Hot Cross Bun Muffins

In our family Easter is the holiday with the most family traditions. I figure thats probably because you aren’t rushing around sorting presents and feast food like at Christmas and you dont have to sort costumes and parties like at Halloween.

I was over at my friend Imens (I married an Irish Farmer) the other day for an egg painting party with the daughters. It was a revelation to the Irish and English moms there that you can paint/color hardboiled eggs which is something we of american extraction  assume everyone knows and does. Although Imen showed up my feeble crayon and foodcoloring on brown eggs  attempts with her beautiful white eggs, american egg dyes , stickers, gold leaf and beads. Im going to have to seriously up my game this year.

Adam Bunny and Chocolate Bunny minding our painted eggs

Easter here starts at 7.30 Good Friday  morning when I get up and put on the dough for the hot cross buns. This is the only day of the year I get up that early to bake.Then the phone call comes at 9 from Dad asking are the buns ready, so I tramp down to the castle with hot Hot Cross Buns with dripping icing  cos I was too impatient to let the buns cool . We  then feast on buns and coffee down there (my kids don’t love hot cross buns so most of them go down to the parents).

Hot Cross Buns

Next is the buying of dozens of eggs on saturday afternoon and the hardboiling of them saturday evening. Half get painted and left out for the Easter Bunny to hide and the other half get sent to mom who we have begged to make Finnish Easter Breads. These are our traditional easter breakfast (my Granny being Finnish an all). Hard boiled eggs are baked into a sweet enriched yeast dough basket and eaten sunday morning with lots of ham and  cheeses.Its not Easter without them.

Easter Breakfast

The painted eggs get hidden by the easter bunny around the house -usually just before kids get up as we have learned  that if you hide those and the chocolate eggs earlier, dogs and cats find them and eat them and then you have sad children and sick animals.

The kids also leave out their easter baskets which get filled with small chocolate eggs, flower and veg seeds, eggcups (we’ve quite a collection now) , coloring pencils, chocolate moneyand small stuffed toys (bunnies and chicks).The easter bunny does not give big eggs here as thats just too much chocolate.

We are all stuffed still from breakfast so about lunchtime we trek down  to Mom and Dads for “THE GREAT GIN RUMMY TOURNAMENT”. This is our favorite tradition.  As much of the family as possible gets together and plays about 20 games of Gin Rummy  then the scores are totted up. Mom buys a range of  Easter eggs  from super fancy Lily O’ Brien eggs down to a crappy  chocolate flavoured  egg. Then the winner picks first, then runner up and so on . The last egg left is usually fairly nasty. One year it was  candy Refreshers egg. But my brother Ed says  it has to be a nasty egg , if you are a loser  you need to know it and it will inspire you to improve, and indeed it does . The brother in law went from winning the Refreshers egg  with the lowest score ever seen in our house to Top Dog -claiming the Lily O Brien  in the space of one year. He spends a few weeks every summer in Armenia mapping some caves there with a bunch of anthropologists, archaologists and other palentologists. They live in tents and have nothing to do in the evenings but play cards. A few weeks of playing  gin rummy against Chess Grandmasters means you never need to worry about getting the crappy egg again.

Anyway- to the recipe.

I woke up this morning with a hot cross bun craving  but with a reluctance to  actually make a yeast dough and wait for them to be ready. Then a lightbulb moment. Take the elements that make a hot cross bun and stick them into the fastest bread product to make – a muffin.

The elements I consider fundamental to a Hot Cross Bun are Mixed Spice (beloved flavouring  of old Irish ladies), candied or mixed peel and raisins or currants.  We used raisins as we have our own from our grapevine in the Polytunnel. We took our basic muffin recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook and added these elements and voila- yummy hot cross bun muffins in a fraction of the time to make real buns.

Hot Cross Bun Muffins.

1 3/4 cup Flour

1/3  cup sugar

2 teaspoons Baking Powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon mixed spice

3 tablespoons candied/mixed peel

1 cup raisins or currants

1 beaten egg

3/4 cup milk

1/4 cup cooking oil

Combine the dry ingredients in abowl and make a well in the center. In another bowl mix the egg,milk and oil togetherand then add to the dry ingredients.NB mix until just combined. The batter should still be lumpy If you over mix you get a dense, nasty  muffin.

