Delicious Summery Lavender Shortbread
Home-Made Lavender Sugar Recipe
Lavender Sugar is one of those things I’ve always looked at and loved the idea of, but never really known what to do with. I’ve always liked crystallised lavender – it’s both pretty and tasty – but aside from medicinal or household use, I’ve never really known how to actually use lavender in food. Partly due to its strong flavour and partly due to its very floral flavour, it’s something you have to use with care, but should definitely use!
Making lavender sugar couldn’t really be simpler – the two ingredients are in the name, after all. If you don’t have a food processor you can just mix the two and stir, but I like making the sugar just a little finer, so it’s not so crunchy. Be careful though – I don’t like making it icing sugar either! Just a finely granulated sugar is perfect.
Leave the lavender for a week or so, allowing the flavours to infuse thoroughly into the sugar. You can make Lavender Sugar ahead as a hostess gift, Christmas gifts, wedding favours and other gifting opportunities, and even include a recipe card or two with the jar. It’s a cheap and beautiful gift to make!
Make the Lavender Sugar two weeks before you’re going to gift it, and make sure to leave instructions to use withing 9 -12 months, so aside from drying out, I can’t image the lavender would go bad!
Recipe for Lavender Sugar
Lavender Sugar Recipe
Recipe Type: Dessert, Sweet, Condiment
Cuisine: Foraged
Author:
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 1kg
Ingredients
- 2 tsp lavender flowers
- 1kg white sugar
Instructions
- Use a fork or your hands to remove the flowers from the stalk
- Add them to the food processor
- Add the sugar and blend together – depending on your food processor, adjust your speed to make sure you don’t end up with icing sugar.
- In the Thermomix, hit the Turbo button 2 – 3 times quickly.
- Decant the sugar into jars, and seal tightly.
PIN FOR LATER:
Soybean or Broad Bean Salad
I have a grave and lifelong dislike for beans, especially the tinned variety, but I have developed a love for soybeans, sometimes called soyabeans. Aside from planting some Edamame beans, I’ve discovered that Waitrose sell them in the pods, or anonymous ‘Soybeans’ for £1.50 a bag of 400g! This, in my apparently boring life, has been a very exciting discovery.
Now, soybeans need a longer boil than regular beans to kill off toxins. The packaging on the beans say Microwave for 3 minutes, which I find confusing, but okay, I don’t have a microwave. For this recipe then, I’ve done an 8 minute boil at Varoma temp (120C/248F) to hopefully balance that out, but more importantly, to cook the beans – if I was cooking from frozen, I’d probably go for 10 minutes.
While this recipe is made with dill, and is simply “I want the same again tomorrow” good, the beans are nice with a dash of mint too. Just go lightly, you don’t need much as you don’t want it to overpower the unique Edamame flavour.
Another thing with this salad is that you can do the Feta thing two ways: mix everything, then add the beans, or mix everything then add the Feta. I prefer the first way as the Feta spreads and becomes a dressing of sorts for the beans. The second way, however, is a little ‘neater’ as the Feta doesn’t ‘melt’ as much as quickly. It’s your call.
Soybean or Broad Bean Salad
Author:
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 3-4
Ingredients
- 400g shelled Fava/Broad/Soy or Edamame beans
- 4 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tbsp dry dill
- 100g Feta cheese
- Salt & Pepper to taste
Instructions
Thermomix Recipe
- Fill the Thermomix to the max line with boiling water.
- Place the internal steamer basket
- Add the beans
- Cook 8 minutes/Varoma/ Speed 4 No MC
- While that’s cooking, add the olive oil, lemon juice, dill, salt and pepper and Feta to a serving dish and mix well.
- Drain the beans and allow to cool a little before stirring in to the dressing in the serving bowl. Use a fork to combine it all.
- Serve warm or cold as a snack or a side. Either way it’s wonderful!
One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish – Savoury Crackers
This little One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish project was a labour of love! The resulting savoury crackers were fairly stunning though, we think!
