Faerie Nuff One Today!

I just can't believe that my blog Faerie Nuff is a year old today, where has the time gone. I've met so many lovely people through blogging and would recommend starting a blog to anyone. Its lovely to look through old posts and see what I was up to a year ago and see my photos of the changing seasons, and of course pics of the animals and projects I've made.

Today I decided to make a very seasonal dessert. I had some lovely gooseberries from Winchester farmers market, which I combined with some elderflowers from the garden, cream, lemon zest and sugar and made gooseberry fools.

Recipe serves 4

10 freshly picked elderflower heads, plus a few sprigs to decorate

500g gooseberries

2 tbsp caster sugar

a strip of lemon zest

300ml double cream

Gently shake any insects off the elderflowers, place the gooseberries, elderflower heads, 2 tbsp sugar, lemon zest and a splash of water in a pan and stir over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved.

Bring to a gentle simmer and cook for about 10-15 mins until the gooseberries are soft and mostly broken up. Rub the mixture through a sieve into a bowl then taste and add more sugar if needed.

Whip the cream to soft peaks and fold into the gooseberry puree. Divide between large wine glasses or similar and chill for at least 2 hours. Serve with a little sprig of elderflower in each glass.

It tasted scrummy and we still have one each to look forward to tomorrow. I'm hopefully going to pick some strawberry's at the end of the week, so may try a strawberry fool too.

Heres our elder tree in bloom. Can't wait for all those lovely berries in the autumn to make some pontack.

I've really looking forward to the new series of River Cottage summer this week, as Hugh's a bit of a hero of mine. My friend and I embarked on making a batch of elderflower champagne on Monday which Hugh made in river cottage spring last year, fingers crossed it works, as we're hoping it will be ready to drink at Mid summer. I forgot to take my camera when we made it, but will try and remember to take some pictures at bottling time. Hugh made gorse flower wine tonight so may have to give that a bash if I can get my hands on some demi johns.

TTFN

Pixie xxx