Breadmaker!

I had my birthday this week and got a fabulous present...a breadmaker! How exciting to be able to wake up to fresh bread each morning. My new present is a programmable version, which can make all manner of bread types, including white, wholemeal, seeded, rye and brioche. It is even capable of making jams, compotes and some cakes.

I have made one loaf of white bread so far, which was delicious and consumed in just 24 hours! I will be a little more adventurous later this week, once the family has consumed all of the store bought bread in the house! Don't want to be wasteful now.

I would also like to try and get some sourdough yeast, instead of the dry packet yeast, but I think this will have to wait until I am a little more confident with the bread cooking process. Let the experimenting begin!

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Rosella cordial

After planting my rosella bush at the beginning of the year, I have been inundated with flowers/buds. The continuous development of flowers and the fact that I have only one bush, means that I never have had enough flowers/fruit to harvest all at once to cook with. However, rather than letting all these buds go to waste I have been collecting these lovely red buds as they reach "maturity" and placing them in the freezer. 

On Friday I finally decided that I had enough buds and associated requirements that I would try to make rosella cordial. Many people make rosella jam, but since I have never made jam before I thought cordial would be easier since there is no setting process required (which I have heard is quite difficult). 

So Friday afternoon the cook up began! I followed the Green Harvest rosella cordial recipe and below shows you how I went about it.

 

 

Extract the rosellas from the freezer

 

 Fill your largest saucepan with rosellas, until it is approximately 3/4 full. 

Cook/boil and then strain the pulp/buds off and keep liquid. 

(I put the pulp into my compost bin...don't want to waste these things)

 After you have added sugar to the liquid, let this dissolve and boiled for a little bit more 

you add a lot of lemon juice (thankfully my lemon tree is in full swing and I managed to 

retrieve 8 lemons from my tree to add to the mixture)

 Finished product! Tip of the day: don't let this boil over because it is a sweet, sticky syrup 

now and getting this off the floor is also a sticky business

 And here it is, my first batch of rosella cordial all bottled up!

Now my first taste of my rosella cordial! Yummy!

My batch made about three litres of cordial and apparently it will keep for up to a year. That is, if I have sterilised the bottles properly! So, I expect the above glass of rosella cordial will not be my last.

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