Savoury cheese muffins with wild garlic and fennel

Love the idea of heading out for a walk in the countryside and finding fresh wild food, but my foraging skills are limited to the blatantly obvious - things like blackberries, wild strawberries, elderflower, rosehips - ones where there's no speck of doubt! Going on a course would help, and I've talked about doing that for ages, but it always slips off the 'would be good to do' list.
We found a puffball mushroom the size of a football a while a go, and even though it really couldn't be mistaken for anything else, there was still this slight niggle about actually cooking and eating it. Silly really because it was delicious. And lasted for days.

Wild garlic is good foraging fodder at the moment, and luckily we have quite a few patches around the garden. The foliage isn't unlike a lot of other healthy green, shiny weeds growing like triffids at the moment, but crush a leaf between your fingers and there's no mistaking that pungent smell. The raw leaves have a strong, fiery taste, though really come into their own when cooked. Even more delicate than garlic, a bit like chives, and a lovely alternative to spinach wilted in some olive oil or butter.

Best picked April/May time, before there are too many star-like white flowers, when the leaves can get tough and bitter - you can eat the flowers too though. Probably coming toward the end of the season now, but the leaves still taste good to me. Wild garlic is usually found in woodland among the bluebells, or in marshy, damp places.
Says a lot about our garden...

It doesn't take long to pick, my daughter knows the best spots now, and you don't need much anyway. Often chop up a few leaves and add them to pasta sauce or risotto, but the thing everyone seems to like the best are these wild garlic, cheese and fennel muffins. They're a savoury-loving lot my kids.


280g of wholemeal or plain flour
3 teaspoons of baking powder
2 tablespoons of sugar
75g of grated cheddar + 25g grated parmesan (or 100g of whatever cheese you have in the fridge)
10 wild garlic leaves finely chopped
1 teaspoon of fennel seeds
1 egg
100ml plain yogurt and 200ml of milk (or 300ml of milk)
90 ml of vegetable oil
Makes about 10 muffins
190-200 degrees C, Gas Mark 5-6

Put the cases in the muffin tin - they tend to stick to the cases more than sweet ones, so if you prefer, do away with them and lightly oil the tin instead.

Add the flour, baking powder and sugar to a large bowl and stir in most of the grated cheese. Leave a little to sprinkle on top of the muffins.

In a measuring jug dollop in the yogurt, top up to 300ml with the milk, and then pour in 90ml of vegetable oil. Crack the egg into this liquidy concoction and beat with a fork.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, add the chopped wild garlic and the fennel seeds and mix together. Don't over-stir though. The mixture will be quite sloppy.

Spoon into the cases and sprinkle on the leftover cheese.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until the tops are golden brow and spring back when pressed gently.

Best served fresh and warm - though not at all bad reheated with a little spread of butter...

   

Easy Elderflower Cordial

Making elderflower cordial reminds me a bit of the 'flower soup' the kids used to give me - you know, mixed up water, petals and stalks, and the odd, suspicious-looking black speck with legs...
The elderflower version is obviously way more appealing; but it is just about as easy to make as flower soup.

I saw loads of elderflower on the drive back from Norwich, waving at me from the roadside, so I took the youngest foraging when we got home, and we managed to fill a bag in minutes.
Best to pick it when it's fresh and bursting with that distinctive elderflower aroma - late May early June is the time in the South, but the season can go on till July if you live further North.

It took me a little longer to get some citric acid. I’m sure it used to be easier to find - the places I tried in town didn’t have any, so I bought a bag online, misjudged the quantity (again), and now appear to have enough to go into production! Personally I don’t like too much of a citric acid taste, but I wasn’t won over by the cordial without it either. So I’ve done a bit of fiddle-faddling with the basic recipe.  I’ve also reduced the amount of sugar - there’s a scary amount of sugar in cordial, a whole kilo in this one usually, and though I kind of knew that, it’s different seeing a mountain of sugar piled high in a bowl, before you pour in the boiling water and it ‘disappears’.

So for mine you'll need:

about 30 flower heads
4 lemons
1.5 litres boiling water
750g sugar
40g citric acid

Put the sugar in a heatproof bowl, pour over the boiling water and stir until it dissolves.

When cool, grate in the zest of the lemons, then slice them up and tip in with the citric acid. (I like to squeeze in the juice of half of one of the lemons)

Add the flower heads (after a decent shake) and give it all a good stir.

Cover with a clean cloth and leave to steep for 48 hours.

Drain through a clean muslin, and funnel into sterilised bottles (to sterilise, rinse in the dishwasher or wash the bottles in warm, soapy water, put them on a baking tray and pop in the oven set at 120 degrees C for about 20 minutes. Steep the lids in a cup of boiling water for 5 minutes)

Store in a cool, dark place, and the cordial should last a few weeks. You can freeze it too, in plastic bottles. 
Dilute with still or sparkling water.

It can be pretty expensive to buy, so why not have a go at making your own elderflower soup?

Linking up with Country Kids from Coombe Mill

Leaf Art and a handy gift idea

The leaves are falling fast, but there's still a rainbow of autumn colours out there - so, plenty to collect. As well as reds, russets and yellows, the kids gathered up lots of different shapes and sizes for this little project - just make sure the leaves heading home aren't too curly or mouldy!

I did some flower pressing with the children in the summer - the youngest loved it and we made a card for Grandad. This time I thought we'd have a go at bookmarks, inspired by some fantastic leaf art in The Big Ideas Book. One top tip is to press the leaves (once they're dry) in an old phone book - very quick and easy, but be careful when you're moving it about because it's floppy, and you don't want them all dropping out...speaking from experience...

Weigh it down with something heavy, and leave for about a week.

When you're ready, hold the phone book over some newspaper, flick through, letting the leaves fall. Now the fun starts! I cut out bookmarks from some white card - ours were 5cm by 15cm, but you could draw around one you have, or make them any shape you like.
The kids are always impatient to start sticking, but best to get them to lay out the leaf pattern they want on the card first.

Lots of different shapes, colours and sizes means you can really get creative. Flowers and fish are easy to do - we cut a V into a leaf for the fish tail and a frilly, delicate one made a good underwater plant. And don't you think ferns would work well for christmas trees?

To finish off, the kids wrote a message on the other side, before the bookmarks were covered in clear sticky back plastic.

Make sure you cut enough from the sheet to go over both sides + a bit more. Pull half the back off the plastic, and put the leaf picture down on the sticky side, then fold the covering tight against the edge of the card and slowly, carefully remove the rest of the backing paper, smoothing down as you go. I did this for the kids, and kept an eye on them as they cut off the extra bits and neatened them up.

The bookmarks didn't take long to make and they're going to make great Christmas presents.

We've kept ours quite simple but if you want to jazz them up, you can draw a border round the edge of the bookmark or add a tassel or ribbon at the bottom.
I layered leaves for this butterfly picture, and stalks make perfect antenna. So many possibilities!

Next time paper houses.

Linking up with Country Kids at Coombe Mill and For the Kids Friday - LOADS of fun ideas to keep your little ones busy..