Apple and rhubarb crumble...

We really are coming into apple season now and as there's a nice cooking apple tree in my parents' garden, we made good use of the apples while I was at home! There was also still a pretty big patch of rhubarb left, so we turned some into jam (but that's for another post) and made some into crumble.

I just used a classic crumble recipe - I chopped up the apple and rhubarb (three or four decent stems of rhubarb and a couple of big cooking apples) and layered it in a baking dish with some sugar and a couple of lumps of chopped stem ginger, and then the crumble was 8oz of flour and 4oz of butter, which I rubbed together before adding 4oz of sugar. I also threw in a large handful of oats and a couple of tablespoons of chopped nuts, and then the whole thing went in the oven at 180C for about 45 or so minutes, until the top was golden brown and the fruit was just starting to bubble up at the sides. We had it with custard but it'd be equally nice with some vanilla ice cream. Or with custard and ice cream!

Maple cake...

I've been down in Somerset for the last week, and you know what that means - lots of baking! It's so nice to have people to bake for, and there's a bit of a tradition in my family of making sure there's always cake available when people come to visit.

I'd already decided what to bake first - I'd stumbled upon the Baker's Daughter blog (which sadly doesn't seem to have been updated for a while, but there are some amazing recipes on there) via Pinterest, and as soon as I saw the Maple Cake recipe I knew it was one to try. Having spent four years in New England as a child, I developed a serious love of maple syrup, and it's a love my mum also shares, so I had to make this gorgeous cake for her.

The original recipe calls for one 9" tin, but we decided to bake it in two 8" sandwich tins and use the lovely maple icing to fill and top the cake. It worked really well and the sponge is beautifully light and delicate. It doesn't keep quite as well as an ordinary Victoria sponge, but the buttercream keeps the cake moist and it's so delicious it won't last long anyway - we devoured most of it in one sitting (although there were five of us...!)

I think it would make the perfect cake for an autumn birthday, too...hmm, wonder who's got a birthday coming up in the next few weeks...!

Mid-Somerset Show 2012

I really did have a proper Westcountry weekend last weekend! As I mentioned in my last post, on Sunday we headed over to Shepton Mallet for the Mid-Somerset Show, a small agricultural show in the lovely Somerset countryside. We always used to go to the Royal Bath & West Show when I was little, but after the foot and mouth outbreak in 2001, when a lot of farmers lost their livestock and there were all sorts of restrictions on the movement of animals, it became a lot more corporate and there were more big stands selling farm machinery than there were local producers. But the Mid-Somerset Show was just how an agricultural show should be. It was a boiling hot day and they had a record crowd, and we saw all sorts of fab things.

There were champion chickens...

...and a LOT of Cheddar (unsurprisingly!)

There were also lots of local food producers and small dairies and cheesemakers in the food tent, and I bought some Somerset cider chutney, and some Ringwell and Little Ryding cheese from Wootton Organic Dairy. I love Ringwell - it's made with unpasteurised milk from Jersey cows and it's beautiful, quite dry but creamy and nutty at the same time.

This cow had won all the rosettes...

...and there were lots of very large pigs and lots of old tractors!

One of our main reasons for going to the show was to see The Wurzels, and of course I had to have a cheeky perry (I'm not a cider fan) while they were playing!

And I finished the day with a gorgeous mint choc chip ice-cream from Styles that was made with sheep's milk - it was lovely and refreshing with a gorgeous tang, a little bit like frozen yogurt but much creamier!

Finland Finland Finland!

I'm back from a fab five-day trip to Finland to visit my sister and her chap. It was great! I'd been to Helsinki twice before, but only ever in the winter, and they now live in Turku so there were all sorts of new things to explore.

My sister and I started off with lunch in Helsinki on Thursday before getting the train to Turku, which only takes a couple of hours, and then we all went out for dinner to a really lovely restaurant on a boat. All the food was local and seasonal and there were lots of traditional Finnish flavours - I had smoked salmon with beetroot mousse, white fish with tiger prawns and chive mash, and then the most amazing sea buckthorn pannacotta with spruce syrup and caramelised bananas. It was fab - I'm going to do a whole post on food later! We also had a few drinks in various bars around the town...and found the brilliant cow sculpture I've posted up there! Although we're a bit past Midsummer now, the evenings were still really light - this is midnight:

On Friday Suze and I had a potter around Turku - there's an amazing fruit and veg market in the summer, and an indoor market hall with yet more stalls selling just about everything you can think of. And we saw the building where they make the Declaration of Christmas Peace every Christmas Eve!

Then we went to a little country cottage on one of the islands of the archipelago near Turku, and the weather was amazing. We sat out in the sun watching the boats go past on the Baltic sea, we had a huge barbecue, and I went in the sauna!

