Garden Blogs

Haven’t managed to get in the garden to work for a couple of days now due to the rain and being away for the weekend – hence no photos this time. I did make the Strawberry yoghurt sandwich cake and it was delicious so if you fancy having a go you will need …….Cake – 125ml plain yoghurt (Rachel’s of course), 200g sugar, 100g melted butter, 2 lg eggs, 1tsp vanilla extract, 250g self-raising flour. Filling – 200ml double cream (again Rachel’s), 100g strawberries hulled and icing sugar. Pre-heat the oven to 180C/160fan/350F/gas4. Lightly oil a 18cm across and at least 7cm deep loose-bottom cake tin and line the base with baking paper. Whisk together the cake ingredients, except the flour, until combined, then lightly fold in the flour. Transfer the mixture to the cake tin, level the top, place on the middle shelf of the oven and bake for 40-50 minutes or until a skewer inserted at the centre comes out clean. Remove from the oven, allow to cool for 10 mins in the tin, then remove from the tin and allow to cool completely. When ready to fill, slice the cake in half horizontally. For the filling, whip the cream until firm. Roughly mash the strawberries with a sprinkling of icing sugar and fold into the cream. Sandwich the cake with the filling and dust the top with icing sugar before serving. Enjoy. We picked our first runner beans yesterday, just about enough for the two of us, very nice. Our tomatoes are starting to turn so hopefully by the end of the week we will be adding them to our salad’s. Raspberries are fruiting, so much so that I am freezing some for later on in the year. I would make some jam but they are not co-operating by enough being ready at the same time!! We also have Autumn fruiting raspberries, so jam may still be on the cards, we shall see. Strawberries on our veg plot are still fruiting. We had a few plants left over earlier in the year so, not wanting to waste any, I planted them in big pot and put it by our bench in the dogs garden. They are doing well, sending out runners and fruiting. Unfortunately we haven’t managed to have any of these fruits yet because they were being stolen, birds again we thought, but no not this time – the dogs!!!! Yes, it seems they have added strawberries to their five a day list. Hope to post some photo’s soon as everything looks so much better for the soaking we’ve had over the last few days’s.