Raspberry recipes on The Cottage Smallholder site
I love raspberries. Could eat them every day. When I was working in London and dining out a lot, I would often order fresh raspberries with a sprinkle of castor sugar for dessert. Friends tucking into waist expanding desserts would think that I was mad or on an impromptu diet. They didn’t realise that each savoured mouthful took me into the heart of a long summer’s day. Luckily for me, raspberries are packed with vitamins and minerals and are classed as a super food. But the time that it takes to harvest them makes them rather expensive to...
read moreRecipe for Fiona’s scrummy bread and butter pudding
“Why this is wonderful!” My mother quickly took another mouthful. “I wasn’t sure that it would be OK. I couldn’t be bothered to look up Delia’s recipe.” “Well never look it up again, Darling. Just note down how you made this.” I was thrilled. Some of my best recipes have been created out of laziness or by mistake. This recipe is one of those. I usually follow Delia’s recipe for luxury bread and butter pudding – replacing the currants and crystallised fruit with sultans and raisins. It always goes down well and is a...
read moreBottled fruit: enjoying the bounty seven months later
When I sat down to savour the superb third day of creamy Greek yoghurt and organic blackberries and blueberries bottled last October from our own garden, I just had to take a photo. This is now pasted on the kitchen wall to remind me how good bottled fruit is when I’m caught up in the bottling frenzy that dominates September and October. I do enjoy bottling fruit but sometimes it seems a bit of a palaver if I have other things to do. Sitting by the pond on a clear and sunny morning as the fruit and yoghurt combination burst in my mouth I...
read moreBest melt in the mouth vanilla fudge recipe
Danny loves fudge. A few weeks ago he bought some fudge in Newmarket. It was inedible, chewy, tasteless stuff. Danny has a sweet tooth and a passion for cheap sweets and even he couldn’t get beyond the first mouthful and threw the rest away. Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered making fudge as a child – or rather watching my mum making fudge. We used to make sweets as Christmas presents individually wrapped in cellophane like little jewels. I trawled the internet for recipes – there were millions of them but this one by Nick...
read moreHomemade elderflower and raspberry jellies recipe
Somehow I missed the elderflowers last year. One moment they were nodding down at me but when I went out with a basket the next weekend the flowers had turned brown. Elderflowers need to be white and fresh for cordial, wine or anything else. Once the brown tinge appears on the flowers they have gone bitter. If I had searched in shadier spots, I might have found perfect elderflowers but I just didn’t have the time. Having missed out on all the elderflower recipes I’ve been keeping a beady eye open for this year’s first frothy flowers....
read moreGuest Spot: Sam Raithatha’s special lemon cheesecake recipe
Debonair and charming, Sam serves organic food to the tradesmen of East Anglia. His van is parked in the car park of Ridgeons, Newmarket. A lot of people that I know visit Ridgeons just for Sam’s food. I also have driven in, ordered my food and shimmied out without even buying a one inch brush. Sam also runs the successful Queens Events company. I discovered that he has a penchant for puds when he mentioned that there’s a dearth of them on this blog. So here is his generous contribution to that slim section of our site. This is a...
read moreTangy blackberry and apple tart recipe
The success of Orangette’s Apricot Tart fired up my baking enthusiasm and I planned to make the same again when my mum came to lunch on Sunday. I decided to follow Orangette’s pastry recipe exactly – using all butter this time. Fresh apricots were on the shopping list until I spotted some plump juicy blackberries in the garden. Why buy fruit when we have free fruit hanging on our fence? In twenty minutes I had picked enough to cover the base of the pie, plucked a cooking apple from our tree. I devised an alternative filling...
read moreOrangette’s apricot tart recipe
A couple of years ago I found a wonderful blog – Orangette. I read her post on bananas and was totally hooked. In fact, I often think about that post. Her writing is superb, it nips you gently and you remember it forever. A week or so ago a new friend emailed me. She had tried out Orangette’s recipe for apricot tart. Apparently it was dazzling. My friend’s a wonderful writer and the combination of two good writers and one great recipe made me desperate to make this delicacy for our next supper party. Even though I don’t...
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