I made some jam yesterday!

My oldest daughter is big on cooking, she'd bake everyday I'm sure if she had the chance.  She loves to cook and collect recipes so much that as a Christmas gift she was given a food magazine subscription by her Grandma, the perfect pressie for her followed by clothes of course. Lucky for me she's more than happy to share and I too get to enjoy flicking through and discovering new recipes, including peach jam. My local organic shop had some cheap peaches for sale more suitable for jam making than eating so with a new recipe to try out I thought I would make some jam. After bottling the jam I processed it and it worked which I was pretty excited about. I now I have five jars of jam sitting in the pantry I think I'll be on the look out for more cheap fruit to make some again soon but I might invest in some jam making tools just the make it a little less messy next time.  Have you made any jam lately?
♥

Baking Day

Last weekend when my parents came over for the little ones birthday party they bought with them a bag of grapes for us to enjoy.  They are lovely purple grapes, sweet and juicy but I'm the only one who eats them because they have seeds.  I wasn't going to be able to eat them all so after some blog inspiration I thought I would make some grape jam.  I found this simple recipe here, so today I made a batch for us to try.  I'm not sure if it turned out, it still seems a little runny but I figure we could use it to flavour yogurt or even have as a sauce for ice cream.  It felt good to make use of such nice produce, turning it into something instead of it being wasted although burning ones fingers with hot jam wasn't much fun.  Lots of cold water, ice and some aloe vera from the garden helped a lot.

There was also a bit of cake making, just a simple butter cake.

And this energy slice, so simple and very tasty so I thought you might like the recipe too.

Energy Slice
150g butter
1 tablespoon honey
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup sultanas
½ cup wholemeal self-raising flour
½ cup raw or brown sugar
½ cup desiccated coconut

Preheat the oven to 180℃.  Grease a 16 x 26 cm slice tin.  Melt the butter and honey in a saucepan over low heat for 2-3 minutes.

Combine the remaining ingredients in a large bowl.  Pour the butter and honey mixture into the oat mixture and mix well.  Spread evenly over the base of the prepared tin.

Bake for 30 minutes, or until the surface is evenly brown.  Cool in the tin then cut into 3 cm squares.  Keep slices in an airtight container for up to 1 week or freeze in individual portions for up to 1 month.

I hope you enjoy the slice♥

Oranges and lemons

We've been slowly getting through the box of citrus I was given the other week by my Dad, mostly we've been enjoying lots of fresh juice in the morning but after some blog inspiration I thought I might try my hand at some preserving.  

I've got the oranges soaking in some water overnight and then tomorrow I can make some marmalade.  The last time I made marmalade was when I was in high school, which was a while ago, so I'm looking forward to trying it again and having something homemade on my toast.  

We still had oranges left and nothing to eat and a visitor coming over tomorrow, the only solution was orange cake.

The oranges have now been eaten, there were still some lemons left, I just had to make some lemon butter.  I've made quite a bit so there will be plenty for us or should I say me because I'm not sure how popular it will be with the girls and some to giveaway.  I also found this recipe which I might give a try to using lemon butter.

Tomorrow my big girl is having a friend come over to hang out with, she's so excited and has got the day all planned and that includes lots of cooking.

I hope you have lots of fun tomorrow♥