And then on Saturday we went to another island and another country house, owned by my sister's boyfriend's parents. We went out on a boat trip around the islands, had another sauna, and ate a ton of gorgeous food. Lots of salmon and new potatoes and dill - fantastic!

It was a seriously brilliant little holiday and I loved exploring a bit more of Finland and seeing how gorgeously green it is in the summer!

Many mini muffins!

I'm off to Paris for the weekend for a hen do, and what do you do when you go to Paris? You bake things and take them with you. Because they really don't have nice baked things in Paris.

What? Oh.

Anyway, I made these mini blueberry muffins because we're all arriving later this evening and the plan for tonight is a girly night in with drinks and nibbles. The theme of the whole weekend is 'something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue' and the blue bit for tonight is the food and drink! Hence blueberry muffins. I used this recipe from A Bitchin' Kitchen, although I used buttermilk instead of sour cream because it turns out one carton of buttermilk is just about exactly 1 1/4 cups. Perfect! I used a silicone mini muffin pan (£1 from the pound shop near work!) and got 24 mini muffins with enough batter left over to make one normal-sized muffin, which may or may not have been eaten straight out of the tin.

I've also made yet another batch of coconut meringues - but with added blue food colouring! They're more of a very pale teal on the outside thanks to the gentle browning of the oven, but I think they're going to be nice and blue on the inside!

So I'll see you on the other side of the weekend with some photos from Paris! By the way, I'm on Instagram now, so if you fancy following me just search for alliesolskjaer.

Holidays, random acts of culture and gluten-free pastry...

Crikey, I've neglected my blog for a rather long time! First I had a particularly nasty bout of tonsillitis, and then (on a happier note) I went off down to Somerset for a week's relaxation and pampering with my family. It was my sister's birthday last Wednesday so the week was packed with celebrations and days out and, obviously, lots of food and drink.

We went to rainy Lyme Regis (where my sister comprehensively kicked my bum in a hilarious moose-shooting arcade game...)

...and rainy Bath, where we went to see the Roman Baths and where I found the Oasis butterfly-print pleated dress I'd been lusting after for months HALF PRICE. I actually jumped up and down and squealed in the shop.

Then, on Friday, the weather suddenly improved and we wanted to get out and enjoy the sunshine. Reading the local paper the evening before, I'd spotted that Antony Gormley's Field for the British Empire was on display at Barrington Court, a mere 15 minutes or so from my parents' house. None of us had ever been to Barrington Court before, despite having lived so close by for 25 years, and I'm so glad we went! The house and gardens were beautiful, and the exhibition (which unfortunately we weren't allowed to take photos of) really was quite spellbinding. According to one of the guides, the most common reaction from children on seeing the rooms full of little clay figures was 'Meerkats!', while several adults had remarked that it reminded them of concentration camps. It's amazing how different people react to things!

In other exciting news, the lovely girls from Domestic Sluttery very kindly asked me to do a guest post on gluten-free cookery, and I had a great time coming up with a truly simple and delicious recipe for gluten-free shortcrust pastry. My sister was absolutely over the moon with the curried potato pasties I made, and we're already planning lots of other ways to use the pastry!

And finally, here's a photo of the gorgeous Lily of the Valley that's growing right outside my mum and dad's front door!

Easter Food Fest...

I'm back from my Easter weekend in Somerset feeling absolutely stuffed - we made all sorts of gorgeous things to eat!

First off, my mum finally got the ice cream maker for her (beautiful) Kenwood Chef out of the cupboard - it was her birthday present from me and my sister last year, but she hadn't used it! It's really clever, with a bowl that you freeze, a larger plastic bowl, and a paddle attachment to complete the transformation from Chef to ice cream machine. We used this maple syrup ice cream recipe (we love maple syrup in our house thanks to the four years we spent in New England when my sister and I were little) and unfortunately we were far too excited about watching the ice cream churning to remember to take photos, so you can have a sneaky pic of the finished product instead!

We used more maple syrup than the recipe suggested, and rippled some through the soft ice cream before it went into the freezer to fully set, and it was amazing. Really smooth, really creamy and incredibly delicious!

We then revisited the chocolate pie I made a couple of weeks ago, but as my sister wasn't around we didn't have to worry about making it totally gluten-and-dairy-free. While shopping for biscuits we spotted some almond ones in Waitrose, so we used half almond biscuits and half ordinary digestives. Great idea! The chocolate filling was the same as before, except we used almond milk to carry on the almondy theme, and we decorated it with some edible gold leaf just to make it posh!

(Can you tell I was let loose with my mum's smart Nikon DSLR camera?)

