The Great Mulberry Adventure

I love trees in full fruit. So many different possibilities and enough fruit to do it all!!!! James has a mulberry tree which fruited last spring and off I went with a ladder and a torch (yes I chose to do this particular fruit picking at night because I'm practical) and ended up with a large cardboard box full of succulent berries. Not to mention purple fingertips and lips.

So. I did the only thing I could do.........

I made a pie!

To make the filling I first covered about a kilo of mulberries with 2 cups of sugar and left them sit for a few hours. This draws liquid out of the berries. The whole lot was thrown in a pot and boiled for about 10 minutes.

I used my regular pastry recipe

Pumpkin Scones

A few months back we had an excess of pumpkin, 2 whole pumpkins for 2 people is just crazy talk. Amongst having roast pumpkin, caramelised pumpkin or mashed pumpkin with every meal, a triple batch of pumpkin soup and an assortment of various pumpkin dips, I decided that pumpkin scones were on the menu.

I just used a really simple recipe for these. You will need:

1 cup of mashed pumpkin

2 1/2 cups SR flour

55g butter

1 egg

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup milk

Set oven to 200 c

Beat butter and sugar together until pale yellow and creamy, add pumpkin, egg and milk and mix well. Add flour slowly, mixing as you go.

Flour a bench and knead the dough before rolling it out. Use a small glass to cut circles out of dough and place on lined baking tray.

Bake for 15 mins