Carluccios Raspberry Meringue

Carluccio's is one of my favourite chain restaurants. The decor is beautiful and the food full of fresh italian flavours and lots of mozzarella! I also love the giant pile of raspberry and chocolate meringues they have in their window display, and bought one for dessert!

Here we shared one giant one between myself, my mum and Scott!

Ingredients:

1 large meringue ( or little ones, broken ones, whatever you like!)

red-current jam, or a jam of your choice

Pouring cream

fresh fruit/berries

Method:
Crumble your meringue into three bowls.
Drizzle with the cream. Spoon a few teaspoons of jam into each bowl, and finally sprinkle over a few berries. I used raspberries and blueberries as they were what we had in the fridge! Raspberry's are my favourite fruit so we usually have a punnet of them to hanging round.

The meringues were crisp on the outside and soft and sticky in the middle! Just as they should be. The only problem was they didn't really taste like raspberry which was a little disappointing!

It's sometimes hard to think of desserts to make when you haven't got much in, but anything meringue based is always a winner,  so I always try to keep a packet in the cupboard for when you need that sweet treat :)

Picking berries

The other day I went fruit picking (again) with Scott. Scott's Nana Hazel, was kind enough to let us raid her supply of gooseberries and red currents from her garden. It feels so good being able to pick your own fruit, there is definitely something very caveman like about searching for your own food and then eating it!

We used the gooseberries to make a yummy crumble! And the red-currents we ate straight up, and I used the leftovers to make some other desserts look pretty by laying them over the top!

This is Ollie, Hazel's lovely doggy. He was 'helping' us pick the fruits, and actually had a nibble on a few of the red-currents!

The colour of the gooseberries was so rich compared to the pale green variety you get in the supermarket. They were already nice and sweet so didn't need as much sugar adding to them as the store bought kind do.

I made a gooseberry crumble, and then a few days later used the left over gooseberries with some frozen berries from Lidl and made another one! Crumble is definitely a food obsession at the moment, I just cant get enough of it!

Strawberry Jam

So a few days ago I said i'd post the recipe for strawberry jam that I used for the fruit we picked locally!

It's a really delicious jam and quite easy to make!

Recipe from BBC GOOD FOOD:

Ingredients:

1kg /2lb 3oz strawberries

1kg/2lb 3oz granulated sugar or caster sugar

½ lemon, juice only

Place the strawberries, sugar and lemon juice in a heavy bottomed pan. I used the Cruset which worked really well! Simmer gently until all the sugar has dissolved, and then bring the jam to the boil testing every ten minutes or so to see if its set. Heres a tip: Place a saucer in the freezer an hour before you make the jam. Then when you think the jam is set place a teaspoon of the jam onto the cold saucer. Push the jam on the saucer with your finger. If the jam wrinkles you know it has set and is ready to put into jars. If not keep boiling and checking every 8 minutes or so. 

Once your jam is set, ladle it into sterilised jars and it should keep for up to a year!

(It will be too yummy to want to keep it for a year though!!)

We had ours smothered on toast for breakfast this week!

 With a trusty mug of builders tea of course!

Elderflower and blackcurrent Pimms

I've recently tried the new Pimm's flavour 'blackberry and elderflower'. I must say, I really wasn't impressed. I'm not the biggest alcohol drinker out there, but I do like a Pimms in the summer! This Pimm's however was very artificial tasting, and didn't remotely taste like the fruit on the label! The colour is magnificent though, a rich purply pink thats look even better when diluted with a little lemonade. We had ours served with fresh lemon slices and strawberries, and a lot of ice too!

The best part of the evening was the yummy scones from The 'Sugarplum Tearoom'. We had some samples to try (oh it's wonderful living next to a tearoom) so we had them with blackcurrrent jam, salted welsh butter and clotted cream. AMAZING!

I love how fresh and pretty the fruit and ice look in the jug.

My grandparents joined us outside to try the scones. It's always more entertaining when my Grandad's at the table. They both enjoyed the scones and they are a tough crowd to please!

Pick your own

Scott and I went Strawberry picking last week and collected and array of delicious British fruits. We picked red currents, Strawberries and gooseberries. All were extra yummy and we cant wait for the cherries to be in season to go again shortly!

 Here are the red currents. We only picked a few of these as I like to use them mainly for decorating other desserts, though Scott does like to eat handfuls of them. His Nana also grows them in her garden so I think they always remind him of her which is sweet! I love the colour, so vibrant and fresh!

 We gathered a lot of smaller strawberries for both eating on there own and to make jam from!

 There is something extra special about picking your own fruit, I think it would be great to encourage children who are not really  a fan of fruit to actually eat more as there really is a big novelty of seeing them grow, picking them and eating them. I thinks it's standard to say you eat more fruit than you put i  your basket... which justifies the price of picking your own! We used to have a massive field full of pick your own strawberries but sadly it no longer exists and we have to travel slightly further afield. If your local the pick your own nearest us is near on the Aberwheiler/Bodfari road. You can't miss the signs (a giant strawberry) and its a really fun afternoon out.

I will post a little about the jam we made later :)