Stonefruit additions

Since it's currently stone fruit season, and particularly since I had a dozen or so plums left over from my jam, I decided it was about time to add some more fruit to my rumpot.


I  used a couple of the plums, some apricots and a peach. The plums and apricots I de-stoned and sliced into quarters; the peach I peeled and sliced into wedges.

Peering into the rumpot before adding the stone fruit, I was a little bit dubious as to how the whole rumpot experiment is going to work out. I have some scary brownish strawberries surrounded by soggy-looking blueberries floating in a jar of rum. It's just not as appealing as I expected.


I added the stone fruit, hoping that these nice colourful chunks of fruit wouldn't turn out looking quite as dodgily brown as the strawberries. The fruit amounted to 400g, so I put in 200g of sugar before topping it up with rum and giving it a stir.


There's only a little space left at the top of the jar - enough to put a few chunks of apple, and maybe some pear if I'm lucky. After that, I'll still have to leave it a couple of weeks before I find out whether my rumpot is as good as it originally sounded, or whether it's just been a waste of good rum!

More runny jam

On my most recent visit to Raeward Fresh, I picked up a couple of 99-cent bags of plums, with the intention of turning them into jam. Two bags ended up being more than enough, as you'll see from the next couple of blog entries.

The messiest and most time-consuming part of making plum jam (p227) is halving and stoning the plums. Unlike apricots or peaches, plum stones don't come away from the flesh very easily. In fact, it's a total mission getting the stone to come out without taking half the fruit with it.


Once I'd got the hang of it, the de-stoning went a bit quicker - but I still got plum juice all over the kitchen, and came close to taking chunks out of my fingers more than once when the knife slipped. It was really a miracle that I produced a potful of stoned plums with 0% blood content.

A little water and a lot of sugar joined the plums, and I put the pot on to boil for 15 minutes. Towards the end of this time, the jam was approaching a suitable consistency, but the plum skins weren't breaking down. I decided I didn't want big lumps of plum skin in my final product, so I grabbed a slotted spoon and scooped out most of them.


During the scooping process, I noticed the jam was starting to look quite thick. Not wanting to over-thicken my jam, I cut short my scooping and checked to see if it has reached setting point. It looked alright, so I took the pot off the heat and poured the jam into jars.

While I was filling the jars, I noticed the jam didn't seem as thick as I'd thought; in fact, it was quite runny. Several days later, it still hasn't thickened up at all. So it seems I still haven't learned to judge the setting point very well. Possibly, leaving the skins in is essential to making the jam set.  If not, I guess I just should have boiled it for longer.

Operator error

Earlier this week, I once again found myself lacking anything to put in my lunchbox for mid-morning sustenance. Time to do some more baking! I decided to choose from the 'slices and squares' chapter this time. There were several recipes I had all the ingredients for, but in the end I chose caramel date fingers(p61).

There's quite a lot of date-based baking in the Edmonds book - which suits me fine, of course, since I'm very partial to dates. Caramel date fingers have a date filling sandwiched between two layers of spongy cake. Sounds exactly like my cup of tea!


I began by cutting up a cup of dates, and putting them in a pan over a low heat with some water, brown sugar and cocoa. Oddly, since these were supposed to be caramel date fingers, there was actually twice as much cocoa as brown sugar.

While the filling was reducing down to a paste on the stove, I prepared the base. It's a familiar process: cream butter and sugar, beat in egg and add dry ingredients. I then split the dough in half and pressed one half into the bottom of a 20cm square cake tin. As usual, it didn't look like it would spread enough at first, but eventually, with use of wet hands and teaspoon, I had the whole base of the tin covered evenly.

The instructions for the second half of the mixture were to roll or flatten it into roughly a 20cm square shape on a piece of baking paper. This was a bit tricky - the dough was quite sticky and was more inclined to stick to my hands than the paper, until I tried flattening it between two sheets of baking paper, which was more successful.

