Lighter Christmas Cake

Many people dislike traditional Christmas cake.  It can be stodgy, contains sultanas (which I know at least one boy who hates) and involves marzipan and royal icing, each of which can be problematic in mixed company.  However, Christmas in my father's house would not be Christmas without a cake, and if it is a winter-stodge-cup-of-tea-type cake (which it should be), that means dried fruit.

The following makes a nice tasty round for the main holiday season, and won't burden you until February.  It's light enough to be a 'normal' cake, with enough fruit to satisfy the ardent traditionalists.

Lighter Christmas Cake with Apricot Frangipane

You Will Need: One 24cm cake tin, greaseproof paper and scissors; chopping board and knife; large bowl, wooden spoon; small bowl, cup, teaspoon; saucepan; medium bowl, measuring jug, sieve; food processor or blender, zester/grater, cooling rack, serving plate.

3oz dried apricots (and apricots to decorate)
2oz ground almonds
6oz light brown soft sugar
9oz butter
3oz honey
2oz sultanas
2oz dates (and dates to decorate)
100ml Stones Ginger Wine
4 large eggs
7 1/2 oz self raising flour
1tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 or 2 oranges

1) Preheat the oven to 180degrees C.  Grease and line the tin with a circle of well-buttered baking parchment.
2) Chop the dates into little pieces.  Soak the sultanas and date pieces in the Stones Ginger Wine.  At this stage, if your apricots are very dry, soak them in water separately.
3) Chop the apricots finely, and mash them in the food processor.  Add 2oz of ground almonds, 2oz of brown sugar, and 2oz of butter.  Mush until combined.  Scoop into a small bowl, and add the yolk of one egg (save the white in a cup for another project).  Mix well and put by.
4) Melt the remaining 4oz sugar and 7oz of butter with the honey in the saucepan.
5) Beat the eggs in the large bowl; add the melted sugary mix in a slow stream, stirring constantly.
6) Strain the ginger wine back into the measuring jug, and put the fruit in the cakemix.  Save the wine, mix the fruit.  Gradually add the flour to the cakemix, along with the spices, and the zest of one of your oranges.
7) Now the fiddly bit.  Slice your orange into 1cm rounds, and turn these 'inside out', peeling off the rind, separating the segments along their sides and joining the ends of the chain to make a 'cog'.  Set these cogs inside each other on the bottom of the tin.  Fill the gaps between the teeth with slivers of date and apricot.

ProTip: Navel oranges will not be as good for this.  Remember that the finished cake will show the underside of the 'cogs' as you see them, so lay dates skin-side down and segments big-side down.  Peel off any excess pith or teeny segments from the middle.  Baby cogs can be made with a few segments; more than one orange is listed in the ingredients so that you can use the best slices from two.

8) Gently spoon over half of the cakemix, followed by the frangipane, then finish with the last of the cakemix.
9) Bake for approximately 1 hour, until a skewer comes clean.  If it starts to brown too much halfway through, give him a tinfoil hat.  Leave to cool in the tin for a good while before turning out.
10) Finish the cake by drizzling with the reserved ginger wine.

White Chocolate Nectarine Cake

I don't usually make cakes like this.  I usually despair of the faff of multiple-stage, gooey, sugar-heating concoctions with complicated fillings.  They go against all my principles.  They are (I believe) really no tastier than simple ones.  And yet, when a friend approached me with this recipe, and I said 'i'm not making this, see above also I hate mango,' she was able to persuade me to do an Elisabeth-friendly version.  It uses proper British measures by weight (not those blasted 'cups'), nectarines (one of my favourite fruits) and white chocolate.  It went down a storm at the girly baking day yesterday, and I'm already thinking up ways to improve it and riff on it to use as a birthday cake in a few weeks' time. You will notice that much of the equipment for this cake overlaps in the different stages, so don't be afraid to wash up as you go along.

