Flapjacks galore

Flapjacks are a funny thing. They’re supposedly really easy, something that children make when they’re just starting out in the kitchen, or the first lesson in Home Ec. But I’m still waiting to find my perfect recipe.

I like them chewy without being undercooked stodge, and I like a little bit of crunch without endangering my fillings. I want to be able to lift a slice in one hand without it crumbling into a million flaky oat pieces.

So I’ve been doing some reading around.

The brilliant Felicity Cloake at the Guardian wrote a good column on flapjacks, even if she does like them crunchy (which, frankly is flapjack heresy, as the comments all make clear), and the three pages of comments are particularly enlightening, with several readers’ own recipes.

Here’s Miranda Gardiner’s recipe, from her book Teaching Dad to Cook Flapjacks. You’d imagine that, with it being the title recipe of the book and all, it would be top-notch, but I’m concerned it’s a wee bit peelly-wally. Maybe five more minutes in the oven?

How about adding condensed milk? There’s a bridal forum going nuts about it – which is slightly odd, as most brides seem to want to subsist on ryvita and rioja in the run-up to the nuptials, in my limited experience. But still, there’s quite a few different google hits on the search so it might be worth exploring. Because condensed milk usually makes things better, right?

The addition of a Whole Pat of Butter is a slight concern in most of these recipes. I’m quite good at forgetting what’s in stuff once it’s made, but seeing the whole thing go in a pot, then adding sugar and syrup is a slight reminder that I probably ought to drop a few pounds and consider my risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Dan Lepard makes Halva Flapjack which I do like the sound of on several counts: the reduction in butter, the fudgy consistency of the finished article and my fondness for tahini and halva in general. The only drawback is my concern that the two mini crumbles will not enjoy this departure from the expected norm.

Finally, the Leith Cookery Bible offers up this simple version, which gets good ratings in the Guardian comments.

So all I have to do now is choose a version! I will, however, be tinkering – I have a giant sack of craisins to use up, so a handful or two of those plus some chopped white chocolate will go in the mix. Results may follow.

Update:

Rachel Allen owes me 12oz of butter – yes, one and a quarter packets. Plus some oats. Her flapjack recipe is a total failure. I put it down to the inclusion of 3oz of flour. The finished article manages to be crunchy at the corners, uncooked in the middle and totally falls apart if you try to prise a piece out of the tray. Bugger. Plus we now have, to all intents and purposes, a large volume of floury granola to get through.

Truffles for good friends and helpers

It’s unfortunate that my Christmas spreadsheet (yes, it’s true, and I’m sorry) usually has an appendix at the bottom which reads “teachers, brownie leaders, Mr Horn etc” and nothing further written. Which means that the last morning of term of the 9yo’s music lessons, we grabbed the bottle of red wine on the counter and stuck it in a bag for Mr Horn as we were heading out the door.  And tonight, the last of the brownies and rainbows for this session, I again left it to the (almost) last minute.

I’d been to C0stc0 but, you know, I just couldn’t bring myself to spend £12 on 12 tiny plastic jars of sweet-shop sweeties. And I couldn’t really afford to buy the stuff that would be nice gifts – there are, after all, twelve helpers across both groups.  So instead of making dinner tonight, I was making truffles.  These mixtures make a fair amount – definitely 25, and maybe even up to 30 or 40, depending on how small or large you make them.

White chocolate, rose and pistachio cups

200g white chocolate
100 ml double cream
50g pistachios
rosewater or other flavouring

Break up the white chocolate and put in a bowl in the oven at the very, very lowest heat. You don’t necessarily want to melt it, just soften slightly. Put the double  cream in a milk pan on the hob and bring to the boil then switch off. Let it cool ever so slightly, then stir in a teaspoon of rosewater. Not too much or it’ll taste a bit soapy. If you don’t like rose, just miss this out, or substitute a different taste – I expect malibu would be amazing, or white rum, even. Now, pour the cream over the chocolate and stir until the chocolate is all melted and the mix is combined. Plop teaspoons or so into little petit fours paper cups more or less to the top. Whizz the pistachios to gritty dust, and sprinkle over the cups. Pat the pistachio down so it sticks, then put the cups in the fridge to harden.

