Whortleberries

We have a new member of the team ... Jo (who is a Phd in woodland ecology) looked us up and showed up today with a big tray of whortleberries ... what yummy fruit. They are like blueberries but with flavour and more colour !

Looking forward to what else she shows up with ... lots of wild mushrooms for the autumn and should have some interesting plants over the next couple of months for the restaurant !

Made Berry mess using them and used as a coulis with Beth's brownies today in the restaurant ... will try with a burnt cream or mousse tomorrow ...

Crowdie Raspberry Cheesecake

I was privileged to spend an hour or so at Connage Dairy this week having a tour of their cheese factory, a really impressive operation and some superb cheese. I left with a small bag of samples which I'm enjoying. Their Clava cheese is a brie style cheese second to none I have tried in the UK and their lovely creamy Crowdie is a great full fat cheese, perfect for a cheese cake, and needs no cream to be added.

Here's my Crowdie cheesecake (shamelessly made from fridge leftovers) ... I'd probably use a little less base and more cheese next time but I only had half a pot of cheese left after eating the rest with some smoked salmon last night !

Ingredients:

10 raspberries

Raspberry liquor

1/2 sheet gelatine

1/2 small Crowdie

72% Chocolate

Clarified butter

Cornflakes

Method:

Blitz cornflakes till crumbly. Heat equal quantities of chocolate and clarified butter together and blend, mix with cornflakes to a just dry mix. Press mix into base of a cooking ring.

Mix Crowdie with raspberry liquor till smooth and a nice cheesy sweet mix, add on top of crumble base.

Place half raspberries on top of cheese, heat the other half with a little liquor then add gelatine. Sieve then pour clear jelly on top of cake.

Remove ring carefully and fridge for 30min before serving

Delicious !

Scones

Forgot how easy these are but made a batch this morning with the kids as a treat breakfast.

Self raising Flour
Butter

Rub butter in till crumbly with your fingers, then add some more to make them extra buttery !

Add pinch of salt
Add little sugar if making sweet scones

Mix then add flavour, cheese, sultanas, dates ... whatever you fancy ... remember plain are pretty good on their own too.

Add milk and mix by hand till just binding together ... not a wet dough ... add a bit more flour if you've added too much milk.

You've probably noticed I haven't added any measurements ... I never measure ... as long as you get the butter and flour to a nice crumbly mix where it will bind if squeezed hard then its done ... at a guess I would say about 150g Flour to 50g Butter and 50ml milk to make a really buttery scone. Don't over work them or they won't rise ... worked flour stretches the gluten and you get hard scones (or cakes when making cakes) ... work it as little as possible to get yummy, crumbly, buttery scones ... there's not much better !

Truffles

Truffle ingredients

• 200ml Double Cream
• 75ml Vodka
• 1 Orange (or two mandarins), zest and juice
• 125g Dark chocolate
• Cocoa or icing sugar for coating

Heat Cream, Vodka, Orange juice and zest to just simmer, remove immediately from heat and pour over broken up chocolate in a bowl. Mix till blended, warm slightly if all chocolate doesn't melt. Blast with a hand blender to get some air into it ... makes it a lot lighter.
Refrigerate till chilled and set ... 3hrs or so or overnight.
Remove and make into balls, roll in cocoa or icing sugar and place back in fridge for 30 min, then roll again to finish.

Eat ... yum ... I can't manage more than one or two as they are very rich ... great with coffee.

Try other flavours of liquor, Baileys, or Rum are good, add coffee instead of orange. Just finished some white chocolate ones with lemon juice and a dash of vodka ... they are great !