If you know Dr Seuss, you know this book title, I think? One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.
Bizarrely, despite the yellow colouring of the text on Two Fish (on our version of the book), there’s no ‘yellow fish’ reference in the book, but there is a black fish. This may seem irrelevant, except it’s not, when you’re trying to bake multi-coloured and multi-flavoured themed fish crackers!
I know my US friends have something called Goldfish crackers, but we don’t have anything like that, so I had to look for the smallest cookie cutter I could find. I did, in the end, find this one.
I used my regular crackers recipe, and made up a batch of the dough.
Split the dough into equal sizes of the colours you’re going to use. 
I used black, green, yellow, red and blue – just a few drops of a gel based food colouring* worked well so it doesn’t affect either the flavour or make it too wet.
- For flavouring the black fish, I used black onion seed but I think Aniseed (almost licorice in flavour) would work too.
- For the green fish, I immediately opted for basil, but I thought chive might work well too. And possibly some cheese, but that would reduce the shelf life of the crackers.
- Yellow fish suit garlic powder or onion powder – I prefer powders, again for the shelf life extending.
- The red fish had some smoked paprika, but tomato paste would be good too, or chilli if that’s your thing.
- For blue I went with the sea theme and just sprinkled some sea salt on but these are already fairly salty, so don’t overdo it.
If you’re using the same bowl and don’t want to wash between each colour mixing, do the yellow first, then the blue, followed by the green, then the red and then black.
One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish – Savoury Crackers
Recipe Type: Snack, Baked, Book Food
Cuisine: Savoury
Author:
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: lots
If you use a larger cookie cutter, you’ll take a lot less time than an hour. The mixing of the dough itself takes less than 5 minutes. With these tiny fish 3 – 4 minutes of baking is sufficient (I use a stone try, so just try one to be sure it’s cooked if you use steel or glass.)
Ingredients
- 520g (4 cups) Plain Flour
- 10g (2tsp) Salt
- 4tbs olive oil
- 250g (1 cup) water
- Extras
- 1-2 teaspoons each of:
- Drieid Basil
- Black Onion Seeds
- Garlic or Onion Powder
- Sea Salt
- Smoked Paprika
- Red, Green, Blue, Yellow and Black food colouring
Instructions
Thermomix Recipe
- Heat the oven to 180C/350F
- Add all the ingredients to the Thermomix bowl
- Mix 10 Seconds/ Speed 5 till all mixed
- Then mix 1 Minute/Speed 3
- Split the dough into 5 equal balls
- Add one ball and its extras and colouring back into the Thermomix bowl and mix 10 Seconds/ Speed 8.
- Sprinkle flour on a clean surface and roll out the dough as thin as you can.
- Cut into shapes using a cookie cutter. Combine the left over excess, roll out and repeat, until all the dough is used.
- Repeat till all the colours are done.
- Bake for 5-8 minutes, but these fish are tiny so they don’t need long. Keep and eye on them.
- Loosen the fish from the baking tray as soon as possible, but leave to cool so they can crisp up. Transfer to an airtight container where they should last for a few days. If they lose their crispness, pop them in the oven for a few minutes again.
Regular Instructions
- Heat the oven to 180C/350F
- Add all the ingredients to a food processor and mix till well combined and pliable.
- Split the dough into 5 equal balls
- Add one ball and its extras and colouring back into the food processor and mix till it’s well combined.
- Sprinkle flour on a clean surface and roll out the dough as thin as you can.
- Cut into shapes using a cookie cutter. Combine the left over excess, roll out and repeat, until all the dough is used.
- Repeat till all the colours are done.
- Bake for 5-8 minutes, but these fish are tiny so they don’t need long. Keep and eye on them. Loosen the fish from the baking tray as soon as possible, but leave to cool so they can crisp up. Transfer to an airtight container where they should last for a few days. If they lose their crispness, pop them in the oven for a few minutes again.
