Let me tell you, Aunt Lilo’s apple cake is delicious and super easy to make. Try it warm with a wee dollop of Greek yogurt.
Although this feels like an Autumnal recipe, perhaps it will be just perfect for using up a couple of apples which are most definitely past their best. They’ve been lurking in our fruit bowl for just too long.
I feel a bit like those apples, as though I’ve been sitting around doing not very much for far too long. Perhaps my time to shine is about to come?
I’ve not been well for a few months, and it’s fair to say that our house move was not as straightforward as we might have wished. However, perhaps it’s the Spring in the air, but I really do think that I’m beginning to feel a whole lot better. I still can’t drive, due to the big blindspot I have in my left eye. And I still have a permanent headache. But honestly, this feels like good health compared with how I’ve felt for months.
Anyway, let’s go see what we can do with those slightly soft apples. And after that, there will be lots more wild garlic pesto to make. Such a good harvest this year. Top tip if you’re making wild garlic pesto – play about with it, make it how you like it. We made a batch with Bonnet goats cheese the other day and it was stunning. And we regularly add a chilli pepper to give it a bit of zizz.
***
Thank you for reading this.
Mostly I blog about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, so if that might be your thing, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation. Or just dip in. After all, if I’ve learned anything this last few years it’s that chronology and time are less important than we might believe.
Do get in touch if you have any questions or comments – I love to hear from you my lovely readers.
My wee plant has grown strawberries! How cute is that?
Also, after work today I cut out fabric for a top using the rotary cutter on a cutting mat. MisoCat supervised of course. But hey, why have I always used pins and scissors instead of stones and a rotorblade? I feel like I have discovered the secret recipe for Irn Bru. Yes, it’s that exciting!
Talking of secret recipes, would you like my most favourite secret recipe?
It’s not really a secret at all, but it makes the most amazingly tasty jars of goodness, which you can then barter for other things. Or just enjoy for yourself. So I feel like sharing again.
Anyway, it’s my Cinnamon Apple Jelly and when I first started making it I adhered to Thane Prince’s instructions and quantities, because although I might like to think that I rebel, really I conform and if someone gives me instructions I am likely to follow them pretty closely, or at least until I know where best to veer off successfully.
When I first started making this jelly, I didn’t have a whole lot of jam-making experience to draw on so wasn’t wildly confident about where I could tweak.
However, things have moved on, I have been making huge quantities of this every Autumn now for years. Mum gave us two apple trees which we planted in the garden – they are prolific and produce the perfect apples for making jars of Cinnamon Apple Jelly.
I seem overly prescriptive about how you go about it, so below is an update, with fewer instructions but more blether.
That Cinnamon Apple Jelly
Fire up your slow cooker
Throw some cinnamon sticks in its base, and then add some water, just an inch or so just now.
Now chop up some apples (give them a wipe first if they are fallen ones, you don’t want bits of actual dirt going in to the pot). No need to peel or core, just chuck the whole lot in. If you have other fruit, like brambles, feel free to throw them in too. Though I’m not sure I would combine brambles and lots of cinnamon.
Add some more water, you want the apples to be sort of floating, but not swimming if that makes sense? Honestly, it won’t really matter, but if you add too much water at this stage you’ll have a bit less flavour I guess.
Add other flavours if you want, but I generally don’t bother any more. Fresh ginger, lemon peel, juniper, cloves all work. Cardamom might be interesting, even a peppercorn or two. Don’t go too wild – part of the joy of this for me is that it tastes purely of apples and cinnamon.
Leave to cook in the slow cooker till it’s all a bit mooshy. Probably 5-6 hours, depending on your cooker and the apples. Mash them with a potato masher after an hour or so, just to help the apples all break down so they release their flavour into the liquid.
Now set up a jeely bag over a large bowl. Ladle the apple mixture into the bag and let it drip overnight.
Throw away the solid apple mix left in the bag (I tried to persuade my hens to eat it, but they have never been keen unless I cook it into porridge for them. And I have my limits, and it appears that this year that was it)
Keep the juice. You can freeze it at this stage if life is getting in the way. Or keep it in the fridge for a few days.
When you are ready for the final bit… measure out your juice into a large pan. A cauldron will be good if you have one, or a preserving pan, or a very large saucepan. Or not such a large one, depending how much juice you have made.
For every pint of juice you pour into the pan, add 1lb of sugar. Ordinary granulated sugar. Feel free to convert these measurements to metric for yourself if you need to. I prefer to remember ‘a pound for every pint’.