Put into baking cases and cook for around 15- 20 mins until golden at 200 degrees.

Let cool on a wire tray for a few minutes then  make a cross on the top of the muffin  using icing sugar and water or orange juice and water. Serve with lashings of butter.

The girls made these for me this morning  and we ate the pretty ones before we got a picture taken but you get the general idea. The girls also like these a lot better than Hot Cross Buns so I never need to get up and make buns again. Yay.

Hot Cross Bun Muffins

Dragon neck willow

I must say I absolutely love my willow trees. When their pussy willow buds are out its the promise of  spring to come and the end of winter. Its also an extremely valuable plant for wildlife  as its one of the first sources of nectar in the spring  for insects and  it supports almost three hundred species of insects through the year.

I was just out in the sunshine watching my willow flowers being swarmed by bees and hoverflies.

Hoverflies sunning themselves

The bark of the willow contains salicylic acid which is the main component of asprin and the bark has been used medicinally for thousands of years.

Peking Willow-the one on willow pattern delph.

Willow also has more than its fair share of plant hormones -especially rooting hormones.Stick a bit of willow in the ground and it will root  like you wouldnt believe . You can also use willow tea made from willow twigs as a rooting solution . Soak cuttings of other species of plants  in the tea for a few hours and voila.

Contorted willow

Willow cames in all  sorts of colours ( from black through purple to beige) and forms (weeping tostandard to contorted).  We have about a dozen varieties here. Some are large varieties for Biomass(grows 18ft perannum) and for building garden structures and others are more light and are used for wildcrafting and basketmaking.

Wiilow can be woven to make all sorts of  living garden structures , fences and sculptures.

Often the willow branches will then graft together .

Young willow shoots have the best colour and should be cut in th elate autumn to early spring  .wait until there has been a hard frost-it helps make the color more vibrant.

Willow is so useful as a biomass crop because it grows extremely fast so do think of that if you decide to use it in your garden.In the picture below you can see the willow fence whick was woven and cut this year.I didnt cut the branch thats sticking up at the end of the fence last year or this year so thats two seasons growth. Ginormous.

Willow thrives in damp and wet areas of the garden  and dries those areas up a treat . If its not in a wet area it will send roots out searching for a wter supply thus the problems with willows damaging drains. So be careful where you plant.

Although I love having such a large garden (and attatched field )it does mean it takes a lot of maintenance and planting. Where we live is called Derryclough -The  Stone of the Oak and this used to be all woodland but was cleared in the 1960’s.We are  trying to replant but its slow work. We’ve put in hundreds of trees but need much more.

Ive been trying to put in native species-birch, scots pine,oak,hazel,hawthorn ,rowan,elder, viburnum,willow and alder. Huge problem. The majority of trees being sold here as native grown, native species are in fact imported as micro plants(clones) from Holland and then grown on here. This means they are all genetically identical -no biodiversity and susceptable to full die off from a single disease. Also as they have been imported from Holland they are not  best suited for our climate and growing conditions even if they are grown on here.

Coillte used to collect  irish seed  and grew on the trees but this practice seems to have beem discontinued, so apart from growing our own, where can we get  real native trees is the question.

The Organic College in Dromcolloher, Limerick  has a nice little tree nursery with seed grown trees. Ive gotten some oaks from them in previous years  and they are happily growing about 1 ft per year. This spring I picked up a selection from their nursery of wild crabapples,oaks ,native aspen and poplar, birch and hazel. Fantastic trees and fantastic value.

Also try Seedsavers in Scarrif in Clare and the Organic Center in County Leitrim.

Go to your local market and look for the stall selling homegrown organic produce. The stallholder there will either have sometrees he’s grown from seed or knows a man who  has some.

Look at  the plant stall at local garden fetes, school fairs ,ICA meetings. Often you find seedling trees for sale (often in yougurt or milk cartons)

Ask your neighbours- theres always someone near you who’s a tree nut  and who collects and plants seeds and ends up with more trees than they will ever need and are happy to share (in my case its my father in law).

And if all else fails go foraging for trees.

Watch the sides of the roadways.You often find seedlings growing there which will be cut back eventually by the road cutter. Save them from such a horrible fate and dig them up and take them home. Ash and Elder  are especiallycommon on our local verges.