Pin This Post:
*This post contains affiliate links. You will not be charged for purchasing through these links.
Chia Mocha Recipe
One of the recipes in this month’s Degustabox was a Chia Mocha, to go with the chia seed samples from The Chia Co. Even though I’m not normally a fan of textured liquids – I don’t even like lumps in my soup – I was keen to try this recipe, because I have a whole pot of chia seeds I don’t really know what to do with! I bought them because I know chia seeds are supposed to be very good for you, then couldn’t figure out what to do with them as I’m not overly keen on either chia jam or chia porridge – too lumpy for me! This recipe was quite surprising though, and is perfect for lovers of coffee with chocolate, or chocolate with coffee – whichever you see a mocha as!
If you don’t give this a good whizz in a food processor, the end result is a lumpy sort of drink – like bubble tea, but really really small bubbles. It’s drinkable if you don’t dislike the texture. 
If you do mix it enough to break down the chia, you’ll end up with a thicker, smoother drink. 
This Chia Mocha is easily adaptable. I changed it to coffee for one, since I am drinking it alone. I just halved the original recipe’s ingredients. I also made it in the Thermomix, but you can use any food processor. I think it would be simple enough to adjust to your tastes. For example if making it again, I’d probably use regular cows milk instead of coconut milk as I prefer a whiter, lighter coffee. If you’re used to black coffee or nut milks, this will be perfectly fine for you!
The chia seeds will cause the drink to thicken up a bit, making a comforting, but invigorating and filling drink.
Here’s the original recipe from Degustabox and below is my adapted to a single serving version.
Chia Mocha Recipe
Recipe Type: Drinks
Author:
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 1 cup
Ingredients
- 1 cup/250ml/250g prepared coffee (instant or filtered, as you prefer)
- 80ml/80g coconut milk
- 1 teaspoon cacao powder or cocoa
- 1 teaspoon chia seeds
- 1 tsp coconut oil
- 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon honey or other sweetener (I used Natvia)
Instructions
- Add the all the ingredients to the Thermomix
- Put the MC in place
- Mix 100C/Speed 5/ 4 Minutes
- Make sure the MC is still in place, then Speed 7/30 seconds
- Pour and enjoy
Pin It For Later:
Chia Raspberry Cacao Nib Peanut Butter Slice
This peanut butter slice is adapted from the original Degustabox The Chia Co recipe. I had to make some changes to it as my kids wouldn’t eat cranberries if they were the last food on earth, and human survival depended on them. So I went for the freeze dried raspberries in the cupboard, and filled them out with some cacoa nibs for a raspberry and chocolate flavour to this ‘slice’ which could also quite easily be called a flapjack, except it has no sugar or butter and isn’t baked.
So, if you want a sugar free, butter free, no-bake flapjack, congratulations. You’ve found it in the form of a peanut butter slice.
I must then immediately caveat that by saying that in the 0 – 4C temperatures we’re having at the moment, these hold really well straight out the fridge. It’s likely that in hot temperatures, you could end up with a delicious peanut butter muesli. Try it and let me know?
Here’s the original recipe from Degustabox:
And here’s the adapted peanut butter slice version.
Chia Raspberry Cacao Nib Peanut Butter Slice
Recipe Type: Snack
Cuisine: Healthy, Free From
Author:
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 20 bars
Ingredients
- 70g whole almonds, roasted
- 150g oats, toasted
- 75g raisins
- 50g desiccated coconut
- 50g cacao nibs
- 5g freeze dried raspberries
- 2 1/2 tbsp chia seeds (about 15g)
- 105g honey
- 100g smooth peanut butter
Instructions
- Pre heat the oven to 160C (320F)
- Place the oats on a baking tray and toast for 15 – 20 minutes. Keep an eye on it so that it doesn’t burn. On a separate tray, toast almonds for 10 – 12 mins, allowing to cool slowly.
