If you're having a bit of a celebration in this country, this fella is sure to show up. Suave, sophisticated, a bit fuzzy, delicious and totally non-alcoholic. Being Mormons, he shows up at all our parties and is always warmly welcomed . . . as well as being the first drink to disappear!!!



The people from Schloer recently sent me a sample to try out, of their new Limited Edition Winter Flavour . . . just in time for the holidays . . . Berry Punch!! Ruby coloured it gives a beautiful nod to traditional English flavours being packed with the flavour of blackberries with a warming hint of spice.



They recommended that it be served over ice and quintessentially English fruits so I thought why not go whole hog and serve it over frozen English autumn berries, which I also happen to keep a load of in the freezer . . . the berries acting as both ice and fruit!

Wow, was it ever wonderful! We both really enjoyed and are sure to pick up a few more bottles to have in the house during the up and coming holidays! Many thanks to the people at Shloer for sending me this tasty treat!



Shloer Limited Edition Berry Punch costs £2.29 per bottle. (Schloer is also available in White Grape, Red Grape, Rose, apple & White Grape, White Grape, Raspberry & Cranberry and White Grape & Elderflower flavours)

Schloer is also on Facebook where you'll find little extra inspiration and a Sunday Cookbook. (I'm thinking that it would make an amazing fruit jelly for the holidays as well!)



This put me in a very fruity moos, and of course . . . knowing me, whilst I had the frozen berries out I had to do something else with them as well . . . and why not!!!



I baked up some lovely fruity muffins. We all love blueberry muffins, but a muffin stogged with a variety of berries just can't be beat!



Oh so buttery, and fruity and moreishly scrummy with the tang of fresh berries in every bite . . . black and red currants, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries . . . these are soooo delicious!!



You could glaze them if you wished, but I just dust with a bit of icing sugar. These scrummy muffins speak for themselves, they really don't need much in the way of dressing up . . .really!!




*Berry Fruities*
Makes 12 muffins
Printable Recipe

Moist, buttery and chock full of tangy summer fruits!

175g of mixed summer berries (1 2/3 cups)
(fresh or frozen, cutting the larger ones in bits the size of
blueberries)
300g self raising flour (2 cups)
1 tsp baking powder
150g of caster sugar (2/3 cup)
100ml of plain yoghurt (1/2 cup)
125ml of milk (1/2 cup)
1 large free range egg, beaten
1 tsp vanilla
125g butter, melted (a slightly generous half cup)
Icing sugar to dust (optional)

Preheat the oven to 200*C/400*F/ gas mark 6. Line a 12 cup medium muffin tin with paper liners.

Whisk the flour, baking powder and sugar together in a large bowl. Beat together the egg, yoghurt, milk, melted butter and vanilla. Add all at once to the dry mixture and mix the two together, combing only to moisten the dry ingredients. It is perfectly ok for the mixture to be lumpy. Fold in the berries. (I like to save out a few to press into the tops.) Spoon into the paper lined muffin cups. Scatter any saved berries over top, pressing down lightly.

Bake for about 20 minutes, until risen and golden brown. Leave to cool in the pan for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling. Dust with icing sugar and serve.



Cooking in The Cottage today, a Sticky Date Bread Pudding!

You will probably find my first Meatfree Monday post rather boring . . . delicious, of course . . . but boring nonetheless. I haven't had a time to go to the shops yet for this week's shopping so it's something I have pulled together using ingredients I have on hand.

This recipe is as old as the hills, hailing from a day and time when every Monday was Wash Day and women needed something quick and easy and that could basically take care of itself in the oven whilst they did the week's washing for the family.



This may be simple and plain, but it is filled with flavour. It's economical and easy to put together. The hardest part is probably making the bechamel . . . and anyone can do that, just so long as they remember the two rules of bechamel.

• Don't be in a hurry and try to cook it over too high a heat. Medium-low heat and patience is the key
• Whisk, whisk, and whisk some more. Whisk it constantly until it thickens. Don't turn your back on it for an instant. It's a sureity it will catch the second you take your eyes off of it!

Cooking marcaroni is likewise very simple. Just follow the package directions and stir it occasionally to make sure it doesn't stick together. Also be sure to add it to the water, only after it comes to the boil and keep it at a slow boil the whole time it is cooking.



I always use good quality Italian chopped tomatoes in tomato juice for this. Lotsa, lotsa good tomato flavour.



Likewise you will want to use a good and flavourful cheese. Today I used a mixture of the cheeses I had leftover from our trip up to Cumbria, the Flakebridge and the Eden Chieftan, but any good and flavourful cheddar will do.