Elder  roots very easily and if you look carefully at the base of an elder tree you can often find a fallen branch which has rooted and is waiting to be cut off and dug up.

Alder has gazillions of seeds and spreads those babies every where. Look around the tree out to about 20 ft from the trunk for them.

Look out for willow at the side or rivers or streanms and take cuttings from them . look for long straight branches coming up from the base of the tree, cut this off and into snip into 18 in  pieces and plant these .Willow roots like a dream and grows like a weed – you’ll have 5-6 ft trees by mid summer.

Go to your local forest.Your trees will thus be suitable for your local  growing conditions .You can find seedling trees which are in very poor positions -edge of path ,too close to other trees etc, and the tree wont survive there (At least thats how I justify it). Carefully dig them up disturbing the ground as little as possible. Ive also found sprouted oak  and hazel seeds mixed in with leaves on  forest paths and at the edge of roads which will only be mouse or squirrel food. I rescued them and they are now 3 ft trees.

Have a look where timber has been recently cut in the forest  as there are often seedlings stuck in the ruts left by the giant machinery which need rescuing.

Do not take trees that have been planted by the forestry.

Happy Planting.

Majka my Wwoofer trying to cram all our tree loot into my car

Look at all our new tree babies

Christmas is the time of year cookies really come in to their own at our house  especially since I inherited such a great range of  christmas cookies cutters from my Grandma. My girls  are happy to spend hours rolling baking and decorating cookies  and peace reigns.

Aoife Ryan from Babaduck came up with this recipe and kindly sent it on to me as part of the Irish Food Bloggers christmas recipe exchange. Yummy crispy,spicy, honey flavoured cookies.

Athene and Belle spent all evening producing these lovelies.

Spiced Christmas Cookies

50g Butter
100g Golden Caster Sugar or brown sugar
100g Runny Honey
225g Plain Flour
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
1 tsp Ground Ginger (double this for a spicier cookie)
1 tsp Ground Cinnamon (or 2 tsp Allspice if that’s all you have)
1/2 of a beaten egg

In a pot, heat the butter, sugar & honey together, stirring until melted & smooth.  Remove from the heat.

Put all the dry ingredients into a bowl, add the melted butter, honey & sugar & mix for a minute with a wooden spoon .

Add in the half egg  and mix  until the mixture has turned into a smooth & shiny dough. If you have a good mixer use that instead of the spoon as mixing the dough is  hard work.

Wrap the cookie dough in clingfilm & chill in the fridge for at least a few hours until cold.

When you’re ready to use the dough, heat your oven to 160c  and line two large cookie sheets with baking parchment.

Place the shapes on the sheets & bake for 8-10 minutes until golden. 

Remove from  the tray and allow to cool completely before icing.

My girls used premade fondant icing on these and some of their stash of American gel icings which  our friend Emer (and her american in-laws )keep us supplied with. Icing makes the cookies a bit softer but still yum  and we used a bit of warm jelly to stick the fondant cutouts to the cookies

If you are very lazy like me mould the dough into sausages before chilling and when cold slice rounds of cookie dough instead of  bothering rolling the dough out  and bake as above.

Aoife says they’ll keep for about a month un-iced in an airtight tin -if you can resist them that long. We made a double batch and they are almost all gone already.

I finally remembered to bring my camera in with me to the market last weekend and took a quick run around to get some pictures of what I buy as presents for my family and friends so this post will be heavy on pictures and light on  words.

For Food Gifts I often  make up a wee hamper of non perishables.

Applejuice from Adam of Killowen Orchard which we give with our “Spices for mulled wine” -spices work for applejuice as well.

Chocolates from Chocolate Trish at Wildes Irish Chocolate

Chorizo from Olivier  -”On The Wild Side”

Whole small cheeses from Pete of ” Kilshanny Cheese” .Every April we get him to put away a big Plain cheese  in his cheese house for us . By Christmas its fantastic- almost fudgey textured and sharp on the palate. A whole  cheese doesn’t last long in our house.