- Add the almonds to the Thermomix, pulse quickly twice.
- Add oats, raisins, coconut, cacao nibs, raspberries, chia seeds, honey and peanut butter.
- Mix reverse/speed 4/ 2 minutes
- If you’re not using a pan with a removable base, line a 20cmx20cm tray or pan with baking paper, tip the mixture in and press down into the corners, flattening the mixture to make it even.
- Cover with cling film or plastic wrap and place in the fridge for at least 3 hours.
- Once it’s set, remove, slice and cut into bars or bites.
- Store in the fridge.
These are easily adaptable and are very tasty. They make fabulous breakfast bars on the go and can hold a plethora of hidden healthy foods that might not otherwise go down well. They are very filling and they freeze well too, so you can make a huge batch, and keep some in the fridge and some in the freezer, so they’re ready when you need them.
Hard Boiled Honey Sweets, AKA Honey Balls – Outlander #BookFood
There’s a passage in Dragonfly in Amber that always catches my attention when I read it:
“We stayed locked together, not speaking, until my eye suddenly fell on the other small, yellowish lumps that Jamie had removed from his sporran.
‘What on earth are those things, Jamie?’ I asked, letting go of him long enough to point.
‘Och, those? They’re honey balls, Sassenach.’ He picked up one of the objects dusting at it with his fingers. ‘Mrs.Gibson in the village gave them to me. Verra good, though they got a bit dusty in my sporran, I’m afraid.’ He held out his open hand to me, smiling. ‘Want one?'”
I love the sound of these ‘honey balls’, and remember making a hard boiled sweet using sugar, butter and syrup as a child. I wondered whether I would be able to do the same, but using honey, so gave it a shot and what came out were gorgeous sweet, hard, honey balls. They are so tasty and very sweet!
Once poured out you need to give these a few minutes to cool so that you don’t scald the flesh right off your bones, but not so long that they harden – you need to be able to quickly roll them into balls before they do.
I wait till the mixture stops bubbling on the stove, then pour it into a tray or dish. Leave it to cool enough to touch – use a melon baller or apple corer, or just a teaspoon and start on the sides as that’s where it will cool first. Gather from the outsides and work your way inwards, making balls as you go along.
Initially these will be soft, but they will harden. Either way, don’t chew! You’ll lose fillings or teeth if you do!
And while we’re talking about honey… I’m pretty sure Winnie the Pooh would quite like these too!
There’s another way to make these, which is a lot faster: rather than rolling the balls individually, you can wait for sugar mix to stop bubbling (about 20 seconds) and then pour the hot mixture into a silicone mould. If you use essential oils*, you can also add a few drops of Young Living Lemon oil to the mix. I use this emoticon tray as the sweets are a good size for individual lozenges. 
Honey Balls
Recipe Type: Stove Top
Cuisine: Outlander, BookFood, Historical Food
Author:
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 50
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup honey
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup unsalted butter
Instructions
- Pour cold water into a glass. Set next to the oven.
- Prepare a dish for the sugar honey mixture
- Add all the ingredients to a saucepan and turn the heat up
- Bring to the boil and keep stirring. It will bubble and froth. Keep it doing so for about 2 – 3 minutes.
- KEEP STIRRING it will burn really easily. After 2 minutes dip a spoon in and drip a drop of the mixture into the glass. This is how you test for a soft ball or hard ball stage. If it dissolves, it is too soft. If it forms a soft ball that’s easily squashed, it’s called soft ball stage. If it forms a hard ball, it’s called <g class=”gr_ gr_59 gr-alert gr_spell gr_run_anim ContextualSpelling ins-del” id=”59″ data-gr-id=”59″>hard ball</g> stage.
- For this particular recipe, you want to catch it between the hard and soft ball stages, turn the heat off, and pour into a prepared pan or dish. IT WILL BE HOT NOW
- As it begins to cool, use a teaspoon to scoop out the mixture and shape into balls in the palm of your hand.
