JAM, CORDIAL AND GREAT COMPANY!

My kitchen this morning is full of jammy aromas.  We've been a bit overrun with strawberries in the last few days, so I thought I'd make some jam.

Now I'm not always very successful in this endeavour - blackcurrant 'tar' being a spectacular disaster.  Having anxieties over the jam setting sees me pinging back and forth to the freezer to retrieve yet another chilled saucer to test it.

My recipe said to cook the fruit with the lemon juice for 5 - 10 minutes until the fruit was soft. Then bring to the boil and when it reached a rolling boil, cook for 15 mins or until it reached setting point.  Well, this took nearly AN HOUR!  .

I ended up watching Mary Berry on YouTube, who's jam took a fraction of the time. It must be me,  but thankfully, I got there in the end.

The one vital bit of information provided by Mary, was to let your jam sit in the pan for about 10 minutes, then stir to see if the fruit has become evenly distributed, then you can pot up. If you don't, all the strawberries rise to the top of the pot and some poor soul ends up with just jelly from the bottom of the jar. Strangely the last lot I made a few years ago did just that! Wise Mary....love Mary 💖

You can see all the little seeds in the strawberries....can't wait to eat this and may make a Victoria sponge for a  weekend treat!

Last Sunday morning saw us at 'our tree' collecting blossoms heads for our now,  annual elder flower cordial making. 

My intrepid man insisted in tackling the cutting due to stinging nettles and the fact I was wearing shorts.  He was also in shorts, but claimed his skin was tougher than mine. Aah, chivalry is not dead folks!

He has got rather lovely pins .

We tend to come to this tree because it's the most accessible.  Many of the trees are engulfed in stingers, thistles and tall thick foliage which is probably a good thing as the blooms will eventually result in berries and the wildlife need these as a source of food later in the year.

Just had to photograph the vibrant yellow sedum that grows in the walls in this area.  Don't they look like little shooting stars? Gorgeous.

When I started preparations for making the cordial, I couldn't find my recipe.  Last year's was such a success, I wanted to replicate it and normally I write things down or at least note down the source of a recipe. Couldn't find it, so trolled the internet, on the sites I knew I might have looked at last time.  So many recipes included citric acid, which I know I hadn't used. In the end, I plumped for one that didn't use it, but somehow just didn't seem familiar to me. I curse my memory, it used to be so good!

The blooms are just so delicate and pretty

Recipes for this cordial are fairly straightforward and easy.  You just collect about 20 - 30 blooms, make sure you shake out all the creepy crawlies and cut off the thick stems.  Pour 1.5 litres of boiling water over a 500g of sugar (I used organice cane sugar) in a large pan, stirring until the sugar has dissolved.  Then add in the juice of two lemons. You then pop in the blooms, give it a good stir, put on the lid and leave for two days,  making sure you stir  it every morning and evening. On day two, strain it through a muslin cloth and bottle it up. The flowers will be quite brown at this stage, but they're supposed to look like that.  I will freeze my cordial,  as this version  has a very short shelf life, about one week in the fridge.

This recipe resulted in quite a watery product, whereas last years was more of a syrup, but it tasted delicious all the same. Oh, and guess what, after I'd made it, I remembered the previous recipe...it's from Sue's recipe at The Quince Tree blog.  It does involve boiling to make the syrup, which probably removes a lot of the goodness from the elder flowers, so my present version may be healthier.

They both look quite different in appearance too, this years on the left and last years (Sue's recipe) on the right. 

There are a lot of health benefits to drinking elderflower cordial, which is always a plus.  Mr has also found a recipe for elderflower gin, so we'd better get a wiggle on and collect some more before it goes over!

Going back to the beginning of the week, I met up with four fabulous friends I've known since my late teens and early twenties.  We all worked together back in the day, and try to get together somewhere for lunch every few months or so, but this time met at P's house.  She has a large and very lovely garden.

Her pond is a little bigger than mine!

I love the water lilies in her formal garden pond...ours haven't flowered yet.

P had company all weekend and as she was worried she wouldn't have time to bake for us,  I offered to make some cakes, lemon drizzle muffins using this recipe.  I'd not made these before and they didn't look all that appetising when they came out of the oven, not as nice as my usual lemon drizzle cake.  I put a good slurp of Limoncello into the lemon drizzle mixture and popped on a few fresh little mint sprigs for decoration, which I think improved their appearance. The girls seemed to enjoy them, which is the main thing.

And so did Mr.  He of the 'not very sweet tooth' gave them the thumbs up, especially liking the addition of the mint and even went as far as saying he'd like more again soon.   He doesn't know yet that he's going to have to  help me get through a Victoria sponge first!