Now, this is the important bit. Do NOT stress if you are not very accurate with your measurements. It will all come right.
Bring the sugary appley juice up to the boil. If you have a jam thermometer, now is the time to use it. Pop it in the pan, in a way that it won’t fall in.
Pop a small plate into the freezer or fridge
Watch your pan of sweet appley juice – there is a thin line between happily boiling vigorously and boiling over and onto your hob and making a hideous mess. You want the former.
Your jelly will be set when it reaches 105C on the thermometer. Or use the wrinkle test with your cold plate – spoon a wee bit of the liquid on to the plate, wait 30 seconds and then push your finger through it. If you see wrinkles, it is ready. If it all just runs back to fill the gap you made, then it needs to boil a bit longer
Once it’s ready, use a ladle to spoon it into clean sterilised jars.
Delicious on hot buttered toast. Also known as Loïs On Toast.
I’m going to see Mum this weekend. She sleeps most of the time these days, but I might take a small jar of this jelly and a teaspoon and see if she enjoys the cinnamon-y apple-y taste. Eating delicious things was one of Mum’s last real pleasures. And seeing her family.
***
Thank you for reading this.
If you want to read more about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation. Or just dip in. After all, if I’ve learned anything this last few years it’s that chronology and time are less important than we might believe.
Finally, if it’s not too much to ask (I know, it is, apologies) I would really appreciate it if you could make a donation towards Alzheimer Scotland. They’re doing stuff that makes living with this more bearable for so many people. Thank you, thank you, a thousand thank yous.
I started the next design today. It’s not the one I’d been planning, but sometimes you just have to go with what feels right at the time. And it’s time for a wild strawberry.
It’s not really… we picked the last of them a few weeks ago. This is the season for brambles. And joy of joys, for Victoria plums. The edges of our garden are wilder and more unkempt than ever this year, and I’ve harvested more than 3lbs of brambles from our wild edges and hedges. Five years ago mum gave us a plum tree. We’ve only ever had 2 plums from it before. We’ve harvested 26lbs so far this year! That makes a lot of crumble!
Anyway… most people have completed their 100 days for 2021. I’ve loved seeing so much creativity, and such a supportive community. And I’m more than happy to be continuing mine at my own pace.
Wild Scottish Strawberries are the most lovely treat for a small child. There is something about their teeny tininess that makes them perfect for small hands. I remember picking them as a child, probably eating more than were put in the bowl, but that is part of the point isn’t it?
This design was created by my nephew Max, who is now a grown up, but as a child he also loved to pick those wild strawberries. When you first start picking wild strawberries you think there aren’t going to be many at all, certainly not enough to make A Thing. And then slowly as you wander around the edges of the garden, lifting up the big green leaves to find more teeny bright red fruit, you realise that if you hadn’t eaten so many at the start, there would be plenty to macerate with a wee bit of vanilla sugar and a splash of balsamic vinegar, to then add to a bowl of lush Greek yoghurt or spoon over vanilla ice cream.
Anyway, you are in for a treat with this embroidery design, it is one of my favourites.
It’s odd writing this blog post nearly two years on from when I wrote that first opener, about the wild strawberry design.
I see that back then I had just had a lovely visit with Mum – I reported that she was in good fettle, which is good enough for me.
But more than that, I had told her that she was my favourite Mum (perhaps for the first time?). She looked at me, paused, and then said ‘I am your only Mum’.
I told her that there were lots of other Mums in the word, and I was so happy and lucky that she is mine. She liked this. I then told her about my friend, J, who did not have a good relationship with her Mum. Mum looked puzzled at this, looked down at my hand and stroked it with hers. It was such a beautifully tender moment.
Mum no longer always had the words to express herself, but she could let me know that she cared, that she loved me. And that was enough. It’s still enough.
***
Can I ask you a small favour? Could you please click here and vote for me, Lois Wolffe. The Smock has been shortlisted for an Award and it would mean the world to me if you voted for it.
Mostly on this blog I write about trying to care for Mum as she developed dementia, which nearly broke me on a number of occasions. Gentle meditative stitching her old Fisherman’s Smock probably saved me as I let everything go to concentrate on those tiny stitches. If you want to read more about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation.
Finally, if this has moved you, I would really appreciate it if you made a donation towards Alzheimer Scotland. They’re doing stuff that makes living with this more bearable for so many people. Thank you, thank you, a thousand thank yous.