By the time I'd finished with that, the filling had become a thick brown paste. I poured it on top of the base and tried to spread it evenly over. Then came the tricky bit: I had to transfer my baking paper-pressed dough onto the top of the filling. I managed to peel the top sheet of baking paper off ok, but when I tried to transfer the dough to the tin, the paper didn't want to come off.

With very careful easing I managed to peel the paper away. Since my shaping of the dough had been approximate, there were still edges where the filling wasn't covered. Attempting to spread the dough across to fill these areas gave me a very clear understanding of why the top layer of dough is pre-rolled/flattened instead of just being spread over the top. It was difficult to spread the dough without smearing the filling or making holes in other places.

A little perseverance eventually produced the desired result - that is, if the desired result is to have smears of filling all through the top layer of the dough - and the slice went into the oven for half an hour.


When the slice had cooled a little, I cut it into fingers and tried one. The filling was lovely and moist, and went well with the cakey layers. I didn't think it merited the description 'caramel' though - the filling tasted quite chocolaty, which was weird in combination with the dates.

I've been eating this slice ever since, thinking how the odd chocolate/date combination really ruins a slice that would otherwise be very nice. It wasn't until I sat down to write this that I took another look and realised that there's nothing wrong with this recipe after all. There's only supposed to be two teaspoons of cocoa in it. I put in two tablespoons. No wonder it tasted so chocolaty!

Yet more evidence that I need to read recipes more carefully - clearly I haven't learnt my lesson yet. I think I feel a 'take 2' coming on!

Savoury selection

On Friday evening, having put my relish on to boil, I turned my attention to the savoury nibbles I'd offered to bring.  I'd decided to make salmon puffs (p194), savoury tartlets (p195) and devils on horseback (p193).

I began with the salmon puffs, cutting 5cm rounds out of pre-rolled sheets of pastry. These went into the oven until puffed up and golden, then I took them out, split each puff in half, and cooled the tops and bottoms separately. I was quite pleased with the way these came out - they were perfectly golden and each 'half' was nicely rounded to allow room for the filling. It'll be worthwhile to remember these easy cases, which could be used for all sorts of fillings.

With the salmon puff cases finished, I moved on to the savoury tartlets. More puff pastry, this time a block rolled out to 6cm thickness and cut into rounds to line patty tins. The filling consisted of sautéed onion and bacon, topped with a mixture of eggs and milk.

When the tartlets came out of the oven, they looked absolutely gorgeous, all puffed up and golden. Inevitably, they collapsed as they cooled, and I packed them away in a container ready to take over to Lauren's.

On Saturday morning, I got up early to continue my preparations. I iced my chocolate eclairs, then made the filling for the salmon puffs - a mixture of smoked salmon, cream cheese, parsley, lemon juice, and (oddly) whipped cream. I didn't put this in the pastry cases yet though - I didn't want them to go soggy.

I had one last dish to make: devils on horseback. These simple canapés have only two ingredients - prunes and bacon. You simply wrap each prune in a strip of bacon, and pin it in place with a toothpick, then put them under the grill until the bacon is cooked. The juicy sweetness of the prune contrasting with the salty bacon is just delicious. Unfortunately, I overcooked my first tray, and didn't have time to make any more before running out to meet the others for our dress fittings.

 Returning from the dressmaker's, I went straight back into the kitchen and made another batch of devils on horseback. Thinking I had plenty of time, I sat down and read a book for a little bit, then (some time later) suddenly realised it was almost time to leave and I wasn't at all ready. A lightning-quick job on hair and makeup was followed by a quick change of clothes, then (carefully covering up my outfit with an apron) I ran back into the kitchen to finish off my savouries.


I had big ideas of prettily piping the filling into the salmon puffs, but very soon found that I hadn't chopped the salmon small enough for that. The piping nozzle immediately got clogged with lumps of salmon, so I ended up spooning the filling in. It worked just fine that way - and you could hardly see the filling once I put the tops back on them anyway.

