Sorbet - Annabel Langbein style

 Berry Sorbet and real fruit ice cream

Well I decided to try making Annabel Langbein's sorbet that was on her current TV programme "The Free Range Cook, Simple Pleasures". It is so much easier to make than normal sorbet where you have to make a sugar syrup. But it left it a lot grittier and the berries have little pip bits that gave it a sort of crunch. It is nice, it is super easy and also is egg, gluten, fat and dairy free. But the boys did not like it. So I also made some real fruit icecream for them. Putting them both together in the same dish worked well as the smooth icecream meant the crunchy sorbet was not overpowering.


Annabel Langbein Berry Sorbet
I did 1/2 recipe and that was a lot.
500g frozen berries into the food processor, add 1 cup castor (or superfine) sugar and 1 tablespoon of alcohol (I used creme de cassis from Barkers). Process till smooth (this took a wee while) Put in the freezer for at least two hours before serving.

My real fruit icecream
Put frozen berries into foodprocesser, add icing sugar to taste - blend. Then put in some vanilla icecream and  whizz until it is all well mixed. Yummy on the spot and refreezes well.

Frozen berries into food processor

Add icing sugar

Whizz

Whizz till smooth with icecream in it

Or just eat it as it is.

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Crisis Averted

My gorgeous husband has spent hours resolving the loss of this blog. He got it back!!! I had resigned myself to a new life without blogger. Think of all the housework I could do, think of all the gardening!! But no I am saved from a life of drudgery and can now be a internet freak again.

Isn't he gorgeous!!

To celebrate we had a yummy dessert (well that was my excuse, it was actually a failed lot of mini pavlova). I put layers of Chantilly cream, strawberries from the garden and disastrous pavlova into gorgeous glasses. A sort of Eton Mess.

An awesome baby shower

I have just come home from a fantastic baby shower for my cousin Alison. It was held at The Make Cafe in Riccarton, Christchurch. Wow did they pull out all the stops. Decorated beautifully with so many things I just cannot mention them all. Then as an activity we all made a bib. They supplied bibs and material and a cutter and we cut out various pattern, used vliesofix to iron them on and if you felt like it there was thread etc to stitch something.

Gorgeous china and three pots of different tea, coffee, slices........ What a great way to celebrate.

I scooter-ed 10km!!

We were in Dunedin for the weekend staying with my sister. The Dunedin City Council have slowly been making a bike, walk, run path around the harbour from the city out towards Port Chalmers. This path is at the bottom of the hill where my sister lives.

Eli and I on scooters at St Leonards.

The boys exploring

Aaron was going to run it, the boys had scooters to scoot along and so Warren (my brother in law) found an old scooter in their garage for me to use.

To start with Aaron's first comment was "you are not wearing that scooting are you?" Sorry what is the problem, I had a merino jersey over the top of a cotton shirt and 3/4 length jeans with sneakers. "It's gingham" - what? Then I asked what did he think I should wear, a skirt? "Shorts". What! in public! is he nuts?!

So off we go. Oh my goodness. Each way turned out to be 4km not 5km (whew). I had to keep changing legs as my gluteous maximus were getting very sore!! Aaron then started pushing me up the hills (what a gorgeous macho man). Then the scooter dropped something through its main section and that acted as a very sudden brake! Used some tape from another bit of the scooter to hold that up.

Our lovely 90 year old 

Whew rest time. The boys looked at the water - climbed up banks into hidey holes. It was great. I went to stand and my legs quivered!!!!! They felt like you do when you get off a trampoline that you have been on too long.

It was gorgeous, it was certainly fun, but my scooter slowly started the braking thing again. The boys saw me getting pushes so Eli said he would give me his better MGP to use if Dad would push him on my old crappy thing. They had great fun whizzing past me.