And of course Amazing preserves from Us at The Green Apron. I usually give  our Christmas Chutneys and Mustards. Partridge in a Pear Tree Chutney, Apple and Walnut Chutney,Sugar Plum fairy Chutney and our Crunchy Honey Mustard.Katrina also has the cutest Finnish Gingerbread Cookies in all shapes and sizes (also a whole range of Gluten free baking)

Aruns puddings from  Green Saffron look  fantastic  don’t they.Locally roasted award-winning Coffee is available from Ponaire s Coffee house and teas are available from “Teas and Grind” and “Tea4You”Why not pop in a bag of Irish Harvested Seaweed

For Immediate Gratification Gifts Brid has delicious awardwinning pies

Vi makes the yummiest sourdough  Rye Bread and a range of organic cakes and breadsYou can pick up a variety of cheeses from Mairis Cheese shop , Pates, preserved fish, and terrines from Olivier, wines from Country Choice (along with about anything else you can think of.

There are lots of craftspeople selling their pieces  in the market. Local and Handmade Crafts

Here is some of Ruth at Nice Day Designs  fabulous  pieces.

Aileen with her beautiful jewellry Susan ’s  Nativity scene  and her Crazy camelHandmade hats to keep you warm and stylish this winter

Handcarved wooden pieces

For Body and Bath Gifts

Tobias from Nonin Herbal has a  range of essential oils and a fantastic Rose Avocado Cream for problem skin It smells divine and works brilliantly -I bough some for mom for her birthdayJasmine from Sunvale Soaps has a  great range of homemade and french soaps, salves and creams.

Last year I gave the sisters  each a chicklit book, a bar of Wildes Chocolate and Bath Melts from Sunvale . Ingredients for a  perfect evening.

There are plenty of Plants here for a lovely living present and lots of spring bulbs (get them in fast though)

Heres some of the other fabulous things available at the market Couldnt take enough pictures and get everything in .

Now you can see why almost all my presents come from the Market.

Oops – One last thing . I bought these for everyone last year and am wearing a pair now-invaluable

When I was little we knew it was Christmas because Mom started making the Christmas cookies. At the start of every December she would start baking a few batches every day, filling old biscuit and sweet tins with all sorts of bars and cookies. They’d be piled everywhere in the kitchen and scullery (even stashed under the couch), fifteen or twenty different tins and you’d have to go through them all to find your favorite. We all loved the sugar plums, Dads favorite were the cherry bars, we fought over the tree and reindeer sugar cookies and everyone hated the mincemeat squares -they were the only ones  left in January.

I love these Lemon Bars and picked these to share in The Irish Food Bloggers recipe exchange. We only make these at christmas ,which is odd now I think about it, as they are so good and not specifically christmas flavoured. But tradition is tradition -it would be like having christmas pudding in July .

They are ridiculously easy and the fresh lemon flavour is a fabulous contrast to the fruity stodginess of most traditional christmas food. I’ve tweaked the recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook here.

Lemon Bars

2/3 cup butter

1/2 cup sugar

2 cup flour

4 eggs

1 1/2 cup sugar

4T flour

grated zest and juice of one big or two small lemons

1/2 tsp baking powder.

Using a food processor whizz up the butter, 1/2 cup sugar  until combined then add the 2 cups flour and whizz  untill crumbly and shortcakey. Press into the base of  an ungreased 13 x 9 x 2 baking pan and bake for about 15 minsat 350 degrees until golden.

Whilst that is cooking whizz up all the other ingredients until combined making a thin custardy filling which turns  into a lemoncurdy yummieness when cooked.

Pour the filling over the shortcake and bake for about 20 mins until set and its browning a wee bit around the edges. Then cool and cut into 2 inch x1 1/2in squares . For a finishing touch you could shake a bit of icing sugar over them

In the bottle -the complex syrup. In the coffee mug- the easy syrup .Notice the colour difference.

I’ve been trying to make my mid morning coffee a bit more exciting for the last few months. Mostly by adding natural vanilla bean paste and muscovado sugar -with the occasional cinnamon hint. I really don’t like coffee syrups  as they are way too sweet for my palate and a bit artificial flavoured. I keep looking at the bottles in the store going- somedayI really need to make my own.

Today is that day. Instead of filling out a scholarship application,delivering jars or any of the list of tasks given to me by the sister for her wedding I spent the morning playing with Gingerbread Syrup recipes. Procrastinator extraordinaire -thats me.