The filling was quite runny - I think because of the whipped cream. Next time I make these I'll just use soft cream cheese and forget about the whipped cream. I've often used the salmon/cream cheese combination in the past and it always goes down well.


I hurriedly piped cream into my eclairs, packed everything into containers or on platters, laid it all carefully in the back of my car, and drove across town to Lauren's, where I made a fairly unsuccessful attempt to reheat my tartlets (soggy!) and helped set out the rest of the food before the other guests arrived.


The hen's party was really quite hilarious. We spent the afternoon making and drinking mojitos, playing dodgy hen's party games and generally having a good laugh. I didn't take the 'pantry item' prize with my relish, by the way: it was deservingly awarded to Sandy, who brought not one pantry item beginning with 's' but a whole basketful.

The food I and my Edmonds book provided all went down very well. Oddly, my soggy savouries were very popular: despite the sogginess, they still tasted pretty good. Still, I'd recommend serving them either cold or immediately after you first bake them. Several people got quite excited when they saw the eclairs, most of which disappeared despite the fact that they're very messy to eat. The salmon puffs and the devils on horseback got positive comments as well, so on the whole, I reckon that making all those nibbles was definitely a worthwhile effort.

Pantry item

As an aid to introductions at the hen's party tomorrow night, we've all been asked to bring an item for Lauren's pantry beginning with the same letter as our first names - prizes given for originality.


I initially intended to re-label a bottle of red wine as 'Robyn's Reserve Red' and create a lengthy description on the back using as many r-words as possible. I was quite enthusiastic about the idea at first, but when it came to making up coherent, relevant sentences using only r-words, I couldn't put together a version I was satisfied with.


The hen's party was getting ever closer, I wasn't getting any further with the wine description, so I started to think of other possible pantry items. Ideally, I should make something from the Edmonds book, but I didn't think there was anything starting with 'r' that I could pass off as a pantry item. Without much hope, I picked up my Edmonds book to flick through the jam and pickle chapters - just in case.

As I thought, the only 'r' recipe was raspberry jam, and I'd already made that. There weren't any recipes beginning with 'r' amongst the pickles, chutneys and sauces.. but there was a tomato relish (p234)! How about 'Robyn's Relish' as a pantry item? Homemade, too - that's got to count for something!


I hadn't left myself much time to get it made, though: by the time I bought my ingredients, I only had today to make the relish. The tomatoes and onions have to be salted and sit for 12 hours - a difficult length of time, if you're doing it during the week - so I was up at six this morning, chopping onions and blanching tomatoes.

The tomatoes and onions had produced quite a bit of liquid by the time I got home this evening. I poured this off and put the vegetables in a pot with some brown sugar, chillis and malt vinegar. This mixture bubbled away happily for an hour and a half while I pottered about preparing jars and making nibbles for the party.


When the boiling time was up, I mixed together a paste of mustard powder, curry powder, flour and vinegar, and added that to the pot. Another five minutes' boiling, and the relish was ready. I'd only done a half-recipe, which turned out to be exactly the right size to fill two of the jars I had prepared.

After the jars had cooled down, I took the larger one, and prettied it up a little with a cover and a label. Robyn's Relish: one pantry item beginning with 'r', ready to go. Now all that remains to be seen is whether someone else has come up with something better!

Party pastries

It's Lauren's hen's party on Saturday night, and I've offered to bring a few nibbles. It's a good excuse to knock off a few more recipes of the kind I can't really make just for myself. I've selected a couple out of the 'party finger food' chapter, but the first thing I've actually made is a batch of chocolate eclairs (p81).

Chocolate eclairs are made from choux pastry, something I've made before, so I was reasonably confident they'd come out ok. Perhaps I was even a little too confident: despite the fact that I'd been feeling fuzzy-headed and absentminded all day, and that the first thing I did on arriving home was knock a water glass off the kitchen bench, shattering it everywhere, I still felt that tonight was a good night to be making pastries.