- Put on a plate and repeat.
How To Make Fruit Vinegar
Foraging is a fantastic activity, but it’s hard work, so you want to utilise every scrap to best effect in whichever way you can.
Once I’ve made a syrup from the berries I’ve harvested, I’m loathed to throw them out. Some say you can put them in an ‘adult pie’ or ice cream, but that doesn’t always work – blackberries, for example, are white as snow by the time the flavour’s been sucked out of them, or there’s simply nothing left of them. Other fruits, however, like rose hips, hawthorns and elderberries, have enough left in them to make something else out of. Like second-use tea bags, they’re not the ultimate flavour, but they may just work out okay.
I have a bundle of 100ml jars specifically for this purpose – when I’ve made a syrup, I pop the pulp into the jar and top it with vinegar – if it doesn’t work out, I’ve lost about 50ml vinegar. If it does work out… I have a delicious new fruit vinegar to enjoy.
Some fruits – like elderberries or fresh blackberries – will pretty immediately change the colour of the vinegar, but I’d still suggest leaving it for a few days – although I have also done it about a year down the line, having forgotten about it! Others – like hawthorn – may take about a day to change the colour of the vinegar, but it’ll come.
To start, you’ll need equal parts fruit to vinegar, so lets say 600g fruit to 600ml apple cider vinegar. Now, I don’t normally set out to make vinegar, but rather use leftover bits of fruit or used pulp to make the vinegar, so you can be flexible with the amounts. I tend to use what I have, cover it with vinegar, and hope for the best!
That makes the next bit a little more tricky – or a good opportunity to practice maths and fractions!
After at least four days of soaking in the vinegar, strain out the fruit and pour the vinegar into a pot on a medium heat. For every 600ml liquid you need about 300g sugar – add less or more, depending on how sweet or how thick you want the vinegar. Add the sugar and stir till it is all dissolved. Leave to simmer for 15-25 minutes (adjusting depending on how much you’ve started with – the longer it boils the thicker it will be) without a lid on, which will reduce the liquid into a thick and delicious vinegar for dressings or dipping. If it’s not thick enough, simmer a little longer, but do bear in mind that as the vinegar cools, it’ll thicken too.
True balsamic improves with age. If you’re disciplined and have the space, use 3/4 of your vinegar now, but put aside a small jar of each batch in the back of the cupboard somewhere. I discovered a forgotten blackberry balsamic in the back of a cupboard when we moved house – it was about five years old, thick, sweet and incredible!
How To Make Fruit Vinegar
Author:
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Ingredients
- 600g fruit
- 600ml white wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar
- 300g sugar
Instructions
Instructions
- In a glass jar, add fruit and cover with vinegar. Leave for at least four days, shaking whenever you pass by it.
- When it’s taken on good colour, strain out the fruit and pour the vinegar into a pot on a medium heat.
- Add the sugar and stir till it is all dissolved.
- Leave to simmer for 20 – 25 minutes without a lid on, which will reduce the liquid into a thick and delicious vinegar for dressings or dipping.
Thermomix Instructions
- In a glass jar, add fruit and cover with vinegar. Leave for four days, shaking whenever you pass by it.
- After four days, strain out the fruit and pour the vinegar into the Thermomix.
- Add the sugar 15 mins/ Varoma/speed 1/ NO MC
Slowcooked Chicken & Tomato Stuffed Pepper
Temperatures are dropping and the days are becoming shorter, so for us, it means the slow cooker has come out of the dark depths of the cupboard. We’re trying out a variety of savoury dishes for Halloween, a season not normally known for its savoury foods, but I want to have some options available, at least! 
For this recipe, I’ve used yellow peppers. I didn’t realise until I was cleaning them out that one of the peppers only had two humps on the apex, rather than three, which meant it couldn’t stand on its own. Undeterred, I just cut a small layer off, not so much that the bottom of the pepper was opened up – just enough to make it stand up straight.