At the end we came across a man and woman who talked about scootering. The man had thought of buying one, so I got him to try mine. It then turned out that they were out for a walk on the same path and she was 90!!! (She was so gorgeous but said "I am not going to try that, I am 90 you know). I had to get a photo of him on the scooter (he was VERY wobbly)

Aaron and I resting while the boys explored

The hero pushing Jakob on the old scooter

In the end I only did 4km as Aaron ran back to get the car because my scooter just was falling apart. Great intentions, great fun.

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Super Easy Rhubarb Dessert

This dessert is sooo simple and easy. Tasty tasty and healthy. Egg, Dairy, Gluten, Fat free (fantastic for you Kerryn).

Take 500g rhubarb stalks and wash and cut them to the length of the container you are going to bake them in.

Lay them in rows (putting the little bits in the bottom so they can't be seen

Grate on the zest of two oranges

Squeeze the juice from the oranges onto the rhubarb

Add 5 teaspoons of honey (I have used the honey from the hives of our friend Dirk)

Put into the oven at 180oC for 20-30 minutes until the stalks seem soft to touch. Turn oven off and allow to cool. Serve as is - Gorgeous

If you want you can make some nut brittle and sprinkle on top. Or this is gorgeous for breakfast with some homemade muesli sprinked on and a bit of Greek Yogurt (so long as you can eat dairy!)

Recreating a Regency Jacket

A wee peek at what we all looked like dressed up at Oamaru

Before - Front

Before Back

After - Front

After - back

On the weekend we had planned to try a second attempt at going to the Victorian Festival in Oamaru.
This time was highly sucessful - but more about that on another post.

The forecast was for 12oC and it was only that!! I was very worried that my dress was made as Regency Ball dress for Aaron's 25th birthday and that I would be cold. Which would definitely have happened.

So talking about this on Saturday Aaron suggested that I go to Save Mart in Dunedin (as we were staying in Dunedin with my sister Ruth) and have a look for something there. I needed to make a Regency style short jacket to go with my dress.

Well right away I spotted a Stax size 12 tweed jacket that I knew I could turn into something for only $6.99.

It is a long time since I used a needle and thread rather than sewing machine but out came thread and a needle. I altered the sleeve bottom to be tighter. I cut the back right up to my dress hem and made the front a bit pointed ( a little bit like Lydia's jacket in Pride and Prejudice when she is going to be "a particular companion" in Brighton). I then stitched up all the button holes and took off all the extra buttons. I folded the lining and the jacket edges in towards each other and slip stitched all around the bottom. Then I resewed on the back tab but in it's new position. A perfect jacket to finish my outfit.

Completed in the Nick of time

Why I only manage to finish things at the last possible moment I do not know. But back here I had the silk all washed, then I cut it out. Last weekend I sewed the vests and prepped the bow ties but somehow it took till today to do the finishing. Putting on the buttons and then finishing the ties.

But the result looks great. They both have fully reverseable waistcoats in Thai silk. One side is plain - Jakob has a gorgeous blue and Eli the deep crimson you see, the other side is patterned. Jakob has the stripe and Eli has a multi check. They both ordered lots of bow ties. So I sewed them three each for a choice.

You will see more photos next week once we have been to our Victorian Weekend.

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Spicy Fruit Bagels

The finished bagel

The boys and I watched "Rachel Allen Bake" on the weekend and she did bagels. When the boys were little I used to make spicy fruit bagels quite a lot as they liked them toasted with homemade jam on them for breakfast.

Why is it that we forget some of the great things we used to do? So all inspired today I thought I would do bagels for afternoon tea. I think I over rose them a bit - they really puffed up when boiling. I forgot how easy they are when you have a breadmaker. The boys are scoffing through them as I write this.

The dough

My recipe has no dairy, no saturated fat at all (great for you Kerryn - hot with some homemade jam on them) no egg (I specifically do not egg wash them so that they can be no egg.) Though if you do egg wash them they do go glossy and lovely on top.

Boiling the bagels.