Today I discover that being precise and neat is harder than it looks. So this will forever be an impression of the CAPE logo.
In other fruit news, the Victoria Plum tree which mum gave us 5 years ago has this year decided to bear fruit. And oh so much fruit. I picked 1lbs a couple of days ago and 5lbs today but the tree doesn’t look like I’ve picked anything at all.
On the phone I reminded mum when she and her big sister Jen were children they rode the wee ponies through their orchard and would put their hands up and just pick the plums off the trees. And then they would see how far they could spit the stones. Mum liked to think of me now spitting plum stones.
Earlier this year when we had decided that we would put the house on the market and move to Galloway, I had sort of assumed that we would have moved or be in the process of moving over the summer, and certainly gone by the time any fruit are ready to harvest. In my head I had written off a 2023 fruit harvest.
Things don’t always go to plan do they? For reasons various it looks like we may still be here in the early Autumn when the fruit is ripe – we’ll certainly harvest blackcurrants again this year, and the red and white currants that made such teeny tiny quantities of jelly last year (and stupidly I haven’t opened those jars yet, believing them to be so rare and precious that they should be kept for another day).
The apple trees have hardly any fruit this year, which isn’t surprising after two heavily laden years (also they really need pruning). Those trees were gifted to us from Mum, soon after I moved in here – they are a Cambusnethan pippin and a Galloway Pippin, and they produce good, slightly tart apples which work as eaters or cookers. The Victoria plum similarly is taking a year off this year – I wonder if there was something about the time they blossomed this year? There wasn’t a frost to kill off the fruit, but perhaps the pollinators weren’t about?
In amongst this barren orchard are the two pear trees, which haven’t produced much fruit in recent years… but this year, oh my! So many pears! I have a lovely recipe for Spiced Pears, which involves slow cooking some pears in a mixture of sugar and spices and vinegar and wine (if I remember correctly) until the fruit is entirely infused with the flavours and the liquid has boiled down to a syrup – they are equally good served with cold meat, or drizzled on top of the best vanilla ice cream. I still have the remnants of a jar made several years ago (possibly pre pandemic) and honestly, those goo-ey soft fruit are ambrosial nectar.
Mum slept through my whole visit the other day, for a couple of hours, until the very end when she opened her eyes and smiled her big gappy smile at me. But her eyes twinkled and she knew it was me, her favourite daughter. Her eyes used to be green as gooseberries (according to her Aunt Janey). Now, they are slightly rheumy, and the green has faded to a soft grey-ish green – a bit like gooseberries do if you overcook them.
***
Can I ask you a small favour? Could you please click here and vote for me, Lois Wolffe. The Smock has been shortlisted for an Award and it would mean the world to me if you voted for it.
Mostly on this blog I write about trying to care for Mum as she developed dementia, which nearly broke me on a number of occasions. Gentle meditative stitching her old Fisherman’s Smock probably saved me as I let everything go to concentrate on those tiny stitches. If you want to read more about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation.
Finally, if this has moved you, I would really appreciate it if you made a donation towards Alzheimer Scotland. They’re doing stuff that makes living with this more bearable for so many people. Thank you, thank you, a thousand thank yous.
This is meant to be a quick wee emblem.. but I’m beginning to think it might take a while.
Mum has saved stickers from fresh fruit over the years, and stuck them to the back of the door under the stairs. There are actually no stairs in Mum’s house, but the larder was under the stairs in my childhood home, so the larder is still called UnderThe Stairs.
Under The Stairs in our childhood home was a magical place for me.
There was a rough stone floor, and thick shelves, which in memory were made of stone, but perhaps they were concrete blocks? I’ll never know. And everything under there was cool to the touch.
When I call it Under The Stairs you might be imagining a small space with a low ceiling. While one part of this space was just like that, most of it was a fairly a long thin room with long deep shelves on either side, leading to a tiny wee window at the far end. That window was covered in mesh, allowing a free flow of air into the space.
For some reason this was where we were going to go if we got the three minute warning of a nuclear bomb… I’m not now convinced it would have protected us from any fallout, with that old mesh over the window. How odd to think that one of the things I was definitely aware of as a child was where we would hide if there was an imminent nuclear bomb; and even odder that I don’t recall there being any anxiety about this knowledge (or the fact that our safe place clearly wasn’t that safe).