Stupidly Complex Squidgy Ginger, White Chocolate And Nectarine Toffee Cake

Nectarine Curd

You Will Need: sharp knife, chopping board, small saucepan, blender, sieve, cup, two small bowls, wooden spoon
11oz ripe nectarines, stoned (about three; also you will need one or so for decorating later)
2 egg yolks
6 oz sugar
2 oz butter
1) De-stone the nectarines by cutting all the way around them and twisting gently on each half.  Chop them into small pieces.  Put them in the saucepan with a splash of water, and simmer until disintegrating.  Blend the mixture to a smooth puree, and keep aside in a small bowl or the blender compartment.

2) In a clean saucepan, heat a little water and set another small bowl above it.  Melt the butter in the bowl.  Separate each egg with the whites going into a cup and the yolks into the butter.  Add the sugar to the butter and eggs, and mix well over a gentle heat.  Add the puree.
3) Cook for about half an hour or until the mixture coats the back of the spoon.  If too runny, add another egg yolk.  Strain the mixture through the sieve, forcing it through with the spoon, into a bowl.  Discard any fruity bits which can't go through the sieve, and set the curd in the fridge to cool fully.

Cake
You Will Need: Tin 23cm across, baking paper, scissors, scales, large bowl, wooden spoon, small bowl, strong whisk, spatula, skewer, cooling rack, two plates, breadknife

3 eggs
8oz butter (Kerry Gold)
6oz sugar
8oz self raising flour
4tsp ground ginger
1) Preheat the oven to 180degrees C.  Line and grease the tin.
2) In the large bowl, cream the butter and sugar.  Separate the eggs, with the yolks going into the big bowl and the whites a small one.  Mix in the egg yolks; add the flour and ginger a little at a time.
3) Whisk the eggwhites to soft peaks in the small bowl, and carefully fold them into the cake mix until it is runny enough to use the whisk.  Whisk the mixture together, and pour into the tin.  Smooth down the surface of the mixture, leaving a dent in the middle to encourage a flat cake.
4) Bake approximately 45 minutes, or to clean-skewer.  Remove when done to a cooling rack, and turn out.
5) Leave to cool for a good while.  Turn right-side up and trim off the domed top of the cake.  Eat this later.  Put the remaining cake on a plate; carefully saw through it to make two layers with the  breadknife and shuffle the top half onto the second plate.  Leave to cool completely (I had to set a 15-minute timer and use peer pressure to stop me fiddling with it.)

Candied nectarines

You Will Need: sharp knife, chopping board, small pan, tray, greaseproof paper, small plate, wooden skewers, wooden spoon, kettle
1 1/2 nectarines
4 tablespoons caster sugar
2 tablespoons chunky brown sugar
1) Slice the nectarines.  Line the tray with greaseproof paper.
2) Heat the caster sugar in a clean, dry, small saucepan until melted and golden-brown.  Meanwhile put the chunky-grained brown sugar on the small plate.
3) Coat each slice in toffee, then turn it out first into the chunky sugar, and then onto the tray.  Leave to cool.
4) Boil the kettle and pour into the toffee pan to get the crusted sugar off easily.  Then wash up as normal.

Ganache
You Will Need: chopping board; sharp knife; bowl; small pan; measuring jug, spoon
400g white chocolate
200ml cream
1) Measure out 200ml of cream, and heat it very gently in the pan without boiling it.
2) Chop the white chocolate into very small pieces, and put in a bowl.  Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and stir gently until the ganache is smooth.  If the cream cools too quickly to get rid of all the lumps, heat the ganache over a pan of hot water on the hob, stirring all the time until smooth.

Assembly
You Will Need: Small plastic sandwich bag, scissors, spoon, knife, cake components
1) Gather everything you need.  Spread the sandwich bag securely open, and spoon some of the white chocolate ganache into it.  Squeeze all of the mixture into one corner of the bag, and cut a little corner off with the scissors.  Pipe a wide spiral of ganache all around the lower half of the cake.

2) Fill the gaps around the spiral with the nectarine curd.  Any left over will keep in a jar in the fridge for 3 weeks.
3) Lift the top cake onto the bottom cake.  Spread the remaining ganache over the cake, letting it drip down the sides.  Decorate with the candy slices.  (n.b. version pictured used half as much ganache, but I doubled it in the blog recipe so that your crusts would be covered.)

