just pottering

another day spent pottering, i attempted to try my hand at marbling paper- so not my forté apparently; the only thing i succeeded in doing was turning perfectly acceptable printer paper into soggy limp useless wads of mush. good one emma!

on a more pleasant, successful note, i got my film developed this afternoon, so i'm going to post up my cherry pie recipe c: yahoo!



CHEERY CHERRY PIE

pastry:
- 2 cups flour
- 3 tablespoons caster sugar
- 150g cold butter (cubed)
- 1/3 cup of iced water
- 1 teaspoon vanilla essence

filling:
- 3 cups fresh cherries (or sour, or tinned)
- 2 tablespoons caster sugar (more or less to taste, depending on your cherries)
- 2 teaspoons arrowroot
- 1/4 cup of blackcurrant juice



preheat your oven to 180 degrees (that's 350 fahrenheit i think).
the next thing you should do is chop up your butter. nice and small, so your food processor or mixer can handle it and you don't end up with a big wad of nonsense stuck to your beater. little cubes like in the photo are perfectemundo.



next, measure out your flower and sugar and combine them in your mixing bowl. this pastry isn't particularly sweet, in fact, it's not sweet to taste at all, so if you like an obviously sweet pie crust, add some more sugar. the main flavour in this particular pastry is meant to focus on the vanilla, but whatever floats your boat c:



now add your cubed butter and mix until your butter and flour have combined to make a kind of crumbly, breadcrumb texture. since my mixer didn't do very well at this part, i mixed it initially with the machine, until it stopped doing anything and was just pushing everything around the bowl, then took to it with my hands, just squishing the mixture in my fingers over and over and making sure there weren't any stubborn clumps of butter. hopefully the picture above is a good enough reference for the breadcrumb texture we're after. then i simply turned the machine back on and let it slowely start to create smooth balls of dough, adding the vanilla essence and iced water gradually.



then you need to just form a nice big ball out of your dough, wrap it in plastic and let it sit in the fridge for 30mins and it's on to the filling!



first thing you need to do if you're using fresh cherries (always so much yummier) is to pit them. this can either be massively laborious, or amusing. sometimes a little of both. for me this time it was amusing.. cherry juice was flying all over the shop, including my face, clothes, table, cat etc. the easiest way to remove the seeds is with a cherry pitter! thank all things good that we have one here, otherwise i might have given up right then and there. if you're unfortunate enough not to own one, sorry, but looks like you're going to have a long time ahead of splitting cherries and removing the seed by hand :c better you than me!



whichever way you go about it, your cherries should end up looking just SO GOSH DARN DELICIOUS but no eating them yet! trust me, your self restraint will be worth it later.



next we combine our cherries in a pot on medium heat with around 3 tablespoons of sugar. you can use more or less depending on the sweetness of your cherries/ your sugar tolerance/fetish. whichever. stir those cherries continuously until they've stopped oozing out their beautiful red juice, and have turned a most attractive deep red. i feel happy just thinking about that colour. then in a little bowl (tiny bowl!) mix your arrowroot with about a tablespoon of the blackcurrant juice (you don't have to use blackcurrant juice.. an alternative would be cranberry juice, any real fruit berry cordials, or mixing berry jam with a little water) until it's all dissolved and milky. then, making sure you stir QUICKLY AND CONSTANTLY, pour your arrowroot/blackcurrant mix into your cherries and mixmixmixmixmix so that it doesn't go lumpy. add more blackcurrant juice until you have a nice thick, gelatinous, soupy pot of cherries.



while you're waiting for your cherry goop to cool, grab your dough out of the fridge and seperate it into 2 halves. roll out your first half to fit into the base of your greased pie dish. if you're worried about the base of your pie not being cooked, cover it in baking paper and fill it with rice and put it in the oven for around 10 minutes, or until it's a lovely light gold, then take it out. if you're not worried, don't worry; i didn't and mine turned out just dandy.



poor your cherry goop onto your pie base and smooth that sucker down!



with your other lump of dough, roll it out and cut it into nice long strips; weave your strips and lay them over your cherry filling, press everything in place and trim the edges. now the fun(nest) part; brush your pastry with a little egg white, or some milk -i use almond milk because it's just super delicious- and sprinkle it with raw sugar. and that's it, you're set to throw that baby in the oven for about 30mins or until the crust is beautiful and golden brown. serves around 6.

who needs friends..

..when you have pie!

the plan for today was to head out of the city and go for a bit of a frolic with a friend, but after waking up to a message on my phone that went something along the lines of: 'only just got home from work, really tired, can't do anything today sorry!' looks like those plans were out the window. i spent a good few hours pottering around glumly, when the glorious woman who is my mother walked through the door with a big bag of sweet, plump, ruby red cherries. i haven't done a lot of cooking lately, i tend to fall in and out of love with food quite regularly, but recently i've been dreaming of steaming hot pies fresh out of the oven, and i couldn't pass up making good use of my new found cherry opportunity!

apart from a donna hay pastry recipe i kind of just threw it together (most lovingly) while having a good ol' boogie to j.j cale on the radio. and i tell you what, it tastes gosh darn scrumptious! i can't think of a better way to spend the afternoon... sadly the only photos i have on hand are the lame digital ones i took when it was done, i'll have to wait to get the rolls i took developed, and then i think i'll post up the recipe, because sharing is caring, and this is just too yummy to keep to myself (did i mention i already ate 2 big slices?? ha..).

getting started

in order to form some semblance of sanity out of the unorganised, discombobulated, often times frantic mess that resides inside my head in my final semester of university, i've decided to fill this space instead with all the bits and bobs, useless information, images, ideas, and adventures i collect as i wander willy nilly around the world.

being on a lovely 6 week holiday warrants more adventures than usual, especially since i've neglected even thinking about the major work i have to start when semester begins at the end of july.. since it seems rather passé to post things that are over and done in the past i'll have to wait for my next exciting gander to write about it here.

basically it's just been me, the cat, and the garden. not a shabby way to start if you ask me.

(middle photo by nat, http://skyandground.tumblr.com/)