(Luckily the camera is fixed, paid for and should be returned to us very soon!)

I realised - it being thursday already - that i was putting off writing about this week’s pudding. I think I know why. There were some problems with it.

Not in how it tasted - it tasted wonderful - but in the technicalities of how it was made.

But lets back up a bit.

This weeks pudding: Rhubarb Ice Cream.

Now, since this recipe isn’t actually in the book, and is one I adapted myself, I going to post it here, along with direction on how not to cock it up, (like i did.) I’m planning to remake it properly over the weekend - probably. Hopefully. Assuming all the baking works out.

But anyways, you need:

• A decent handful of rhubarb stalks
• A large (560ml ish) pot of double cream
• 260g icing sugar

1. Wash and chop up the rhubarb and put in a pan with a tiny splash of water. Heat until all the rhubarb goes soft and starts to break down. Leave to cool.

2. WHIP THE CREAM. (I didn’t do this, because i thought that my ice cream maker would magically whip it enough for me, as well as freezing it. This would have been fine if we were going to eat it all in one go, but i knew that wasn’t going to happen, and so when it actually went into the freezer, it froze into a solid block. Hence the scrapings, rather than scoops I photographed on monday. And thus i’ve put off posting this till thursday.)

So - whether you’re using an ice cream maker or not - WHIP THE CREAM. Till it has soft peaks and there is obviously a lot of air in it.

3. Add the icing sugar to the rhubarb, and mix till all the icing sugar has disolved.

4. Add the rhubarb mixture to the cream, and fold in gently.

5. If using an ice cream maker: Add mixture to the maker, and follow the instructions for your particular ice cream maker.

If NOT using an ice cream maker: Put the ice cream mixture into a plastic box with a lid, or wrapping cover, and put in the freezer. Take it out and give it a stir every hour, so that it doesn’t freeze into a solid block. It should take about 4 hours to freeze.

6. Eat. :)

As my birthday present this year, Will and I went to Lacock for a few days, and on the last day, before heading back home, we went for a bit of a wander around the shops. Lacock, as a village, is owned by the National Trust, so there is a decent sized National Trust shop. When I went inside this caught my eye:

Good Old-Fashioned Puddings by Sara Paston-Williams

When we were kids, sunday was always a roast, and mum would almost always also cook a sponge of some sort. My favourite was a treacle sponge with custard. Heaven!

Anyway, flipping through the book I got an idea. Though I do bake (I made a banana cake just yesterday), we probably eat more  bought cakes and pasteries and cookies, than home made ones. And while these days I buy fair trade sugar, and chocolate, and free-range eggs, i’m pretty sure that most ingredients in processed baking would not live up to that sort of standard.

Plus my pudding repertoire of hot puddings consists of baked apples and crumbles. And while these are great, why not learn more?

So sunday is new pudding day, as I slowly work my way through the book. (I’m planning to do one recipe from each chapter, from the first to the last, and then back to the first again, and so on and so on, so that we don’t end up with a glut off three months of icecream! or whatever.)

This week’s recipe: Apple-Marmalade Charlotte

(again with the camera phone)

It’s basically bread, and apples, and marmalade. (The marmalade was some we made back in january. :)

…with custard.

Conclusion: Wonderful. Didn’t take very long to do (if you ignore that it’s not always easy to find enough stale white bread in our house), and both W and I have munched through it happily over the last couple of dinner.  Will cook again.

More next week.

…but maybe a piece of cake.

I had one of those ideas last sunday which I knew from the start was never going to actually happen.

I thought “I have a number of projects on the go, and some of them need to be finished soon, and some of them should have been finished AGES ago, and therefore need to be finished as soon as possible so that they are late, but not OMG!LATE!.

I know! I will promise to only knit a certain project on a certain day, so that each project gets some knitting time each week, and thus will get finished quicker (than having no knitting time spend on them at all.)”

I even made a table with the days of the week in it, and next to that, the project I should knit each day, and then added the information into my diary.

