Month: January 2022

Strawberry Cupcakes

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Every now and again, you come across something that is as delicious as it is easy. The other day I wanted to make a cake involving strawberries, because it’s that time of year. I looked at lots of recipes online that involved making a strawberry reduction first, but it seemed like an awful lot of work. I was really looking for simple. 

So, ignoring everything I’d seen online, I modified a basic vanilla cake recipe from the Mennonite Community Cookbook, adding sliced fresh strawberries, and whipped up a quick strawberry icing. I baked the cake as cupcakes, as I often do to keep our portion sizes down (because you know I can’t resist cutting a huge slice of cake …).

The result is exactly what I wanted—an easy cake that highlights fresh strawberry flavour. I’ll definitely be making this one again.

Strawberry Cupcakes

3/4 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs, separated
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
3 tsp baking powder
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups fresh strawberries, sliced

Cream the butter. Add sugar gradually and beat until fluffy. Add egg yolks and beat until well incorporated. Sift flour, salt and baking powder together in a separate bowl. Add flour mixture alternately with milk and vanilla, beating well after each addition. Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites, then fold in the strawberries.

Fill cupcake papers, and bake at 175ºC (350ºF) for 25 minutes. Allow to cool completely on a rack before frosting.* Makes 24.

Strawberry Frosting **

60 g (1/4 cup) butter, softened
1 cup icing (confectioners) sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
3 Tbsp pureed fresh strawberries
Puree strawberries in a blender (I had to puree about a cup and a half of berries in order to have enough volume for the blender to work with—just save the extra puree. There are hundreds of delicious uses for it). Cream the butter. Sift the sugar over the butter and continue to beat. Add vanilla and strawberry puree and beat until well blended. Adjust the icing by adding more sugar or strawberries until it is a spreading consistency. 

* It was a warm day, and I was a little worried my strawberry icing would weep if it sat at room temperature with the cupcakes. Instead of frosting them all, I frosted only what we were going to eat right away, storing the remainder in the fridge, to spread on the cupcakes as we eat them. Alternately, you could store your iced cupcakes in the refrigerator. Mine is currently stuffed full of zucchini and green beans—no room for cake.

** Double this frosting recipe if you want to ice all 24 cupcakes. I put half the cupcakes in the freezer unfrosted, since I haven’t got kids at home to devour them at the moment, so I only made a small batch of frosting.

From Haast to Haast Pass

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

My husband and I spent the past four days on the West Coast. I was helping him with some field work involving a lot of bush bashing on steep slopes.

The trip also involved a lot of driving–all the way from Greymouth to Haast, and then over to Wanaka before heading north again. It being the West Coast, the road crossed many creeks, each one named by a small road sign. After a particularly waterway-rich stretch of highway, where  we crossed a creek every 50 metres or so, we began to note ALL the creek names. At some point I began writing them down—they were strangely poetic.

I’ve taken a section—State Highway 6 between Haast and Haast Pass—and have written a poem that uses each creek name, in order starting in Haast, and evokes South Westland. The creek names are the only words capitalised.

you swish through the Grassy paddock
to take a Snapshot,
then fossick for Greenstone
on the beach amidst the strewn blossoms
of southern rata, that seasonal Myrtle
Harris says brings out the colour of
your eyes when he tucks a bloom behind your ear.

ankle deep in the Glitterburn
on a tuesday that sparkles with gold
you fire a text to Roy and Joe,
knowing they are stuck in Dismal london,
while you grow Dizzy trying to track
the flitting movement of a tomtit
in the undergrowth, its Gun Boat grey
blending into the shadows, white breast
winking like a Cron command,
Dancing to its own irregular beat.

and deep in the forest, the Roaring Swine
fill the Gap in the silence and find
the Chink between birdsongs.

your Cache of wonder sits at the Depot,
its Square Top a fitting seat
for Orman,
the Imp with Mossy eyes.
his Eighteen Mile hike on Gout swollen feet
has not dampened his spirits.
he recites MacPherson’s translations,
mixing the ancient gaelic with
lines you’re certain came from Douglas adams.

the Serpentine path you wander tumbles
over boulders soft with moss like grandma Evans’ arms
when she would pull you into those hugs you
hated as a teen, when you and your cousin Chelsea
walked the tired streets of town—
three blocks, then Pivot to retrace
the entirety of main street—hoping
for some excitement.

now it is Solitude you crave.
as Douglas said—space is Big—
surely there is enough of it that you
can carve out your own piece of it
here, among the ancient footprints
of Moa, tangled in a Briar,
imagining Haast eagles soaring overhead.

Diana would have been your goddess,
in this wilderness of rain where The Trickle
of water is more like a roar and
liquid is a Cutter of stone.

you would stay here for decades
like Robinson crusoe, study the
ants at your feet as though you
were e. o. Wilson.

instead you Cross the river
and stand dripping and shiny
as a nugget of gold on the other side.

10 Garden Hacks

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

A few days ago on an online group I’m part of, someone asked about people’s life hacks.

I thought about it for a while and realised that I spend so much time in the garden, that my ‘life’ hacks are mostly garden hacks.

