Category: Desserts

Bottled Tamarillos

On By kwarkyIn Desserts, Fruit, Preserves3 Comments

DSC06537   Today I bottled 11kg of tamarillos.  We still have some fruit on the trees.  There is a mixture of 3 varieties that have self-seeded in our avocado orchard and grown up tall to reach the light.  I just go and give the trunks a good shake and they fall down if they are ripe.

Red Tamarillo
Red Tamarillo
Gold Tamarillo
Gold Tamarillo
Amber Tamarillo
Amber Tamarillo

The three varieties are red, gold and amber.  The red ones are more tart than the other two, so I tend to process the red ones in some way with sugar, and the gold and amber ones are good to eat fresh or to process, needing a lot less sugar.

I used the recipe ‘Bottled Tamarillo’s’ from my cookbook ‘Tamarillo Cookbook’ by Jan Bilton, and this time I decided to use wine instead of water. I have changed it slightly because I found it to be too sweet going exactly by the recipe. Naughty eh 🙂

Once I had bottled the tam’s, I had a whole lot of juice left over, so I bottled that too.  It will be lovely diluted with lemonade or soda water, or just water.

One 10 litre bucket yields aprox 3 kg of scooped fruit, but for the recipe you weigh them before you scoop them out.

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Ingredients:

2 cups water or red or white wine

3/4 cup sugar

1 kg tamarillos,  halved and scooped.

Bring the liquid to the boil, add the sugar and stir to dissolve.  Poach the tamarillos until just cooked.  Spoon into clean preserving jars and fill to overflowing with the boiling liquid.  Seal with vacuum seals.

With the excess juice left after bottling, strain, bottle and seal.

Really yummy

Kind regards

Mumma Bear xx

Old-fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream

On By kwarkyIn DessertsLeave a comment

icecreamAnother recipe for when your chooks are laying enthusiastically. This vanilla ice cream is very rich and creamy.  I guess it’s the equivalent of a commercial french vanilla, but this one is way better. Serve with various crumbles and other hot desserts. Or, if you must, just eat it on it’s own.  If you are by yourself and no-one sees you, then did it really happen?

Don’t worry if you haven’t got an ice cream maker although they are quite a cheap item to buy.  Just freeze the mixture a little, beat, freeze a little more, beat, etc etc until it is of the right consistency.  This recipe makes aprox 1 litre of ice cream.

This recipe comes from a Family Circle recipe book called ‘Ice-creams and Desserts’.

Ingredients:

3/4 cup caster sugar

2 vanilla beans, split lengthwise, or 1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup milk – raw is preferable, but bought is fine if you don’t have access to raw.

6 egg yolks, lightly beaten.

2 cups cream – raw is really yummy, but bought is fine if you don’t have access to raw.

Method:

  1. Place sugar and vanilla beans (or extract) in a double boiler or a heat-proof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water.  Pour milk over and stir until sugar is dissolved and milk is quite hot.
  2. Remove milk from heat.  Place beaten yolks in a heatproof bowl or jug.  Slowly pour milk over egg yolks, whisking as you do so.
  3. Return mixture to double boiler.  Stir constantly over low heat until mixture coats the back of the spoon.  Remove from heat.  Whisk until smooth if it is a bit lumpy.  Place aside to cool.  If I am in a hurry I put the bowl in a sink of cold water and stir it to cool quickly.
  4. Once cool, stir cream through and chill in fridge for at least 2 hours,  or overnight is even better.
  5. Remove vanilla beans if you have used them and scrape the seeds from the beans into the mixture, discard pods.
  6. Pour the custard into an ice cream maker and churn for about 30 minutes or until ice cream is firm.

I often serve it with a homemade caramel sauce if you are feeling really naughty 🙂 or lemon honey and greek yoghurt or Homemade Custard.

Do enjoy

Yours sincerely

Mumma Bear xx

Homemade Custard.

