Tag Archives: cooking

Making Marzipan

Posted on by

My daughter, Alice, was given a lovely baking set and set of recipe cards for her birthday and we have been looking longingly at all the lovely things we could make. So with the weather being so miserable this weekend, we got everything out and decided to have a go at making almond hearts. Now we could have done this very easily and just bought some almond paste / marzipan, but we thought we’d do it properly and use the whole recipe. Having quickly looked in the baking cupboard I thought we had everything we needed, so it was with great dismay I discovered we had no ground almonds at all!

This meant a much lengthier than planned walk round the neighbourhood shops looking for ground almonds. Eventually after 4 local shops and over an hour of walking we found some and head back home for a cup of tea and to get making.

The recipe is very simple but involved quite a lot of kneading. We split the paste in half and coloured one half with red food colouring. Then left it in the fridge for a while to harden up a bit and make it easier to roll out.

We were both quite impatient to make the hearts, so I did the rolling out and Alice cut out the shapes.  We did think about making some stars too, but the hearts looked so lovely in the different colours we thought we’d stick with them.  They’ve really got us in the mood for Valentine’s Day too, although I don’t think they will last that long to give out to all her friends!!

IMG_20160124_153704238

IMG_20160124_153810197

This is definitely a recipe we will try again.  It’s fairly simple although it has left me with most of a tin of condensed milk.  I shall have to get my thinking cap on and see what I can make with the rest of it, it’s far too good an ingredient to waste.

Happy crafting
x

Jam and Jerusalem

Posted on by

There has been so much on the TV recently about the centenary of the WI, I decided to take a leaf from their book and use up the remaining blackberries to make some jam! I always thought this would be a difficult process and would need loads of extra ingredients and equipment. My neighbour said it was dead easy to do and I should give it a try. So I did a bit of research on the internet – You Tube is amazing for tutorials – and thought I would have a go.

P1240403

So out came all the washed blackberries, a large bag of sugar, my largest pan, masher and pots for the finished produce. Everywhere I found on the internet called for added pectin with blackberries, but my Delia book doesn’t mention it. As this was my first go at jam making, I decided on the simple approach – fruit and sugar.

Firstly I mashed the blackberries a bit in the pan, then added the sugar, stirred with my trusty wooden spoon and then brought them to the boil.

20150917_094551

Here they are on the hob, nicely boiling away. I removed some of the bubbles as they boiled and kept a watch on it to check on thickening up.  It didn’t take long, and then I left it to cool, whilst boiling my pots.

I was amazed at just how much jam I made.  I finished the day with six pots ready for the fridge.  I hope they last as I don’t think we’ll get through it that quickly on toast – oooo, that’s made me think of scones, maybe I shall have to have another baking session again soon.  Watch this space!

Happing crafting
x