Hot Cross Pudding

When I was a child, hot cross buns were a once-a-year treat, consumed eagerly on Good Friday; toasted and dripping with butter. I have always enjoyed them so I was pleased to find a yellow-stickered packet at the supermarket at the weekend.

I had been looking out for some as I had spotted a recipe for bread and butter pudding made with hot cross buns on Frugal Feeding. Like its name suggests, this blog is dedicated to producing excellent food cheaply. Bread and butter pudding is a great way of using up stale bread; it is a favourite of mine so I was keen to try a variation.

The recipe, (here), was clear and very easy to follow. The results were lovely; real comfort food. Everybody cleared their plates and demanded seconds - you can't get a higher accolade than that!

The apples are in!

In our garden we have an old, gnarled apple tree. I have no idea how old it is; our house was built in the 1950s on the site of an orchard, so it is quite a venerable specimen. I love it; it provides blossom in spring, shade in summer and apples in autumn. After last year's dire harvest due to bad weather I have been watching with anticipation as the apples have been swelling and growing. 

Yesterday was officially designated apple-picking day! This is a major event for our family. We all join in and take turns with the fruit-picker thingummy jig. Everyone else tries to catch any fallers, or sorts out the good from the bad. This year, maybe because of the late spring, the fruit is good quality but small. Between us we managed to pick 25kg of fruit and we left quite a lot for the birds.

So now the fun begins! During the week I bravely defrosted the freezer ready for the onslaught of stewed fruit. Some fruit has gone to our long-suffering neighbours, but there is only so much I can palm off onto other people. There is also only so much apple crumble that we can eat, so we have splashed out on a juicer. We thought about this long and hard, as they are not cheap. In the end I think it will be worth it; we also have a pear tree which will need harvesting soon. The pears don't keep so well, so at least this way I won't waste any.

Yesterday evening we had our first baked apples which I stuffed with sultanas, cinnamon and brown sugar. They were baked in an ovenproof dish with a little water at 180C for half an hour. Yum!

A fool for rhubarb!

Rhubarb season is in full swing in our back garden. We have four crowns; two mature plants and two babies. Having been cut off in it's prime back in the spring, one plant is really going for it and pushing out loads of stalks. Normally I am a crumble girl, but in this current hot weather I just couldn't face it. So today I rang the changes and made rhubarb and cardamom fool. (Recipe here).

It is very yummy, and is a little healthier than some fools as it is made from yoghurt and cream. It is also very easy to make, as long as you remember to remove the cardamom pods before blending. No prizes for guessing who spent ages removing little black seeds from the results! Does anyone else have any good ways of using up rhubarb?

Bread pudding

What do you do when you find large loaves of bread reduced to 35p in the supermarket? Fill your freezer and make bread pudding of course!

I used a Delia Smith recipe, but there is a very similar recipe on the BBC Good Food website. I used value mixed fruit, which has candied peel mixed in, so I didn't add any extra peel.

It's not the most elegant of desserts, but it tastes wonderful. We had it with custard for pudding. It should probably come with a health warning given the amount of calories, but I only had a small slice. Honest.

Something alien this way comes...

Chocolate apples are something of a tradition in our house this time of year. When the children were little we would set up a production line with apple segments on cocktail sticks, melted chocolate and sprinkles. We all got very messy but it was great fun. 

For the last few years I have bought the supermarket chocolate apples but they never quite hit the spot. The apples were a bit manky and there was a paltry amount of chocolate. We like our chocolate so this year we did our own:

We stuck apples on lolly sticks, rolled the apples in melted chocolate (reduced Green & Black's - yum!), and stuck on mini-marshmallows. The results look like they have landed from outer space, but taste wonderful. Surely they count towards our five a day?!

Easy peasy chocolate fondue.

A few weeks ago Morgan at Growing in the Fens very kindly sent me some little cook books, including this one on healthy eating:

I was a bit surprised that it contained a recipe for chocolate fondue! That wouldn't top the list of healthy desserts for me. This recipe uses evaporated milk rather than double cream which presumably gives it the "healthy" status. I've never made fondue before so I was eager to give it a try. The children were also keen!

Ingredients

25g/1oz cocoa powder
170g can evaporated milk
25g/1oz milk chocolate, chopped

Chopped fruit.

Method

1. Put the cocoa powder into a non-stick saucepan and stir in the evaporated milk little by little to make a smooth sauce. I suspect the "non-stick" is important here for the well-being of the saucepan.

2. Add the chocolate. I used dark chocolate rather than milk as that is all I had in the cupboard. I am not fussy about cocoa solids; this was the value range of chocolate!

3. Put the saucepan over a medium heat and, stirring continuously, bring to a simmer. Keep it at a simmer and stir for another minute. The chocolate should have melted and the sauce should be thickened.

4. Serve with whatever fruit you have. It is a good way of using up fruit that has been occupying the fruit bowl for too long. I served the sauce in individual cups. I added some sugar to our sauce as the dark chocolate made it a bit bitter for children.

The children particularly liked the pineapple. DD rated it one of her best puddings ever, so it's just as well it only takes 5 minutes to make! It's also fairly cheap as the evaporated milk costs around 45p and I used about 9p worth of value chocolate.