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
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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!
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
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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.
Honey Dough Balls Recipe
It’s a Winnie the Pooh time of year again, which means pretty much any time is the time for a little something, so long as that something includes some honey! Knowing this, I made sure to stock up on honey this week, because come Winnie the Pooh Day, we’ll be having honey everything. For human children though, jars of honey don’t seem to be sufficient picnic food, so I’m adding a few delicious honey-based recipes to our honey – repertoire.
These honey dough balls are traditionally an Italian recipe, but I’m sure they won’t mind sharing it with Winnie the Pooh, because really, dough balls smothered in honey? Pooh’d love it. I did consider drizzling condensed milk over – Pooh’s other favourite – but that’s just too much sweet for me.
“Pooh always liked a little something at eleven o’clock in the morning, and he was very glad to see Rabbit getting out the plates and mugs; and when Rabbit said, ‘Honey or condensed milk with your bread?’ he was so excited that he said, ‘Both,’ and then, so as not to seem greedy, he added, ‘But don’t bother about the bread, please.”
These little blissful bites are sticky and crunchy and chewy at the same time. As soon as the honey is poured they’ll still be warm but very sticky. If you leave them to cool the honey will harden a little, making them less messy to eat. Skewer the honey dough balls with fondue sticks, and tuck in. (I think these would be awesome with vanilla ice cream too, but it’s a bit cold to test that right now!) 
Isn’t it funny that the bear likes honey.
Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz.
I wonder why he does.~ Winnie the Pooh
Find more recipes for Winnie the Pooh here, and activities to do with the kids for Winnie the Pooh day here
Honey Dough Balls Recipe
Recipe Type: T5 recipe
Cuisine: Italian, Winnie the Pooh
Author:
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Total time:
Serves: 60
Ingredients
- 200g water (50g more if you’re using organic flour)
- 70g vegetable oil
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 340g all-purpose flour
- 2 eggs
- 170g honey
- 85g sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 400F/200C
- In the Thermomix, add the water, oil and salt.
- Bring to boil 4mins/Varoma/Speed 2/No MC
- Open the lid and add the flour to the side (so it doesn’t get stuck on the blades)
- Mix for 1mins/Speed 1
- Add two eggs through the lid
- Mix for 2mins/speed 2
- Scoop out the dough about 1/2 a teaspoon at a time, making balls in the palm of your hands.
- Lay them out on a tray. They don’t rise, so you don’t have to worry too much about extra space.
- Bake for 20 – 25 minutes, depending on your oven. (My oven burns really hot at the top, and much cooler at the bottom, so after 10 minutes I turned it all out into a glass dish and baked the other side)
- Set aside to cool in a heat proof dish
- In a clean Thermomix bowl, add the honey, sugar and cinnamon
- Boil 5 minutes/Varoma/Speed2
- Pour the hot sugar syrup over the dough balls, using a spoon to make sure it’s all coated.
- They are very sticky, but if you leave them to cool the honey mixture will harden. It’s still sticky, but easier to eat.
Serving size: 4 Calories: 2011cal Fat: 71 Saturated fat: 5g Trans fat: 0 Carbohydrates: 337 Sugar: 240g Sodium: 119mg Fiber: 4g Protein: 21g Cholesterol: 0
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
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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
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.
Cheesy Straws
These cheesy straws are a lovely snack for lunch boxes and last minute visitors. They can be prepared whenever you have time, and the pastry frozen – then just pop out a handful and bake when you need them. I was setting an Autumn scene for some photos I had to do, so we broke up the straws to make a ‘woodpile’. I was glad when the kids walked in and said ‘Oh, look at the brooms!’ Always useful when people can tell what you’re going for!
These cheesy straws can be made as straws, though simply baking them in rounds is okay too – I tend to freeze them as round biscuits, making them easier to use with dips. If you’re going to make brooms, I recommend that you use the stringy type of kids cheese, rather than regular blocks of cheese which crack rather than pull apart. And have more chives than you think you need as they break really easily too.
I also like to add paprika or rosemary to cheese strings – it just depends on what flavour you like, or whether you like something different from time to time! Also, you don’t have to add parmesan, it just heightens the cheese flavour. If you decide not to, just make another 50g cheddar cheese.
Cheesy Straws Recipe:
Cheesy Straws
Author:
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 60 sticks
Ingredients
- 375g plain flour
- 225g butter
- 150g cheddar cheese
- 50g parmesan cheese
- 1 tsp mustard (I use a grainy mustard, but powder will work too)
- 2 egg yolks
- pinch of salt
- pepper to taste
Instructions
Thermomix Instructions
- Add all the ingredients to the Thermomix bowl
- Mix speed 5/30 seconds
- Remove and shape into a log. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 30 minutes
- Heat the oven to 180C
- Break off pieces and roll into sticks using your hands
- Bake for 10 – 12 minutes until golden brown. Allow to cool before moving but be gentle as they are fragile
Regularly Instructions
- Add all the ingredients to a food processor
- Mix until everything is combined and the dough forms a ball
- Remove and shape into a log. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 30 minutes
- Heat the oven to 180C
- Break off pieces and roll into sticks using your hands
- Bake for 10 – 12 minutes until golden brown. Allow to cool before moving but be gentle as they are fragile