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Rösti is a traditional Swiss-German food, so traditional in fact that the border between the French and This dissatisfaction led me to tinker a bit with tradition, and this, or variants of this, is the result Traditional with a twist. I find this take on the traditional dish infinitely more satisfying. There is veg in every bite and while retaining its traditional essence, it is lighter and more satisfying

For a long time, mead was something I had only ever read about in medieval literature, like Hrothgar's mead hall in Beowulf, or mead being toasted with in Arthurian lit. I only tried it a few years ago, initially in Brittany and then as mulled mead in Stuttgart. The first time I wasn't in love with it (but did like that is was called Merlin's brew or something), but then trying it hot and spiced in a German Christmas market, I really enjoyed it. When I saw Max Miller's episode on making his own mead in Tasting History therefore, I decided to try it out for myself. I ordered a 3l pickling jar with a water stop and gave it a shot. I only had baker's yeast rather than brewer's yeast. I thought this would prove too big an issue, but my sister said she had done the same and it worked, so I figured I would go ahead. I heated water, then stirred in the honey, brewed it for a few minutes and then allowed it to cool. When it was about 37°C, I stirred in the yeast, and then put it in the jar with the water-lock in place. I left it to ferment in out coat closet for about 5 days (the coat closet smelled strongly of fermentation). I then transferred out the mead and got rid of as much yeast as possible, and put it back in the jar for a couple more weeks to age a little. Ingredients: 600ml honey 1.8l water 15g yeast 1) Bring water to a boil briefly, and stir in honey. Allow the honey to dissolve and then bring the temperature down to about 37°C. Stir in the yeast. Place in a jar with a water-lock and then leave in a dark place to ferment for a couple of days. 2) Transfer the mead out of the jar, leaving to age for at least a few days. I pulled it out of the coat closet today to try it (I need to pick up a funnel before I can bottle it). I am afraid it didn't come out as well as I had hoped but better than I had feared. It is very acidic and has a little bit of a bitter edge to it. I'm not sure why it went so acidic - whether I fermented it too long, or if the fault is down to using the wrong yeast, or if I messed something else up...As a first attempt at fermentation, I am not too disappointed, but I am not sure what to do with it. It is not sipping mead, but maybe mulled? I will have to look into this and have a think. I've included the recipe anyway, so if you try it out, let me know it you have better luck! EDIT: I strained it repeatedly through about 16 layers of cheese cloth until the mead came out clear. I've put it aside for now, but I'll give it another taste soon to see if getting all the yeast out improves the flavour.

Still on our baking kick with my sister, we were playing with more Christmas cookie ideas. We decided to play around with the flavouring of sugar cookies, adding some cocoa and some Christmas Mix spice. We tried it a first time and found that the chocolate came on too strongly and the spice not strongly enough, so we tried it a second time, tweaking the amounts a little bit. To deepen the flavour and add a festive note to it, we swapped out some of the sugar for maple sugar. On the second go, we decided we liked the balance. Here it is: Ingredients: 1/2 c butter 1/2 c sugar 1/2 c maple sugar 1 egg 1 tbsp milk 1 tsp baking powder 1 tbsp mix spice 3 tbsp cocoa 1 1/2 c flour 1) In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugars. Beat in egg and add milk. Gradually add dry ingredients and mix well. 2) Roll into balls 1 inch in diameter and place spaced out on a greased baking sheet. Alternatively, chill for an hour, then roll out to just shy of a cm thick and cut out with cookie cutters. (in the picture above, Little Bit tried out his Christmas profiled roller - repeatedly so the shapes are a bit unclear, but lots of fun!) Flatten with a butter knife dipped in cold water. Bake at 190°C for 8 minutes. 3) (Optional: decorate with icing and sprinkles!) These came out very tasty! We talked about brushing them with melted butter, but forgot to do so while they were hot. They are also probably rich enough as it is, but maybe I'll do so at some point. It may be nice to add nuts or maybe orange, whether dried or candied, next time... Something to think about. Definitely best had hot, but they were still good the couple of days afterwards too! Don't forget to leave some for Santa with a glass of milk.... or some grog, if you have a sea-shanty-obsessed toddler. Just beware jolly fat men flying a sleigh on too much grog! Ho ho ho and a bottle of grog, and to all a goodnight!