Cutting faces in a pepper is a whole lot easier than it is on a pumpkin. Simply use a sharp knife and carefully pop the cutout parts out. 
You can use any filling you like, really. I’ve used a chicken and tomato one. If you want to stretch this meal, add some rice or couscous to the pepper. Alternatively, serve each pepper on a bed of rice. I didn’t bother in this particular meal. 
Once stuffed, I felt the peppers could use a bit of help to stand out a little, so I used a finger to pop some homemade tomato sauce into the eyes and mouths of the peppers.
I love the way the chicken and tomato looks a bit like brains, topping off the Halloween face. It’s simple, and quite effortless and very tasty!
Slow Cooked Chicken and Tomato Stuffed Peppers Recipe
Slow cooked Chicken & Tomato Stuffed Pepper
Author:
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 4
Ingredients
- 500g skinless, boneless chicken
- 1 tin of tomatoes
- 30ml (2tbs) dark soy sauce
- 15ml (1tbs) balsamic vinegar
- 5ml (1tsp) dried or fresh chopped rosemary
- 5ml (1tsp) salt
- 5 fresh tomatoes
- 4 yellow peppers
- For Halloween Faces, you’ll also need a little tomato sauce
- Serve with rice or other grain if you are so inclined.
Instructions
- Turn a slow cooker on low for 6 hours
- Add chicken, canned tomatoes, soy sauce, vinegar, rosemary and salt , put the lid in place.
- With an hour to go, add the fresh tomatoes
- With 30 minutes to go, remove the lid so the sauce can thicken a little
- After six hours, cut the top off the peppers and remove the seeds. (If you’re making Halloween faces, do that now too)
- Stuff the pepper, and using a clean spoon or finger, fill the eyes and mouth with tomato sauce.
Find more Halloween recipes here
Amazing Pumpkin Parmesan Dip
Another fantastic centrepiece for a party, a pumpkin filled with Pumpkin Parmesan Dip looks great and is versatile for crackers and veggies alike. You can adjust the amount of parmesan, or even substitute for a cheese you prefer – I can’t imagine there’ll be too much difference to the end result.
My kids are particularly antsy about raw garlic – they can pick it out of anything – so if you prefer, you can saute the garlic for three minutes at 100C. I only do that if I’m making it, especially for my children.
I decided to put the dip into a bowl and hover the bowl inside the mouth of the pumpkin. I don’t know if that’s necessary or if you can just put it in the pumpkin, but I decided it would be easier in this instance to keep cool, and that the pumpkin itself was reusable for a number of days and other recipes if not. Also, if you’re particularly skilled at carving (I’m not!) a fake candle inside, under the dip could look very pretty too.
Pumpkin Parmesan Dip Recipe:
Amazing Pumpkin Parmesan Dip
Author:
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 600g
To cook the pumpkin, add 400 – 500 g chopped raw pumpkin to the internal steamer. Fill water to the 1-litre mark. Thermomix 15 minutes/Varoma/speed 4. Once finished, leave to drain and cool for a while before making the dip
Ingredients
- 1 garlic clove
- 50g parmesan
- 100g cream cheese (I use full fat)
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1 tsp salt
- 400 – 500g cooked pumpkin
Instructions
Thermomix Instructions
- Add 1 clove garlic 5 seconds/ speed 5
- Add parmesan 10 seconds/speed 10
- Add cream cheese, paprika, salt and cooked pumpkin 30 seconds/ speed 4
- Scrape down sides 1 minute/ speed 10
- Set aside to firm up again, and serve
Regular Instructions
- Finely chop the garlic, or crush it and add to a food processor
- Grate parmesan and add to the garlic.
- Add cream cheese, paprika,salt and cooked pumpkin
- Mix following your food processors instructions till it’s all well blended and smooth.
- Set aside to firm up again, and serve.
Try these Halloween recipes too!
The cheese biscuits in the images are round versions of these cheese straws.