Wednesday, February 26, 2014

'Airships' and continuing fruit harvest

Madeleines aka 'airships'

Lately I've been making batches of the little French butter cakes known as 'Madeleines'. You need to chill the batter in the fridge, which works well for me because I can make it in advance then cook up as and when required for a lovely treat. My soon to be 7-year-old D calls them 'airships' because of the hump underneath! In any case, they soon disappear. I won't give a recipe because there are so many on the net, basically it's butter, sugar, eggs, flour, vanilla and lemon zest. I used my homemade lemon extract which is lemon zest soaked in vodka. I have silicone madeleine pans which makes getting the cakes out when cooked a simple task.
 
Our citrus orchard is yet to be performing well, so I don't often have my own lemons on hand. Limes yes, and lemonades, but not lemons. Sometimes we receive a lovely big boxful of Meyer lemons from my husband's dear aunty (thanks L :-)!) as she has an established tree. Our citrus orchard is still very exposed to the elements and the little lemon trees are struggling to grow. In a couple of years the feijoa hedging will make all the difference I'm sure, and with better wind protection, they'll be away.

On the other hand, we have had a fantastic year for stonefruit, with peaches and nectarines galore. I've made loads of chutney and jam, and have also bottled some of the fruit, giving the Fowler's Vacola a good workout and filling up my pantry shelves tout de suite! We are now picking our lovely purple 'Black Boy' peaches, which are just delicious! Will post photos soon.

Unfortunately after a great harvest, the tomatoes were getting badly attacked by plague of green shield bugs. They were also going quite 'mealy', so I decided to rip them all out, salvaging the last of the fruit including any unripe ones, just in case I feel the urge to make some more chutney...! The last lot of ripe tomatoes have gone into a delicious Indian spicy relish which I have made this morning. It will go very nicely with a curry. I found the recipe on Pinterest - here's the link.

Spicy tomato relish


2 comments:

Ockduspock said...

Yum! Love relish! I've always wanted one of those fancy madeleine tins! One day :)

Cabbage Tree Farm said...

Yes they look so cute and are a really nice size for a little treat with coffee :-)