Anyway, what things were kept in there?
It was effectively an overflow fridge, though never quite as cold as the fridge. We didn’t keep the actual Must Be Kept Cold things in there (so no cartons of milk, or butter and generally no fresh meat or fish). But always, always leftovers, dishes of tasty leftovers, ready to be re-purposed into some other meal. Mince made into cottage pie, vegetables added to a soup, roast lamb diced up and mixed with gravy and some curry powder to make ‘curry’. The 70s were another galaxy weren’t they?
Tins had their own shelf. There was a rack of vegetables just by the door as you went in, and frequently there would be a brace of pheasants hanging, by their necks from a hook just to the right as you went in, with a newspaper on the floor underneath to catch any drips of blood. There was a pile of tupperware-esque containers and their not-quite-fitting lids; there was the huge jeely pan, brought out once or twice a year to make marmalade and then again before Hogmanay to make the most enormous vat of Pea Soup from split peas, to feed the revellers at some unholy hour of the morning when it became clear that no-one was leaving any time soon, but we all needed something else to keep us going through till breakfast time. There was the fish kettle, brought out only once or twice in my memory to poach a whole salmon; candles, torches, a tilly lamp and an old railway signal lamp in case of black outs, which were a regular feature of my early childhood (Mum, of course, made what must have been a nuisance and a frustration to her, into a fun game for us kids). There were cans and cans of dog and cat food, each one more stinky than the other. And there were spaces for us to hide in if we were playing hide and seek.
No wonder I wasn’t afraid of a nuclear bomb – hiding in here for a while was just fine.
I was living in London when Mum and Dad moved house and I didn’t visit them till some weeks after they had moved. But from the first moment I stepped into Mum’s kitchen in that unfamiliar house and opened the door to Under The Stairs, I knew EXACTLY where everything lived. The trays would be stacked beside that chair next to the fridge, the jars of jams and chutneys on the shelf to the left Under the Stairs, and the candles up on that shelf on the right. Bottles of wine would probably be on the rack on the floor on the right, with the old square tin full of shoe cleaning stuff sitting on top of it. Everything had its place, and when Mum became increasingly blind, and then unable to remember where things were, somehow her muscle memory compensated and helped her to put her hand on just what she was looking for, keeping her independent for far longer than perhaps was wise.
***
Mostly on this blog I write about trying to care for Mum as she developed dementia, which nearly broke me on a number of occasions. Gentle meditative stitching her old Fisherman’s Smock probably saved me, giving me a focus and forcing me to carve out time when I could let everything go and just concentrate on those tiny stitches. The Smock Project is up for an Award, and it would make my heart sing if you took a moment to click through here to vote for it. It will take you but seconds to do it.
If you want to read more about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation. Or just dip in. After all, if I’ve learned anything this last few years it’s that chronology and time are less important than we might believe.
Finally, if it’s not too much to ask (I know, it is, apologies) I would really appreciate it if you could make a donation towards Alzheimer Scotland. They’re doing stuff that makes living with this more bearable for so many people. Thank you, thank you, a thousand thank yous.
It’s glorious weather here today. And I’m on holiday from work this week, so after a lazy start and a walk with the dogs I made some madeleines. Oh my good god they are delicious!
And this afternoon I pootled a bit, then had a coffee break on the Terrace and did a bit of stabbing.
I called Mum late afternoon and talked about flowers for a minute or two. That was fine.
Now might be the time to state that I have never read any Proust. And it seems likely that I probably never will if I’m honest (and I like being honest).
But I had a desire to understand about the whole madeleines Proust thing (which is no doubt impossible to fully understand if I resort to Wikipedia instead of actually going to the primary source). Anyway, I now know that in A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, or In Search of Lost Time if you want the English translation, the madeleines are used to demonstrate involuntary memory, and how it differs from the partial memory of voluntary memory.
Basically, when the character in the book tastes a madeleine dipped in tea it brings forth a forgotten memory of his aunt eating madeleines dipped in tea on a Sunday morning. And I guess a whole lot of other associated stuff with that memory.
I get this. I had this involuntary memory experience a couple of years when I saw Mum spooning the froth off the top of her cup of hot chocolate in a café. I realised I do this whenever I get a frothy drink. I also find myself sometimes involuntarily ordering a black coffee with a wee jug of cold milk on the side, because this is exactly what Dad used to order, and sometimes his words just come out before I have thought about the fact that I prefer a flat white. I wonder if Dad might have liked a flat white, if they had been more readily available in his lifetime?