This morning there was a tweet about someones recipe for making your own gingerbread liquer but since booze in my morning coffee is not an everyday occurance I figured I’d try making a non alcoholic syrup.

I found a bunch of recipes and dismissed them all to make my own.

Here’s the recipe in progress. All recipes in my house get written onto a clean spot on the fridge until we’ve finished tweaking them and then they get committed to paper. Heaven help the helpful person who decides to clean the outside of  my fridge before the recipes are all taken down (Mike periodically takes pictures of the fridge just in case a new fab recipe would dissapear).

Gingerbread Syrup

1Tablespoon cloves

3inches cinnamon stick

125g  Ginger root (I know its that much cos thats what the bag says. but its about 7 good fat inches otherwise)

1/2 nutmeg

2 pt water

1 t ground cinnamon

1 t ground ginger

1/2 t vanilla paste

2 cardamon pods (optional)

2 T mollases or treacle(use less or leave out if you wish)

2 T agave syrup(optional)

2T muscovado sugar Dark

4 T  light brown sugar

Whizz up the gingerroot with the cloves and  cinnamon stick in a food processor(grate the root if you dont have one and just break up the cinnamon stick) I left the skin on the gingerroot as its being filtered out anyway.

Put these spices in a big pot with 2 pt water and bring to a rolling boil and boil for about 15 mins until the ginger has lost most of its flavour into the water( pull out a shard of ginger and taste it).

Remove from heat and strain through a  fine sieve, a jellybag or a coffee filter. (If you use a paper coffee filter run some boiling water through it before you use it to get the papery taste off it) . You should have about 1 1/4 pt of liquid .  If less add more water , if more you may have to cook the syrup for longer.

Then add vanilla , ground cinnamon and ginger, mollases, sugar, agave,and the two cardamon pods (you can fish the cardamon out later). I added the ground spices now because they would have been strained out by the coffee filter and I want them in the finished product.

Cook all of this up for about 10 mins, stirring occasionally, until it gets syrupy and starts to coat the back of a spoon. It will boil/foam up so use a big pot.

Remove from heat and  pour into sterilized bottles.

Ready!.

used Agave syrup in the recipe to reduce the  refined sugar load in the  gingerbread syrup but since Im not used to working  with it it Im being sparing and only adding a bit. I may add more next batch.

If you hate Mollases leave it out of the recipe but it really does give a fabulous underlayer to the syrup.

If you don’t have muscovado just use normal brown sugar.

If you hate all brown sugar just use granulated sugar.

Im thinking that next batch I’ll add the rind and juice of an orange to the whizzed spices to make Orange Gingerbread Syrup.

The spices will settle out in the bottle just give it a shake before using.Keep it in the fridge and use within 3 weeks or so.

So first I made this with no brown sugar(to be healthy) and felt it was too bitter, thought I’d over cooked the spices and was going to throw it out. But I found and tried a different easy recipe which made me realise the only problem with my origional was just not enough sugar . Added the sugar and now its fabulous (although now not a bit healthy).

Heres the simple recipe  From Penny Golightly on the Domestic Sluttery blog . Its a nice fast recipe  and with a tasty result but the more complex recipe is well worth the effort as it is a multi-layered joy.

Gingerbread Syrup

• 250ml water
• 150g light brown muscovado sugar
• 1 tablespoon honey (optional)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 whole cloves (optional)

Make it!

• Heat the whole lot gently in a saucepan until all the sugar has dissolved. This will take less than 5 minutes.
• Give it a good stir, remove from the heat and allow to cool.
• Fish out and discard the cloves, if you’re using them, then pour the syrup into a clean jar and cover tightly.

I was teaching a workshop here today on “Foraging and Preserving the Autumn Fruits” so I yanked out all of my preserving books for the students to read.  I started leafing through the R iver Cottage preserving book and found a recipe for nasturtium pesto which I’d always overlooked before but since my front porch is overrun with nasturtium I figured I’d give it a try.

Love it . Its very similar to wild garlic pesto with the strong green flavour and sharpness and look at the fabulous colour. The kids loved it too and have just hogged down half of the bowl on their bread and in the french onion soup we had for dinner. I tweaked the recipe a bit from the River Cottage recipe to fit what I had in the house.

