Today, and yesterday to some extent, has been a busy day in the kitchen. I don’t mind, I like it and the weekend is when I find the time to cook. 🙂 There has been the cooking of meals including desserts (of course) but also a few extras. Here is the list if you want to check out some of the recipes I have added to this site:
A batch of puff pastry to cut in portions and freeze for later use.
Some raspberry jam. So good on fresh bread! There are a few places where you can get frozen berries at a reasonable price, I made raspberry jam using 2 kg of fruits.My jam stores were running a bit low, a bit of apricot left, some strawberry jam, some red-current jam and maybe some apple jelly. You will notice the labels, love them! That even deserves its own photo:
Fabienne’s homemade jam
2 batches of bread. If you were already reading this blog when I published the bread post, you will know that I make sourdough bread. I prepare two breads at the time. I baked a serie on Saturday morning, that was the delicious walnut, pepitas and cranberries one! I gave one away, which means we should be running out of bread tomorrow. So I have two breads freshly shaped doing their last rise in the fridge overnight.
A peach crostata. I used a recipe found on the internet for the pastry, something was really wrong with that recipe (butter ratio about same as flour). I worked it out of course but I do not have the quantities, so will be doing more of those and posting something later.
Who does not love raspberry jam? When I grew up, we would have to pick the raspberries, here I save myself that trouble and head to the frozen section at the shop. Some shops or food suppliers will have them at a better price than the main supermarkets.
Jam traditionally call for 1/2 fruit to 1/2 sugar weight in their composition. I prefer mine not so sweet. Also note that this recipe does not use any jam settler, if you want to use those, I would suggest the “sugar jam” which is sugar and settler all in one. In that case do not use lemon juice, apparently it cancel the effect of the settler.
Did you notice my jam label? I have now been using it for 7-8 years!
Ingredients:
1 kg frozen berries
700 g of white sugar
the juice of 2 lemons
Material:
Jam jars previously cleaned, then sterilised in boiling water (I do that while my jam is cooking) and let to cool down face down on a clean towel
a large ended funnel and a ladle
A large cooking pot
Method:
Put the raspberries, lemon juice and sugar in the cooking pot on the stove. Stir roughly. I like using a large wooden spoon to do that.
When the fruits are boiling reduce a bit. In the meanwhile place a small plate in the freezer and prepare your jars.
The jam is ready to put in pots when a few drops of jam placed on your cold plate (yep, the one you put in the freezer) and allowed to cool down for up to a minute does not run when held at an angle.
Using the ladle and the large ended funnel fill the pots one by one quite close to the top and immediately put on the lids. The jam will settle, it may take overnight.
When the pots are cold, clean them if there is a bit of jam on the outside and label them.
Tip: be very careful not to burn yourself with the jam, hot jam burns and it is painful!