4) Eat, eat, enjoy!

Victoria and Albert Sponge (and edible flags)

what a pavlova (oh, pun!) Note pink lemonade to right, very appropriate

I love rice paper.  You don't seem to get it in the supermarkets anymore, so I ordered a huge amount off the internet.  Once I'd got out an A4 sheet it seemed a shame not to use it all, so I went on a bit of an edible flag binge this month.  Still - the Queen is only the Queen for the 60th year running once...

The 'Albert' in this otherwise typical sponge comes from the German-themed grated apple and cinnamon in the mixture.  This does cause it to densen dramatically but I got no complaints as to taste.  Next time perhaps more sophisticated fruit-layering could be arranged.

Victoria and Albert Sponge
You Will Need: 23cm cake tin, greaseproof paper, scissors, large bowl, wooden spoon, small bowl, teaspoon, scales, whisk, cheesegrater, veg peeler, chopping board and sharp knife, spoon, baking tray, breadknife, serving plate, plate, dinner knife (skewers / cocktail sticks, cotton bud or clean paintbrush)

6 eggs
self-raising flour
butter
sugar
2 Bramley apples
3 tsp cinnamon
red berry jam
1 punnet strawberries
250ml double cream
(rice paper, food colouring)

1) Preheat the oven to 180 C.  Line your tin with a circle of greaseproof paper and smear the sides with butter.
2) Weigh 4 of your eggs (reserve the other 2).  Weigh out and beat together 4 eggsworth of butter and sugar.  Beat the 4 eggs together in a small bowl; gradually add and mix them with the butter.
3) Peel the Bramleys and grate them into the mixture.  Mix.  Weigh out 4 eggsworth of flour, add the cinnamon, and gradually fold it into the mixture a little at a time.
4) Pour the mix into the caketin, and make a dent in the centre - then when the centre inevitably rises, your cake will be flatter overall.  Protip.  Bake approximately 45mins - 1 hour, with a tinfoil hat for the last 15 minutes if need be, to clean-skewer stage.
5) When your cake is done, take it out of the oven and whack the oven up to 200 C.  Hardcore.  Allow the cake to cool.  Clean your large bowl.  Separate your remaining two eggs, getting the whites into the large bowl.  Whisk your eggwhites until they are at stiff-peak stage - when you lift the whisk, the points that form should be rigid.  Beat in approximately 6 tablespoons of sugar one spoon at a time, until stiff and glossy.
6) Cut another circle of greaseproof paper the same size as your cake, and lay on a baking tray.  Spoon the meringue out over this circle to almost cover it, forming a 'nest'.  Bake at 200 C for 10 minutes, then turn the oven off.
7) Wait at least 2 hours.  Watch a film, play a game, make lunch, whatever.
8) De-tin your cake.  Place it on the serving plate.  Carefully saw the cake in half, and shift the top half onto a second plate.  De-oven your meringue nest.  Carefully transfer the meringue from the baking tray to the top cake-half, peeling off the greaseproof paper.  It will be quite soft and sticky.
9) Chop 2/3 of a punnet of strawberries, and whip all the cream to soft-peak stage (when the peaks wilt).  Spread jam on the lower half of the cake; follow with half the cream, and strawbs to cover.  Lift the top cake on.  Fill the nest with the rest of the cream, and decorate with the remaining strawbs, leaving small ones whole and un-hulled.
10) If flags desired: Tear a sheet of ricepaper into rectangles.  Make a shallow fold at one of the short ends; wet the edge of this fold and fold across a stick.  Press firmly to glue the paper together around the stick.  Paint designs on with food colouring.

Protip: Rice paper is edible, but not very tasty.  This fact was rediscovered multiple times, often by the same people twice.

Afternoon Tea Sandwiches

Afternoon tea is a Great British Institution.  It is a Posh Thing.  It is something 'the Set' might have done 'properly' in the 17 and 1800s.  Messing it up is not done.