These Cherry Brownie recipes three ways- two cherry and almond white chocolate blondies and one cherry and dark chocolate brownie recipes - are the result of multiple tangents after discovering that I was missing ingredients for successive recipe variations that I had originally set out to make - passion fruit, cocoa powder, orange juice - leading to the first iteration of the cherry and almond blondies... It thus wasn't planned out in advance, but rather assembled and devised as I went, with Littler Bit as my helper (she was more interested in taste-testing every stage than anything else. And in going through the cake decorating things and commenting on them, and asking if we could use them on various things. E.g., with sprinkles in hand, "These are for ice cream", and with food colouring, "Can I put this in yoghurt?", and with the almond extract, "Is this for cake or cereal?"). Anyway, assembled with multiple changes of direction midway through, this wasn't necessarily how I would have made Cherry Blondies otherwise, but such is life... as a Type C mom anyway. Having made them and being happy with them, but... the recipe kept going around in my head for days, so I decided to try two new variations side by side a few days later. All three of these wound up being quite different, from taste, to colour, through texture and how sweet they were. Two are blondie recipes, and one is for dark chocolate brownies. Recipes Cook time: 15-20 minutes prep, 30-35 minutes in the oven ~~ Portions: (how big do you cut your brownies?) approx. 20 brownies ~~ Difficulty: Easy Cherry and Almond Blondies, Take One Ingredients: 4 eggs 2 c sugar 4 TBSP oil 3/4 tsp orange extract 1/2 tsp vanilla extract 3/4 c (250g) white chocolate, melted 1 c tinned cherries, blitzed 2 c flour pinch of salt 3/4 c flaked almonds 1 c dark chocolate chips 1) Beat the sugar and eggs together. Stir in the oil and the extracts, mixing well before adding the white chocolate and the cherries. 2) Stir in the flour and salt until just combined, followed by the almonds and the chocolate chips. If the batter feels to thick, add a little of the cherry syrup. 3) Pour into a brownie pan and bake at 180°C for 30-35 minutes. Allow to cool thoroughly before serving. Cherry and Almond Blondies, Take Two Ingredients: 3 eggs 1 c sugar 1/2 c butter, melted 1/2 tsp almond extract  1/2 c (~200g) white chocolate, melted 1 c fresh or frozen cherries, puréed 2 c flour 1 c flaked almonds 1/2 c triple chocolate chips 1) Beat the sugar and eggs together. Stir in the butter and almond extract, mixing well before adding the white chocolate and the cherries. 2) Stir in the flour until just combined, followed by the almonds and the chocolate chips. 3) Pour into a brownie pan and bake at 180°C for 30-35 minutes. Allow to cool before serving. Cherry and Dark Chocolate Brownies Ingredients: 4 eggs 1 c sugar 1/2 c butter, melted 1 c fresh or frozen cherries, puréed 1/4 tsp almond extract 1/2 tsp vanilla extract  1/2 c (~200g) dark chocolate, melted with 1 TBSP milk 2 c flour Pinch of salt 1 c flaked almonds 1/2 c dark chocolate chips 1) Beat the sugar and eggs together. Stir in the butter and the extracts, mixing well before adding the dark chocolate and the cherries. 2) Stir in the flour and salt until just combined, followed by the almonds and the chocolate chips. 3) Pour into a brownie pan and bake at 180°C for 30-35 minutes. On the whole, I was happy with all three of these, although that does not preclude the possibility of more playing around with these in the future. The first variation of the blondies was tasty, with a very strikingly distinctive hot pink colour to them. What they had in colour, they lost in taste, though. Having used tinned cherries (due to the peripatetic nature of that particular recipe development, that is what I had on hand), the cherry flavour was less present than I had hoped, but the colour was brilliant. I also used a little too much white chocolate and too much sugar so they came out tasting too sweet to me. Having said that, they were most definitely kid-approved, with both Little Bit (who usually has less of a sweet tooth) and Littler Bit devouring them at any opportunity. I had liked the idea of using the orange extract with the cherries, and while it did work, I found that using the vanilla as well muddied the flavour-waters a little, so to speak, so I would strike that one out next time. Instead, I would add some orange zest to really lean into that flavour combination (but given my pantry scarcities I seemed to encounter on that particular occasion, I didn't have that on hand either. At least, not fresh. I do still keep Dried Orange Peel as a pantry staple). I would also use orange juice instead of cherry syrup to moisten the batter, leaning into the citrus notes and cutting some more of the sugar. Attempting to balance out the sweeter, higher, flavour notes, I added dark chocolate chips. Unfortunately, I added too many of them (I know? Right? I didn't think that should be possible...) So again, the flavour profile was a little muddied, and so in the subsequent variations, I cut the chocolate chip quantities significantly. Texture-wise, they were moist and squidgy, well within the normal blondie texture range, but I liked the almond flakes in them, so I kept those in the subsequent recipes. I am aware that nuts in brownies or blondies aren't everyone's thing, though, so feel free to just skip those if you so prefer. Overall, tasty, and I would make again, possibly just tweaking one or two things. Blondie Variation two, I don't think I would tweak much. For blondies generally, I have discovered that I prefer to eat them once they have cooled. Because of the white chocolate, I find that if eaten hot, the only flavour that really comes across is sugar. As they cool, more subtle flavours are allowed to emerge. In the case of variation two, the flavours when it was hot were sugar and almond, which were overpowering. As they cooled, however, I found that the flavours were more balanced. I would possibly still cut the almond extract a little to showcase the cherry flavour a little further, though. These were on the slightly cakier end of the normal brownie texture continuum. Adding a little more liquid next time would not go amiss. Despite this, they were lovely and moist and stayed so the whole time that we had them around - almost a week, in fact. The downside to these was that, using the frozen cherries, although the flavour was more pronounced, the colour was darker. Still visibly pink brownies, they lacked the pop of colour that variation one had. Maybe if I need that colour in future (like for Littler Bit's pink birthday coming up), I try doing half-half tinned and frozen cherries - get the colour and flavour? The dark chocolate and cherry brownies were delightful. The cherry complemented and deepened the dark chocolate, while the chocolate added richness and counterbalanced the sweetness. These ones were a little on the fudgy end of the texture continuum and quite sticky. It could have been that they were pulled out a couple of minutes early (what made me think that baking two batches of brownies back to back while doing bath-time and bedtime for the kids would be a good idea, and after a nursing shift, no less?) The other possibility could be the extra egg compared to the second variation of blondies. With the sugar content lessened, the 4 eggs could simply be too much. I might try these again with one less egg. Beyond that, though, and I'm not saying the fudginess really was even a bad thing, I was happy with this one. The original brownie recipe I grew up with, for dark espresso brownies, is my dad's, and he was teetering on the verge of mildly offended that I had felt the need to play with what is generally agreed to be a rather excellent brownie recipe. When he tried these though, he did succumb to their call and recognised that although possibly not the healthiest lunch option on his visit, they were tasty and addictive. Swaps and Substitutions: Try using different citrus extracts, zests or juices in any of these; just adjust the other extracts accordingly. I went with almond and vanilla in the brownies here, but orange could be delectable! Try different nuts, cut into different sizes to play with texture. Try adding 1 TBSP of cream or milk to make the recipes squidgier. Try swapping the almond extract and flakes for coconut. Book Pairing I am listening to The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon at the moment. Set in the late 18th century in Massachusetts in the wintertime, the story follows a midwife in her community. Right at the start, there is a murder, and the community is in uproar, people taking different sides. I am not very far in yet, but it is beautifully written, and I am completely won over to the main character's side. I just hope I am not betrayed by her later on! I wasn't listening while baking, but had been just before on my walk home from work, and so as I was stirring batter, my mind kept wandering back to the bookish world I had just left and mulling over where the story might take me. So far, it has been lots of fun!