Anyway, memories.
Memories of memories.
And shadows of memories, ghosts of memories.
I’m interested in what we remember, and what we lose. What we notice at the time, and what we hold in our memory banks so we can revisit them later. I hope I always remember the woodpecker that had breakfast at the birdfeeder just 2 feet from my desk this morning. Will it come back to me, unbidden, if I see a woodpecker again when I am old? Will I always remember that moment it first landed on the birdfeeder and I held my breath, lest I disturb it? And how when it had its fill, it flew back up to the telegraph pole and clung on, in classic woodpecker pose, but this time not so close, so I couldn’t see the detail of each and every feather.
Also, I do love the photograph (above) of the ghosts of madeleines, created by the dusting of icing sugar.
***
You might want to dip into other posts, or understand how we got to this point? This series of posts starts here, with Taking Smock of the Situation, an embroidery project I started after I realised Mum might have dementia. There I was, embroidering her old fisherman’s smock with symbols relating to her life; as her memories were being thrown around like so many pieces of jigsaw in a big box.
Mum used to make us the thinnest of thin crepes, which we all (obviously) fought over. We only ever had them with a squeeze of lemon (which in the 60s and early 70s was always a squeeze from the plastic Jif Lemon, do you remember them? And what was the relationship between a Jif Lemon and Jif Cleaning products?)
Anyway, although I do love to share a recipe here, I’m not going to share the crepes recipe – there are plenty other places you can find them online, or in recipe books. But I’m going to share two other recipes for pancakes.
Mum’s sister Joyce made the best pancakes. I have such happy memories of sitting at the big farmhouse kitchen table at Marbrack, with my back to the Rayburn, where Aunt Joyce was turning out the most perfect fluffy pancakes. They were what you might call Drop Scones, or Scotch Pancakes, similar to American Pancakes. Once each pancake was cooked, she would pop it into a big bowl, lined with a clean tea towel, and then flip the tea towel over the top of them all to keep them warm. So good, warm with fresh butter.
We have Joyce’s pancake recipe in Mum’s recipe book.. the instructions aren’t today’s cookbook standard, but you can probably work it out, if you know what you’re looking for.
Aunt Joyce had compiled a collection of local recipes into a wee book to support Carsphairn Heritage Group in 1993; it was republished in 2017 after her death. It has a wonderful recipe for pancakes in it, though I doubt any of you will make it today. Do let me know if you do (click on the picture to see the whole recipe).
Whether you are sweet or savoury, crepes or fluffy, and whether or not you include very clean snow in your recipe, I hope you enjoy pancake day.
***
Most of my writing focuses on my relationship with Mum’s dementia since I first noticed there was something “not quite right” in January 2021. You can read about it here.
The vase was made by a local potter, Tom Lochhead. Mum had known him, and he had inspired and encouraged Mum to start her own wee business making sculptures of domestic animals from clay. She owned a few of his pieces – a small jug and also a crocus bowl, both of which she has given to me in recent years when all Mum’s Christmas and birthday gifts have been things from the house that she was trying to get rid of.
Since buying that vase, nearly a year ago, a few other pieces have found their way into my possession… including the beautiful bowl above, and several other vases. No doubt in coming years, I will follow Mum’s lead and give them away to people as Christmas and birthday gifts. Meanwhile, I get such joy from picking a few sprigs in the garden and having a wee vase of flowers on my desk.
But, back to 25 June 2021… that afternoon I sent a message to a friend: I have switched off Mum’s Rayburn. .. I cried a wee bit but in a good way.
That Rayburn. It was the physical beating heart of our home, an extension of Mum’s love and warmth all my life. I learned to cook at the Rayburn. Our big ginger cat jumped onto the hot plate of the Rayburn when it was a kitten and PROING! immediately jumped up and off like a cartoon kitten when it realised it was HOT. Dad’s supper was always left ‘in the bottom oven’ back in the day when he was travelling back and forth from Edinburgh, and would always arrive some hours after we had eaten our supper. Meringues cooked like a dream in that slow bottom oven. You could make your own yoghurt overnight, using the gentle background warmth to keep the culture happy. I never really learned about timings when making a meal, as everything could be kept ‘on the side of the Rayburn’ to keep warm once it was ready. The oven in the Rayburn is most forgiving, making perfect roasts, warming stews and light cakes. Of course there was also that Christmas when we put the turkey in the Rayburn at breakfast time, only to notice at coffee time that the temperature had not come up. It had run out of oil, and would not be cooking our Christmas dinner that day.