On the other hand, it is quite difficult to mess up afternoon tea.  There are only a few boxes to tick, and there are multiple acceptable ways to experiment with the content, theme and context of the event (cupcakes!  Steampunk! Picnics!  Booze!)  Here is what I reckon constitutes a 'proper' tea:

• Teas, plural, available - preferably some to be served with milk (e.g. Assam) and some without (Lady Grey).
• Scones, with real clotted cream, and at least two kinds of jam - a red/purple one and an orange one, minimum.
• Cake - either individual chunks, such as Lamingtons, brownies, or other traybakes; or a single large and creamy edifice.
• Finger Sandwiches.
• Sandwiches must be able to be eaten in two bites or less.
• They must have the crusts cut off, or it's not posh.
• The shape of the eventual sandwich (triangle or rectangle) is immaterial.
• Fillings may include spreads, but these must be savoury (not peanut butter).  
• Faffless but uber-kitzch adornments such as cress should be rampant.

Of all the boxes, it is the sandwiches which are most often overlooked.  They do not make as photogenic an arrangement on the three-tiered stand as the cakes; it is the scones which are seen to be the true essentials, and 'tea and sandwiches' doesn't have the same ring.  Nevertheless afternoon tea is a Meal, a small meal but a Meal all the same, and all posh meals have multiple courses.  

The Approved Sandwich-Making Method (appropriated from Douglas Adams)
The chief among knives, of course, was the carving knife. This was the knife that would not merely impose its will on the medium through which it moved, as did the bread knife. It must work with it, be guided by the grain of the meat, to achieve slices of the most exquisite consistency and translucency, that would slide away in filmy folds from the main hunk of meat. The Sandwich Maker would then flip each sheet with a smooth flick of the wrist onto the beautifuly proportioned lower bread slice, trim it with four deft strokes and then at last perform the magic that the children of the village so longed to gather round and watch with rapt attention and wonder.  With just four more dexerous flips of the knife he would assemble the trimmings into a perfectly fitting jigsaw of pieces on top of the primary slice. For every sandwich the size and shape of the trimmings were different, but the Sandwich Maker would always effortlessly and without hesitation assemble them into a pattern which fitted perfectly. A second layer of meat and a second layer of trimmings, and the main act of creation would now be accomplished.

Suggested Flavours For Afternoon Tea Finger-Sandwiches

Meats
Roast beef / steak and mustard.
CurryNation Chicken: to make simple sauce, finely chop half an onion, fry in butter with 2tsp of cumin, coriander and a sprinkle of turmeric, and add coconut cream until spreadable.  Coat diced fried chicken in the mixture and assemble the sandwiches as above.
Fish
Smoked salmon, cream cheese and dill
Mackerel and horseradish
Veggie
Cucumber.  N.B. I could write a whole post on the Correct way to make cucumber sandwiches; the key thing is to peel the cucumber, slice thinly and drain the slices before assembly in a colander, scattered with salt.  This stops them going soggy.  Dress with salad dressing to increase flavour.
Cheese and chutney.

Scrumptious Pancakes for Pancake Day - rather late

Left to right - first cock-up, second recovery, third perfect!  Blueberry sauce top left

Ok, so I should have had this up on Monday probably so that you guys were all set to follow the recipe on Shrove Tuesday.  But given the number of people on my Facebook bemoaning that they missed Pancake Day, or are planning a binge at the weekend, and the fact that there is a Pancake Day every year - here is what we ate this year.
One batch of the Simple batter makes a 'round' to serve two people.  I recommend making one plain round, then having a rest while you make a sweet round for pudding.

