Not a cake in sight: How I spent my Monday

I could just make this post short by saying I spent it in bed but that makes me seem really lazy and I truely do have justifications for spending it in bed.

Basically, I just needed to.

Mount Grace Priory said good bye to the summer season yesterday, ending it on a beautifully crisp and bright autumn day. Although we don't close completely (we are still open on weekends) yesterday definitely had a 'last day of term' feel about it.

The beautiful Summer Peonies are nothing but a distant memory now!

It seems fitting that the weather today has shifted from being a bit chilly to rather cold and we actually had a frost on the ground this morning: winter is coming! I feel like I'm putting the summer to bed and embarking on a new season of winter projects and preparing for next season, which includes even more opening hours and the re-introduction of weddings on site! And if next summer is anything like this one, cakes will also be keeping me very busy. It's all so exciting but will be hard work.

The site basking in the Autumn sun

Which is why I took a day to have a completely self indulgent, lazy day in bed. It was amazing.

I woke up (not late,) had some lemon water (because it's good for you,) did a bit of online window shopping, had breakfast, read Harry Potter (book 3,) read some more Harry Potter, finished Harry Potter, did some Pilates, had a shower, stuffed my face with Domino's pizza, felt sick and that is about it.

I took this in OCTOBER! Can you believe that blue sky?!

I am not saying I won't have any more days off ever again but I felt like I had to get it out of my system early on as I intend to make full used of the next 5 months of enforced absence from work.

Autumn colours on the manor house

My plan is to use my time to make some serious headway with my business, and to work through all the ideas I've had, whether they are small and simple or the stupidly large and ambitious ones that were thrown around after one too many glasses of bubbles. I am going to dream big and explore them all. I want to work on my craft and come up with my own exciting ideas and creations. And most importantly work on my own self confidence when it comes to these things.

But for now I think I will dig out The Goblet of Fire and get back in to bed.

Vicky xx

Autumn Baking

Yes, yes, I am one of those people who love Autumn. Any season that makes it ok for me to get out my hot water bottle and drink hot chocolate in bed is alright by me. And the Autumn colours, obviously! My place of work looks like this in Autumn:

Image copyright English Heritage

If that's not a good enough excuse to get up for work on a dark morning, I don't know what is!

So as Autumn is slowly slipping away from us and the time for sloe gin and Christmas cake is nigh (actually, I don't like Christmas cake so I'll just have extra gin,) let's have a look at what I did with Autumn goodies.

The Food

Brambles, apples, plums & pumpkins. Three of those things I got for free right of the bush/tree! Amazing. 

The brambles came from my own back garden. We discovered the bush last year after we got very little gardening done due to the bad weather; this thing just started taking over the garden and then produce some lovely brambles. It turns out my Mum had taken a cutting from my auntie's garden years ago and forgot about it and had been cutting it back for a number of years, meaning we had no idea it was going to produce some delicious fruit until last year. This year we didn't dare cut it through fear of losing the berries. It is in the corner of the garden affectionately called 'the wild area'.

The plums came from work; we have a small orchard in the grounds that's made up of plum, apple and pear trees and bounty this year has been amazing.

My apples didn't come from the Priory but from a castle! Nearby Richmond Castle was also enjoying a fruitful September and I sweet talked our gardeners into acquiring me some. (When I made a visit to Richmond the branches were far too high for me to get them myself!)

Richmond Castle - Image copyright English Heritage

Sadly I don't have access to a pumpkin patch so my pumpkins came from Tesco.

Hagrid's Pumpkin Patch

The drink

Plum liqueur

After a successful bash at making sloe gin last year, I knew I was going to make more liqueurs this year, and because we had such an abundance of fruit I was able to make a couple.

Blackberry liqueur

I used this recipe for the plum liqueur and this one for the blackberry one. (Note: if you get minute have a look through The Boy's Club site - their cocktails are inspirational!) Nothing to report here as I just followed the recipes and both are still doing their thing! I did run out of vodka for the blackberry so topped it up with white rum. I'm sure it'll be fine...

The Sweet

One word: crumble. In our house the fruit is a necessary evil. We would quite happily (and have been known to) eat a bowl of crumble with some custard. I used James Martin's recipe for the crumble (110g/4oz butter, softened - 110g/4oz demerera sugar - 180-200g/6-7oz plain flour just lightly rubbed together and baked on a baking sheet for 15 mins at 190/170/gas 5) and then I used this BBC Good Food recipe for the fruit. Delicious! I love warm brambles - they remind me of when my Nanna used to make bramble pie. Even the smell gives me that nostalgia. Yum! She should get on that again.

Plum, chocolate & hazelnut cake

Next was this recipe also from BBC Good Food. Can you see I haven't done anything ground breaking? I am afraid using other peoples' recipes was the best I could come up with! I was unsure about the plum, chocolate & hazelnut combo of this cake but it actually was surprisingly lovely. The ground hazelnuts really came though and the texture of the plum was a nice contrast. I would recommend giving this a try for something different.

The Savoury 

Image copyright BBC Good Food

Pumpkin soup!! I have memories of eating pumpkin soup ata German Christmas market around a barrel after a few too many Gluhweins. Perhaps that is why I remember the soup tasting so delicious but it also came in a bowl made out of bread! Uh! Amazing! It was mindblowing.

I had to eat my soup out of a bowl and one day I had to eat it with Ryvita because I didn't have any bread. Not. On.

Guess where I went for my soup recipes? Well done - BBC Good Food. The first one was a little but onion and cream heavy  - maybe it only needed one onion but the onion taste is why my mum liked it so much so each to there own. The Thai one had such an amazing fragrance - it just smelled of Thai  It was little thinner than the first one but I think that's just the style of Thai soup but it certainly had a lot more flavour and a definite kick from the red curry paste but was maybe lacking in the taste of the ginger, although I think that might be my own fault.

So I might not be winning any awards for culinary originality but I have enjoyed baking and eating things that I have foraged for. Ok, so very little foraging took place but I found the process of baking things that I knew to come directly from the source extremely satisfying. And I just can't wait to get my hands on the sloes in a couple of weeks time!

Vicky xx