On By kwarkyIn Desserts1 Comment

019When you have chooks and they are laying copious quantities of eggs, its nice to do lots of homemade things with them knowing that you are making something entirely from scratch, using nutrient dense home-grown ingredients.  I often make this custard with raw milk too,  which is so much better for you than homogenised and pasturised shop bought milk.  If you do know a dairy farmer, they are legally allowed to sell you up to 10 litres of milk (in New Zealand) at a time.  Raw milk is beautiful to use to make custard, ice-cream, cheese, etc and everything tastes just that much creamier and wholesome.

You will need:

800 mls milk

3 tbsp sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

Bring to the boil in a saucepan on the stove.

Meanwhile, into a shaker, add:

250 mls milk

1/4 – 1/3 cup cornflour (depending on how thick you want it)

4 egg yolks

Shake together and have ready to add to the milk just as it starts to boil.  Reduce heat and stir quickly until it thickens.  Remove immediately from heat once thickened as it catches and burns easily.

Really yummy served with Old-fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream

Enjoy

Yours sincerely

Mumma Bear

Tamarillo Whirls

On By kwarkyIn Dairy-free, Desserts, Fruit, Gluten-free3 Comments

20150935This is my husbands favorite dessert, so when the tamarillos are in season we have this often.  The kids love it too.  My favorite tamarillos to use are the red ones.  They have more flavour and tartness than the Gold or Amber ones.  Tamarillos are an excellent source of carotene and vitamins B6, C and E.  They are a rich source of iron and a good source of fibre.  No reason not to do lots with this very versatile fruit.  Unless of course you live in an area where they don’t grow.  When I was a student in Dunedin my fiance lived in Kerikeri, and he used to send me down boxes of tamarillos and kiwifruit.  I thought it was christmas!  He obviously knew the way to a poor fruit-deprived students heart 🙂

Red, Gold and Amber Tamarillos.
Red, Gold and Amber Tamarillos.

The recipe is really easy,  basically a scone mixture made into pinwheels.  It is easy to make into dairy-free,  just substitute coconut oil or ghee instead of butter. And I have made it gluten-free before, by using a gluten-free flour mix. And the sauce that it makes is deeeeelicious!!!  I could go on and on and on…..

So, on with the recipe.

Heat oven to 180 deg celsius on fanbake, or 200 deg celsius on conventional bake.  Into baking dish place 1 1/2 cups boiling water and 1 cup sugar.  Place in oven to keep hot.  Prepare dough.

Dough:

1 1/2 cups flour (wheat or gluten-free)

2 tbsp sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1/3 cup milk (dairy or dairy-free eg. almond, rice etc)

90gm butter (or ghee or coconut oil)

Pinch salt.

Rub butter (or dairy-free alternatives) into flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.  Mix with milk (or dairy-free alternative) into a stiff dough. I usually just chuck it all into my food processor.  Roll out into an oblong aprox 1 cm thick.

1 cup tamarillo flesh – (cut tams in half, use a teaspoon to scoop out the flesh, and chop lightly into smaller pieces.)

Spread chopped tamarillos over the dough. Add some dots of butter or coconut oil to the fruit.  Roll up from the long edge into a roll, lifting as you go so as to capture the fruit in the roll.  Cut into slices about 4cm thick.  To do this easily, I get a piece of cotton thread,  slide it under the roll where you want to slice it.  Bring each end of cotton up and over the top of the roll, crossing over each other at the top and keep pulling.  This slices the roll neatly without squashing it like a knife does.

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Place each slice in your dish of hot water/sugar mix.  Add any leftover fruit around the slices in the dish.

In this picture I have doubled the recipe. If you do this, don't double the amount of hot water, put in about 2 cups instead.
In this picture I have doubled the recipe. If you do this, don’t double the amount of hot water, put in about 2 cups instead.

Bake for aprox 20 mins or until golden brown on the top.  Let it sit and cool for a bit so that the sauce thickens.

I often serve it with Homemade Custard and Old-fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream.

Yum, yum, yum!!!