parts of the summer Oscar and I made lego shaped frozen yoghurt. Just because we could really. We had it for snack when his friends came to play. (This makes me super mummy!) It’s not an original idea. It’s been around blogland a lot this summer.

We mixed my soya youghurt with raspberries. Oscar just used petit filous in his. Then we filled the lego ice cube trays and ta-dah! Easiest boy based entertainment ever.

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Strawberry fields forever…

{Note, this is a joint post., and it will appear on both the blogs of:
Laura Boyle – http://koffervoll.blogspot.com
Ruth Lewendon – https://atnumber29.wordpress.com
We hope that ALL of our readers enjoy it}

Before Laura returned to England, Ruth suggested that we go to Tulley’s Farm and pick our own strawberries. Laura immediately agreed, asking if we might make jam with the berries we picked. Thus the plan was born.

With Oz and Emily in tow, we headed out to pick strawberries. As its near the end of strawberry season, we worried the pickings might be slim, but we managed to find a number of them anyways.

Once home,we cleaned the berries and prepared to make jam. Apples are added to the jam to help it set.

Our recipe calls for equal parts apple, berries and double sugar. We used 1lb 6oz of each berry and 2lb 12oz of sugar. You also need the juice of two fresh lemons.

Step 1: Wash and cut fruit.

Step 2: Add apples to a pot with some water (maybe 2 cups?) – Basically about half of them were covered. Put the berries in a separate pot, with no added water – although the bottom should be damp. Add the lemon juice to each pot (one lemon per pot). The lemons are high in pectin and help the jam set.

Step 3: Cook berries and apples until they are soft and can be further mashed. We used a potato masher. You should probably mash them a bit better than we did!

Step 4: Pour berries into apples and then once the mixture is boiling, add sugar. Continue cooking.

Step 5: While the fruit-sugar mixture is cooking, soak your jars in HOT BOILING water. The jars MUST be extremely hot in order to seal properly. A dish towel should also soak in the water as well.

Step 6: When the mixture thickens and a “skin” begins to form, it is time to pour the jam. Pour the jam into jars and put the lids on them. You need to fill them to the very top, otherwise you risk it molding before you use it. Plus this helps it seal better.
BE VERY VERY CAREFUL, THE JARS AND MIXTURE ARE VERY VERY HOT!
(Disclaimer: We cannot be held responsible if you burn yourself during this process.)

Step 7: Cover the jars with the dish towel that was soaking in the hot water, and let sit for 24 hours.

Step 8: Check that your jam has set. If not, you can pour it back into the pot, re-boil and try again.

Step 9: Enjoy!

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Cheerios and Lattes

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Potato Salad

Do you have a favourite summer recipe? I do! And it just got it’s first outing of the Summer! Despite the terrible weather we found a ‘sunny spell’ to bbq in! Hurrah!

So here’s my version of potato salad. It tastes best if it can sit for at least a couple of hours in the fridge before you serve it. I’m not good with quantities, I’m more of a sling it all in sort of cook, but I’ve had a guess.

Ingredients

Several large potatoes

2 or 3 rashers of bacon

1 or 2 eggs

2 or 3 tablespoons of mayo (We lurve Hellmans but do what you think is best!)

A shake of garlic salt

A shake of herbs de provence (or mixed herbs if you don’t have it!)

Method

Chop up the potatoes into bitesize pieces, leaving the skins on.

Boil the potatoes. While they are boiling, boil the eggs and grill the bacon.

Chop the cooked bacon and shell and finely chop the egg.

Strain the potatoes and leave to cool in a large salad bowl. Stir in the eggs bacon and seasoning and 2 or 3 large spoonfools of mayo. The potato should start to break up a bit as you stir.

Cover and chill to let the flavours sink in.

Eat in the sunshine for the best possible taste!

 

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Raspberry and Apple Almond Torte!

Our house smells yummy! All fruity and harvesty and yummy! I’m having an experimental bake – would you like to see what I’ve been up to?

First let me say this bake encompasses our entire apple harvest and about half a daily raspberry picking from our garden. (I should point out that the apple tree is in a pot and about 4′ high thereabouts!)

Here is the entire apple harvest!!!

So I started with a variation on a recipe I found in a magazine years ago. This is my variant, not sure what the original

was!

150g sugar

150g self raising flour (or real power and baking powder I imagine!)

150g almonds

1 tsp cinamon

150g softened butter/margarine

1 beaten egg

raspberries

(and today stewed apple too!)

First stew the apple. (To do this it needs to be chopped and a very little water added.)

Over a low heat it mushes down quite quick. I left mine with a little texture.

Next comine the dry ingredients.

Now rub in the butter…

…and blend in the beaten egg 9which makes it rather sticky!

Note: this need to be cooked in something you can bake in without baking the ‘pastry’ blind. I used my lurvely pampered chef pie dish (anything ceramic would do) or a pastry/flan tin with the clever slots/holes in the bottom.

Dump half the mix out into the pie dish and attempt to spread it without it sticking to your fingers or the fork!

Spread the apple on top of it.

and add raspberries. (Mine came out of the freezer, they were picked in August according to the label so they look a little wierd in the pic as they are frozen.)

try spreading the rest of the pastry ish mix on top.

Bake at 180 deg C. Time depends on what you bake it in. I did about 45 mins and it was still a little sticky underneath. so I guess 50 or 55 would have been better. BUT remember the pampered chef stoneware adds about 12 to 15 mins to baking time.

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