And finally, we made a lemon drizzle cake - but it was a bit of a disaster! When it came out of the oven looking seriously misshapen and a bit odd, my mum remembered that she'd tried the recipe before, a couple of years ago, and had ended up with a weird cake then as well. But we sliced it in half, sandwiched the two halves together with buttercream to hide the wonkiness, and topped it with lemon icing, fluffy chicks and Mini Eggs. You can't go wrong with that, and it did taste far better than it looked! A bit of clever photography also helped...!

I'm not going to post the recipe, because it's so impossible to get right that it's been banished from my mum's recipe file, but at least we made it look half decent in the end!

Christmas 2011: Done

Once again, sorry for disappearing for weeks on end! I did mean to post a few times over the festive break, but as it was I had such a lovely time eating, drinking and being merry that I barely touched a computer! So here's a recap...

Christmas Day started like this:

...and continued in a similar vein all day!

Here I am looking very excited about my presents:

...and here's our lovely tree (Dad had a slight tree-rage incident at the garden centre when he turned his back for five seconds and someone else nicked the tree he and Mum had chosen, but we ended up with a gorgeous tree nonetheless!)

And finally, here's all the food...

Weekend away 4 of 4!

Yep, for my fourth weekend away in a row I headed down to Somerset to spend a long weekend at my parents' new house. It was the first time I'd seen the place - apart from the photos on Rightmove - and I was really excited! And it's absolutely gorgeous. Mum and Dad have only been there just over a week, but already (thanks to all the hard work they and my sister have put in) the house feels incredibly cosy and homely. There are a few cosmetic things to sort out (my bedroom has the most delightful '90s yellow and terracotta colour scheme, with a tasteful zig-zag patterned decorative border and curtains and lampshades to match...) but it's a lovely, lovely house.

The cats came home on Friday too, after a short stay in the cattery, and they made themselves at home fairly quickly (although to start with they did retreat to the cupboard under the stairs!)

(Note the lovely carpet there...)

And we even managed some baking - there are loads of apples still clinging on to the tree, so we made a Suze-friendly apple crumble with a seriously delicious topping. We made it up as we went along, but we basically rubbed some ground almonds into some Pure dairy-free margarine, then added oats, brown sugar and flaked almonds. It all went on top of some chopped and peeled apples, which had a sprinkle of vanilla sugar and some mixed spice. Here it is pre-oven (we ate it too quickly to take a photo of it when it was cooked!)

It was a lovely weekend, and I can't wait to see how the house has changed next time I go back (which won't be until Christmas - I bet it'll come around ridiculously quickly, though!) While I was there, I also painted a new sign for the house, as Mum and Dad have changed its name. I was quite pleased with how it turned out - just look at the lovely little cottagey front door!

A Welsh wedding...

My third weekend away out of four, and this time it was off on an epic road trip to north Wales for my friends' wedding. We woke up on Saturday morning to this glorious sunrise...

...but unfortunately it really was a case of 'red sky in the morning, shepherds' warning' as the weather soon turned rather nasty. It didn't dampen anyone's spirits, though, and we set off for the beautiful 12th-century church, which is famous for its rood screen - complete with skeleton!

The groom arrived in style, in the Caterham car he built himself - and there was much hilarity as he and the best man attempted to get themselves out of the car in their smart morning suits!

The reception was held at a beautiful country house hotel on Anglesey, and the whole day was absolutely lovely despite the best efforts of the Welsh weather. The happy couple are off to live in Vietnam in a few weeks' time, and they had a very fitting (and absolutely delicious) suitcase cake!

The following morning, my friend Dave and I felt very smug as we dragged ourselves out for a four-mile run in the gorgeous countryside - it was a bit hilly (well, we were on the edge of Snowdonia!) but we managed it somehow! I'm annoyed that I didn't think to bring my Ealing Eagles running vest - I could've snapped an 'Eagles on Tour' photo! We then set off to explore a bit of Snowdonia before heading home - we wanted to go up the mountain on the train, but because of bad weather it wasn't running to the top and we were going to have to wait ages, so we just had a walk around Llanberis and saw the lovely castle.

A Belfast hen do...

My friend Ali is getting married on Saturday, and last weekend we all went off to Belfast for her hen do. I'd never been to Northern Ireland before (it was quite strange getting off a plane and just waltzing out of the airport without showing my passport to anyone!) and I had a great time, despite the fact that it absolutely tipped it down for most of Sunday!

We had a few drinks...

...saw a few sights...

...had a Sunday morning Ulster Fry (without meat in my case, but with lovely potato bread and soda farls!)

...and went to the oldest pub in Belfast for a hot whiskey!