Thursday, January 2, 2014

Happy New Year everyone

Hope it is a good one for you and your loved ones. 2013 had its ups and downs for us so we are hoping 2014 is a smoother ride!

Christmas came and went in a flurry, with much time spent in the kitchen baking up tasty treats for gifts. I also made another chocolate and raspberry mousse layer cake for dessert on Christmas day:


I decorated the cake with a layer of ganache and then some fresh raspberries (from the garden), blueberries and chocolate sprinkles. Rather a lot of chocolate went into this cake but although it was rich, it wasn't sickly or too sweet. Had I more chocolate in the pantry I might have got more creative and put shaved chocolate on top instead of the sprinkles.

'Christmas' plums
 After enjoying loads of juicy sweet early peaches, we are now onto plums and nectarines.

Nectarines and plums
We have various nectarine trees, 'Queen Giant', 'Spring Red', 'Red Gold', 'Tasty Gold'. They are all good! We are trying hard to keep the possums off them, mainly by trapping. We are enjoying them fresh of course and as you'd expect I will be busy making chutney, jam, and bottling and freezing them too.

Lots more stone fruit to come as summer progresses!

The weather has been mixed, hot and sunny, with sudden tropical downpours as well. Hoping to get to harvest my 'Grosso' lavender sometime soon. I probably should have done this a couple of weeks ago before the showers started as it's better when really dry (the scent and less likely to spoil), also more flowers have opened than I would have liked but never mind, it still smells and looks pretty good!

Grosso lavender




6 comments:

Liz said...

Happy new year to you Bridget Wow you have done well your slice of heaven. The cake looks beautiful and so does the garden.

Happy 2014!!!

Cabbage Tree Farm said...

Thanks Liz, Happy New Year to you and your girls, sorry I have not had time to drop by your blog for a while.
There is always something to keep us busy here, if I'm not in the kitchen I'm outdoors doing something, never enough time though especially with a 6 yr old!
Hope all is well with you and you are enjoying the summer so far :-)

Aimz said...

Happy new year to you too! That cake looks delish & love lavender, I like to put a wee bit of the oil into the final rinse when washing sheets & pillowcases.

Cabbage Tree Farm said...

Happy New Year Amy :-) The drying lavender smells great inside. I felt a bit mean cutting it though, depriving the poor bumble bees!

Ruth @ Camellia Rose said...

Happy New Year! I too am hoping for a smoother one in 2014! Oh my god that cake looks awesome. Isn't it great when you can use your own produce too! My raspberries have just finished but today I picked armfuls of rhubarb to turn into chutney and also stew and freeze. Then there's all the produce from the vege garden! It's a busy time of year for sure but I love it!

Cabbage Tree Farm said...

Hi Ruth, I love rhubarb :-) Hope your chutney turns out well. I just made chutney using some of our many ripe nectarines. We're getting a really great crop this season (our first big one). Busy alright!