My Tiny Plot

I was going to bake Lemon cake today but I ran out of Lemons (essential ingredient in Lemon cake) so I made Banana cake instead. Bananas – now I have lots of those!

I used the very simple recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook which includes lots of ginger, cinnamon and melted butter. The boys seemed to like it even though it was quite gingery. Here’s the recipe from the book, which if you like cakes, I really do recommend you buy.

270g soft light brown sugar
2 eggs
200g peeled bananas, mashed
280g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
140g unsalted, melted

23 x 13cm loaf tin, greased and dusted with flour

Preheat the oven to 170°C (or 160°C fan)

Put the sugar and eggs in a freestanding electric mixer with a paddle attachment (or use a handheld electric whisk) and beat until well incorporated. Beat in the mashed bananas.

Add the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon and ginger to the sugar mixture. Mix it thoroughly until all the dry ingredients have been incorporated into the egg mixture. Pour in the melted butter and beat until all the ingredients are well mixed.

Pour the mixture into the prepared loaf tin and smooth over with a palette knife. Bake in the preheated oven for about 1 hour, or until firm to the touch and a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean.

Leave the cake to cool slightly in the tin before turning out onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely.

Tags: Banana Cake

I started sowing a few seeds today, in-between the over-Wintering Lettuce in the coldframe. Just a few, then if they don’t work out it’s not the end of the world. I sowed a little Cauliflower (Gipsy), Carrot (Early Nantes 2) and some pointy Cabbage (Pyramid). All early varieties.

I’ve found in the past that the early Carrots do quite well in the coldframe. I can grow them quite close together (just not touching) since I will be harvesting them nice and young anyway.

The Cabbage I will transplant into the garden in early Spring so that they can grow to their final size. There really isn’t enough room in the coldframe.

And I just sowed a handful of Cauliflowers and will probably thin them to just three and then sow some more in about a month. I really don’t want a glut of Cauliflowers all ready at the same time and they take up so much room in the garden. Starting them early in the coldframe is the only way for me as they will be grown and harvested before the Cabbage whites can get to them.

I went to my local garden centre to see what seed Potatoes they had and found they had done this really cool Potato display. They could have easily just chucked the Potatoes in boxes and left it at that but someone had really gone to town with the display. Not only could you buy in bags but you could also do a ‘pick and mix’ style shop and fill an egg box with different varieties. This is great if you have a really small garden and don’t have room to plant a whole bag full of second earlies.

They also wrote up some boards with some ‘Potato Facts’ – like “In October 1995, the potato became the first vegetable to be grown in space. NASA created the technology with the goal of feeding astronauts.” And also some boards telling you how to grow Potatoes.

It’s not rocket-science and of course it’s all designed to entice you to buy seed Potatoes. But I just love the passion behind this. You can tell that they both grow and sell Potatoes. And they love doing it.

And after all this they did make a sale – I bought a bag of Highland Burgundy Red.

Tags: seed potatoes

Not exactly cake but baking at least. I decided to use up the Blueberries from the freezer since there is precious little in the garden right now. A pie seemed the sensible option and a good excuse to get my pie dish out.

I made the pastry in the usual basic pie crust way – with a little help of course. We even made an err.. sort of, pastry snowman out of the left over bits.

I blind baked the base, weighted down with kidney beans and parchment.

The filling is so simple. Just Blueberries (550g), juice from one Lemon, lemon rind, 100g of caster sugar and a spoonful of cornflour to thicken. Then you let the oven do the work and cook it for 50 minutes at 170 degrees C. I think I’ll use more cornflour next time as the water from the frozen blueberries meant that the filling wasn’t as gloopy as I’d like.

But warm Blueberry pie with ice-cream? Wow! The boys had never had that before and by the end they were practically bribing me for more.

Tags: Blueberry Pie

I would absolutely love, love, love to be able to paint my fruit and vegetables like this. This is a painting by Susan Hillier, a very successful botanical illustrator who has worked for British Rail and holds exhibitions of her work regularly.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be that good but I’d like to have a go at just recording some of the produce that I grow, if nothing else. It looks like fun!

I remember when I did Art A Level at college and while everyone else was doing abstract paintings in a Georges Braque style I was hunched quietly in a corner doing a watercolour of a beefsteak Tomato. Ha ha! I was a strange child.

Anyway, the nerd in me wants out. Enthusiasm I have. But I’m currently looking into doing a course to get me pointed in the right direction regarding skills. Anyone have any experience of botanical illustration? Tips, links?