Traditional Brownies with a Twist by my Sister Experimental Peanutbutter Brownies by me Vegan Pomegranate

I first encountered clotted cream on a trip to Cornwall with my dad when I was 8, and I loved it. Living in Switzerland, it is unavailable here, so it was always only an occasional treat on trips to the UK. And then I moved to Scotland and discovered that I could have it whenever I wanted. And I learned to make scones. Hey Diddle Diddle! It never occurred to me though - growing up with it as a treat, with it commonly available for 6 years in Scotland, or since it has again become an occasional treat - that clotted cream was something I could actually make at home. With minimal faff or effort involved. And then I read somewhere about how simple it actually is and I had to try it. I read a couple of recipes and other people's accounts of making it, and the difference between making clotted cream and cornish cream, and then decided to try it for myself. The biggest impediment was picking a time when I could have it in and out of the oven at low temperatures for several days. Other than that though, it is the simplest "recipe" I think I have ever tried. Here goes. Heat cream at very low temperature for several hours (10-12). Turn off the oven and leave in, cooling oven overnight. In the morning, move the cream to the fridge. Allow to cool completely for several more hours, then scoop off the solid cream. There will be a slight skin or crust over the top, which is completely normal. It came out beautifully! I can't believe how simple it actually was once the veil was lifted. There are a few foods like that that I've enjoyed de-mythifying over the last few years, but this has to be the simplest....I am tempted to start playing around with this a little, like flavouring the cream beforehand for example. I would also like to try it as an ingredient in other dishes and see how it compares to using butter or regular cream. And then, of course, I had to make scones to go with it...