The rest is just cooking magic. Totally delicious this is. I could eat it every day, no kidding. (All you need is a tasty mixed salad on the side and some crusty bread to sop up all of that tasty sauce!)



*Wash Day Macaroni and Cheese*
Serves 4
Printable Recipe

Plain and simple needn't mean that something isn't tasty. This is absolutely delicious!

2 TBS butter
2 TBS plain flour
12 fluid ounces milk (1 1/2 cups)
salt and ground white pepper to taste
6 ounces dry macaroni (1 cup)
1 (415g) tin of chopped tomatoes in juice (15 ounce tin)
1 stalk celery chopped
4 spring onions, trimmed and chopped
6 ounces cheddar cheese, cubed and divided (1 1/2 cups)
Crushed croutons

Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in the flour. Cook and stir for one minute. Slowly whisk in the milk. Cook and stir until thickened. Season to taste with salt and white pepper. Set aside and keep warm.

Preheat the oven to 180*C/350*F/ gas mark 4. Butter a shallow casserole dish. Set aside.

Cook the macaroni according to the package directions. Drain well. Stir in the tomatoes, onion, celery and half the cheese. Add the sauce and toss to mix. Pour into the prrepared baking dish. Top with the remaining cheese and some crushed croutons.

Bake for 30 minutes, until hot and bubbly and lightly browned on top. Delicious!



Just in time for all that entertaining we'll be doing over the next couple of months with Bonfire Night and then Christmas, the people at Branstons have come out with some tasty new snacks! Branston Peanuts and Crackers are a delightfully tasty mixture of Branston's smooth pickle flavoured oven baked peanuts mixture together with savoury cheese flavoured crackers. Perfect as a nibble with drinks, these would be a great entertaining nibble during the holiday season. I highly recommend keeping a few bags in the cupboard just to put out when unexpected company drop by as well. I really enjoyed them. They were just the right combination of tang, crunch and salty moreishness. Many thanks to the people at TurnKey and Branstons for sending me some to try out! (Branstons and Cheese the perfect combination!)



Over in The Cottage today there's a delicious Blackberry Pie with Streusel Topping.

The Toddster and I had the most delicious lunch today. Most delicious indeed. Sarah from Purple PR contacted me recently and asked me if I would like the opportunity to try out the latest offering from the Linda McCartney vegetarian foods range, the Linda McCartney Mushroom & Ale Pies.



(I admit that I have toyed with the idea of becoming Vegetarian from time to time . . . and would probably quite happily do so . . . except that I do like me a nice tasty steak from time to time . . . sigh . . . ) I was happy to give these new Linda McCartney Mushroom & Ale Pie's a try. We've eaten their sausages from time to time and really enjoyed.



These pies are the happy result of the hugely successful "Search for the UK's Tastiest Meat Free Dish" contest in 2010, and I have to put my hand up and admit freely that these are very tasty pies indeed. (As you know we are real pie afficionado's in this house!)



The pastry was light, flakey and delicious and the filling quite generously ample and oh so scrummy. Consisting of tender mushrooms, lentils and spinach in a wonderful gravy lightly flavoured with ale that was moreishly good indeed! All together they were quite wonderfully scrumptious and I can see me going out to buy some more the next time I am at the shops! They are available exclusively in Sainsbury's from 7th August 2011 at a affordable £1.99 and will be available at Tesco (10/10/11) and Asda (05/11/11) also priced at £1.99.



I believe that Linda McCartney did a lot to promote meat free eating and vegetarianism in her lifetime and her line of meat free products are considered to be some of the best around. I, for one, would highly recommend these tasty Vegetarian Mushroom & Ale Pies. This is truly food to come home to!



I was reading on the site about Meat Free Mondays, which is a campaign that was launched by Sir Paul McCartney and his daughters Stella and Mary, which encourages the nation to help slow climate change by reducing the amount of meat consumed by having at least one meat free day a week and was most impressed.



You can read more about it here. I think we'll be enjoying Meat Free Mondays in our house regularly from now on . . . although in truth, I'll admit that I'm not quite ready to give up that steak just yet . . .



As Todd said when we were enjoying these pies . . . "Vegetarian Food has come a looooong way since the 1960's!!" Many thanks to Sarah at Purple PR and Linda McCartney Foods for having afforded us this most delicious opportunity to try something new. I think we've found a new favourite around here!



There are Pink Drizzle Plum Muffins over in the Cottage today!

Ocado, a popular shop-from-home online grocery site here in the UK, recently partnered with Carrefour, the world’s second largest supermarket group, to sell a range of French products that it hopes will differentiate it from rival Waitrose in the online grocery market. Ocado now offers Carrefour’s “Reflets de France” range of authentic French products in the UK, alongside its current range of Waitrose and own-branded products.



