Trifle

Finishing off my trifle. Sugar free jelly with  fresh raspberries. Blancmange with sweetner, cream on top! Yum!

I only make it for special occasions, my sister has been to visit so it was a treat for her. It’s refreshing and tasty. Not overly sweet, with fresh fruit rather than trifle sponges that can be too sugary.

Raspberry flower?

It’s Mid-october and things were mild but now they are getting colder. Last week we had temperatures in the high teen centigrade and this week they have gone down to 12 or 13 in the day time and 5 or 6°C at night. Leaves are finally starting to change colour but still some plants seem to think its Spring!

My Raspberry plants for instance have come back into flower. I don’t have a close up lens, but I managed to get a photo of this raspberry flower. It’s a bit cold and bedraggled after the cold, heavy rain we had today, but despite a tinge of brown on the edges of its petals its still trying. It probably won’t turn into fruit as there are no insects around now. Still interesting to see.

Just making a trifle

I usually make a trifle at Christmas, but I’m doing it for New Years Eve and Day this time (so it will be a two year old trifle!).

This is only the start, but it looked so pretty. I’ve put a pint of sugar free rasperry jelly (made up with half a pint if boiling water and a quarter of a pint of cold water and a quarter of a pint if sherry. (jelly is not the American version of jam, but is it called jello). I added chopped strawberries and whole blackberries to the liquid. Any slightly mouldy ones are going on the bird feeding table tomorrow, they have been washed and are back in the fridge.

Tomorrow I will add strawberry blancmange (a type of flavoured custard), as I don’t like custard which some people use. I make that up with a pint of milk and sweetener ( I avoid putting sugar in). Finally I whip double cream, (heavy cream?) about three quarters of a pint till it makes stiff peaks. I might add spare blackberries for decoration. I might take a photo tommorow when it’s finished. X

Apple and Raspberry cake

A little bit flat, but I cooked this in a flan case.

Ingredients (approx amounts)

8oz self raising flour

4oz butter/ margarine

two tablespoonfuls sweetener (or 4oz sugar)

three eggs

two tablespoons milk

pinch of salt

large cooking apple peeled and cored

packet of raspberries.

I put the self raising flour in a bowl and then put bits of butter in plus the sweetener, then with a metal spoon I broke the fat up more, a pinch of salt, then crumbled the mix between my fingers so that it looked like breadcrumbs.

I made a dip in the mix and added the eggs, slowly stirring it in and trying to keep air in the batter, I added a bit of semi-skimmed milk to soften it more.

I added the apple slices and the raspberries to the cake batter so the fruit was evenly mixed into it. Then I poured the batter into the flan case which I had buttered.

I put the cake in an oven, gas mark 4, for 1 hour and 10 to 15 minutes.

It came out nice and moist, and it wasn’t completely cooled when we tore into it!

Note I used self raising flour that contains wheat, milk and eggs that can be allergens, butter which may not be in your diet and sweetener that you can cook with because I try to make sugar free cakes.