In recent months, I had been reacquainting myself with the quirks of cooking with a Rayburn. It was a delight to take a slightly slower approach to making all our meals. Weekends were for batch cooking stews, casseroles and soups, sometimes a roast on Sundays. And through the week, the Rayburn would gladly reheat those batch-cooked meals from the freezer, so we could easily enjoy our main meal of the day at lunch time, and I could still get some paid work done.
It was impossible not to cloak the switching off of the Rayburn with meaning. But even without my default setting of overthinking and over-analysis of the situation, it was just heart-wrenchingly sad to lock the door of Mum’s house behind me, knowing that next time I opened that door all the warmth would have gone from her home.
At this point I think perhaps we knew that she might have left that home forever, although we were still fighting to find ways for her to come home when she was able.
(As an update to the last post, I did not get the job. It was handled incredibly badly and I regretted applying for it. It totally knocked my confidence for a while. However, the candidate who got the role is now a great colleague and I realise that however capable I was of doing that job, I know I did not have the headspace to persuade anyone else of that at the time. Since then I have thought a lot about work, and what I want out of it… and I have far better clarity now around how important (or not) my work is to me. It is no longer a key part of my identity, my social life does not revolve around it and it is not where I am inspired and learn and feel myself growing.. but I am lucky in that I am finding other ways to find that fulfilment. Work enables me to focus on what is important to me, and that feels very liberating.)
***
If you want to catch up on how we got to this point, this series of posts starts here, with Taking Smock of the Situation.
On the 9th day of my 100 day embroidery project I wrote the following:
With a few online internal meetings today, I’ve been able to make good progress with embellishing the smock so here I give you my pair of swooping swallows.
Not bad, eh?
My brother and I are looking after Mum together now, after months and months of each of us doing it on our own and then going home for a bit while the other minds Mum. It’s only now, sharing our caring, that I realise how much of the strain is down to the isolation.
When not working for my employer, or caring for Mum, or stitching I can generally be found cooking.. and our new favourite are my Biscuits That Make You Go Ooooh. They are sesame and saffron shortbread. Mum loves them. So today’s bonus is a dish of toasted sesame seeds, and then Those Biscuits.
I’ll spare you the picture of the toasted sesame seeds, because you really don’t need to see them.
But those biscuits! They really do make people go ooooh! I think it’s the surprise of the sesame-ness of them. And then that beguiling hint of saffron. Anyway, they are super-tasty. And even now, seven months later, and with Mum’s memory so patchy, she will delight in saying ooooh if she opens the biscuit tin and finds these biscuits.
I guess you want the recipe don’t you? They are Saffron and Sesame Biscuits by Sabrina Ghayour, from her Simply book, which you really should buy because there are so many VERY good recipes in it. And these are ridiculously simple.
I’ve been reflecting a lot recently on how it was last year, what I was up to a year ago, what I didn’t know then that we know now. January 2021 was without doubt the hardest, cruellest month. The weather didn’t help, but that was not the problem. I knew I would be minding Mum on my own for a while, as we’d gone back into lockdown and really we shouldn’t be mixing households, or swapping them about more than was necessary. I had thought a lot about self care, and had put various strategies in place, but even so, it was lonely and (with hindsight) anxiety-making being with Mum, and realising that she probably had the early stages of dementia.
But don’t feel sorry for me, please. We had lovely times together, and I am forever grateful and aware of the privilege of being able to temporarily move my life and live in the house next door to her, in the town where I grew up, and to feel supported by a community (despite us all being locked down and apart from one another) and being nurtured by the Galloway countryside.
I got support from many sources, including from from Alzheimer Scotland, who provide a 24 hour helpline. Please help them keep that helpline free for anyone who needs it. You can donate here: Alzheimer Scotland, and I can tell you that you are an absolute star for supporting all of us who have feared the worst when faced with the prospect of someone we love having dementia.
It’s been hard hasn’t it? This last year, being locked down, missing being with the people we love.
At the beginning of January this year, I went to stay with Mum, to mind her as she gets increasingly frail and somewhat confused. I knew I might be there for a while, and with the latest version of lockdown I didn’t know when I’d be allowed to see anyone else, nor how long I was likely to be there. It would be lonely, isolated. So I put a lot of thought into my own well-being and self-care, and tried to really think about what I could plan that would give me pleasure, that would nurture me, keep me on an even keel, when I knew I would feel cast adrift from the world I usually inhabit.
