While it wasn’t quite as hard work as Ellis was making out in the first picture, I did recruit him on my seasonal foraging duties. There is a hill near our old house where it is plentiful, but we struggled to find it in our new area.  A few patches here and there on one of our favourite walks was all, andI was worried we hadn’t brought home enough Wild Garlic. But 2 large pots of pesto and a massive batch of cheese and wild garlic biscuits/scones later, I am confident we will have our fill…and that we will repel any Vampires from the entirety of Central Scotland.

I didn’t use any recipes…the pesto is cashews, parmesean, olive oil and a ton of wild garlic (maybe too much, it is POTENT) and the scones are just my standard American biscuit recipe that I use for everything and can’t remember where I know it from:

500g/4 cups of flour

3t of bicarb (baking soda)

125g/8T of cold butter

250g/ 1cup of grated strong cheddar cheese (the eye-wateringly strong the better)

100g/1/4 cup of wild garlic pesto

200g/ 2 cups of chopped wild garlic leaves

120ml/ 1/2 cup of milk

Mix flour and baking soda. Chop butter into small pieces and work with fingers into flour until it becomes crumbly. Mix cheese into the dry mix, leaving a bit aside to sprinkle later. Add milk and wild garlic. Work with hands until it forms a dough, adding a bit more milk or flour if needed. Roll or pat out onto a lightly floured surface and cut out circles.

Sprinkle with a bit of left over cheese and bake at 180C/ 360F for 8-10 minutes. Makes 24.

Although I am quite severely dairy intolerant, these were simply too good to pass up with tomato and butter bean soup.

So, here is the thing – I feel posts like this MAY give you a false impression of me.  Yes, it used to be that I spent a lot of time cooking, foraging, growing my own veg, but since I started my business, this has happend:

(today’s Knitting and Crochet Blogging Week Challenge is to make an infographic)

As time has gone on, the amount of time I spent cooking has decreased in direct proportion to the amount of time I have spent crocheting. In fact, I forget to make dinner at least 3 times a week and we eat peanut butter toast with apples or bananas.  Ellis regularly tells me, “You used to be such a good cook, mom.” or “Remember when you used to make x, y, z?”

Yes, I remember. But who wants to cook when I can have yarn and hook in hand? And so this week, we have eaten pasta with bacon and wild garlic pesto 3 times…and its only Wednesday. Sigh.

I am not quite sure what came over me, but on Christmas Eve, I was gripped with the burning need to make egg nog.  Not being generally picky, I would have been happy to buy some at the store, but any eggnog, let alone the non-dairy variety, is non-existant this side of the pond.  

And so began the search, for a decent recipe that was both thick and rich, but also had the ingredients we had to hand (Scotch, not Burbon) as the stores began to close for the holidays and also cooked as raw eggs gross me out. I read a bunch of recipes, and then decided that I would just throw things together in the general principle of egg nog and see what happened.

The answer is – I drank a lot and decided that if my life as a designer and photographer doesn’t work out, I have a credible back up plan as the official Scottish Nogmaker.

Warning: this egg nog is lethal, but delicious.

Easily made with cow’s milk and cream – but please top with whipped cream and tell me about how delicious it is – I miss whipped cream!!

Ingredients:

6 eggs – separated.  Store whites for later.

1 litre (4cups) soy milk

250ml (1 cup) soy cream

100g (1/2 cup) powdered sugar

2T plus a little for sprinking ground nutmeg

250ml (1/2cup) rum

500ml (1 cup) whisky

mix egg yolks, soy milk, soy cream, 2T of the nutmeg and sugar in a heavy bottomed sauce pan.  Heat until just before boiling, make sure to stir constantly so you don’t scramble the eggs.

Add the alcohol and leave to cool, first on the counter, then in the fridge.

Just before serving, whisk the egg whites into stiff peaks and mix thoroughly into the egg nog.  This really makes it nice and creamy without the addition of much cow-based cream.

Aren’t my birdie cups sweet? They are from here.

Growing up, we had a neighbour who was known for her cookies.  Perfectly crunchie, yet chewy, hers were the most highly prized food currency in the neighbourhood.  A party wasn’t a party unless Karen brought her cookies.

I don’t think I have eaten another snickerdoodle since we moved away. How could I even compare, baking not being my greatest strength in the first place, then having the bar oh-so-high. And so I didn’t bother, stuck to the basics of chocolate chip…until last week when I decided to make it my mission to recreate the cinnamon flavoured bites of sweetness. You see, I am not a huge chocolate fan, but cinnamon, well that is a whole other story.

I have now made 4 batches in 5 days, tweaking them each time. As I am sure you can imagine, my family were more than happy to be the guinea pigs.  So much so, that on the one day I didn’t make them, I was roundly told off my Ms Georgia, wagging finger and all. “Mama, why you no make cookies? Bad, mama.”

However, 4th batch in and I am pretty sure they are as close to perfect as they are going to get.  Softer and lighter than I remembered, they are just divine dipped in coffee. I am imagining them with cinnamon or coffee buttercream and made into whoopie pies.  But perfection is here and its fair to say I don’t need to make another batch for awhile.

Just don’t tell Georgia. 

Soft Snickerdoodles:

1cup of room temperature butter or margerine

3/4 cup white sugar

1/2 cup demererra/ raw sugar

2 eggs

1t baking powder

3cups of flour

pinch of salt

3T white sugar

3T cinnamon.

mix butter, sugar and eggs thoroughly.  Add flour, baking soda and salt. Mix.

Place the extra cinnamon and sugar in small bowl and mix. Roll small balls of dough in the cinnamon sugar mix.

Place on cookie sheet about 2in apart. Flatten with the bottom of a glass or jar.

Bake at 350F/180C for about 8 minutes until just brown.

Dunk in coffee.  

Reach nirvana. 

Is there a sexier fruit than a fig?  My heart certainly beats a bit faster when I spot the new season in the grocery store.  I am known for stuffing bags full of the purple orbs into my basket as soon as they appear.  I love them. Would eat them every day if I could.  But my favourite, favourite way to devour their soft sweet flesh is on pizza. I can't remember where I saw the idea, but it is a seasonal staple in this household. 

I always start with a no-knead pizza dough.  The recipe came originally from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a day, but over the years we have perfected it to:

3 cups of warm water

2T yeast

1/4 cup olive oil

4 1/2 cups of white flour

1 cup of corn meal

1 cup of whole wheat flour.  

The basic principle is that you stir everything together in that order, mix until all the flour is incorporated, then let it rise and fall (about 2 hours).  Sprinkle a bit of flour on the dough and pull of aprox 1lb of dough per small pizza.  Flatten on a cookie sheet that either has a bit of oil or corn meal on it and then drizzle the top with a bit more oil.

Then you are ready for the toppings.

Sauce:

1 red onion

1/2 cup of rose wine

1T honey

1T balsamic vinegar

a pinch of rosemary

The sauce is a simple carmelized onion and wine reduction.  No real amounts, just an onion, cooked on low for about 20mins in a bit of oil of butter.  Add the wine (I like the sweetness of rose in this) and a tablespoon  each of basalmic vinegar and honey and the rosemary. Cook for about 5 minute until the wine has reduced some.

Spread the sauce, then generous slabs of cut figs and goat's cheese.  A small pizza uses about 1.5 figs and about 75-100g of goat's cheese. I buy both the figs and the cheese from Lidls…the best place to buy anything continental where we live…

Bake at 180C/360F for about 20 minutes.

Even the 2 year old whose second word was "cake" turned these down.