Orange and cranberry truffles

Oh man, these are rich. Soft, too, so allow plenty of time for them to firm up.  If you’re extra fancy, you could dip them in melted, tempered chocolate (white would be nice), but that’s a higher level of skill than I’m at!

225g dark chocolate
195 ml double cream
40g butter
80g icing sugar
tablespoon grand marnier or similar
2 handfuls craisins
zest of a small orange, really finely grated

Get the chocolate warming in the oven at super-low heat, and the milk and butter in a milk pan on the hob. Let the cream come to the boil, then switch off and allow to cool a little – if you pour boiling cream onto your chocolate, the ganache will split. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and stir gently until melted together. Sift over the icing sugar and mix in then add the liqueur, orange zest and craisins (yes, that is a horrible word, but the product itself is pretty nice – far better than just plain dried cranberries, which can be a bit tart for my taste). Put the bowl in the fridge until it firms up. You can then roll balls in a drinking chocolate/cocoa mix, chopped nuts or even dip in chocolate. With time not on my side, though, I just dolloped soft blobs into paper cups. They then firm up in that shape quite nicely.

Ellen Ferguson’s famous liqueur truffles

These were always the big hit at the church daffodil tea and jumble sale. My friend Carole and I would buy as many as we could stretch to, and feel the thrill of underage booze consumption as we munched them.  Now that I’m well over the legal drinking age, I still adore these for their rich flavour and gorgeously gritty texture thanks to the addition of ground almonds.

4oz plain chocolate, broken up
2oz butter

Melt these in a bowl over simmering water.

8oz icing sugar
2oz ground almonds

Meanwhile, sieve the almonds and sugar into a larger bowl.

When the chocolate mixture is melted, remove from the heat and stir in 1 tablespoon each of double cream, strong black coffee and baileys (or tia maria, brandy, rum, cointreau…you get the picture). Then form a well in the sugar-nut mix and pour in the chocolate liquid. Stir gently until it’s all mixed together. Pop the bowl in the fridge for at least an hour before rolling into small balls and coating in drinking chocolate.

Christmas spiced cranberry liqueur

“What should I get your husband?” I asked my sister on the phone the other night.

“Drink.” she said.

“Anything in particular?”

“No, just drink”

Please don’t think my brother-in-law is some kind of unreformed drunkard – he’s just terribly hard to buy for.  I didn’t want to just get a bottle of whisky; he’s quite a connoisseur and I’m not sure what his tastes are. Also, malts are expensive.  Gin? Well, Hendricks or Caorunn both are divine. But, you know, maybe not very festive. Also, expensive.

In the spirit of making stuff – which I’m trying to do more and more – I decided to make him a Christmas Spiced Cranberry Liqueur.  Here’s how:

2 cups white granulated sugar and 2 cups of water go in a big pan and are slowly warmed until the sugar dissolves. As it warms, add six cloves, a decent bit of cinnamon bark (or some broken up bits from the bottom of the bag) and the peel (no pith) of an orange. I was going to use clementines, but they didn’t seem as well-scented.

Then add a 200g bag of cranberries and cook gently for around 15 or 20 mins until the berries are soft. During this time you’ll hear them gently popping and the kitchen will fill with the mixture’s festive spicy scent.   When the berries are soft, cool the mixture a bit (so you don’t crack the jar) then tip the whole lot into a really big jar (I’m using an old glass sweetie jar, like the ones that used to line the shelves of proper sweet shops) – or, conceivably, two middle-sized ones – and top off with vodka, a litre or so.  Don’t be daft and use the world’s best vodka for this, just supermarket stuff should be fine.