Simple Pancake Batter - adapted from the GoodFood website
You Will Need: Scales, two measuring jugs, spoon, whisk, frying pan, trusty spatula with fine edge, kitchen roll, plate.
1 egg
100g plain flour
pinch salt
300ml milk
glug vegetable oil (about 1 dessertsponful)
butter for frying

For sweeter pancakes
1 dessertspoonful caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla essence

1) Turn the hob on, and begin to get your frying pan really hot.
2) In the larger measuring jug, stir together the  flour and salt.  (If making sweet ones, add the sugar at this point as well).  Make a 'well' in the flour by pushing it to the sides with your spoon; break in the egg.
3) Measure out the milk in the other jug.  Add half of it to the flour and egg, and whisk well.  Mid-way through, scrape around the bottom edge of the jug with the spoon to pick up any flour which is sticking there.  Whisk this in.  Whisk in the rest of the milk, the vegetable oil, and the vanilla essence if using until really smooth.
4) Cut a little knoblet of butter and put it on your frying pan.  It should froth almost instantly.  Get a bundle of kitchen roll, and use this to smear the butter evenly all around the pan.  Save this bundle for the next pancake.  When the fat is smoking, pour in a good measure of batter - this will depend on the size of your pan.  Too little is more fiddly to deal with than too much, generally.
5) Swirl around carefully to get an even circle.  The first one is always a cock-up - don't panic, it will still be edible!  Wait until the batter has turned a matte, beige colour rather than cream, then work your spatula around the edge.  Shake the pan gently to loosen the middle.
6) I will not advise you to attempt throwing your pancakes, as in my experience this always results in wasted food and mess.  Instead, shuffle your spatula right in under the middle, and if necessary grab the near edge with your (clean) fingers to pull the pancake over.  The second side only needs about 10 seconds.
7) Slip the pancake onto the plate, and put a sheet of kitchen roll or a piece of greaseproof paper on top of it.  Wipe the buttery  kitchen roll over the pan to coat it again, and splosh the next pancake in.  Repeat!

Frankie's Shaken Pancake Mix For Students
An alternative mixing method, first shown me by my friend Frankie, is suitable for those celebrating in a less well-stocked kitchen.  Save an empty 2-pint plastic milk carton.  Peel off the label so that you can see all the markings easily.  Making sure that the bottle is clean, carefully break in the egg.  Add plain flour level up to the quarter-pint mark.  Add milk up to the half-pint mark.  Put the lid on hard and shake as though making cocktails! This makes pretty thick batter which is more drop-sconny and easier to handle.

Fillings
Soggy Duck Pancakes
YWN: chopping board, knife, frying pan, small plates, ramekin, teaspoon

1 pack mini Gressingham duck breast fillets, cut into 1cm wide strips
6-7 spring onions, white sections of, cut into quarters lengthwise
plum sauce / Hoi Sin sauce
Fry the duck pieces until tender but not chewy, only a few minutes.  Serve the components on small plates with sauce in a ramekin, to assemble at the table.

Spinach, Asparagus and Goat's Cheese Pancakes
YWN: Oven, oven tray, tinfoil, dish/Pyrex/bowl and clingfilm, chopping board, knife, frying pan, plates

Bag of leaf spinach
bunch asparagus
packet goat's cheese
3-4 rashers unsmoked streaky bacon
Before you make your pancakes: Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.  Line the oven tray with tinfoil.  Cut the hard ends off the bottom of the asparagi and lay them in the oven tray; drizzle with olive oil, and season with salt and pepper.  Jam in the oven for about 20 minutes.
Make the pancakes (as above).
Steam the spinach in a little water in the microwave, for about 7 minutes until mushy.  Chop the bacon into small pieces, and fry until crunchy.

When ready, take the asparagus out of the oven.   Put them on a plate for now.  To assemble the dish, plop a line of spinach down the middle of a pancake.  Add 2-3 stems of asparagus.  Sprinkle with bacon.  Roll the pancake around this assemblage, and put the tube into the oven tray.  When you have run out of ingredients, cut the goat's cheese into slices and lay over the tubes.  Bake cannelloni-style for a few minutes, until the cheese has melted and the panakes are warmed through again.