Tags: botanical illustration

It’s about this time of year that I start to think about buying Onion sets. I must admit in previous years I have tended to buy what they were selling at the garden centre. But after growing a variety called Snowball last year I was very disappointed by its yield. I put it down to my soil or maybe me just not looking after them properly. But I recently read a trial that said that particular variety performed poorly – so maybe I should start taking notice of these trials?

Apparently, the soil here in the UK is not suited to all varieties of Onions. Sweet onions (the likes of which they grow in Spain) are difficult here because there are too many sulphur compounds in the soil (Which? Gardening January 2012).

I always grow from sets (immature Onions) rather than seed. And was interested to see that the following Onions did well in trials for UK soil:

Brown Onions

Troy (best overall 2010) – although many places don’t sell this variety anymore.
Autumn Gold – matures end of July
Centurion – matures mid July
Forum – matures mid July

Red Onions

Garnet – matures early Aug
Hyred – matures early Aug
Red Baron – matures early Aug

I think I’ll be giving Troy a go and also either Garnet or Hyred since I’ve already grown Red Barons in the past.

Tags: Onion sets

My little one had been snuggled up in his warm cot all afternoon and so I took him out for a quick walk just before the dark drew in yesterday for some fresh air. The sun was going down quickly and we had to run to see the horses in the fields before the light failed and they wandered home for their hay.

The sun was not quite disappearing over the hill and in the mist of a far-off bonfire sent a golden ray of light back to hit the big house on the hill. It glinted at us from across the field and made us squint and laugh and sneeze.

Down the lane our friendly Oak tree looked dark and mysterious against the beaming sky that faded from blue to orange. A perfect winter’s afternoon walk. Just far enough to make our noses red. Just short enough so we could push back for warm milk and crackling fires.

Loving Wintertime.

Tags: winter walk

Okay so I know it’s not Friday but I made a decision today that may affect my Fridays from now on. I have come to the conclusion that cake is not bad. You know that bit in The Holiday when Cameron Diaz says, ‘I just want to eat carbs without wanting to kill myself.’ Well you know what, I really do.

When I was on holiday with some friends over New Year were were talking about how your mum would always ‘bake a cake’ and it would be a special thing. Gathering the ingredients (which would sometimes require a walk to the shops), preparing, aprons, grandma’s old beige mixing bowl, the packets, the dust, hot ovens, the s-m-e-l-l, the anticipation, watching it rise, the anticipation, the cooling, not yet! And then, finally, finally, when a cup of tea had been made and at least one neighbour had been invited, the taste.

I think we’re guilty, these days, of looking at a cake as just a pile of calories. Yes they have sugar and eggs and butter and la de dah in them but really? Is it worth missing out on all of the above just because it may be a little bit bad for us.

In truth I feel like a bad, bad mother for denying my boys the same excitement that I felt all those years ago.

So the decision is this. Friday is cake day. Not one that comes in a box, or packaging or even sneakily bought from the farmers market. No, Friday is ‘bake’ a cake day. With natural ingredients, hopefully including something from the garden too. And shared with neighbours, friends, boys (big and small) and me.

Disclaimer: I’m not promising to bake a cake every Friday, but I will try.

This is the Carrot Cake from The Riverford Cookbook. It’s gorgeously moist with lots of Carrot in it and no icing because it doesn’t need it. I did add a bit of Cinnamon to it which seemed to work.

Tags: Friday Cake

We had lunch at the Riverford field kitchen on New Year’s Day. I basically ate a plate of vegetables in different forms, Carrots with feta cheese, Cauliflower with almonds, Beetroot and herbs etc. But it felt like a gourmet dish. I was so impressed that I simply had to buy the book to find out how to make those.

I was very impressed with the honesty in the first few chapters. From a test farm for chemical company ICI to the successful vegetable box scheme it is now is a great achievement in one generation.

Guy Watson, the founder, talks about the simple Savoy being the best thing to eat at this time of year and of course the cheapest. His pep-talk has already worked for me. I switched my order for Aubergine and Courgette to Savoy and Kale.

Jackson is raring to get going on his new, bigger garden. He wanted to go out and do some digging but the digging soon turned to raking. The raking consisted of moving the soil from one location to another and then back again.

It was great fun, especially when we used the rake upside down.

And when we were finished the garden really didn’t look any different than it did before we arrived but we had spent a nice hour or two in the garden, getting some welcome fresh air after the crazy Christmas week – and mummy got to do some tidying up too!

Tags: gardening with children