Plum jam shortbread

Getting some distance to things is sometimes useful. I haven´t spent much time online in the last few weeks, first I was busy preparing for my extended Christmas holiday, getting presents and cards all finished on time, then cleaning the house and packing my bags. When I landed in Finland, it was like coming to a completely different world. I turned off roaming on my phone and all of a sudden I was detached from all the usual communication that keeps me preoccupied. I still have wifi at my Mum´s of course, but the Culinary Consultant has taken over my computer so all I have is my iPad. And now Mum´s computer when I'm writing this, as typing long texts on a touchpad is more than my patience can handle.

I live so closely connected to the internet at home. I check my emails first thing in the morning, check facebook, blog, read blogs and then check the emails last thing before I go to bed. Not so when I'm in Finland. This is a holiday from everything that is routine. I don't have access to my craft room, and I don't need to cook. And I have also been thinking about my relationship to blogging. And how the food blog has become more of a chore than a fun hobby. Which is why I will take some time off to see whether I want to get back to it later in the year. Or whether I just want to focus on the card blog as there will be some more exciting announcements over there soon. So I don't know whether this will be my last blog post for a while or my last food blog post ever. If I do get back to blogging, I will update it on my facebook, twitter and Google+. But for now I wish everyone a wonderful, peaceful and food filled Christmas and a great New Year 2015, may it be even better than last year!!

I will publish a food recipe as well. It's something super quick and easy to put together, bakes relatively quickly and it's absolutely delicious. The original recipe is from The English Kitchen, and it's for lemon curd shortbread.  I thought my home made plum jam would be great substitute as it feels silly buying lemon curd when I have the fridge filled to the brim with home-made goodies. The plum jam is not very sweet and it has a slight sour/bitter flavour to it, just like marmalade has. That's why I love combining it with sweet pastry, it keeps the balance of the flavours, just as I imagine lemon curd would as well. So whether you have lemon curd, plum jam, orange marmalade or something else you want to use up, this shortbread is a great way of doing that.

Plum jam shortbread (serves 8):
225 g all purpose flour
125 g semolina or rice flour
125 g caster sugar
225 g chilled butter, cut into small cubes
200 g plum jam (or lemon curd, or whatever other jam/curd takes your fancy)
2 tbsp caster sugar

The howto: 
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Butter a 21 cm springform tin. In a bowl, mix together the sugar, flour and semolina. Add the cubed butter and rub with the butter into the flour until the texture of coarse sand. Press half of the mixture into the springform tin, and spread the jam on top. Mix the rest of the butter and flour mixture with the additional 2 tbsp sugar and spread the crumble topping onto the jam, pressing down lightly. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until the edges start to turn a bit golden. Let cool in the tin for about 10 minutes, then cut into eight slices. 

The verdict:
This is a super easy treat you can whip up at any time as it only uses kitchen staples. Perfect for surprise guests. It's amazing how delicious it is, given that only very basic ingredients go in it. It's buttery and crumbly, and it's absolutely irresistible. 

Blackberry and poppy seed buns

After all our jam making sessions, we have a fridge full of jam. And although we are quite efficient at destroying it, I thought I would speed up the process a bit more by making some lovely jam buns. I just don't want to take the chance that our jam goes bad. Which is why we made relatively small batches of each jam, and put the rest of the fruit in the freezer for more jammin' sessions later in the winter. Right now our freezer is jam packed with produce from our garden and our mission is to make sure we actually eat everything before next spring (something we didn't quite achieve this year). 

This is a well used and trusted recipe for bun dough. It's from the Finnish website Kinuskikissa, and it always turns out great. You can either skip the ground cardamom or add it, as I Finn I would say buns are not buns if there isn't cardamom in them but if you absolutely detest it, leave it out. If you are undecided, I would suggest just give it a try. You won't regret it. It is such a wonderful flavour and it goes so well with the blackberries.

For this recipe you absolutely have to use home made blackberry and apple jam. It's only acceptable if it's been made from berries you picked yourself. Just kidding, just kidding. You can use any jam you like. I just can't get enough of our lovely blackberry and apple jam.