At first, things were going quite well. The choux pastry itself is not difficult to make: simply bring water and butter to a rolling boil, then take it off the heat and beat in flour. Let it cool slightly, then beat in three eggs one by one until you have a nice glossy mixture. I got to this point without having any problems. It was the piping that got me into trouble.

I'd intended to get a box of disposable piping bags with my groceries, but as a result of the aforementioned absentmindedness, I'd neglected to buy any during an unnecessarily long grocery mission spent going back and forth and around the supermarket in circles as I remembered various items I wanted. This meant I had to use my ordinary piping bag.

My piping bag works perfectly well for whipped cream, which is what I mainly use it for anyway. But the moment you try piping a denser mixture with it, the mixture (in this case, choux pastry mix) oozes out the seam rather than the nozzle and makes your hands all gooey, meaning it's much more difficult to keep a decent grip on the piping bag.

I'd decided to try and make the eclairs quite small, since they're supposed to be finger food. Even so, I didn't intend to pipe the pastry in such skinny little lines, but that's the best I could do with the dodgy piping bag. I filled a couple of trays with piped lines of pastry, put them in the oven and hoped for the best.

They didn't rise - well, they did, but not nearly enough. When the cooking time was over, I had a number hard little turd-shaped lumps of eggy pastry. Well, I couldn't use those! I'd have to do a second batch. But first, it was time for a walk: I grabbed my jacket and wandered to a local supermarket for some piping bags.

Returning to the kitchen, I mixed up another batch of pastry, and this time I was able to pipe it into reasonable eclair shapes. They still weren't perfect, but they were a heap better than the first lot, and far quicker and easier to pipe with a non-oozing piping bag! After about 20 minutes (less than the half hour in the recipe) at 200 degrees for the eclairs to puff up and go golden, I turned the oven down to 120 and left them in there for another 20 minutes or so to dry out.

After all this, I now have 28 decent-looking eclairs. I still have to ice them and fill them with cream, but that can wait until Saturday. Meanwhile, I've got more finger food to make!

Back into baking

I haven't done any baking for a while. In fact, I didn't need to do any baking for the whole of January, since I was still making my way through the remains of my totally excessive Christmas baking: I can't imagine what made me think I'd need so much. Still, having finally eaten the last piece of Christmas cake, I'm now in need of baking for my morning teas.

I haven't done much from the 'scones, muffins and loaves' chapter, so I thought I'd pick something out of there this week. Date loaf (p27) is always a favourite (though I don't recall ever trying this particular recipe) so I decided to give that one a go.


It's best if you make a start on this a while before you actually intend to bake it, as the dates need to be soaked in boiling water with baking soda and butter for an hour. As long as you're organised, you can set this up and do something else for an hour while your dates go all soft and gooey in the hot water.

When the hour's up, just beat in brown sugar, an egg, some walnuts and vanilla essence, then fold through the dry ingredients. I stupidly used my Pyrex jug for this - a good size for soaking the dates, but not so great once you've added a few more cups of ingredients. It was difficult to combine the ingredients with so little room in the jug, the result being that the mixture was a bit overworked before I had it all combined.


I poured the mixture into a lined loaf tin and popped it in the oven. The recipe had a cooking time of 45 minutes; I set the timer for 40 and took it out to test when the buzzer went off. The top was quite dark (and split, likely because of my overmixing) but I was a little worried that the centre might still be a bit gluggy. It's hard to tell from the toothpick-test when you have those sticky dates in there to gunge up the toothpick. I didn't want to risk drying out the loaf though, so I decided not to put it back in for the final five minutes.

I left the loaf in the tin for ten minutes, then turned it out onto a rack. I cut into it immediately, of course, because I just couldn't resist a slice of date loaf warm from the oven. It wasn't at all heavy in the centre as I'd feared: in fact, it had quite a light spongy texture. There were chunks of walnut to give it a bit of bite, and, of course, those lovely sweet gooey bits of date. As date loaves go, this is a pretty good one. I think I'll be making this again.