When we were living down in Kent, we often hopped over to the Continent to do some shopping in France and Carrefour was always the top of my list of shopping destinations. No surprise there as I am a person that treats a trip around the grocery aisles with great delight! Tripping around foreign grocery aisles is even better! I just love to oggle the different things on offer, so you can imagine how pleased I was to discover that my favourite online grocery shop was going to be offering tasty products from my favourite French grocery supermarket!

It gets even better. Nicola from FrankPR recently sent me a few of their products to try out here at home, which included a tasty jar of Reflets de France Campagne Rough Paté , a free range coarse pork paté all the way from Brittany.





These delicious French patés were originally made in a crust. At the end of the Middle Ages the first “mincemeat” was cooked in pots and while the pastry disappeared the paté remained. Inherited from the Breton paté, the Reflets de France coarse paté is renowned for its thick chunks/mince and pieces of meat and fat which appear white.



We found the pate to be incredibly moreish! I served it up with chunks of a crusty French Loaf and Todd and I couldn't get enough of it! It disappeared in no time at all! Mitzie was really disappointed we didn't save her any!



We were also sent a jar of the delicious Reflets de France Confiture d'Oranges et de Clementine de Corse. Oh my . . . what a lovely jam it is. This delicious Corsican Orange and Clementine Jam is chock full of lovely bits of orange and clementine peel. Proud of their island, the Corsicans pick the oranges and the clementines with their deep green leaves when they embody the scent of myrtle and citrus fruits. Cooked in a copper bowl with just enough cane sugar, this fruit exudes tons of flavour.



Oh my but it was so delicious spooned out onto that same crusty loaf!! I thoroughly enjoyed, as did Todd!



With over 100 different products to choose from you are sure to find something in the range to please just about anyone's tastes. I know a few things that are going to become a common addition to my weekly grocery shop for sure!

Many thanks to Nicola and Ocado for affording me these tasty little treats!




There is a tasty Hot Bacon Dressing cooking in the Cottage today!

We had a Birthday Dinner here for a good friend of ours yesterday. I love Birthday's and celebrating them. It's always a good excuse to bake a cake, or even better . . . cupcakes!!



Who doesn't love cupcakes???? A tasty little cake, ALL for you! What could be any better than that??



Especially when they are Lemon and Poppyseed Cupcakes, all moist and lemony and topped with a delicious buttery lemon icing and some tasty candy lemon slices!!! Wowsa Wowsa!!!



These are fabulous. I adapted the recipe from one I found on the BBC GoodFood site. (That's a great site by the way. I love BBC GoodFood, the site . . . the magazine . . . and all of their cookbooks.)



If you are looking for a great cupcake, which is delicious . . . buttery, and with a bit of texture, then I highly recommend these! They were very scrummy indeed! They got High Fives all the way around the table!



*Lemon and Poppyseed Cupcakes*
Makes 12
Printable Recipe

There is something that is quintessentially delicious about combining lemon and poppyseeds! I'm not sure what it is. I only know it works. Toast the poppyseeds for even more flavour!

225g self raising flour (1 2/3 cups)
175g golden caster sugar (2/3 cup)
the zest of two unwaxed lemons
1 TBS poppyseeds, toasted
3 large free range eggs
100g natural yoghurt (about 1/2 cup)
175g butter, melted and cooled slightly (1/2 cup, plus 1 TBS)

For the Icing:
225g butter, softened (1 cup)
400g icing sugar, sifted (about 3 cups)
the juice of one lemon
few drops yellow food colouring
icing flowers, sprinkles or lemon slice candies to decorate



Preheat the oven to 180*C/350*F/ gas mark 4. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with paper liners. Set aside.

Whisk together the flour, sugar, lemon zest and poppyseeds. Beat the eggs into the yoghurt and them tip this mixture into the dry ingredients along with the melted butter. Mix together with a wooden spoon, until lump free. Fill the cake cases about 2/3 full. Bake for 20 to 22 minutes, until a skewer poked in the centre of one comes out clean. Cool in the pan for about 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to finish cooling completely before icing.

To make the icing, beat the softened butter until really soft. Gradually beat in the icing sugar and lemon juice. Add just enough food colouring to give you a pale yellow colour. Spread on top of the cupcakes in a decorative manner. Top with some decorations. Store in an airtight container.



Seeing as it was a birthday, it also gave me the perfect excuse to use this wonderful Cupcake Stand that was sent to me by Jo at Find Me A Gift.com!!