Lid on, and put in a dark place. Bring it out once or twice a day and shake it.  Over the days it should take on a beautiful red colour, and the liquor should improve in taste.

After three weeks (more or less) it should be done. Test it, just to be sure! If it’s ready, then strain the liquid and bottle up beautifully. Don’t chuck out those drunken berries! They’ll make a very adult addition to baking or a boozy ice-cream topping, so I’ll probably jar up some and gift them too.

It will, I hope, be ready by Christmas. I expect it will be tip-top in the bottom of a champagne flute and topped up with fizz.  At least, that’s how I’m going to sell it to my brother-in-law.

If heavy rain, then borscht

I am, it would appear, completely predictable. When the weather or temperature reaches a certain state, a food impulse is triggered and I get cooking. In this case, it’s rain.  Give me a week of heavy rain – or a week’s worth in one day – and it’s borscht time.

I found beautiful, firm beetroots in Morrisons today (along with cassava and ettoes, neither of which I’ve ever cooked – but will, for sure, one day) and I just knew what I wanted to eat.  As soon as I got home, I put the ingredients out and took some photos. This is normal, right?

I’ll blog this recipe, I thought to myself. And then, just to be sure, I checked the archive. Oh, I see. It was rainy in October 09 too…

My old borscht post

But it’s still worth it. I had a bowl for lunch, earthy, and warming, with a sliced, oh-so-juicy pear, some blue cheese and homemade beremeal bannocks (this recipe). It was so, so very good.  It would appear that I repeat myself for good reason.

Day in the Life – 17th November

I’m allowed to sleep until 8.25 which is an amazing lie-in. Husband has been up for a while and is downstairs dealing with 4yo, and in his absence, 9yo has sneaked into his warm bit of the bed. She’s not well, tonsils are swollen and she has some mighty big mouth ulcers, so it’s a day off school for her. This is a bit of a bugger as I’m supposed to be going to the Country Living Christmas Fair. Husband brings me tea and I go to wrangle 4yo to school.

We arrive to find a small black scottie dog in the middle of the road outside school. It’s causing a bit of traffic havoc, but I know the dog so pull over and try to call her to the side so’s I can catch her. Fortunately my friend and her wee girl are passing so we use a bit of her little ‘uns breakfast sandwich to catch the scamp.

I take Dylan the dog (that is, our dog) for a walk in the park, which is nice for both of us. Then it’s home for him and off to the Fair for me!

The fair is fab – it even smells Christmassy. I see a few folk I know – Danni of Bonbons and Buttercream, who sells me a chocolate muffin mix in jar, which is intended for the P1 teacher who’s heading off on Maternity leave, Jenny and Emma at the Showpony stand (Showpony was responsible for my *free!!complimentary!* ticket ) plus I bump into a couple of mums from school. It’s all very pleasant.

I get back home in time to grab a bowl of soup for lunch and then out to get 4yo from school.

Ooh, the postie brings an Amazon parcel – it’s the Bust DIY Guide to Life. I’ve bought it as a gift for someone but can’t remember exactly who… You see, this is what happens when you do online shopping late at night, possibly after a glass of wine. Also credit card bill, including a year’s car insurance. Goodbye birthday money, potential new shoes and luxury food items, hello well-insured austerity.

The 4yo refuses to go swimming (each child gets one refusnik chance card per term) so we go home, eat Lidl stollen and watch Scooby doo. Mystery Incorporated is definitely the absolute nadir of the Scooby Doo oeuvre. Fred and Daphne actually getting off with each other – ew. Velma vying with Scooby for Shaggy’s affection – that’s just plain wrong.

There is lots of building work going on outside the house so the dog keeps barking madly. I go to look every time – when will I learn? There’s never anything exciting there.

It’s two weeks until 4yo becomes 5yo, and I haven’t done anything about her party yet. It being P1, I think a whole-class party is best, but having seen the whole class in action, decide that soft-play (ie total delegation) is the best idea. Finally get it together, phone the place and book it. She is chuffed to bits. I have agreed to make a Harriet Hedgehog chocolate cake, so do a bit of light googling for the recipe.