Most people who know me would assume that baking and cooking would be high on that list, and I thought so too initially. But it didn’t take me long to realise that the joy I gain from baking is mostly from sharing what I make. I got so little joy from baking for myself (partly because I have successfully lost over 2 stone and don’t intend to pile it all back on for the sake of some baking self-care). For a while I hardly baked at all.
Then I started making biscuits again, and posting them to people – biscuits, I discovered, are very post-able. And there was a surfeit of post-able boxes available after all that online shopping that had been going on!
But then the first pink forced rhubarb arrived in our fruit and veg box, And I knew exactly what I wanted to make – a sort of rhubarb frangipane tart. Well, the pastry was going to take too long (I only seemed to have short slivers of time available) so I made a cake without the pastry. It was amazing. But oh so ugly.
I made another. Just as tasty, just as ugly. It was christened the Ugly Duckling Cake.
Ugly Duckling Cake, in all its glorious ugliness
Then I discovered the muffin tins in the cupboard … at around the same time as I used up all the rhubarb. How could I replicate that sharp shock of rhubarb in a wee frangipane cake? My first thought was cranberries in balsamic vinegar (this may seem like a very random thought, but I had spied a bag of cranberries in the freezer, left over from the Christmas That Never Happened, and a couple of years ago I had made a delicious sharp and sweet cranberry and balsamic chutney, which was just the taste I was looking for). I’ve also used marmalade, and lemon curd. I reckon almost any kind of compote, made with whatever fruit is seasonal would work.
Oh, and the best thing about these wee cakes? If you pop them in a ziplock bag and put them in a suitable box, they post really well. You can send them in lieu of a hug to anyone and everyone you love. And you’ll feel so much happier having done it.
Well-fired frangipane cakes in rainbow muffin cases
Frangipane cakes
125g butter, softened
125 caster sugar
2 eggs
125g ground almonds
1 TBsp plain flour
Preheat oven to Gas Mark 5, or 170C.
Prepare your muffin tins. You know that this just means pop a paper muffin case into each of the muffin holes don’t you? I usually make 9 wee cakes out of one batch, but it depends on the size of your muffins, obviously.
Weigh out your almonds and add spoonful of flour. Set aside for a minute.
Using and electric beater, beat the butter and sugar together till really light and creamy. Then beat it some more. Seriously, the better you beat it at this stage, the lovelier and light your cakes will be.
Add the eggs one by one, beating well after each one. Add a wee bit of the flour/almonds if it is curdling to try to bring it back together. If your eggs are really fresh I think it is less likely to curdle or split, but perhaps I’m just imagining that?
Now, using a big metal spoon, fold the almonds and flour in to the mixture. Try to keep it light, don’t bash all the air out of it.
Spoon dollops of the mixture into muffin trays, using about 2/3 of the mixture.
Now put a spoonful of whatever fruitiness you are adding on top of the mixture in the muffin tins. And then cover with a final wee spoon of cake mixture. You really don’t need to be precise about all this, and in fact it works fine if you spoon all the cake mixture into the tins, and add the fruitiness on top at the end. You find this out by forgetting to leave some back one time.
Pop them in the oven. Check them after about 30 minutes to see how they are – I’ve had some ready at about 35 minutes, others needing another ten minutes. I guess it depends on your oven doesn’t it? I test by pressing lightly on a cake with two fingers, and seeing if it springs back nicely. If not, cook it a bit more.
Ready for baking
In the oven
Mini frangipane cakes, ready to be packed up and posted off as a proxy hug
You can pimp this basic frangipane mixture by adding other flavours, such as vanilla essence, almond essence or orange oil (I was gifted some of this elixir by a super-kind friend and it is amazing) – I mix it in with the butter and sugar.
If you want to make the lemon version, you can find my lemon curd recipe here. The balsamic cranberries can be found here. Or use a bought jam, or fresh berries, or slices of poached pear on top, or apples cooked in butter and sugar to caramelise them. Really, whatever you have to hand, just try it out. What’s the worst that can happen?
If you are interested in more recipes that I’ve scribbled down over the years, take a look at my Index of Recipes. And if you find any broken links, please let me know – over the years I have moved this site and some of the links I think are historic (and not in a good way).
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