Cherry Guava Marshmallow

I grew up adoring cherry guavas- eating them off the tree in autumn and watching my grandmother make them in to exquisite jelly. The trees are really just shrubs and easily grown, bearing deep red fruit every autumn, that are simply laden with goodness.

The fruit ripens in batches so it's easy to gather up a bowlful at a time to make use of. 

By adding a little over a cupful of water to a pot of guavas and simmering the fruit until the colour has faded from them, you'll soon have a gloriously rich liquid- enough to make a little traditional jelly or even some marshmallow.

How to make guava marshmallow:

1 cup of liquid (as above) 

Add 3 tbsps of good gelatine (I like nutra organics natural gelatin that I buy at Bin Inn) and heat gently to dissolve.

That's a few minutes stirring over low heat in a pot, or 30-40 seconds in  the microwave.

Stir in 1/2 cup of honey and then pour into a bowl that you can use a beater in or use an electric beater if you have one.

Beat until the mixture is pale pink, fluffy and thick.

Pour in to a prepared container quite quickly.

I use a small square slice tin lined with baking paper.

The marshmallow sets fast so within 20 minutes or so you'll be able to turn it out and cut it.

I rub my hands with cornflour as I handle the pieces and then stack them in layers in an airtight container.

They will keep just fine out on the bench until you've eaten them all.

Sweet, but tangy such a delightful food/medicine treat.  

You can now press the cooked berries through a sieve or work them through a moulie disgarding the hard seeds.

You could make this in to guava ice cream, or sweeten and mix it in to some thick Greek yoghurt, or chia seeds and coconut milk to make guava chia pudding. Guava paste takes a bit of work but it is truly the Queen of pastes. You can find that recipe here. 

Catherine X

Feijoa Oatmeal Cake

 When we lived in Taranaki some 35 or so years ago I often made this delicious cake.

Back then there was no internet so we just thought of it as "our" cake that we'd shared amongst friends, but as I look up oatmeal cake now I realise that it's a tried & true old fashioned fave from way back further.

Our recipe has been stored in a handwritten cookbook all these years & I have just made it again for Rob's birthday. I don't think I'd change anything.

I have always preferred baking that was more "wholesome food" than a sweet treat, so in making a comparison with online recipes I had already halved the sugar content & it is more than sweet enough.

To make use of the feijoas of the season & to add interest & moistness to the cake I began adding the fruit to the mix. I'm sure apple would be good too.

Nice & simple:

In to a large bowl add:

1 cup rolled oats

1 cup of soft brown sugar

1 cup of boiling water

1/2 cup or around 100 grams butter

 a pinch of salt, 1 tsp vanilla essence

Stir together & leave to do it's thing for 20 minutes or so

Add 2 eggs- mix

1 cup of flour & 1 rounded tsp baking powder

1 cup dried fruit & 1 cup chopped feijoas

Mix & pour in to a lined or greased cake tin.

Mine was around about a 20 cm tin

Bake in a moderate oven for 50 minutes to an hour.

Do the old skewer test to make sure it's cooked in the middle.

While the cake is cooling make the topping. Such a tasty treat that makes all the difference to this cake.

Put 100 grams butter, 2 tbsps cream & 1/2 cup brown sugar in to a pot & cook stirring until it is golden & caramelized.

Add 1 1/2 cups of coconut. Fine coconut is good or a mix of fine & shredded. 

Stir & allow to cool. While it is still workable spread over the cake.

Some passionfruit pulp is a nice tangy edition to the topping if you have it.

Summary ingredients for the cake:

1 cup rolled oats

1 cup of soft brown sugar

1 cup of boiling water

1/2 cup or around 100 grams butter

Pinch of salt, 1 tsp vanilla essence, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp ginger

2 eggs

1 cup of flour & 1 rounded tsp baking powder

1 cup dried fruit

1 cup chopped feijoas or apple

Topping: 

100 grams butter

1/2 cup soft brown sugar

2 tbsps cream

1 1/2 cups coconut

Catherine X

Cherry Guava Ice Cream

It's a strange time of the year to be eating ice cream I know, but it seems that all the best ice cream fruits are in abundance in late autumn. Here in Hawke's Bay we have such a fabulous lineup: figs feijoas, cherry guavas, medlars, sweet persimmons, cape gooseberries, white sapote, kiwifruit, mandarins and so much more. One of the easiest fruit trees to grow in a home garden is the cherry guava (Psidium cattleyanum). An evergreen and elegant small tree that never fails to bear fruit, year after year.

