The birds are back

For the last couple of months we haven't seen many birds in the garden. They've managed to find bugs and treats elsewhere. However, with the colder days on the increase, bugs and food are becoming more and more scarce and over the last couple of days we've seen sparrows and tits feeding on the suet balls we have hanging on our bird feeder.

Last winter, a large variety of birds visited the garden from blue tits and great tits to sparrows, finches, thrushes, blackbirds and even robins. Of course, putting out bird food also meant the inevitable visit from the large clumsy pigeons who always manage to chase the smaller birds away and then plod around under the bird feeder picking at the seeds the other birds have dropped until one of the neighbour's cats comes along  to make a tasty (or not-so tasty) meal out of them. Let's hope we don't have to pick up the remains of too many pigeons this winter.

It's always a treat watching the different varieties of birds coming to visit and trying to identify them and listening to them tweeting and chirping away. Welcome back birdies!

An abundance of apples!

The last recipe was about apples and I'm afraid the next few recipes are going to be about apples too. There's an apple and almond cake baking in the oven as I write this and a half eaten spiced apple cake in the fridge and we have an enormous bowl full of apples in the kitchen and more apples are falling off the apple tree outside. It's apple mania!

I think we're going to have to look into making some apple chutney and maybe even some apple cider (now that would be exciting though I'm thinking complicated too!) to keep these apples under control. The apple cake recipes don't use a lot of apples so next week's task is finding a recipe which uses an abundance of apples.

In the meantime, here is the spiced apple cake recipe which I found on the Channel 4 website and is one of Gordon Ramsay's recipes. Talking about Gordon Ramsay I'm still sulking about the fact that La Garrigue, the French Bistro in Edinburgh, didn't win the French restaurant heat in his Best Restaurant series. For me, they were by far the better French restaurant. I'm also sorry that we never got to go to the restaurant when we were in Edinburgh in August. Next time!

In the original recipe the apple mixture is divided up into small baking dishes and a piping bag is used to squeeze the sponge mixture on top but as we didn't have small baking dishes (or a piping bag!) we opted for placing it all into one large baking dish.

(Note: If you have self-raising flour you can substitute the 125g plain flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder and pinch of salt with 125g self-raising flour)

Spiced apple cake

Ingredients

For the sponge

125g plain flour
50g butter

1 tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

2 tbsp caster sugar
1tsp vanilla essence

1 egg

100ml milk (or enough to bring mixture up to 110ml)

1 orange zest

For the apple mixture

4 apples

50g unsalted butter

2 tbsp honey

100g dates, diced

1tsp ground cinnamon

Flaked almonds for sprinkling

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.

2. Sift the flour, baking powder, salt and caster sugar into a large mixing bowl.

3. Cut the butter into cubes and rub together into the flour mixture with your fingers until it resembles bread crumbs. (Licking your fingers after doing this is a very tasty treat!)

4. Beat the egg in a measuring jug with the vanilla essence then add the milk so the mixture reaches the 100ml mark. Add the milk mixture to the flour mixture, add a pinch of the orange zest and mix together.

5. Peel, core and dice the apples. Add the butter to a large deep frying pan and toss the apples into the butter mixture and then add the honey and mix through again.

6. Add the chopped dates, cinnamon and the rest of the orange zest to the apple mixture. Cook for a few minutes making sure the apples are evenly coated in the honey.

7. Add the apples to a baking dish and pour the sponge mixture on top.

8. Scatter the sponge with flaked almonds and bake in the oven for 18 minutes until golden brown on top.

9. Dust with icing sugar and serve with vanilla ice cream or double cream or custard!

Winter is here...

The clocks have gone back. That's it. It might only be a mild 16 degrees and the sky might be blue with bright sunshine and the garden might still be very green and the banana trees might still have their leaves but none of that matters because as soon as the clocks go back that one precious little hour at the end of October, that's it for me. It's winter.

Apart from sulking at the fact that it's dark at 5 o'clock in the afternoon it's also time to rake up all the leaves, clean out the greenhouse, plant violas, cyclamens and pansies and curl up with warm soups, hot chocolates and my early winter favourite - mulled wine! I think we'll have a go at preparing our own mulled wine this year instead of buying the usual sachet filled with cloves and cinnamon. Yes, this year we'll create our own little bundle of spicy goodness to place in a pot of warming red wine. Mmm...delicious!

Anyway, before I get carried away thinking about warm spicy wine, onto something not very warm  at all. A few days ago we decided to make a Waldorf salad with the apples from the apple tree. There are so many apples on there at the moment and so many shapes and sizes too. Some extra large ones to some tiny little baby ones and all sorts of shapes too as some have grown in peculiar places like squashed between small little gaps in the branches so they're plump on one side, skinny in the middle and plump again at the end. I suppose that's what happens when you try to grow too much in a tiny space like ours. So with an apple corer in one hand and a couple of unusually-shaped apples in another we decided to desert the sweet for the savoury and make a winter Waldorf salad.

This is one of the simplest recipes I could find. Some recipes use yoghurt instead of mayonnaise but having recently invested in a very large jar of garlic mayonnaise we decided to add a tiny twist to the recipe by opting for garlic mayonnaise instead of ordinary mayonnaise.

Wintery Waldorf salad


Ingredients
2 large (round or not very round) apples
4 tbsp garlic mayonnaise
1 tbsp French Dijon mustard
2 stalks of celery
1 tbsp freshly-squeezed lemon juice
Walnuts, generous helping
Watercress, a handful

Method
1. Core the apples and cut into slices and then mix with the lemon juice to prevent from browning.

2. Cut the celery sticks into chunks and add to the apples.

3. Mix the mayonnaise and mustard together in a salad bowl and then add the apples and celery and toss together until well coated.

4. Sprinkle the walnuts and watercress on top. Crunchy and delicious!