Hell’s bells, look at the time – 5 o’clock. I phone husband to remind him that he has a ski lesson tonight, then get on with dinner. 4yo helps me make corn muffins and there’s 8-hour stew from yesterday.

Take 9yo to piano – although she’s not well, she really wants to go as she’s done lots of practice this week. It goes okay. When she gets back the girls make invitations for the 4yo’s upcoming party on the computer. Very cute.

By 9pm children are finally dispatched to bed, I watch Only Connect and Buzzcocks on iplayer and brush the dog, then listen to I’ve never seen star wars and I’m sorry I haven’t a clue on the radio iplayer while I clean up in the kitchen.

Late night, off to bed at 12.45 – oops. Double oops, I read until 1.15.

Phew – that was my day in the life. Thanks to Laura for picking a good day, and Mooosh for collation duties

Adventures with the Great British Bake-Off

The Great British Bake-Off became a highlight of the week’s tv for me, when it was on a few months ago. Sadly, I missed the bit when the boy dropped the cake (much to the delight, I’m sure, of the cameraman who caught it on tape, and the director who dreams of this kind of drama in a baking programme) but there was something quite engrossing about watching people baking, pacing up and down in front of ovens, measuring dough and so on.

So I was very pleased to receive the book of the series for my birthday.

Pleased, but not surprised, as I’d bought it myself three weeks previous and handed it to my husband saying “the girls might like to give me this for my birthday”. It’s got all the recipes for the technical challenges, with step by step photos. And I thought I should really work through all the challenges from the show. So here we go, with challenge no 1.

Brandy snaps

Now, I’m not normally a fan of brandy snaps. They’re usually too thick, the shards unpleasantly sharp and jaggy in your mouth, and requiring quite a lot of noisy crunching while eating. But today we were going to visit a friend who’s not so bothered about chocolate but can’t resist anything with cream.

Here’s the recipe I used.

Step one involved melting butter, syrup and demerara sugar over a low heat. This took ages, and I’m still not totally convinced it was completely smooth – the demerara granules are quite robust. Then you stir in the flour and ginger and mix well. It’s a curious dough, oozing and spreading out on the tray, but still with the stickiness of cake batter. Anyway, it firms as it cools and then you can roll it into little balls, all neat and ready for the tray.

It’s a bit of a labour- and time-intensive exercise when you get to the baking – you only want four ready at a time, so I had two trays and staggered their timing. After 12 minutes, they were perfectly lacy and brown, a couple more minutes cooling and they needed to be shaped round the handles of wooden spoons.

The end result was pretty fab actually. Light and super-crisp, they melt in the mouth, and there’s a good ginger kick to them too. I used dairy cream in a can – partly laziness and partly because I’ve lost the adapter bit for the piping bag nozzle attacher – but this deflated quite a bit by the time we came to eat them. Nevertheless, they got a very positive reaction from the ladies who lunch and, indeed, their children.

What would Mary and Paul say? Well, Paul would probably note that I didn’t quite manage to get them all exactly the same size, and that they weren’t perfectly cylindrical as they sort of drooped a little on their spoons as they cooled. But I think Mary would like their crunch and the peppery ginger bite.

So in summary. They’re yummy, easy, use store-cupboard ingredients and look misleadingly impressive… brandy snaps, I think I love you.

Season to taste

My little sister recently returned home after a year working and living in Paris. “Would you like me to bring you anything back?” she asked, “Just bear in mind, I have 20kg total baggage allowance and will be travelling wearing three coats, a dress, a skirt and a pair of jeans…”

Well actually…

Pimente d’espelette is a new spice to me. I’d read about it in a magazine write-up of Hélène Darroze’s work. She loves it so much, she named the restaurant at The Connaught after it. But, the article cautioned, you won’t be able to buy it in the UK.

