Beginner Baking 12

Not exactly baking but still within my culinary challenge, I think - chutney!

I had some chunks of orange left over from a Pimms afternoon, as you do, and some rhubarb which was going to waste as we were too busy eating up cheesecake. Luckily I found this recipe in the Southland Times and combined it with this recipe which involved roasted orange.

And this is how it turned out...



We're going to eat some of it with leftover New Year ham.

Beginner Baking 11

A baked vanilla cheesecake, topped with raspberries, for J's birthday, courtesy of River Cottage. Mmm...



The next birthday challenge will be a chocolate cake for my birthday next week...

Caterpillar in the cauliflower

Beginner Baking 10

This is a gluten-free lime and coconut loaf from a River Cottage recipe.

Except I don't like coconut so I switched that for chopped pecans. And I didn't have any lime so made it with lemon juice instead. And I decided to do a cream cheese icing instead of a lemon glaze. It was still gluten free though.

Surprisingly, it turned out rather well, particularly given that I didn't have any xanthan gum to lighten it up. The icing was a little runny after I added lemon juice to it - and I failed to stir it well enough as someone was complaining about being hungry - you can see the resulting lumps. But it was sufficiently sweet and creamy so that didn't really matter.

I'm sure that some of my experimentation will fail soon - I must try not to become over-confident in my baking abilities. But in the meantime, I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself, despite my success being somewhat undeserved!

Beginner Baking 9

This is some of my gingerbread triangles, before they've been cut.

It's made from my mother's recipe but turned out not quite as dark as I remember it. Just as delicious though.


Here's the recipe:

• 100g SR flour
• 100g rolled oats
• 1.5 tsp powdered ginger
• 150g soft brown sugar
• 150g melted margarine
• 1 tbsp syrup

First, place all the ingredients in a bowl - a nice and easy recipe this one! Mix well with a fork then press into a lined round cake tin (8"). Bake for 30-45 minutes at 165 degrees celsius. Leave in the tin to cool then cut into triangles and enjoy.

A new perspective

When I took our neighbours' wandering dog back home the other day, I was interested to see what they could see of our house from their gate - just the top storey through the hedgerow.

Safekeeping

J has recently extended his collection of pottery which looks like fruit and vegetables to include containers which look like the food that they are intended to contain.

Witness the lemon-keeper and the garlic-keeper:



Next we need a chilli-keeper and a ginger-keeper.