Waste Not

It has been beautiful here but very cold so poor Mrs Jones, our friendly Rayburn, has been going day and night which has led to some fun cooking. As usual I did the food shopping but this week my munchkins have not been eating so much of the fruit so the apples ended up a little wrinkled and a lot less appealing. My OH does not eat apples unless I put them in my fruit tea loaf which is a recipe I was given many years ago by a friend and have adapted to suit my family.

The basic recipe is 1 cup of dried fruit soaked in a cup of tea, 1 egg, 2 cups of flour and 1 cup of brown sugar. Mix it all up and bake for 1 hour at 160 degrees celsius or until browned and a skewer comes out clean.

This is a nice very basic tea loaf without butter or oil but not quite to my taste. I like spice and much more fruit than that and with some apples to use up I chopped up the four small apples and one lonesome pear added 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon, 1 teaspoon of ground ginger and 1 teaspoon of mixed spice. I left this to soak for a couple of hours.

 

I ran out of brown sugar so I added granulated sugar; it's a different taste but this is not a cake which has to have exact ingredients.

 

It does not look pretty but then not that many cake mixtures do.

This made enough to fill 2 standard loaf tins and when turned out went to lurk in the cake tin to be devoured by hungry munchkins and OH for pudding or for afternoon tea.

Left: top of the cake, Right: bottom of the cake

As if this was not enough there were some blood oranges in the bowl and some lemons so I put them in a pan of water, covered them and gently simmered them on Mrs Jones for a couple of hours until soft. You know the plastic tubs you get a takeaway in? Well I keep them and use them for times just like this as the fruit was drained, smooshed up with the hand whizzer thingy and frozen ready to be made into Nigella's Clementine cake http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/clementine-cake-2559. I sometimes change the fruit for whatever citrus fruit I need to use up and if I do not have the almonds I will use the same quantity of polenta but with a teaspoon of almond extract so the flavour comes through.

This has been an odd week but I am halfway through the second Christening shawl so I am feeling hopeful that there is light at the end of this particular crafting tunnel. We opened a couple of bottles of the ale I bottled a while back one evening and it was good so I am a happy bunny.