Bless my sister, despite the dire situation regarding baggage allowances, look what she brought me for my birthday!

Not one, but two precious jars of piment d’espelette. The scent is paprika-ish, with a chilli undercurrent, and a whiff of something completely new and different to me. So far I’ve successfully trialled it in egg mayo with spring onions, and put a shake in my shakshuka (try saying that after a couple of gins) but according to this page there’s a whole host of other ways to use it.

I’d love to visit the Connaught and see how Hélène Darroze uses it, but in the meantime, I might just mix up some 24hr no-knead bread, blend half a teaspoon or so into some good butter, and indulge myself.

Jewish chicken soup

I came late to chicken soup. Of course, I’d had the reconstituted packet stuff, with its parsley-esque green flecks and uniform, soft noodles. But I’d not tasted the real deal until I sat down to dinner at my husband-to-be’s family dinner table.
“How many kneidles?” his mum asked.
Kneidles? I looked to my not-yet-husband for help.
“Three?” he suggested.

A shallow bowl was placed in front of me, containing three pale dumpling balls, a few neatly cut slices of celery and carrot, and one half cherry tomato, its skin starting to slip away from the pulp, all floating in a fragrant, golden broth. I lifted a spoonful, waited for it to cool, then supped. It was amazing.

Sadly, my mother-in-law is no longer with us, and of the many things I miss about her, her cooking is right up there. “I’ll bring the soup” she’d say, when we were putting together the big festival family meals. She’d arrive, glammed up to the nines, carrying a bag with two huge containers of soup, and a separate one for the kneidles. She’d be unpacking the food and kissing her grandchildren before she even got her coat off. And although I know I’m nowhere in her league when it comes to the classics of yiddishe mama cookery, I’m doing my best to keep the traditions going.

And so it is, that when my big girl had flu recently, and was home from school, all she wanted to eat was chicken soup. And now that I have a horrible gunky chest cold and am feeling sorry for myself, chicken soup is my first port of call.

If you’re making Jewish chicken soup, first you need a jewish chicken or pieces thereof.

You can also use an old boiler fowl, or just bones from the butcher. If that’s the case, you might need to bump up the flavour at the end with a little extra stock.

In a large pot, put…
one or two onions, cut in half. You don’t have to bother peeling them, in fact, the skin adds an extra colour to the soup.
a large carrot, snapped in half
a stick or two of celery
10 peppercorns (just a guess! don’t stand and count them!)
two or three cloves of garlic, again unpeeled but stabbed with the tip of a sharp knife to allow their flavour to penetrate the soup
a slice of turnip (swede) cut into chunks
two bay leaves, crumpled in your hand to release their flavour
a tablespoon of salt

Add the chicken bones or bits and cover with cold water. Put on a medium heat to bring to simmering point, then turn right down and leave to gently simmer for several hours, until it’s golden and slightly viscous. You’ll know it’s ready when your whole house smells wonderful!

Strain the soup and dispose of all the veg and bones and stuff. Some people like to pick off pieces of the soup meat to put in, but that’s not what we do. Our lucky dog gets them.

You can serve the soup as it is, a health-giving consommé. Or you can finely slice a little carrot and celery and cook it in the broth, add a few halved cherry tomatoes near the end. The final touch is kneidles, little matzo dumplings. That’s a recipe to give you later, but if you do want to add dumplings, remember, never cook them in your soup! Just warm them through in it at the end.

And I’d like three, please.

My take on “The hell of handicrafts”

I’m angry, really angry, and it’s all Alex Clark’s fault. Prior to today, I had not heard of Alex Clark, and all was well. Then I read this article in the Guardian (usually a friend to craft, thanks to the ever-readable Perri Lewis and other sound contributors) and the red mist began to descend.

Admittedly, what did I expect with its title ‘The hell of handicrafts’? And usually I’m okay with these sort of things – the craft-bashing article is not exactly a novel journalistic phenomenon. But Ms Clark takes it to a whole new level of insult and misinformation.

