Date and Walnut Loaf

A dense fruity date and walnut loaf.

Perfect as a less-sweet alternative to biscuits or cake. You could even have a slice as a quick breakfast if you've not got time to grab anything else.

In fact it's so popular that someone managed to scarf down half the loaf before I got round to photographing it!

Stuffed Marrow

Before we went on holiday, we carefully checked the courgette plants and removed developing fruit. But obviously we didn't check hard enough because we returned to be greeted with a full-sized marrow anyway.

Nothing for it but to make Stuffed Marrow for dinner.

Modelling Chocolate

This year, my daughter requested an Ohmu shaped birthday cake.

Previous birthday cakes have been cartoon characters that can be made easily using coloured buttercream on a flat shaped cake, but this one required some 3-dimensional construction.

I piled up rectangular layers of chocolate sponge cake stuck together with blueberry fruit spread - it's less sweet than jam - and then carved out the oval shape of the Ohmu.

After a skim coating of chocolate buttercream to smooth over the cake edges and give something for the outer layer to adhere to, it needed some brown rollable icing to make the carapace plates. Stick on some glace cherry halves for eyes, and add the legs at the front.

Now, commercial fondant icing is all very convenient and available in many colours. BUT IT TASTES HORRIBLE. A cake decorated with it may look pretty, but your guests will be quietly peeling the icing off before they eat. So I went looking for a recipe to make a rollable chocolate-flavoured icing. And discovered a new cake decorating wonder material!

All it takes is TWO ingredients.

Chiles en Vinaigre a.k.a Mexican Carrot Pickle

Mum used to make this one regularly when I was growing up. Unlike many of the other pickles and chutneys, this one was a big hit with us kids and a batch never lasted long.

The actual name of the recipe in the recipe book is Chiles en Vinaigre, but Mum went lighter on the chillies and bulked it out with the other vegetables, so we called it Mexican Carrot Pickle.

These days, I put in the original proportion of chillies - mild to medium big juicy ones like jalapenos, not scotch bonnets though!

This is the recipe for a single batch, but you could double up if you have a glut of peppers or carrots to use up.

Rhubarb and Vanilla Jam

The rhubarb plant in the garden is growing very enthusiastically! It looks like it now has 5 or 6 budding points on the crown, so it probably will need lifting and splitting into 2 or more plants in the autumn. I pulled a load of stalks from it, and pulled up a couple of raspberry shoots that were trying to invade its patch.

Rhubarb jam is easy to make and tends to set up very well. Rhubarb and Vanilla jam tastes like a fruitier version of the Rhubarb and Custard boiled sweets that we used to eat as kids.

As you can see from the jam colour, my rhubarb is one of the green and pink varieties that loses its colour when cooked. For a brighter pinker jam, try to get hold of one of the more strongly coloured varieties.

Chocolate Mint Loaf

It's been a while since I posted anything.

I've got into a rut, cooking from the same set of warming winter meals using the same winter fruit and veg each week. The impending spring weather and new season's produce should change things up a bit soon though.

This cake is also part of a rut, being yet another Empty Jar Generating Loaf Cake variant. I do make other kinds of cake too, honest!

Coconut Macaroons

Having made the Key Lime Cheesecake Pie yesterday, I had 3 egg whites sitting in a bowl waiting to be used up.

Time to bake some Coconut Macaroons.

Key Lime (Cheesecake) Pie

Key Lime Pie was invented by American settlers of Florida to use what they had to hand - fresh-laid eggs, tinned condensed milk and fresh key limes. The original pie filling used nothing more than this and relied on the acidity of the lime juice to coagulate the eggs and milk alone.

In these days when we get our eggs from the supermarket of an unknown age, modern recipes lightly cook the pie in order to ensure the raw egg yolks are pasteurised.

This variation bulks out the condensed milk filling with some cream cheese, which makes it a little less sweet, and a bit more cheesecake-like.

Mixed Citrus Marmalade

In the room at the back of the house next to a sunny patio door lives my orangery. Two potted citrus trees.

The older is a Calamondin (Citrofortunella Mitis). This small citrus is thought to be the result of a cross between an orange and a kumquat, and its fruit are used extensively in Filipino cuisine. Its one of the commonest type of potted orange trees sold as houseplants.

The younger is a Meyer Lemon. This one is thought to be a cross between a lemon and an orange and produces lemon-shaped fruit that get a blush of orange on the skin when they ripen, and are sweeter than ordinary lemons.

A third tree waits in the wings on the kitchen windowsill. An australian immigrant - Fingerlime (Microcitrus Australasica). It is still very small - having arrived as a seedling earlier in the year - and is currently just about getting ready for its first repotting. It will be a few years before it is big enough to start flowering and producing its unusual fruit.

This year's citrus crop came to a total of about 1lb of fruit from the two fruiting trees. By themselves that would make only a very small batch of marmalade, so I padded them out by adding 6 limes and 6 oranges from the supermarket.

On the first day:

Wash all the fruit, and dry them off.

Take a large glass mixing bowl and another small bowl.

On a plate - so you can collect the juice - thinly slice the calamondins and meyer lemons, peel and all (they have quite thin peel with little pith). Put any seeds you may find in the small bowl, and then put the sliced fruit and all juice into the large bowl.

Next, cut thin strips of zest from all over the limes and oranges and add these to the bowl.

On the plate, quarter and finely slice 3 of the limes. Add the fruit and juice to the large bowl. Squeeze the remaining 3 limes thoroughly and add the juice to the large bowl. Slice up the squeezed lime halves and add them to the small bowl with the seeds.

Peel the remaining zest and pith from 3 of the oranges and put it into the small bowl, and then quarter and thinly slice the 3 oranges into the large bowl. Squeeze the final 3 oranges thoroughly and add all the juice to the large bowl. Cut up the squeezed oranges and add them to the small bowl.

Tip the contents of the small bowl - all the pips, pith and squeezed out fruit - into a muslin bag and tie shut. Put this bag into the large bowl too.

Boil a kettle and pour hot water over everything in the large bowl until the water level just covers all the fruit in the bowl. Place a small ceramic plate on top to weigh down the muslin bag and keep it under the water surface.

Cover the bowl with a clean teatowel to keep out fruit flies, and leave the fruit to soak overnight.

On the second day:

Microwave the bowl on full power until it is bubbling. Cover with the teatowel again and leave to stand.

At this point it got forgotten about for a day, so...

On the third (fourth) day:

Microwave the bowl on full power until bubbling again. Test a piece of zest to ensure that it is soft and cooked, and microwave some more if not.

Once the zest is soft, let it stand a few minutes until the muslin bag is cool enough to handle. Squeeze the juice and pectins out of the pith and pips through the muslin bag into the bowl. Get as much out as you can, then discard the contents of the muslin bag.

Weigh the fruit and juice in the bowl, and then tip it into a maslin pan. Add the same weight in sugar. Warm gently and stir to dissolve the sugar in the juice.

Once all the sugar is dissolved, turn up the heat and boil until jam setting point is reached.

Let cool for a few minutes, then stir to distribute the pieces of zest and fruit through the jam. Spoon into heated sterile jars and seal in the usual way.