Some new things and ginger cakes with banana

First of all happy new year everyone! And secondly with the new year and all new beginnings I thought that I would add a new topic of posts to my blog. Recipes. Its hard to have regular update of a garden when things take so long to grow, so I thought that I would start posting a few recipes on here as well to temp your taste buds since I really love to cook and bake as well. And with this I think the blog needs a name change too, but off to my very first recipe.....

Ginger Cakes with Caramelized Banana

Its quiet a simple recipe but it has amazing results

All you need is:

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking soda (Bicarb)

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground cloves

1 tbsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup milk

dash of lemon juice 

120g butter (room temp)

2 cups brown sugar (You could use white but it wont come out sticky)

3 tbsp water

2 eggs

1tsp vanilla essence

Preparation:

Pre-heat oven to 180'C (356F)

Its as simple as adding all the ingredients in a stand mixer, or even a bowl with a hand mixer and beat until there are no lumps in the batter. 

Spray out your cake tin, muffin trays, ramekin or whichever dish you decide to make it in. Just remember to fill the dish 1/2 way as the batter will rise quiet a bit. 

Bake for 25 min and check, the muffin trays and ramekins should be done at this point but a full cake might have to go for a lit longer. You know its done when a metal skewer poked into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Allow to cool for 5 min before turning out onto a wire rack.

For the Banana you'll need:

2 bananas

2tbsp brown sugar

To make:

Cut your banana into thin slices and place in a small sauce pot with the sugar. On a med-high heat let the banana and sugar sit until the sugar has dissolved, giving it a swirl every so often to make sure the bottom doesnt burn. Place on top of your ginger cake and serve. 

Tips:

• It goes well with ice cream or custard and even cream
• For presentation mix some icing sugar (Icing snow) With a small amount of water and dripple over before placing the banana on top
• I put some marigold petals on my cakes for decoration
• best serves warm, with a cup of coffee that has a tot of brandy inside :)

So there you have it my very first recipe I hope that the instructions are clear enough for you to follow and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do :)

Marry Christmas

I just want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!!

Hooray Veggies!

I bet my mother never thought that I would be saying that haha! But today I actually managed to, I want to say harvest but I'll rather say pick cause it was so little really, but the best amount of veggies that I have picked so far!

 At first I thought that snails were eating my tomatoes but its actually the heat that makes them crack like this. I dont care they still taste good. My one tomato bush is doing very well so I think I will get a fair amount of tomatoes soon. I cant wait.

4 Marrows, 5 tomatoes and a cucumber not to bad considering how my poor garden has been suffering in the heat. (Not to mention the dog!!) cant wait for the rest.

I cant wait for next year to plant my pumpkins, butternut and water mellons. I am going to put them in raised beds so I will post pictures of the progress of those when I get started. :)

I hope everyone had a good weekend.

Pickled Cucumbers

Since this is my first real How-To please go easy on me and I will try my best to explain it well. So today I decided to pickle my cucumbers. I thought that since I am not going to have a mountain of cucumbers I will pickle what I have now while the cucumbers are still in season and pretty cheap so that during winter I have cucumbers. Now the recipe is one my family has always used, but its not really a family recipe, many many years ago my father found it in a book, but don't ask me which book.

Pickled Cucumbers:

• 3L water
• 1L white vinegar
• 3/4 cups course salt
• pickling spice 
• cucumbers
• onions (Optional)
• 4-6 (500-750ml) jars

First thing you need to do is the most important. you need to fill a large pot with water and sterilize your jars in rolling boiling water for 3-5min. Lids as well

While your jars are boiling. In another pot add the 3L water, vinegar,  salt and pickling spice. (This pickling spice I bought in a box already mixed, but its a mixture of :Pepper corns, mustard seeds, dill seeds, coriander seeds, bay leaves and crushed chilli) bring this mixture to a boil. The pickling spice will colour the water a slight yellow that's when the brine is ready.