Admittedly, the first line doesn’t auger well;

I have a person in my life who does “crafts” so that I don’t have to.

First, why is crafts in inverted commas? Because it’s a new word we don’t know? Because she’s using it to mean something else? Or because she finds the whole concept of craft so distasteful that she has to mark it out as such. And the meaning behind this sentence is unclear – why does anyone ‘have’ to do crafts in the first place? Bad beginning, Alex.

She goes on to praise her partner’s sister’s amazing craft skills (sewing, knitting, crochet) with what seems genuine enthusiasm. And then we come to the first problem:

Yet Maggie looks distinctly unimpressed when I suggest that her stuff is so good she’s wasting it on us: she could surely make a killing.

Aargh! It’s the old lie, the oft-repeated misinformation, that to make an item is cheaper than buying it, that making stuff to sell is a good way to make a living. I can clear that one up for you right here – it’s absolutely not. The wool for, say, a jumper could well cost you £50, then calculate the hours spent making it… well, I’m an unfeasibly slow knitter (which is why I prefer to sew) but I reckon a good pace could be two hours a night for a month? With weekends off? Let’s say that’s 4 weeks x 5 days x 2 hours = 40 hours. And a reasonable hourly rate of pay is – well, minimum wage wouldn’t take into account the skill levels here, so why don’t we say £7 an hour, roughly what you get as a cleaner or waitress, perhaps a little less. So you’ve got £280 for the time spent knitting it. That makes a grand total of £330 – without actually calculating any profit.

Makes those Sarah Lund jumpers look a snip at 280 euros, doesn’t it?

Maggie (the partner’s sister) is also apparently unimpressed by the idea that she’s ‘surfing the zeitgeist’. We’re then told of a cake-baking friend who’s

…irked beyond endurance by the current fad for home baking.

Oh, boo hoo. Were the nasty new bakers using up all the flour? WFT? That’s just mean and small-minded. The vast majority of crafters, bakers, jewellery makers etc that I know delight in sharing their skills and knowledge and take the time to encourage others. I have baked since I was at least nine years old, and can honestly say that I don’t feel in the slightest bit threatened, put out or irked by other people baking.

But clearly I have been wasting my time, sewing, baking, knitting…

Why do women want to embroider when they could be reading Hegel? Why are we so determined to relive the years of austerity when we have our own hard times on the horizon? Why do people insist on bedecking their houses with homemade candles and old mirrors adorned by an inept mosaic frame, when all these things are clearly both hideous and slightly creepy?

Again we have a rehashing of some dodgy old rhetoric… and this kind of sums up much of what I find so offensive about this article. I really don’t mind the hapless attempts at making stuff, I can stand having someone take potshots at what I enjoy doing and find pleasing to the eye. What I don’t like is the pseudo-intellectual justification of it all, that craft and feminism are mutually exclusive, that only sad cases make stuff and that it’s ugly and poorly executed when they do. Why do women want to embroider (or sew or knit or do carpentry or whatever)? I can only answer for myself; I make the things I like, for myself, my home, my family. I can sew clothes that fit me, rather than try to make my body fit into shop-bought clothes. I find it satisfying to have a creative endeavour, to make something with my hands that didn’t exist before. To have a vision and fulfil it. There are political aspects too – I don’t like buying cheap clothes with dodgy manufacturing practices – but they are secondary to the primal drive to create.

As an aside – I was in Malta some years ago, and in a small museum saw the sleeping lady – a small sculpture that was found in Europe’s oldest prehistoric buildings, dating to around 3000BC. I was transfixed by her. Partly because she’s an amazing shape – lush, zaftig, call it what you will, but she is simply beautiful. But, more than that, I was awestruck by the ancient creative impulses that caused the craftsman to make her. Five thousand years ago, someone took clay and moulded it into this little figure.