Blackberry and poppy seed buns (makes 12):
For the bun dough:
7-7.5 dl (2 3/4 - 3 cups) strong bread flour
1 1/2 tsp dried instant (fast-action) yeast
1 dl (1/3 cup plus one tablespoon) sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp ground cardamom
2.5 dl (1 cup) room temperature milk
80 g melted butter
1 egg (technically speaking you should use 1/2 egg for this amount of dough, but I can't be bothered to use just half an egg so I just add a whole egg and it doesn't seem to make the dough any worse. If you want to use some egg wash to brush your buns before baking you could leave some of the egg for that)

For the filling:
1 tsp vanilla paste
About 1 cup of blackberry and apple jam
3-4 tbsp poppy seeds

For the glaze:
zest and juice from one lemon
4-5 tbsp icing sugar

The Howto:
In a large bowl, mix the flour (use 7 dl at this stage), yeast, sugar, salt and cardamom. Add milk, melted butter and egg. Mix to form a dough. Tip onto a lightly floured work surface and knead. The dough is a bit soggy, so I prefer to use only my right hand to knead and use a dough scraper in my left hand. If the dough is completely impossible, add some flour a little bit at a time, up to 1/2 dl (about 1/4 cup). The dough will start getting less sticky and more elastic as you knead it. I usually end up adding about a tablespoon or two during the kneading. Place dough back in an oiled bowl, cover with cling film and leave to rise for about 2 hours or until doubled in size. If it's cold or the yeast is a bit slow, the rise could take even longer. When the dough has approximately doubled in volume and it springs back when you push it with a finger, it has risen enough.  

Tip the dough back onto a work surface and knead a few times to knock the air out of the dough. Roll out to a rectangle and drizzle with the vanilla paste. Spread the blackberry jam on top, and sprinkle poppy seeds. Roll into a tight log and cut into 12 pieces. I prefer to use dental floss to cut the roll, it results in the neatest cuts, believe it or not. Place in an oven proof dish leaving about an inch between the rolls. Cover with cling film and leave for a second proof for about 30-40 minutes, until the rolls are almost touching each other. Heat oven to 190 degrees C and bake for 20-25 minutes. If the buns are getting a bit too dark, you can cover them with foil to prevent them to turn very dark like mine did.

Leave the buns to cool for 15-20 minutes. Prepare the glaze by grating the lemon zest and squeezing the juice into a bowl. Add enough icing sugar to make a thick paste. Drizzle onto the buns. Serve warm.

The Verdict:
The best thing you can bake with yeast is buns. Well, maybe in addition to bread, but still. And one of the best things you can put inside buns in jam. These buns are sticky and sweet and amazingly good. I put a few of them in the freezer thinking the rest would last us a good few days. Well, they didn't. I inhaled several as soon as they came out of the oven. Hence the picture with a few buns missing... 

Blackberry and apple jam

One of the benefits of living in the countryside is that we have loads of blackberries growing along most of the paths and small roads. Back home raspberries grow like that, almost like a weed, on roadsides and along fields. Here, I haven't seen much wild raspberries, in fact I don't think I've seen any at all. But instead there are blackberries as far as the eye can see. When I was working my previous job (yes the one that shall not be named) I used to walk about half an hour every morning as we did a car share with the Culinary Consultant who worked in the next village over and during September the road was lined with blackberry brambles and I couldn't help myself and used to snack on some berries on my way to work. A few weeks ago I came home from work to a massive load of blackberries, courtesy of the Culinary Consultant. I had never seen so many blackberries in my entire life. And he did a repeat performance, so we had our freezer stuffed full with almost 6 kg (13 lb) of blackberries. Then, the other day we went for a bike ride and our route took us past some very prolific and new (to us) blackberry pastures. What else is a girl to do than return with some containers the next day? The first brambles closest to the village were all picked clean, but just another 10 minutes or so down the road we found brambles which had huge, juicy fruit in copious amounts. So in less than 2 hours of picking we added another 2.8 kg (6 lb) of berries to our stash. However, a word of warning. Although it's free food, it doesn't come easy. I thought I was well prepared with long sleeves and trouser legs, but I still managed to get endless cuts on my hands and legs, not to mention the fact that nettles easily seem to burn through sports clothing, so next year I need to prepare by buying some military grade clothing to escape the torture of multiple nettle burn. And just as a friendly hint, you don't want to cook anything that involves squeezing lemon juice for a few days afterwards. It may not look like you broke the skin on your fingers, but you did. In multiple places. Trust me.

Although I'm perfectly happy to eat all those lovely little black gems as they are, we thought we should make something out of them (and partly because we simply couldn't fit all of them in the freezer). As jammin' seem to be the theme of this fall, we thought why not look up a nice and simple blackberry jam and try our hands at it. And the interwebs, in their great wisdom came up with Easy blackberry and apple jam from Fab Food 4 All. We doubled up the recipe as we had so much berries. And I can't help but to feel very smug about our hard work, as it equates to over £100 worth of blackberries (based on the cheapest price for fresh blackberries on the Tesco website). And I bet ours are better as they are sun ripened and only picked fresh and ripe and put straight into the freezer (or in this case, jam pot) so they have maximum flavour.