I have written about making guava jelly and paste just here.

Every year I make at least one or two jars of ruby red guava jelly. Guava has the best flavour of all the jellies, I reckon.

My Nan used to make guava jelly, but you know I never saw her do anything else with the leftover pulp. A few years ago I decided to press the cooked berries through a sieve and of course you then ditch all those hard seeds. There is so much goodness in guavas- just what we need heading in to the winter months, 

This year as I was making paste with the pulp I remembered the guava ice cream recipe that my lovely dutch friend Margaret shared with me. She even gave me a little to try. The flavour is truly exquisite and the texture sublimely creamy, however, I can't quite justify the extreme sweetness of all the sugar and condensed milk that was in the recipe. So I made up my own version which I think will be happily flexible. I really don't think you can go wrong with it by adding a bit more of this and not so much of that. Next time I might try honey instead of condensed milk for instance.

This recipe is great for using up the half a jarful of jelly or paste that you often end up with when you're making preserves. Since there is only two of us I was happy to make a small batch so here's the general idea:

After I have strained the cooked fruit and used the liquid to make the jelly, I push the rest through a sieve. I then return the pulp to the saucepan and add perhaps a cupful of sugar. This mixture is then simmered to reduce (stirring often) for 10 minutes or so. If you want to make paste/cheese there's a whole lot more cooking to do so before you get to that stage take out 1 cupful of pulp, set it aside and leave it to cool completely.

Beat 125 mls of cream, add a 1/4-1/3 cup of condensed milk and then fold in the cooled pulp and a tablespoonful of jelly. Lastly add a splash of rosewater. Taste to see if it's how you want it. That's it. Freeze. This batch stayed soft and very creamy once frozen.

Katie X

Feijoa Jelly

 A few weeks ago when a man gleefully bought himself a large bag of feijoas from our wee stall he paused to chat and told me about how he likes to make a delicate jelly with the fruit. He uses a whole can of condensed milk to the blended fresh feijoas and them sets the liquid with gelatine. I just can't quite bring myself to use a tin of condensed milk so instead I used 1/2 can of Kara coconut cream, some honey and a little rose water. I soaked some gelatine in a little of the liquid, heated it gently to dissolve and then stirred some feijoa/coconut cream mix in to the warm gelatine stirring all the time- mix it all in together and then pour in to jars, small bowls or a larger one and leave to set in the fridge. It's quite gritty- feijoas will do that, but it's delicious. Adjust the amounts to suit. and gosh, use condensed milk if you want to!

Katie X

Walnut Caramel Tart and Baked Pears

Ooh this tart is amazing & just perfect to bake in April when you've gathered up a whole pile of walnuts & started drying & cracking them. I found the recipe originally @ thisNZlife, made the tart, loved it & then promptly lost the recipe again. Absolutely no other walnut tart recipe will give you a sublime result like this- truly. Thank goodness the recipe surfaced again a year later.           

Walnuts, ground almonds, honey & eggs make this tart sublimely delicious, light, nourishing & not too rich.

Before you begin making the pie- roast/toast 1 1/2 cups walnut pieces in the oven that you've turned on to bake 180 degrees C & when done set aside.

The pastry: 1 1/4 cups of flour 

2 tbsp of icing sugar, brown sugar or a fine jaggery

125 grams chilled butter cubed

2 tablespoons cold/chilled water

Either pulse altogether in a food processor, or rub the butter in to the flour & sugar & then mix in the water to form a firm dough.

Press in to a 23 cm greased/baking paper lined pie tin or several smaller ones.

Bake for 10 minutes in a moderate oven.

Filling- put in to a pot: 

75 grams butter

1/2 cup of lovely honey 

1 large tbsp of jaggery or brown sugar 

Gently heat together to dissolve the sugar & melt the butter. Cool.

Add 4 beaten eggs

3/4 ground almonds & mix altogether

Add 1 cup of toasted walnut pieces & mix in

Pour the filling in to the pastry. Now arrange another 1/2 cup of walnut halves or bits in to the filling.

Bake at 180 degrees C for 10 minutes & then for another 20-25 minutes at 160 until the pie is golden & firm to the touch. Cool before removing.