Ramen is something my husband started throwing together as a quick, easy and healthy meal a while back and we have it semi-regularly. He usually makes it with miso and beef broth, but we were out of miso, and I had pumpkin I wanted to use, so I went for a different flavour profile. Not what you might term authentic, Japanese ramen in the least, but tasty! Be aware, this recipe makes rather a large batch. I sometimes have issues with batch cooking... It did reheat very nicely though, with fresh noodles or a little extra stock. Ingredients: 4 onions, chopped 1 head of garlic, minced 3-4" ginger, minced 2-3 tbsp peanut oil 1 1/2 tbsp rice wine vinegar 1/2 leek, chopped 1 pack mange tout, halved 1 head of broccoli, floretted 3 l beef stock 1 tbsp oyster sauce 1 tbsp ras-el-hanout 2 tsp Mix spice 2 c roast pumpkin purée 1 small squash, chopped 1/3c soy sauce Noodles sesame seeds 1) Heat the oil in the bottom of a soup pot. Sauté onions until translucent, then add garlic and ginger. Cook until fragrant and starting to char a little and add squash. Cook 5 minutes, then add other ingredients except for mangetouts, noodles and sesame for seeds. 2) Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook until squash and broccoli have reached just shy of their desired consistency, then add noodles and mangetouts. Taste test. 3) Remove from heat and serve as soon as noodles are cooked. Sprinkle sesame seeds on top. I was unsure how this would come out but I am pleased with the end result. It would go very nicely with a little fresh coriander, but I didn't happen to have any on hand. It would also work well with veggie stock if need be. Flatteringly, even my dad, who was over for dinner and an evening with the grandbabies, enjoyed it and went for seconds. Until now, his ramen experience has always been the instant kind in teenage boys' dorm rooms, and he has always complained that it smells like feet. His enjoyment of it, I felt, was therefore quite high praise.

Sweet potatoes are still inexpensive, which will only last another little while, so I managed to buy up rather a lot of them and then needed to use them (Oh! no! Not the sweet potatoes!) How else to use potatoes than a shepherd's pie. And if a shepherd's pie with sweet potato mash on top, then what to put underneath it? Beans! And then I found some sofrito in the fridge from another recipe, so that helped colour the flavours of the bean mix. Sofrito is a mix of blended onions, garlic, red pepper, green pepper, coriander, cumin and chilli. It is a South/Central American base used in cooking, the exact components and proportions of which vary. I also added beets to the beans. These I figured would help add some depth of flavour which a red meat dish normally has. The result was a little goopy because I was impatient with the bean mixture but very tasty. Ingredients: For the mash: 1 kg sweet potatoes, chopped 2 tbsp butter 1/4 c milk (ish) For the bean mix: 1 c dried red beans (small ones, not kidney beans, although these might work too) 1 tsp baking soda 1/2 c red lentils 2 tbsp olive oil 4 onions, chopped 1 head garlic, minced 2 beets, chopped 3 tbsp sofrito 1 1/2 c passata 1 tsp oregano 1 tsp cumin 1 tsp dried coriander 1 tsp dried orange peel 1 tbsp red wine vinegar Juice of 1 lemon 1 c cheese, grated 1) Soak the beans overnight. (I actually first brought them to a low simmer with the baking soda and then put them in my wonderbag, or slow cooker overnight, and then I brought them back to a boil before adding the other ingredients.) 2) Place the beans on the stove, add the lentils and bring to a simmer. In a separate pot, boil the sweet potatoes until mashable - 20 to 25 minutes (a bit longer if you chop them bigger). 3) In a frying pan, heat the oil. Brown the onions and garlic, then add the sofrito and the spices. Cook for about 10 to 15 minutes, then add to the beans, along with the passata, beets, vinegar and lemon juice. Simmer to reduce until thickened to a spoonable consistency (or less if you don't mind it a bit liquidy). 4) Drain and mash the sweet potatoes with milk and butter. In a large ovenproof dish, place a layer of beans and then spread the sweet potatoes over the top. Sprinkle the cheese over the top. Bake at 180°c for 30-35 minutes until the cheese is melted and golden and the two layers have married and bubbled together. This was really tasty! It needed the beets and the brightening with the lemon and vinegar, but the spicing worked well for what it was and the beans contrasted nicely with the sweet potato mash. There was about twice as much of the bean mix as I needed, so I set the excess aside and we used it subsequently in wraps which it was very well suited to. The beans were a little mushier than I would have liked. I assumed the cook times of kidney beans, which these clearly did not need. I would recommend merely soaking them overnight rather than placing them in a slow cooker, and leaving them alone until you start bringing other bits together the next day. I enthusiastically got them back on the stove too soon and they disintegrated. As a result, the beans could have done with some more texture to them. In addition to cooking the beans a bit less, I am wondering if something like cashews might not go nicely in the bean portion. That is just musing though. I have no idea. If you try it, let me know!

