Summer Fruits Pudding

I was very lucky that Mike got an allotment cookbook for his birthday and it just happens to have a summer pudding recipe and we just happened to have some picked on our latest visit to the allotment....and we had some spare strawberries in the freezer to make up the difference!  How very fortunate!

We didn't have any Cassis, so looked for alternatives and found a Delia recipe which said "using sliced white bread just will not do!"  Well guess what Delia, it does!

Mike did pretty much all of it, I was at the other end of the camera and the professional clingfilm cutter!

As per usual, what we actually used is in (italics)
9 slices of white bread - one day old
250g each blackcurrants & redcurrants and 325g raspberries (460ish combo of blackcurrants, raspberries and strawberries)
100g caster sugar (just sugar)
2 T creme de cassis (juice from the berries)

line the bowl with clingfilm and then the bread and simmer the fruits until fruits are soft and sugar is dissolved.  The idea was that the softer fruits went in last, but we just chucked it all in.

Spoon the fruit into the breaded bowl and drizzle the juice so that the bread gets a coated a bit.  Cover the pudding with the last of the bread, then clingfilm, put a small plate on top with a tin on that, to weigh down and help the juice of the fruit get all over the bread.

chill overnight in the fridge.  Turn out and serve!

2 July 2012 - Croppage!

Some blackcurrants ready to pick, and lots more to come - we even got there before the birds!

A few raspberries are ready too - we've protected them against from the birds now.

The comfrey is growing like mad, will come in very handy later on as compost, but for now, we'll leave it to the bumblebees!

 Rhubarb wine soon - must go and get all the equipment (and instructions!)

Mike having a quick break, showing off our first turnip - we're slowly going to thin them out, by eating one at a time!

Now that the strawberry bed has been weeded (the grass tried to move in) we've got fruits!

 In this bed we've got the turnips, a few carrots, 2 corn and all 4 jerusalem artichokes (which the bunnies have taken a wee bit more notice of than I would've liked)

The first bed of potatoes is doing well - we've got 4 varieties in here (and you can just see the plastic bottle and toilet roll crops in the background!)

Here's what we took home - looks like it could be summer fruit pudding and turnip for tea then!