Anyway, back to the annoying article. Alex notices that there are lots of books about craft. Clever Alex.

putting paid to my fears that all this craftiness is but another ruse by The Man to engage women in trivial pursuits so that they won’t remember to found their own companies, and become sidetracked instead into making a tablecloth for the boardroom and frosting the glass ceiling. Clearly, crafting is big business.

Ack. Making a tablecloth for the boardroom? I think I threw up in my mouth a little. And I do wish she’d give womankind a little more credit. What entrepreneur is going to be thrown off track by a little handiwork? Maybe, just maybe, it’s the kind of thing that allows women to relax and unwind after a hard day running their own companies. I wouldn’t know, though, cos I’m just a little housewife.

Alex goes on to start to knit a scarf. She does a few rows, gets bored and goes back to watching TV. (to be fair, at this point she is watching The Killing, which is television of the highest calibre) But Alex doesn’t mind giving up because – wait for it, folks –

Luckily, I already have a scarf. I bought it with money I had earned by going to work instead of staying at home and making things.

I think I might explode at this point. (and it’s not because of the unnecessary ‘had’ in that second sentence) For fuck’s sake, Alex. Nobody knits a scarf because it’s the only way they can get their hands on one. And even though you have a job and earn money, you still don’t get to sneer at people who’ve made a different life choice. Or who’d like a job but can’t find one.

Alex goes on to make bunting, felt slippers and then talks about cake. None of which is particularly successful, but neither does she resort to parading her moral superiority and her description of trying to sew some children’s shoes is quite funny. She acknowledges that some of this stuff is pretty hard. Surprisingly, for someone with a job and aspirations that we should all be reading Hegel, she isn’t very good at thinking things through, but then it’s clear she doesn’t want to do it well. She’s too good for this sort of thing.

Alex finishes with ten rules for happier handicrafts. I’ll name that tune in three.
1. Do it if it makes you happy. If not, find something else that does.
2. Craft is something men and women do. It’s perfectly compatible with running a business or a household, reading books or lecturing in literature. It doesn’t make you a better or worse person – just a person with some hand skills.
3. Play nice. Share your knowledge, encourage those starting out and honour those who’ve gone before. Don’t slag off people who practice a different craft or, gasp, none at all. Or, in the words of Bill and Ted…Be excellent to one another.

Plum tuckered

The plum tree outdid itself this year. By early spring, it was festooned in blossom, like a ridiculously over-frilly bride, by midsummer its branches were so heavily laden that we thought we’d have to rig up some kind of support mechanism to prevent them snapping. We decked it in green netting to keep the wood pigeons from helping themselves. And September arrived, the plums ripened and we began to feast.

Miss Small is quite a plum fan, and would happily help herself to one whenever she passed the tree. Her big sister took a little more persuading, as the bitter bite of the skins put her off, even though the fruit itself was lusciously sweet. Whenever I went to visit a friend, I took a little brown paper bag full of plums. Our neighbours got some too. Big girl even made a plum crumble, all by herself.

What happened next is twofold; the remaining plums pretty much ripened all at once, and we were told that the tail end of Hurricane Katia was on its way and we should all batten down the hatches. So last Saturday, as the sun shone, we tidied up the garden, putting all the rubbish out and the toys away. It looked fab. Why didn’t we have it looking like this all through the summer?

And then I stripped the tree. Alas, the wasps also enjoyed our plum harvest, so it was quite a high risk task, checking each plum carefully before plucking it, so’s not to put my fingers into a wasp-filled cavity. I was amazed to have escaped without being stung, but it was a pretty rank task.

We had four huge basins full of plums.

And I knew, from past experience, that plums don’t keep terribly long.

First up was plum gin. “Oh trust you to do the gin first” complained big girl. “But it’s the easiest” I protested, while hoping she didn’t think her mother was an unreformed lush. Plum gin is fab. You take a pound of plums, a bottle of gin and a pound of sugar. Halve the plums and take out their stones. That’s the annoying bit. Then dissolve – as far as you can – the sugar in the gin. Add the plums, seal your jar and put in a dark place. Shake it every few days, then once a week or so. By Christmas it will be blush-pink and gorgeous, fragrant and rich, redolent of late summer evenings just when the nights are darkest. You can drink it with tonic, or add to cava for an elegant aperitif.