Out playing in the snow in severely negative temperatures the other day at sunset, we needed something quick and easy to feed everyone before heading into bath and bed routines for the Littles. Initially, we had thought of omelettes, then somehow, via savoury crêpes, we settled on sweet crêpes. I had some dried raspberries in the cupboard (they had been destined for some more chocolate flavouring experiments that I haven't gotten to yet), so in the absence of fresh raspberries (it being winter and all), I used the dried ones for a bit of a twist on our regular crêpes. Ingredients: 1 c flour 1/4 c powdered sugar 2 eggs 1 1/2 c milk 1/2 c cream 1/4 c dried raspberries, crushed 2 tbsp lemon juice oil for cooking 1) Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. Add the eggs and beat until smooth. Gradually add other liquids, mixing well until a loose batter is achieved. Stir in raspberries and lemon juice. 2) Heat a crêpe pan over medium-low heat (I have a dedicated cast iron one) and brush with vegetable oil. When it is hot, pour 1/2 ladle of batter in and rotate the pan to spread the batter in a thin round. DO NOT pour the oil in before the pan is hot as it will not spread properly or cook evenly. 3) Once the top side is matte and little bubbles have popped on the surface, flip the crêpe and briefly cook the other side. Serve hot. This hit the spot and was enjoyed by all. It's surprising what a difference a slight twist on a recipe can make sometimes. I personally prefer our regular ones, but Hubby and Little Bit insist that these are the best ever, so I'll let you make up your mind. Where do you sit on this question? Book Pairing: I was listening to Narcissus and Goldmund by Herman Hesse when we had these. It is a book I thoroughly enjoyed. It is the tale of two men, very different with different fates, and their effect on each other. Throughout though, I had a distinct sense of an echo of the Glass Bead Game, also by Hesse, which I listened to over a year and a half ago. I've not been able to put my finger on why. The plot and characters are different... Maybe it is just a stylistic echo, or maybe it was the same reader. I am not sure. It is amazing the difference that a reader can make to a book when you are listening to it instead of reading it off a page yourself...

Last night at dinner, à propos of nothing whatsoever, Little Bit declared amusingly that he wanted to make pear sorbet... with spices, maybe...and squeeze in some lemon. So today, that is what we did, although at the last minute, he decided against spices. What better occupation for a snowy day, with the thermometer at -10°C all day, than making a frozen dessert? I must add though, that having received a new ice cream maker for Christmas (the 30-year-old one from my parents finally gave up the ghost), I was not opposed to this idea. Below are two variations on the method, one with an ice cream maker, and one without. Ingredients: 2 c of pear, chopped up 3/4 c water 3/4 c light brown sugar juice of 1 lemon 1) Bring water and sugar to a boil, then reduce heat. Stir until the sugar has dissolved to create a simple syrup, then set aside to cool. 2) Blend pear, lemon juice and syrup until smooth. Taste test. 3) Set aside in fridge until cool, then pour into ice cream maker as per instructions. OR: 2) Place pear chunks in freezer, spread on a tray in a single layer, until frozen. 3) Blend frozen pear, lemon juice and simple syrup. Taste test and place in freezer. I had wanted to make this with either maple sugar instead of the brown sugar or a dash of maple syrup but discovered that I was out of maple sugar, and the only maple syrup in the house was bourbon flavoured, so I gave that a miss. On the whole though, I was very happy with both the sorbet and the ice cream maker. The sorbet was nice and simple. Most importantly though, the instigator of this whole thing was happy with it. Definitely a keeper! We tried it on its own, then also as a Sundae (on Saturday) with toasted almonds, warm chocolate sauce and whipped cream. Oh the decadence! I might still try another version with some cinnamon and maybe a little of something else, or an elderflower and pear sorbet, but that is for another day. For now, there is very tasty sorbet to eat.