Roasted stone fruit

I refuse to accept that it is Sunday evening and the weekend is almost over. I'm simply too busy to go to work. The tomatoes are ripening, and I have made some home-made tomato sauce today. I flavoured it with loads of herbs from the garden. And I have been busy cooking all weekend, we had our first over night guests at New Home. We whipped up quite an impressive barbecue on Saturday. I also cooked a two course brunch this morning, consisting of a tomato and cheese oven baked omelette and Finnish pancake with lingonberry jam. And I finally had some time in the new craft room. The only thing I haven't had time for is cleaning up after my various activities in the kitchen and the craft room which is probably what I need to do right after I have published this post. Well, at least after Top Gear has finished. Although I might just fall into bed and fall asleep before my head hits the pillow.  

Today's recipe is the pudding I served yesterday after our barbecue. The recipe is originally from BBC good food, but I got it from my friend. She served it to us with a big dollop of mascarpone cheese and raspberries, and I was completely blown away. It's one of the best desserts I have ever had, and it's super simple to make. You can make it ahead and serve it cold, or you can cook it right before serving and serve it hot. And you can use whatever stone fruit you happen to have around, nectarines, peaches, plums, apricots. However, properly ripe fruit will always result in a more tasty dessert, but if your fruit is still a bit too hard, you can just increase the cooking time. 

Roasted stone fruit (serves 4-6):
100 g caster sugar (original recipe says 175 g)
35 g dark muscovado sugar 
1 tsp vanilla extract (or one vanilla pod if you have one, or 1 tsp of vanilla syrup)
5 cardamom pods (or 1-2 tsp ground cardamom)
zest and juice of 1 lime
3 peaches
3 nectarines (or any other stone fruit)

The howto:
Preheat oven to 220 ( or 200 fan) degrees C. Whizz all ingredients apart from the fruit in a food processor (if you are using ground cardamom instead of pods, you can just mix it in a bowl). Slice the fruit, and place in a oven proof dish. Pour sugar syrup over the fruit. Bake for about 20 minutes (or more if your fruit is not completely ripe) until the fruit is soft but not too mushy. Serve with vanilla ice cream or mascarpone cheese. 

The verdict:
Like I said before, this is one of the most amazing desserts I have ever had. It is sweet, but not too sweet, and goes perfectly with the creaminess of the mascarpone. It's delicious both warm and cold, so you can make it ahead if you are having guests. I prefer it cold in the summer and hot in the winter. I have reduced the amount of sugar from the original recipe because I think it doesn't have to be quite so sweet, but it's obviously up to personal preference. I also like to mix it up and use a mix of white and muscovado sugar, sometimes I have even made it using only muscovado sugar, depending on what I happen to have available. Using a real vanilla pod gives the most beautiful flavour of vanilla, but I usually can't justify the expense so I use vanilla syrup. Except this time, as I seem to have misplaced my jar of vanilla syrup in the move. 

Card of the day:
I finally had a bit of time to play in the craft room. I ordered a huge bunch of crafting supplies from Stampin up all the way back in May but I haven't had an opportunity to try any of that stuff out yet. I had some trouble deciding where to start, but decided to try out my new blossom punch and Mixed bunch stamp set. I made several cards in different colours, a few of them below. The colours for the top card are Rich Razzleberry and Daffodil Delight. The colours for the lower card are Old Olive and Melon Mambo. The sentiments are from old stamp sets I had hanging around, and I realised I really need to get myself a good set of sentiments. When I started papercrafting I bought several sets of random stamp sets, and after getting proper rubber stamps, I have realised all stamps are not born equal. Good quality stamps are expensive, but they also behave so much better. So in the future I will not buy clear rubber stamps, only proper good quality rubber stamps.