Simple Blackberry and Apple Jam
600 g blackberries
500 g cooking apples (we used a mix of cookers and sweet apples, as we used windfall from our neighbours tree that had landed in our garden)
1.1 kg sugar
300 ml water
1 cinnamon stick
(10 g butter)

The howto:
As with any other jam, prepare your jam jars by washing them in hot soapy water. Shake to remove excess water, but don't dry. Place the wet jars and lids on an oven sheet covered with newspaper making sure they don't touch each other. Put into oven, and turn oven on to 120 degrees C. Leave jar in the oven until they have been at least 10 minutes in 120 degrees. Leave oven on and the jars to wait in the hot oven until you are ready to use them (they should be hot when you pour the hot jam into them so the glass doesn't get damaged).

Peel, core and cut apples into small pieces. Add apples with the water and cinnamon stick into a large saucepan, bring to a boil and let slowly cook for about 10 minutes. Add the blackberries and simmer until soft (about 15-20 minutes). Add the sugar off the heat, stir until dissolved. Bring back to a rolling boil, and let cook until jam has set (reached 104 degrees C). You can also test setting point by placing a few small plates in the freezer before starting the jam making, and when you think the jam is done, drop some jam onto a cold plate and let stand for a minute. If you push the jam with your finger and it wrinkles it's done, if it remains liquid, let boil for 3-5 more minutes and test again. Remove excess froth with a ladle. The original recipe suggested to then stir in the butter to remove the rest of the froth, but I don't like the idea of putting butter in my jam, so I just accept that there will be a few remaining bubbles in the jam. The jam seemed rather runny when I poured it into the jars, but it did set nicely. Apples have quite a bit of pectin so it will set although you think it won't. 

Ladle the jam into jars, and put some parchment paper over the jar opening before securing the lid. I store all my jam in the fridge to make it keep longer, but so far everything has been eaten before it has gone bad.

The verdict:
Of all the jams we have made so far, this is the sweetest one. I don't consider that a bad thing, but if you aren't into sweet jams keep that in mind. It's always a tradeoff as the sugar helps keep the jam for longer but at the same time a lower sugar jam does have more fruity flavour to it. But you do feel the wonderful flavour of the blackberries. As the apple cooks it will turn into complete "mush" so it does give a slightly different texture from a pure berry jam. I really liked how the jam turned out, but it does taste more "sugary" sweet than the other jams we made (plum jam here and fig jam here). On Saturday I will show you one fabulous way of using the jam, although plenty of it has also been devoured on toast and mixed in my morning oatmeal. And maybe a spoonful or two has been eaten straight out of the jar (but remember to only put clean spoons into the jar, if you have licked it, it shouldn't go back into the jar. This will help keep the jam for longer).

Fig preserves

Garden-wise this harvest season has been both good and bad. We got loads of tomatoes again, thanks to the Culinary Consultant's hard work in the greenhouse. And we have so many courgettes and marrows that we don't know what to do with them all (so we just freeze them). Plums look good so far, enough to make a few more batches of jam, and pears look like they are coming along nicely. The asparagus did great in the spring, and most of the herbs have grown well. Grapes were a disaster, they all had some disease and just rotted away. Lettuce, basil, koriander and dill were complete failures, as were rocket and radishes. The birds ate all our cherries and almost all of the raspberries. This year we managed to get a few apricots, not many, but enough to sample them and they were absolutely gorgeous. I have only eaten store bought apricots, and never been a fan as I don't think they actually taste very much of anything. Ours were sweet and really good, too bad there wasn't enough to actually do something with them. And the figs did better this year as well. Last year we managed to get one fig. This year we have already eaten several sweet, juicy figs and we managed to get one batch which was enough to get the old gears turning a bit...

We were so encouraged by our success with the plum jam that we decided to try to make a fig preserve as well. After looking around the Interwebs for a while, I found this recipe which sounded very delicious and also perfect for the amount of figs we happened to have at hand. If you are not a seasoned jam maker, the link contains step by step illustrated instructions, although to be fair it's not very complicated. Just put all ingredients in a saucepan and boil.

Fig and ginger preserves (makes about 2 cups of jam):
455 g (1 lb) figs
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
grated zest from one lemon (about 1 tsp)
1 tbsp grated fresh ginger (or 1/2 tsp dried ground ginger or 1/4 cup candied ginger)
1 cinnamon stick
1 cup sugar (or 1/2 cup honey and 1/2 cup sugar)

The howto:
Prepare your jars by washing them and their lids in soapy water, rinse and shake most of the water out but don't towel dry. Place on a newspaper covered oven sheet, and turn oven onto 120 degrees C. Leave jars in oven until they have been at 120 degrees for at least 10 minutes, or until the water has dried. Wash and chop figs (I cut each fig into 8 pieces). Add all ingredients into a saucepan, and slowly bring to a boil while the sugar is melting. Cook until jam is at setting point (starts to thicken, and becomes sticky when scooped up using a cold spoon). Remove the cinnamon stick. Distribute the jam into the sterilised jars, cover with a piece of vax or parchment paper and close the lids. Label and store in the fridge. Note that if you use half honey and half sugar, the jam will not keep for as long, the original recipe suggests to eat it within 10-15 days. We wanted our jam to keep for longer, so we made it with sugar only. I have no idea how long this jam will keep, as we don't do the whole "submerge jars in cooking water" after sealing the lids. 