So here is a list of 10 of my many garden hacks:

  1. Cut up empty milk bottles to use as plant tags.
  2. Give your chickens the run of the vegetable garden during winter—they’ll keep pests and weeds down and make springtime garden prep easier.
  3. Recycle old cotton sheets and clothes, and raffia baskets as biodegradable plant ties.
  4. When picking carrots, water well about an hour beforehand—the soft soil will make the carrots easier to pull.
  5. When thinning carrots, remove the largest plants first—the small ones will grow, and you’ll be able to eat your thinnings.
  6. Instead of tossing empty juice bottles in the recycling bin, fill them with water and line them up in the greenhouse—they’ll store heat during the day and release it at night. Paint them black for even more heat absorption.
  7. Fill plant pots with cement to use as weights for things like bird nets and row covers. Give them wire handles threaded with a short section of irrigation pipe so they’re easy to move around.
  8. Whenever you cook something, like pasta, that is boiled and drained, save the boiling water and pour it on weeds to kill them instead of sending it down the drain.
  9. Plant summer lettuces in the shade of tall crops like corn to keep them from bolting too quickly.
  10. Plant rangy crops like pumpkins next to early crops like brassicas—by the time the pumpkins grow large, the brassicas are gone and the pumpkins have space to sprawl.

Black Currant Pie

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

I have blogged about black currant pie before, but it’s worth doing again. This year’s black currant harvest was overwhelming, not just because it came in the two weeks on either side of Christmas, but also because it was huge. It didn’t help that the red currants also gave a hefty crop at precisely the same time. For two weeks, I felt like all I did was pick and process currants.

Well, and eat them, too.

We use currants in ice cream, crisps, cobblers, fruit salads, and smoothies, but my favourite way to eat them is in pie.

Black currant pie is not for the sour-averse—it is a full-bodied, knock-your-socks-off type flavour. To me it is the flavour of summer. And because it works equally well with frozen berries, I always try to save enough so I can make black currant pie on the winter solstice and dream of long summer days in the chill and dark of winter. 

So revel in the intense flavours of summer and enjoy a slice of black currant pie. You can download a pdf of this recipe here.

Crust:
¾ cup all purpose flour
¾ cup wholemeal flour
¼  tsp salt
60 g butter
60 g Olivani
3-4 Tbsp ice water

Filling:
4-6 cups black currants
½ cup sugar
2 Tbsp flour

Topping:
2/3 cup flour
2/3 cup finely chopped walnuts (or rolled oats)
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
75 g butter, melted

Crust:
Whisk together the flours and salt in a medium bowl. Cut in the butter and Olivani with a pastry knife until the largest chunks of butter are the size of small peas. Sprinkle the ice water over the flour mixture and combine with a fork until evenly moistened. Knead lightly, just until it forms a coherent dough (it will be crumbly). refrigerate while you prepare the filling and  topping.

Filling:
Combine sugar and flour in a small bowl. Mix with stemmed, washed black currants and set aside.

Topping:
Combine the flour, walnuts, sugar and cinnamon in a medium bowl. Stir in the butter with a fork until evenly moistened and crumbly.

Roll out the crust and place in a 23 cm pie pan. Pour the filling into the pan and sprinkle evenly with the topping. Bake at 200°C for 30 minutes, then reduce the heat to 170°C and bake another 30 minutes.

Serve with a generous dollop of whipped cream.

Summer Fruits

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment
strawberries and rhubarb

Before our house was even staked out on the ground, we knew where the vegetable garden and berry fruits were going to be planted. We began preparing the garden months before the builders arrived. We took cuttings from berries at the old house, and were planting well-rooted currants and gooseberries as we finalised the design for the house. We tried to avoid mistakes we made at the last house—just one, not two, rows of bushes per bed, to make picking easier, and fewer plants overall. No need to be overwhelmed with fruit.

Last year, we harvested a handful of fruit from the currants, gooseberries, raspberries and boysenberries. The strawberries gushed fruit for the better part of the year. For barely established plants, they did well. 

This year, with most of the plants well established, we’re inundated with berries—so much for not being overwhelmed. The week before Christmas was a frenzy of fruit processing—we froze fresh fruit and fruit puree, made several batches of jam, and ate a whole lot of fruit pie, trifle and fresh berries.

Upon our return from our Christmas trip, there were even more berries ready to pick. We made more jam, preserved more whole fruit, made more pie, and have been eating fruit five times a day. The cupboard is once again packed with jam, and the freezer is stuffed with frozen berries. Thankfully, the currants and gooseberries are nearly done producing, but the raspberries and boysenberries are still going strong. The strawberries are finished with their first heavy crop, but should maintain a level of output we can easily eat for the next few months. I’m thankful the grapes are only in their first year and the blueberries aren’t doing as well as the other berries—not that I don’t want grapes or blueberries, but I’m worried about freezer and cupboard space.

lemon raspberry cake
Lemon raspberry cake

At least the fruit trees are still young—we got a handful of cherries, and will have a few pears, apples, and peaches if we’re lucky, but shouldn’t be overwhelmed.

It’s a lovely problem to have. With the summer vegetables coming on strong, too, there is a real sense of abundance in the house—a great way to start the new year.