Blueberry Pancake Filling
YWN: Wooden spoon, small saucepan
Packet of fresh blueberries
Hank of butter
Splash of water
Heaped dessertspoonful of caster sugar

Bang all of the ingredients into a small saucepan and heat on a high heat.  Simmer until all of the blueberries have exploded, the sugar has dissolved, and the liquid has become a purple syrup which dribbles pleasantly off the spoon.  Serve with vanilla icecream if desired.

Toast

Since the boyfriend and I both started our new jobs, it has been imperative that a quick and Simple breakfast be devised which can be eaten together at the extremely stressful time of day, known as When The Today Programme Is On Radio 4.  He has gone for a mushroom omelette, being a manly man and requiring cooking.  I have settled for the default of the nation.
Toast.
It's one of those delightful English words which is both a noun and a verb -  a Make and a Do.  Perhaps the simplest Make/Do of all.  The words 'I can't even make toast' are known to be a lie (always) and excuse to get out of cooking/healthy eating the English-speaking world over.  How to make really nice toast just the way you like it however is a little more of a struggle, and requires personal experimentation.

From Vogel's website

I have always had to balance the desire to make perfect toast (which has in my humble opinion to be white bread, for that golden-brown look) with my desire to make perfect sandwiches, which vary depending on filling but generally call for more 'interesting' bread.  Vogel's products, pictured, in their green-and-purple or red-and-yellow striped packets, are a good compromise.  Burgen also do a seedy loaf with slightly larger, whiter slices.  Each loaf can keep me in toast (2 slices) and sandwiches (2 slices) for the vast majority of the working week.

Seedy bread is a great way to eat slightly better and tastier food without having to go down the brown bread route.  It doesn't feel like brown bread, which even home-made can have a slightly dusty taste to the crust; with jam, marmite, smoked salmon, hard and soft cheese the little niblets add texture and vitamins without impacting much on the overall 'white' taste of the bread. 

Seedy stuff also makes good eggy bread, or 'French toast' as they call it across the pond.  Take 1/2 a beaten egg per slice, dunk the slices in the egg so they're soaked all through, and fry in a chunk of butter.  I've had eggy bread with ketchup, or maple syrup and bacon, or sugar for pudding.  Yum.

Now all I need to work out how to do is get up at 7am!

First Aid for Jam

Every so often, you just make a mistake.  After a lot of chutney-making, which involves a very long boil until a spoon drawn across the base of the pan leaves a trail, I lost my touch with jam.  After dad asked me to use up some plums, I created the most ridiculously toast-ripping plum toffee in a jar to be imagined.  Luckily, a little troubleshooting on the internet found a solution.

You'll need two saucepans, the offending jam, a butter knife and some water.  Half-fill one of the saucepans with water, and put the jam-jars inside, with the lids off.  Slowly bring the water to a simmer, and edge the butterknife down the edge of the blocks of jam inside until they are coming away from the sides.  If need be, clean and heat the knife in the simmering water as you go.
Upend the jam jars into the other saucepan, and prise the jam out.  Pour some of the hot water into this pan, and mush up the blocks of jam.  Now bring the watered-down mix to the boil again until you have acquired a real jam set.  Test this by dropping a blob into a cup of icy water, or onto an icy plate.

Leftover Apple Tartlets

Remember that I told you to save the cocoa pastry from the Exploding Blackberry Tart? These little babies use the leftovers from making that, and any Bramleys you have left over from making jam, to avoid waste and encourage tastiness...

Leftover Apple Tartlets

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.  Grease a cupcake tray.  Roll out your remaining pastry to about 2-4mm thickness and cut into circles with a floured wineglass (if, like me, you don't have round biscuit cutters!)  Bake these cases for 5-7 minutes, then take them out again. 

Meanwhile, peel and core the apple(s).   Slice off very thin slices equal to the number of cases you have (I had seven.)  Put these aside for later.  Very finely chop the rest of the apple, put in a saucepan with a splash of water, a knob of butter and generous sprinkle of sugar to cover the surface.  Cook, stirring gently, until mushy, then add to the pastry cases.

Place a slice each of reserved apple over the filling, and sprinkle with more sugar.  Bake another 5-10 mins until the apple is hot and browned at the edges.

Fin!