Then I totally ignored my careful plan, cast on Tatami, and have knit only that so far this week.

Ooops.

Mind you, despite being on 3mm needles Tatami is coming along. The 21st Century 4ply that I originally (bought for a large but ultimately dull shawl that I abandoned) is as lovely as I remembered it being, and apart from my worry that I’m not compensating enough for my slight lack of row gauge, it’s all going pretty well. Even when I add in both sleeves the stitch count only goes up to just over 200st which is totally manageable.

That said, the barbara shawl and the dreaded looks-like-fairisle-kinda-but-is-really-evil-intasia waistcoat still need finishing well before Christmas.

(It’s a nice shawl, but it grows alot, and maybe I’m just not in a shawl mood? - though I hope that’s not the case since I like knitting shawls generally. Anyways I’m having a break…)

(PLEASE NOTE: This is the original - not the one I’m knitting. The one I’m knitting looks like this:

Or even worse - like this! [Turn you face away if you’re fainthearted!].

(Luckily other Bluestockings have offered to maybe help darn some ends in. It has been suggested that it gets passed around the table, one darned in end at a time. As thanks, they all get invited over to my house to watch my hands shake as I cut the steeks for the armholes and neck.)

Yes, I’m slightly in denial about both of those projects at the moment. So tatami it is. Well tatami, and some Saartje’s Bootees (pdf), for our wedding photographer Sarah, who I’ve just found out is about to give birth. *raids sock yarn half balls*

Sometimes you go to the local farmers market and are overcome with the need to bring home a giant cottage loaf, and fill it full of onions and mushrooms, and tomatoes, and swiss cheese and bake it in the oven for half an hour, and then marvel at the huge sandwich you have created, and then manage to eat half said sandwich over the two remaining meals of the day.

And by you I mean Will (who ate his half in one sitting, because he has hollow legs - and a flat stomach. ;)

And by you I also mean me (who ate it over two meals, and thought it was amazing.)

—

Hopefully the shop will open in the next 24 hours. However in the meantime I’m going to go buy a new housephone, since you have to punch ours to have any hope of hearing the person at the other end, and then I’m dropping in to Felix’s Craftanoons so that I can baby the autumn cold that is threatening to take me over, and finish the first of my minimalist cardie sleeves.

I got this recipe from How to be a Domestic Godess by Nigella Lawson, which I nosied through while we were in Cornwall at the beginning of last month.

Anyways since we grow courgettes we always have way more than we could possible eat, so I thought ‘what the hell’ and gave it a go.

It worked out really well, so it’s only fair to share it with you lot. :)

Flora’s Famous Courgette Cake

60g raisins (optional)
250g courgettes weighed before grating
2 large eggs (or 3 medium)
125ml vegetable oil
150g caster sugar
225g self raising flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarb of soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

sandwich tins or bunte tins, or even muffin tins. (The cake is kinda like carrot cake so it would work in lots of forms - bars, layered cake, buns etc.)

Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 4/350F/180C

If using raisins, put them in a bowl and coer with warm water to plump them up.
Wipe courgettes with kitchen towel then grate with the coarse side of an ordinary grater. When you’ve grated them, turn them into a sieve over the sink to remove excess water.
Put eggs, oil and sugar in a bowl and beat until creamy.
Sieve in flour, bicarb and baking powder and continue to bea until well combined.
Now stir in the grated courgette and add the drained raisins.
Pour the mixture into the tins (or whatnot) and bake for about 30 minutes, or until slightly browned and firm to the touch. (i stick a tooth pick in them to check.)
Leave in their tins for 5-10 minutes then turn out and let cool on the rack until your filling is ready.

Filling:

200g cream cheese
100g icing sugar
juice of a lime or lemon

Beat the cream cheese until smooth, then add the sieved icing sugar and lime/lemon juice to taste.

I think, because the cake is moist, it seems to keep pretty well. it should last for a week or so, assuming you don’t gobble it up. :)