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My second attempt at making my own ricotta went well, but I scalded it a little (Little Bit waking up at a crucial moment was not part of the plan!) The scalding actually gave the ricotta an interesting caramelised flavour though. The plan had been to make ricotta gnocchi with it, so I went ahead with that but decided to use the caramelised flavour and have a slightly sweeter, more robust sauce to stand up to the ricotta. I made a pumpkin sauce with a little red wine and balsamic, caramelising the onions first. Using my own home made ricotta for this also had the advantage of allowing me to drain it in its little basket for a couple of days so that it was nice and firm to start making the gnocchi. I must say, it came out nicely! Ingredients: For the gnocchi: 1 c ricotta 1 egg 1 c grated aged cheese (eg parmesan) 1 - 1 1/4 c flour 1/2 c cornmeal, and extra for sprinkling Pepper For the sauce: 3 onions, sliced fine 1/2 head of garlic, crushed 1 tbsp olive oil 1 tsp sage, crushed 1/2 sweet potato, grated 2 c roasted pumpkin (I pulled mine from the freezer stash of pumpkin I put aside when it was in season) 1 red or orange bell pepper, chopped 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar 3/4 - 1 c red cooking wine 2 c water salt to taste 1) Place flour and cornmeal in a bowl and form a well. Crack eggs into well and add ricotta. Mix to form a dough, adding a little extra flour if it is too wet. Mix in the cheese and pepper. 2) Cut the dough into quarters and then roll these into long snakes. Cut the snakes obliquely every 1 cm or so to form the little pillowy gnocchi, then toss these in a little cornmeal to coat them (this absorbs excess moisture from the outside and gives them a little bite). Leave to rest while you make the sauce. 3) Heat oil in a pan. Sauté onions, sage and garlic over medium-low heat to sweat them. Add the sweet potato and pepper and cook for a few more minutes. Add the balsamic and wine and bring to a simmer. Add the pumpkin and break it up. At this point, the sauce should be quite thick, but coming together nicely in terms of the flavours. 4) Add the water and salt to taste and bring to a simmer. Add the gnocchi and cook for a further 5 minutes, until the gnocchi are tender but firm, not mushy. Serve, with a little more grated cheese over the top, optionally. I loved this dish! I wasn't sure until I started exactly what I was going to do with it, and then had my doubts mid-way in, but it was tasty, with nicely layered flavours without being heavy. It had some creaminess, and some tang, and some sweetness, and some umami. Overall a well balanced dish, in my opinion.

I tried tweaking the recipe a few times to fix the issue and then just stopped making them. soda and baking powder recently though for a refresher (good things to know when you experiment with recipes

Rosehips are ripening, and I decided to use some rosehip purée to trial a new muffin recipe. Hurray for a new rosehip recipe! I also decided to try something new with this recipe and baked these in the air fryer.

I know, I know. I post a lot of tarts. That is because we genuinely eat a lot of tarts though. They are quick and easy to assemble, (especially if you use store-bought crust, although I rarely do), endlessly versatile, and make a great light lunch or side for something... and I like them. This one was a case of "what do we have in the fridge?" and taking as little time out from decorating the Christmas tree with the family as possible. I also liked that, completely by accident, the colours were Christmasy. For the crust, I used some of my home-made lemon vinegar instead of water as the liquid, feeling that the flavour would go well with the courgette. Ingredients: 1 1/4 c whole wheat flour 1/2 c butter, cold 1/4 c vinegar 1 tsp zaatar 1/2 leek, cut in rounds 1 courgette, sliced 1 red pepper, sliced 1 1/2 - 2 c ricotta 2 tsp sumac 1 tsp thyme salt and pepper to taste 1) Place flour in a large mixing bowl and cut the butter into it. Rub the flour and butter together with fingertips until a crumby consistency is achieved. Add vinegar and mix, without kneading, to form a dough. Chill for about a half hour. 2) Roll out the crust and line a pie plate with it. Spread with a layer of ricotta and sprinkle with half the sumac. Lay rounds of leek over the ricotta, then arrange courgette and pepper over that. Spoon the remaining ricotta over the whole, and sprinkle the remaining sumac, thyme, salt and pepper over the tart. 3) Bake at 180°C for about a half hour. This made an excellent, easy and tasty lunch. I didn't have as long as I would have liked to drain the ricotta, and was worried that the tart would come out too wet as a result, but it didn't. It was lovely and light, with beautiful distinct flavours, all playing nice together. Definitely a keeper!

These Cherry Brownie recipes three ways- two cherry and almond white chocolate blondies and one cherry missing ingredients for successive recipe variations that I had originally set out to make - passion Two are blondie recipes, and one is for dark chocolate brownies. The original brownie recipe I grew up with, for dark espresso brownies, is my dad's, and he was teetering Try adding 1 TBSP of cream or milk to make the recipes squidgier.

As things are beginning to settle down again though, I have some exciting recipes to share from the last It ended up being a different colour than I had originally pictured, both because of the pectin and because

Looking into fenugreek a while back, I came across a description of it comparing fenugreek's taste to that of maple and the fact that fenugreek is sometimes used as a maple substitute. That gave me an idea. What about if I used fenugreek in something that often has maple syrup added to it, like pancakes. The idea niggled for a while until I finally tried it. The pancakes worked really well. They were missing a little richness to the maple flavour, but with butter or yogurt they were really tasty! Less sweet obviously, than adding maple syrup to a dish, and the flavour was more delicate, but very tasty. Ingredients: 1 1/2 c flour 2 1/2 tsp baking powder 1 tsp fenugreek powder 3 tbsp sugar 3 tbsp melted butter 2 eggs 3/4c milk 1) Combine dry ingredients, then gradually add wet ingredients. Add an additional splash of milk if necessary for the batter to be just thin enough to pour. 2) Melt butter in a skillet then cook the pancakes in two-tablespoon-dollops (or bigger if you want) over medium heat until bubbles appear and pop on the surface and it goes from shiny to matte, then flip. Serve hot with butter, jam, syrup or fruits. Or anything else you fancy. I really enjoyed these. They had a definite maple flavour but without added sugar. I enjoyed mine plain with butter, which gave them an extra richness that brought out the maple flavour. These are definitely coming back out! The only aspect I wasn't delighted with was the texture. They were a little heavier than usual, and I don't know if fenugreek requires a little additional liquid or rising agent, or if there was a mix-up somewhere. To be tried again I guess, and I will see. If you try them, let me know what you think!

We modified our standard cornbread stuffing recipe by adding a little orange zest to it, then bedded

I will still keep the other recipe too, but this is a nice alternative to have up my sleeve!

I checked a few of my cookbooks, hoping to find a recipe to start me off, but there didn't seem to be anything even in cookbooks I thought might have a cracker recipe (the Tolkein cookbook, as I thought homemade crackers might do for a Lembas reference, the Food DIY book, as it seemed inline with other recipes Here is the result: Ingredients: Base recipe: 1 c barley flour 1 c wheat flour 1/2 c + 2 tbsp butter