Blackberry and Apple Jam

Jam jam jam, jam jam jam, nom.... eugh....

Black Books quotes aside (if you don't know what I'm talking about, go and find out) this jam is definitely not eugh.  It is my mother's own recipe, and I have been highly aware of its production since a very young age.  I first remember picking blackberries specifically for jam at a place called Hole Cottage, once owned as a holiday home by the Landmark Trust but now I believe sadly sold.  It was during our stay there, chopping and fetching wood for the real fire, reading a lot of books, going on a lot of walks and drinking tea from the (always identical) Landmark Trust tea-set, that the Blackberry Jam Song was first composed.  The brambles, as always, were full of spiderwebs, the path, as always, along which they grew was strewn with the detritus of passing dog-owners, and Mum sang out to us wee ones as we worked:

'Spider-jam, spider-jam,
nur-nur-nehneh, Spider Jam
Mind the poo - on the path
or you'll have to, have a bath
Watch out!
Here comes the Spider-Jam,'

to the tune of Aerosmith's Spider Man.  It became a firm favourite immediately, and in honour of the incident I have labelled the first two bottles of my blackberry liqueur 'Créme d'Araignée,' or 'Spider Liqueur.'

Mrs. Dawson's Blackberry and Apple Jam (proportions)


4 lbs (spiderless) blackberries
1/2 pint water
1.5 lbs peeled, cored, finely sliced cooking apples
6 lbs caster sugar
(knob of butter - I missed this by accident, but it seems to be optional.)

EDIT: Thanks to the interwebs, I now know that the knob of butter is apparently added at the last minute to reduce the appearance of scum, but I didn't spot any on mine, so do as you like.

Put a small saucer in the freezer with a couple of icecubes on it.  Trust me, you'll need it later.

Simmer the blackberries in 1/4 pint of the water until soft, which won't take long.  Simmer the apples meanwhile in a larger pan in the rest of the water until soft, then mash them.  Add the blackberries and the sugar to the apple pulp, stir til the sugar has dissolved, (then add the butter.)  Bring to a rolling boil and boil 10 mins.

TOP TIP:  At this point the whole thing will become Extremely Bubbly as you can see in the pictures and difficult to stir without injuring oneself.  I ended up wrapping a teatowel around my hand to protect myself from boiling sugar splats.  It disturbed me somewhat that I never saw Mum doing this, but perhaps she used a longer spoon.

After 10 mins take the saucer out of the freezer and blob some of the jam onto it.  Does it bind together into a  proper jammy blob when cooled?  If not, just keep boiling a bit more.  If so, skim any scum off the top of the jam, and pot into clean jars.  If you don't have clean jars, as I didn't, endeavour to make some, as I did:

Waste and Plenty

A break from knitting now, as I make the most of the summer harvest.  In the next few weeks I'll be posting five recipes using blackberries, elderberries and apple which I've been testing out this August.  Unfortunately in my desire to use up a disposable camera so that I can show you photos of these creations, I'll have delayed posting until the end of the berry season - but there's always next year!

Where I live there are innumerable old-fashioned Victorian and Georgian houses, all with a little garden, and there is a huge amount of fruit going to waste in those gardens.  From my flat I can only dream of having a real apple or plum tree to harvest; even a crab apple tree would provide jelly to serve with meats.  The Christian Science Church on the main road has a sloe tree in their front carpark; the branches of dull bitter berries are too high for me to reach without a scrumping ladder, and the fruit which might have gone to gin is rotting on the pavement, squished by passing women with buggies.  Elderberry bushes are rampant in front yards and back yards everywhere.  It is simply criminal.  None of these lucky, lucky people are taking advantage of the free jam, pudding and liqueur-making facilities at their command!

I address my plea to the Internet at large.  Soon it will be September, and almost all but the apples will have gone, Summer's bounty withered for another year.  Next year, when you see a red or purple glint on that bush that leans over the fence, investigate it properly.  If the bottom of the bush belongs to you, go to it!  If it doesn't, bring a ladder, and drop me a line...