The verdict:
Second jam success! This was extremely good, the flavour of figs came out on top as it should, but you can also taste the lemon and the warm aftertaste of ginger. I would love to eat it with a spoon straight out of the jar, but it's also delicious on buttered toast. I could also imagine it would be great in cakes or maybe with some cheese and crackers. And with ice cream. And maybe in muffins. I am really getting into this whole jam thing, it certainly isn't nearly as hard as I thought. The only thing I don't know about yet is how long the jams will keep. However, given how good the jam is, I'm not sure I need to worry about such things as it will probably be gone very soon. 

Plum jam

I refuse to think it's fall yet, it's just late summer, right? It must be summer because we are still getting plenty of tomatoes and courgettes. But on the other side, I have to admit that the onions have been harvested as have the potatoes. And it's pouring with rain outside, and we don't sleep with the windows open anymore so maybe it's time to stop kidding myself and admit it it slowly turning into fall. I can't believe August is coming to an end. But the good thing with fall is that the produce keeps rolling in, it's time for figs and plums, and when they are done there are still the pears and apples to look forward to. This is our second harvest season in our home, and although I don't wish for big things in my life anymore, the one thing I do wish for is that there will be many more harvest seasons in this house. 

I don't think I've ever made my own jam before. In my mind it has always been a somewhat daunting task. However, we didn't use all of the plums I froze last year so I thought this year we should make something different from whatever our two (well, more like one and a half) plum tree produces. The Culinary Consultant's Dad gave us a jar of yummy plum jam last year, so I thought let's just give it a try and see what happens.

I googled plum jam and found this useful recipe for all sorts of jams on BBC good food. So that's what I followed, except I didn't put any butter on top of the jam because I found the idea a bit revolting. I wasn't sure whether you were supposed to peel the plums before making the jam, what we did was to put them in there with the skins on and then sieve the jam through a colander to remove the skins when it was done. I love that the jam got a beautiful pink colour, which I don't think it would have without the peel. It also gave the jam a slightly bitter flavour, which both of us liked (think along the lines of orange marmalade). I had enough plums to make one and a half times the original recipe, so we have a nice little collection of very randomly shaped jam jars in the fridge (I added the amounts I used in parenthesis in the recipe below). The original recipe says it makes about 1.2 litres, so my extended version should make about 1.8 litres. As our jars were all different sizes and shapes, it's a bit hard to confirm but I guess that's about right.

Plum jam (makes about 1.2 (1.8) litres):
900 g (1400 g) plums
150 ml (225 ml) water
900 g (1400 g) sugar

The howto:
Prepare your jam jars and lids. Wash them in hot, soapy water and rinse. Shake to remove excess water but don't towel dry. Place on a newspaper covered oven tray, making sure the jars don't touch each other. Put into a cold oven and leave to wait. Quarter your plums and remove the stones. Add water and bring to a gentle boil, cooking until fruit has softened, about 30-40 minutes.

Towards the end of the cooking time, turn the oven with the jars inside it to 120 degrees C. Make sure jars are at 120 degrees C at least 10 minutes, and until all water has evaporated from them.

When the fruit is soft, add sugar, and keep on low heat until dissolved. Bring to a rolling boil and cook until the jam has reached setting point (105 degrees). This should take about 10 minutes, although I left it cooking for a bit longer as it didn't feel like it had started to thicken at all at 10 minutes.

You can now transfer the jam into the sterile jars. I however sieved the jam through a colander to remove the peels, brought it back to a quick boil and then transferred to jars. Label and seal. I made little labels using my printer and some crafting stuff. The font is called Jane Austen and it's freely downloadable, it's just perfect for so many things including jam labels.

The verdict:
When we poured the jam into jars, it was still rather runny, and I wasn't sure it would set properly. But it did! Once it cooled off, it became the perfect jammy sticky consistency. It's so good that in one day we had already consumed half a jar. It's perfect on toast, and I am already dreaming of a plum-Victoria sponge cake. And to be fair, it's rather good just eaten with a spoon straight from the jar. I do think leaving the skins on the plums was a good ideas they added a bit of bitterness to the jam. It's not too sweet with the little added tanginess, and the flavour of the plums comes through perfectly. For a first attempt at jam making, I would say this exceeded all my expectations, and furthermore it was much less effort than I had imagined. Particularly as the Culinary Consultant cleaned up the mess we had made in the kitchen!