I’m so glad I tried this as I’ve always more nasturtiums than I know what to do with . I dont really like the leaves in salad and I forget to put the blossoms in salad. I have a few wee nastutium plants in pots that didnt make it into the garden this year so Ive now got them in the greenhouse to make this all through the winter.

Nasturtium Pesto.

Five good handfuls of Nasturtium leaves- I used small and medium leaves  for a more delicate flavour.

a dozen  fresh nasturtium seeds

3 oz of parmesan or whatever stong cheese you have -I used an aged gouda

2 Tablespoons Pine nuts

3 big cloves of garlic

about 100ml of Rapeseed oil ( or you can use  an olive oil)

1/2 teaspoon of salt or to taste.

Bung all of this into the food processor and whiz for about a minute and Voila- Fantasic garden pesto.

Im so happy -Im going to make loads of it tomorrow  before the frost cuts all the plants down and put it in the fridge covered in rapeseed oil where it should keep for about 4 weeks.

So go out and get some nasturtium from your or somebody elses garden and try it  -you wont be dissapointed.

After a long summer break I’ve finally restarted my menu planning each week and thus my posts on my market haul each week. We’ve pretty much been living from our garden for the summer and haven’t needed  any additional market food but since its the end of the season and I’ve cleared my tunnel of tomato plants and the marrows its time to start supplementing .

We picked up some Horse Makerel from Ballycotton Fishmongers.I’d never heard of them before but was assured you cook them the same as makerel they just taste a bit stronger. Alex baked them whole with a  Crunchy Mustard and Lemon Butter. Very yum but, and its a big but, they were very bony and had armored scales all down their sides- I’llask for them skinned and filleted next time. I also picked up some plaice  from the O Driscoll boys.We had those baked in a parsley butter then cooked up the heads and bones for a fish stock which became a really good chowder with the addition of some carrots,corn and marrow (don’t tell the kids but Ive been hiding marrow in everything) and two kippers out of the freezer.

The  Florence fennel,some of the white cabbage and carrots  from Steve the Organic man became a  very tasty salad with some beetroot and oranges to accompany the makerel. ,The cabages were cooked with butter and seasoned -fantastic. The swede and parsnips will give and excellent base for this weekends stew. Joy of joys Steve had some fresh figs I bought six and as you can see had only 2 left for the pictures – I love them so much. Maybe next week Ill buy enough to  actually have enough left to make a vanilla fig tart.

The ABC bread company were the source of the cherry cake. Just like mammy used to make,soooo good.

The mozarella from the  Real Olive Co will go nicely with the end of my cherry tomato crop with a drizzle of basil oil.

Good haul this week.

I was sooo happy with my shopping this week. Tobias at Noinin herbs  had fresh basil and new season courgettes for sale-summer is here. I also picked up some of his fabulous coriander- thats been in carrot salads all week and his new season onions.

This week is “Eat only Irish for a week”. week and so I tried to make an extra effort to design our weeks menus around Irish produce. Which was kind of hard – the origional menu leaned heavily towards potato as the carbohydrate.

The O Driscoll boys sold me 4 huge haddock and threw in a bag of fish heads and bones. This made saturdays fried haddock dinner for 6 and then two days of fish soup for 7 . Not bad at all for a tenner.

We picked up three different types of Petes cheese including a new one he made using Bellishes onion relish -excellent stuff.

For our salads this week we picked up another bottle of the irish rapeseed oil at Country Choice .It really  is excellent.

When I went to pick up my veg from Organic Steve all I could get were parsnips and turnip as almost everything else was non irish (except for salads which I have already in the tunnel).He says its the end of the season and impossible to source irish organic carrots or beets.When I went to get irish carrots in the supermarket nobody had irish so i bought non organic scottish but they were yuk- very watery.

Lots of lovely Irish apples from Adam the appleman kept up in fruit snacks all week.

I bougt a pile of herb plants too this week as we are dealing with herbs this week in my organic gardening class . I can never have enough thyme and my cotton lavender succumbed to the frost tlast winter.I also love the tri-color sage . Its so pretty even if its flavour isn’t as strong as that of regular sage.