The best breakfast

I finally found a granola recipe that is quick and easy to make - no tedious removing from the oven to stir every five minutes - and which doesn't require me to hand over my entire month's food budget to Holland and Barrett in order to buy ingredients: this recipe - from the brilliant Jack Monroe.  

• The recipe uses ingredients that I always have in the house: oats, peanut butter, honey and a little pat of butter.  That's it.
• It took me about 2 minutes to mix and then just 15 minutes to cook.
• It made the whole house smell amazing while it baked.
• Cam did a quality control test once it was cooled, and I had to physically remove the spoon from his hand in order to stop him from eating the WHOLE BATCH.

Granola jars

 

I had some for breakfast this morning with yogurt, banana and fridge jam.  It was one of the nicest breakfasts I've had in months.

A very fine breakfast

The fridge jam is a cross between a sauce and a jam.  It needs to be kept in the fridge, and is a lovely thing to have on hand as the basis for a fruity breakfast, a smoothie or a pudding.  This one is made from half a punnet of blackcurrants - left over from an enthusiastic session at the PYO farm last week - a few shakes of caster sugar, and two tablespoons of water.  I put everything in a pan, brought it to the boil, and left it to bubble for a few minutes before cooling and putting it in a clean jar. 

Blackcurrant fridge jam

It is nice and sharp, and a wonderful colour.  You can make this from any fruit, but berries and stone fruits work particularly well.  The key to making fridge jam is just to use a very small spoonful or two of water in your mixture.  Proper jam uses much more sugar and no water; stewed fruit (or fruit compote) uses less sugar but more water - fridge jam falls somewhere in the middle.  

I love blackcurrants so much - such an interesting, feisty fruit.  This jar of them tastes  like distilled summer.      

Abundance

We went to the PYO farm and picked redcurrants, blackcurrants, and raspberries.  Oh, those raspberries!

Just some of the fruit we came back from the PYO with

Then we went to the forest and picked blackberries.  So many blackberries!

Stewed apple and blackberries

It has been a incredible year for fruit in London.  I think the combination of wet spring and hot summer have suited the berries very well.

One of the great joys of going berry picking is the speculation about what you will do with your berries when you get home.  So far this summer I have made:

• apple and redcurrant crumble (at least three of these)
• raspberry and apple crumble
• raspberry crumble (two of these)
• raspberry and almond cake (using this failsafe recipe here)
• raspberry and vanilla cake
• blackcurrant and almond cake (same recipe as above)
• raspberry coulis
• stewed apple and blackberries
• lemon and blackberry loaf cake

Raspberry and almond cake

We have also stirred handfuls of berries into porridge, bircher muesli and plain yogurt for breakfast.  I am particularly partial to ryvita spread with cream cheese and then topped with raspberries or blackberries and a drizzle of honey.  We've had so many berries that I don't even mind Olivia standing in front of the open fridge eating great handfuls of them straight from the punnet.  

There is a generous abundance this year.

About half of what we picked during a stroll through Epping Forest