It is completely collapsable and holds up to 23 cupcakes. (This image is of the 3 tier one, I could not find a good one of the 4 tier one to show you, but it is essentially the same, except with an extra tier.) What I did like about it, was that the cupcake holders were graduated so that it held the cupcakes snug into the holder. I also liked that it comes completely apart and stores flat, a big plus in my storage challenged household!!What I didn't like was that the top one was just flat and so the top cupcake fell off every time I moved it. I also found the whole thing, when full, a bit unwieldy, so I do recommend setting it up exactly where you want to place it. Moving it once filled is not a great idea.



It looked fabulous lit up with a variety of thin candles interspersed here and there when it came time to sing Happy Birthday, however I did not get a photo of that! Oh, and if you want to know what those other cupcakes are (in the blue wrappers) you'll just have to tune in tomorrow! (I know! I'm such a tease!)



Many thanks to Jo at Find Me a Gift.com for this handy piece of equipment. I know I will use it often!



Over in A Year From Oak Cottage this morning, some delicious Sour Cream Fruit Drops!

It may or may not come as a surprise to you but Anchor Butter is celebrating it's 125th Anniversary this year! Originating in New Zealand, Anchor butter has been around since 1886 – longer, I believe, than most of its major rivals. Arla, who make Anchor in the UK, also make Lurpak and all the other associated variants – the spreadables.



In spite of their New Zealand origins, Anchor also supply butter for one of the greatest of British institutions, by the way: Wimbledon. We often use Anchor butter in this house, I do confess . . . we love it!



Not only does it taste really good, but they do such cute commercials.


To commemorate their anniversary, they are unveiling a stunning range of collectible memorabilia ranging from a really lovely double oven mitt, to a really cute little Corgi toy butter van. There's also cake tins, tea towels, egg cups, butter dishes and cake stands, all featuring the Anchor Queen and Princess cow's along with the commemorative Anchor Crest. I was sent several items and I can attest first hand to the fact that they are adorable and very collectible. I love them all.



For more details you can check out their FACEBOOK PAGE. They are offeringa variety of prizes there and all sorts! You can also check out more information re their products etc. on the Arla Foods Homepage.



I especially love using it in my baked goods, and you know how much I bake. Yesterday we were having the missionaries over for supper again and I wanted to make them a really special dessert.



I had picked up some really tasty looking plums at our local shops the other day and had in mind to do something for the lads with them. Don't they look fabulous, all juicy and red!



I just love a crumble . . . or what we called a "Crisp" back where I was born. Over here they don't often add oats to the crumble topping, but we always had oats in it when I was growing up. I love the moreish wholesome texture and flavour that they add to this lovely dessert!



Just look at all that buttery and crunchy goodness!!! And this particular recipe gives you double the pleasure, because that delicious fruit filling is sandwiched between not one, but two layers of the oaty crumble! I couldn't think of a better way to use some of that delicious Anchor Butter, can you???



Just look at that delicious fruit filling . . . that crunchy buttery oaty crustiness . . . and that rich gilding of pouring cream . . . ahhh . . . mama mia!!!

I'll have you know it is Elder approved!! Elder D'Oppido from Italy really enjoyed tucking in to his, and even hammed it up for the camera . . . he's such an Italian! Very charming to say the least, but a good lad doing a good job. I am sure he's his mama's pride and joy!



*Double Crusted Plum Crisp*
Serves 8 to 10
Printable Recipe

Double the oaty buttery pleasure!

For the crumble:
7 ounces plain flour (1 1/3 cups)
3 1/2 ounces rolled oats (old fashioned not quick) (1 cup)
5 3/4 ounces soft light brown sugar (3/4 cup packed)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
10 TBS unsalted butter, melted

For the filling:
3 1/2 ounces granulated sugar (1/2 cup)
1 TBS cornflour (cornstarch)
pinch of fine sea salt
6 cups sliced fresh plums (about 16)
the juice of one lemon
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 180*C/350*F/ gas mark 4.

Mix together the flour, oats, brown sugar, cinnamon and salt for the crumble. Stir in the melted butter, combining all together well. Press a little more than half of this into a 9 inch square baking dish. Set aside and reserve the rest for a bit later on.

Rub the granulated sugar, cornflour and salt together for the filling. Toss together with the fruit, lemon juice and vanilla to combine. Spread this mixture evenly over the bottom layer of the crisp in the baking dish. Crumble the remaining crumble mixture on top evenly.

Bake in the middle of the oven for about 60 minutes, or until the crisp is golden brown and the filling is bubbling away through the crumble topping. Cool for 20 minutes before serving.

Delicious served with pouring cream or warm custard.

Note: Any leftovers will store well at room temperature for up to three days, tightly wrapped in cling film. Reheat in a warm (not hot) oven until heated through to serve.