After the plum gin came chutney. I stayed up to three in the morning making the bloody stuff and I’m still not convinced it’s properly set. But Mr R said I probably didn’t need to reboil, and I just couldn’t bear to, so fingers crossed its okay in a few months time. I used Nigel Slater’s recipe from Tender, while optimistically suggests boiling for 30 minutes. Unless Nigel’s lowering his jelly pan into the simmering maw of a volcano, I just don’t see how he can get it to the right consistency in that timeframe, but I suppose that’s why he’s a mammothly successful cookery writer and I’m posting on my blog.

While I waited for the chutney to boil itself down, I did a few jars of plums in rosewater syrup. I didn’t bother stoning the plums this time, as it was sort of soul-destroying. Also I’d sampled the gin I’d bought for the plum gin, so was perhaps a little more gung-ho. I made a sugar syrup to the ratio of 2:3 sugar to water, then sloshed in enough rosewater to fragrance it without actually turning it into perfume. Plonked the plums into large pickle jars and topped up with the cooled syrup. Any leftover syrup can be added to gin and tonic to make a delightfully refreshing beverage.

Day two, I decided to have a stab at Asian plum sauce – this recipe here. I did some internet comparison and they all seemed fairly similar, so here we go again with the stoning. Funny thing with plums is, you can never tell which ones will just pop their stones out without any fuss, and which will hold onto them with enviable tenacity. The plum sauce turned out okay, i think, although I’m not sure if it’s suffering some kind of identity crisis and can’t quite decide if it’s jam or not. Jam with teriyaki sauce in it, right enough, but jam nevertheless. I reckon you could use it like a barbecue sauce, or as part of a meal, but I don’t think I’d use it as a dipping sauce or anything like that. Also, it’s a slightly strange colour – like when you’re making rice krispie squares and have melted highland toffee together with pink and white marshmallows… Anyway, I may try to give away more jars of this, as even if it’s quite nice, there’s no chance we will consume four jars of it in the next year.

The next day I had a friend and her wee one coming over for dinner, so I made plum gingerbread pudding. I saw this recipe on the Moneysavingexpert forums, and thought it sounded amazing. It was. Seriously good. We used a little extra sugar (included in the recipe below) to counteract those bitter skins, but the gingerbread was yum and the caramelised plum toffee-ish sauce at the bottom was fab. It’s definitely a keeper:
Mix a pound to a pound and a half of plums (halved & stoned) with 4oz caster sugar and put into buttered ovenware dish.
Melt together 2oz butter with 3oz black treacle and 1oz golden syrup. Add 75ml milk and a beaten egg and leave to cool. Mix 4oz plain flour, 1oz granulated sugar, 1 tsp mixed spice, 1 tsp ground ginger and ½ tsp bicarb into the cooled treacle mixture and pour over fruit. Bake at 170 for around 45 mins. Serve warm, with cream and/or ice-cream. Lick your plate.

The thing is, I’m kind of plummed out now. There are still jars of plum preserve all over the kitchen, because we need to clear out the jam cupboard to make space. One of the jars of plums in rosewater has started to ferment, its liquid becoming some sort of fizzy plum-rose champagne. It’s pretty good – I have taken a few slurps out the top of the jar (you know, to stop it overflowing…) and I wish I knew how to make it on purpose. The other jars seem intact.

I occasionally tip the chutney jars to one side to see if they’ve miraculously gelled. But they haven’t, so far.

There is still about half a basin of plums left. Every morning I throw out the worst ones, the wrinkled fellows, the ones with dark, soft patches, the precursors of mould. But I can’t just throw out all of the rest. They’re still good! I could still make something with them, couldn’t I?