It must be summer

This is the earliest we have had strawberries every. Enough for dessert. We are having these gorgeous red strawberries with homemade Feijoa and Ginger ice-cream ( just added homemade jam to the recipe here).

The strawberries are in the new garden bed that I dug and built this winter and I have gone back to being traditional for planting. I used black weed mat and it certainly not only represses weeds but the soil under is so warm.

Yum Yum in our tum.

Blackcurrant Jam and Dairy Free Banana Cake

The finished product

A great book

I have half a cow coming off the farm in the next few weeks so need to empty the freezer. Last year my blackcurrants were so prolific that I still had three containers of them in the freezer when I looked today. As we used the last blackcurrant jam on Friday, I figured that was what I would do with them.

For those of you with lot of blackcurrants what we normally do is free flow freeze (try saying that fast!) them and I use them instead of blueberries when making the blueberry muffin recipe. They are tarter and stronger in taste and we all love it.

Anyway this Jam recipe is a conglomeration of years of trying and a lovely Victorian Jam and Preserve book that my gorgeous friend Marie Pearce gave me as a wedding present (Hi Marie - still haven't finished making your birthday present, am working on those screens).

Rather than type the recipe out I have taken a photo of it. You should be able to read it ok. I use a higher portion of fruit to sugar than most recipes. I also don't stew the blackcurrants as long as most recipes as I do not want my fruit to be mush - I like fruit in jam to still be semi whole. More like a conserve.

Anyway this recipe is good and is not boiled so long that it goes hard in the jar the way it can sometimes. (My other hint is that I never buy specific jam jars. I just use jars that seal from chutneys, jams and sauces from the shop. They clean up and reseal very well)

The recipe

Dairy Free Banana Cake
I made this dairy free today as I did not have any butter out soft and I wanted to use the time the jam was cooking to make something. (and I had four bananas that needed rescueing)
into a bowl put: 1 and 1/8th Cups neutral oil, 3 eggs, 1 1/8th Cup sugar, 4-5 soft bananas mashed and whisk together. Into the liquid put 3 Cups flour, 1.5 teaspoons baking powder. Then put 1.5 teaspoons baking soda into 3 tablespoons warm water and dissolve, put with all other ingredients. Stir all well and pour into prepared tin. I used a ring tin as this is a large cake and the ring cuts the cooking time down. 180oC for about 40 minutes.

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The Dude and I

Aaron is away at the Cold Play concert in Auckland. Jakob is staying over at his friends for the night. So it is just me and the Dude.

There has just been the two of us since 5pm last night. The Dude has been very happy as he has gotten to XBox all by himself without his older brother interfering. I had a bath and read my book as I was exhausted. We had been up since 6am doing a garage sale to get rid of all the stuff that Aaron told me I had to. (that was after a night where I was up twice to the Dude as he was having bad dreams) When I got up in the morning yesterday I could not find the Dude - he was in his older brothers' bed sleeping with him. Apparently he had another set of bad dreams that I had not heard and had climbed into bed with Jakob.

tidying his room

Then at 2pm we went to my nephews 5th birthday party. Out at Castle Park - so lots of kids running around, flying fox, petting animals etc in the sun. So last night I actually went to sleep when the Dude did as I had a lot to catch up. (8.30pm - very early for me). This morning we woke at 6.15am and I did not feel like sleeping in. So the Dude and I hopped into bed together with books and magazines and a coffee for me and a hot chocolate for him and we read for an hour.

We decided not to go to church but have a quiet morning with just the two of us.

Since then I have managed to clean out the chooks, put out two loads of washing, fold the washing that was there and make blackcurrant Jam and a banana cake.(it is now only 10.15am). (not too sure how this fits into a quiet morning but hey!!)

Posing on the sofa

I am calling Eli the Dude as I sent him to get dressed and tidy his room, 20 minutes later I went in to see how it was all going and he was all dressed up like a Dude. Took some photos but told him that he needed to give me a cute smile, so he posed on the sofa!!!!