 

Oh Lordy- this was the time we made the tart 'cos Nina & Luca were coming & we ate it with green cheese!

A perfect accompaniment to the walnut tart- baked pears & soft cheese.

To bake the pears- halve, scoop out the core with a teaspoon, slice a little off the bottom so that the pears sit flat. Then scatter toasted walnuts over each half, drizzle with maple syrup & bake for 20 minutes until tender. Firm pears like Beurre Bosc are great for this recipe. Figs work brilliantly too.

The pears make a wonderful autumn breakfast food. Here they are served with thick natural yoghurt with loads of cinnamon mixed through it, a pretty begonia (edible), a baked fig & an elderberry, blackberry & hibiscus immune boosting pastille. You can find the pastille recipe just here.

Katie X

Acorn, Coffee, Walnut Cake

200 grams softened  unsalted butter

1/2 c soft brown sugar

1tbsp golden syrup

4 eggs

1/2 cup of ground acorn flour

1 cup chopped walnuts

1 cup almond flour

1/2 c white flour

pinch of salt

Butter coffee icing- an old fashioned hand beater is great. 

150 g softened butter

1 cup of icing sugar- beat together until light & fluffy

Beat in

1+ tbsp coffee, chicory essence

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

In one bowl mix the acorn & almond flours, add the chopped walnuts.

Cut up a cupful of dried figs & squeeze over them the juice of an orange.

 To make the cake- cream the 200 gms of softened butter & beat together with the 1/2 c of soft brown sugar. Beat in the tbsp of golden syrup & then each of the 4 eggs. Gently fold in the pinch of salt, vanilla essence & the figs (tip of the orange juice) & flours as above plus the 1/2c of white flour.
Pour the batter in to a well greased & floured cake tin.
Bake at 160c for about 40 minutes.

 ice with the above icing when cold.

 How to make acorn flour here. Or follow a much more clearly laid our recipe here: https://charlotteslivelykitchen.com/coffee-buttercream/ although, I halved (ish) the recipe.

Katie X

Sweet Chestnuts

Who would have thought that there would be a period in history called Covid-19 Level 4 Pandemic Lock Down, in New Zealand, that would last for 4 weeks+ in the year 2020? But here we all are, most of us staying at home and periodically having a wander around in our own neighbourhoods. I am so glad that it's autumn and that I live in an area in which I have been able to gather and discover all kinds of nuts and seeds. I was so disappointed to think that I was missing the chance to gather sweet chestnuts this season, as there are very few trees in the inner city that I know of. And then I remembered the Castanea Sativa trees in Windsor Park- in fair walking and biking distance from home.

These trees don't produce the most remarkable nuts, but if you look carefully you can find enough decent sweet chestnuts to make it worth your while gathering them.

Sweet chestnuts are easy to identify once you know that you're looking for- little baby hedgehogs!

The horse chestnut trees produce armoured, much larger nuts, known as conkers. They are not even actually in the same family as sweet chestnuts. There are three varieties that you're likely to find in a park near you, but they are sadly inedible. They can, however, be used much like soap nuts for washing clothes. 

If you cut the nuts open, peel off the outer brown shell & then cut in to small pieces, cover with cold water in a jar then within a few hours you'll have a well saponified handy washing liquid.

Now back to our sweet chestnuts- no matter which way you cook them: roasting in the oven, over the fire or boiling, you'll need to cut a cross in the top of each one.

I have worked with them all ways and have decided that it's just easiest to boil them.

Cover the nuts with cold water, bring them to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes, or until the cut skins begin to curl back.

Leaving all the chestnuts in the pot of hot water you then take them out a few at a time to remove the hard outer shell and the thin inner brown covering that surrounds each nut. They are only workable if they're still hot, so pop them back in to the water in the pot if they start to get a bit hard to work with.

Quite a performance, but worth it. Chestnuts have a very short shelf life- only 2 or 3 days but can be frozen for up to 3 months. They can now be added in to autumn/winter dishes or tossed in butter, salt & pepper in a cast iron fry pan- delicious!

This week I made a feijoa crumble. 

In the topping I added 1/2 cup of chestnut meal, 1/2 cup of ground acorn meal, a cup of white spelt flour, 1/3 cup of brown sugar & enough butter rubbed in to make it all moist but crumbly.

If you'd like to have a go at using acorns you can find my post about them here.

Katie X