 

You can cut up the cucumber how ever you wish, you can even peel it if you want to, I just slices mine in rounds and left the peel on. If you like pickled onions you can also slice up some onions and add it to your jars.

 

Once everything is ready place the cucumbers and onion inside the jars and top with the brine till almost full. and that's it. You have to leave it at least a month before its good to eat  but its at its best after 3 months. This will make about 4-6 jars if there is any brine left simple pour it into an empty jar and store when you have something more you want to pickle simply re-boil and pickle.

I only had enough cucumbers for 3 jars so I have quiet a bit of brine left over (Should have halved the recipe) but now its there for the next lot of cucumbers.

 

Herbs, glorious herbs!

So herbs is what I started out with and they are doing pretty well, their growth was stunted in the beginning because I had bad soil, potting mix isn't for planting herbs they need sandy soil so that their little roots can grab hold and grow. The four herbs that are doing the best inside are my Marjoram, Basil, Thyme and Chives which is really lucky because they are some of the ones I use the most. My chives I keep in the fridge in a zip lock bag to use fresh but the others I freeze in water in ice blocks so that I can just pop it in the food as I cook. the basil especially because you cant keep it in the fridge and drying it out is to hard since there is so much water inside the leaf. I have thrown out quiet a few leaves learning this.

I have bought some more top soil to mix into the soil I have for my herbs so that they can do better.

First Harvest

Finally the moment I never thought would arrive! I have picked my first three cucumbers and Tomato! Their not perfect but thats the sign that they are from the garden. Tonight I will make a salad and these will be included! I cant make a whole salad with them but I can add to one and make it divine.

And I also picked some of my beans, these were the Star 300 beans and they really didnt yield very much. Im not sure if it was the weather, the soil or just bad luck but I have bought the Green feast beans to try so I hope they do well. The Star 3000 I must say they grew fast and can take a beating but I only had 3 bushes and only got maybe 20 beans per bush. So you either have to have like 100 bushes or try a new variety.The Greenfeast is said to have a very high yield rate so I will see.

I am still waiting for my Zucchinis to get a bit bigger before I can pick those and have it roasted with some onions, pumpkin carrots and chicken. Hmmmmm I cant wait.

Also if you haven't already seen, I have added two more pages to my blog; tips and fertilizers. So go have a look at those if you have a minute to spare.

I know that its probably best to get your growing tips from an expert gardener whose been gardening longer than 8 months. But sometimes its nice to get some tips from a novice whose getting down and dirty doing it and messing up from time to time.

Hope everyone has a good week. This week I have to pile the sand up on my potatoes, deweed (I seem to do this so often its like weeds rain down with the rain drops!) and also give my plants some sea grow.

Update 8 December 2013

So another quick update on some of my plants outside:

 So the garlic chives are starting to flower, these are great because they seed themselves year after year and each year they come up they are thicker and more tasty. This year I am going to save some of the seeds, so that if anything happens to these I can grow them again. They have grown well in a full sun place that gets more than 10 hours of direct hot sun. I don't water them they only get water when it rains and I dont often give them fertilizer either and they are thriving. I think some plants need to be treated like weeds.

At the top, my thirst back of carrots have finally sprouted up yay. Then my second batch of carrots are doing extremely well, with tiny carrots on the way. These carrots are about the size of a pencil now. I needs to give them some sea grow to help them grow big and fat

 These three plants are all tomato plants, a cherry tomato plant, red roma and yellow roma all are resilient to the viticulium wilt that killed everything else. I didnt know this that was just dumb luck that they were resilient.

 This is my best tomato plant that has survived. There are three others but they are about half the size of this bush.

 Some of the first tomatoes are finally starting to ripen, these bushes are a giant heirloom variety but the tomatoes are only about the size of a tennis ball. But thats due to the bad state the bushes were in for a long time. :(

 My Zucchini bush, I had no idea that the bushes got quite so big. And also there is Fred, my basset that is determined to eat everything that I plant. But hes been pretty good lately

And Finally one of the Zucchinis that are growing. I'll get to pick and get them soon. I cant wait