Beetroot-oo what you believe in

And in my case that would be cake. We'll be growing a lot more beetroot next year - unlike radishes, it doesn't seem like one can have too much of it - we've had it roasted, boiled, grated and now baked. At larger-scale self sufficient communities they are stored in crates of sand over winter to stop them shrinking - seems to work fine if you can avoid gritty meals upon up-sanding. Anyhow, ours have all long been converted!

Maggie gave us some recipes to start with, and this is what we baked:

Moist chocolate cake with a beetroot pink squidge

By any standard, this cake is divine. Yes, the quantity of beetroot used is the only disappointment in this recipe, but it's amply made up for with chocolate!

300 g beetroot, boiled until tender (~30 minutes)
200 g dark chocolate (75%)
200 g butter
4 tbsp hot water or coffee
140 g flour
3 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
5 eggs
180 g sugar

Butter a 20 cm cake tin. Pre-heat the oven to 180C/gas4.
Whisk the egg whites until stiff, the whisk in the sugar.
Bring a few cm of water to simmer in a small pot and rest a bowl on top to heat. Break the chocolate into the bowl to melt and add the 4 tbsp hot water and the butter in small chunks. Mix briefly when melted, transfer to a large mixing bowl and allow to cool a little. Stir in the egg yolks followed by the beetroot. Then fold in the egg whites and the sieves flower, baking powder and cocoa. Do not over-mix. Bake at 160C for 30-40 minutes until firm around the edge but Still a little wobbly in the middle. This will set as it cools. Serve cold with yoghurt or sour cream. Lovely.

Beetroot and buckwheat seed loaf

David's favourite by far - the first gluten and dairy free cake he actually ate most of!

250 g buckwheat flour
5 level tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
200 g brown sugar
180 ml sunflower oil
3 eggs
250 g beetroot
120g seeds (pumpkin, sunflower, poppy)
1/2 lemon juice and zest
50 g dried apricots

Line a loaf tin with baking paper; grease with oil or vegan margerine. Pre-heat the oven to 180C/gas4. Beat the egg whites until stiff and set aside. Beat oil, sugar and egg yolks together. Add the grated beetroot, lemon, chopped apricots and seeds. Mix the dry ingredients and sieve over the mix. Add the egg whites and fold together gently but not too thoroughly until just combined. Pour into the loaf tin and bake for 45 minutes. Leave in switched off oven for a further 15 minutes.

This is a moist fruity tea cake that tastes healthier than it probably is... with the added satisfaction of seedy crunch all the way through! The beetroot almost disappears, leaving just the deep earthy taste of wholefood...

Feast!

A long day on the plot, digging, weeding, picking and planning. Followed by dinner with Cate, Malcolm, Hanna, David and Sarah. Mostly home grown. Baked potatoes, sprouting broccoli with lemon and garlic, hot tomato and onion chutney, mixed leaf salad, elderberry and apple chutney. And some highly processed cream cheese from the supermarket for good measure, and to buffer our slow descent into veganism.

We made pie out of our share of Abundance Apples.

Malcolm gets the credit for the pretty stars and moon decoration.

All done! Stuffed. Recipes will follow.

Spanish style tortilla with beetroot leaves

Our beetroots and potatoes are doing incredibly well and we've also some onions coming on a treat. Beetroot leaves are surprisingly pretty nice either in a salad, or used cooked, like spinach. Here's a tasty recipe I cooked up for breakfast today that uses all of them:

Ingredients:

• A large potato or two, diced into small pieces
• Beetroot leaves, roughly chopped (spinach or chard will also work well)
• A medium sized onion or two
• 3 eggs
• Salt and pepper
• Olive oil

Method:

• Put the diced potato(es) on to boil.
• Just before the potatoes are ready, add a little olive oil to a hot frying pan and start frying the onions.
• When the potatoes are ready and the onions are part cooked, add the potatoes to the frying pan. You might also want to add some more olive oil to stop the potatoes sticking.
• While these are cooking, crack the eggs into a large bowl and roughly mix the yolks and whites together.
• Once the onions look like they're nice and translucent and the potatoes are starting to brown slightly, put them in the bowl with the eggs. The smell should be gently teasing your taste buds by this point.
• Add the chopped beetroot leaves (or spinach, or chard) to the now empty frying pan, along with a little more olive oil.
• Cook the leaves till they've reduced and softened a bit and then add them to the bowl with the eggs and potatoes.
• Season the lot with as much or as little salt and pepper as you like and then mix it all together.
• Add a little more oil to the frying pan (look, I didn't say this was the diet version, did I?) and then pour in the contents of the bowl. Cover the frying pan with a lid to help it cook all the way through.
• Once it's getting quite solid and the bottom is nicely browned, you need to turn it over and cook the other side (here comes the clever bit...)
• Remove the lid and place a large dinner plate over the top of the tortilla. Turn the frying pan over, keeping the plate firmly in place. Then slide the half cooked tortilla back into the pan, uncooked side down.
• Once the other side is also nicely browned, it's ready to eat.
• Mmmmmm! Tasty!

The joy of organic gardening is...

The joy of organic gardening is finding a nest of caterpillars in your broccoli after you've just taken a bite.

Courgette, apple & buckwheat cake

We seem to have done plenty of the sowing and picking posts, at the expense of the cooking and eating bits (which surely is the best part of allotment gardening) and, I think, have been guilty of straying into the dark, murky waters of smugness and self congratulations on being such worthy urban allotment warriors. Well, pish to that - I'm interested in being a smug, self congratulating, fat and sated allotment gardener, to which end Sarah has been coming up with incredible ways to use the glut of marrows and courgettes we've been having recently.

Here are the before and after pictures of last night's incredible edible.

Before:

After:

Not only is it the about the tastiest cake in the world, it's also gluten-free, dairy free and relatively low GI, as Sarah used agave syrup instead of sugar. It's just about the healthiest cake you'll come across.

I'm not privy to the recipe, however, so I'll have to rely on Sarah to do the honours...

[insert recipe here]

Blighted confusion!

Someone forgot to tell our tomato plants it's the outdoor plants that are supposed to get tomato blight, not the indoor ones:

Beautiful, healthy outdoor tomatoes.

Sad, dishevelled, blight-ridden indoor tomatoes.

Sigh...

Photo diary: last seven days at the allotment

Nenya and I had a really productive day last Saturday.

I dug two new beds this week. Just have to figure out what the hell to plant in them now!

The broccoli is coming on a treat.

As are the beetroots - I've got my first baby beetroots from the thinnings and reckon they'll make a lovely salad, grated with olive oil and lemon juice.

I think I'm doing something wrong with the lettuce transplanting. Perhaps the secret is to water them before taking them out of the ground as well as after putting them back in?

This Saturday's haul. Not bad for a chaotic first season, I think. We're now self sufficient for potatoes and lettuce, and check the size of that marrow! (it looks much bigger in real life)

The allotment is a former refuse tip and we're forever finding broken bits of pottery, glass jars, clay pipes and so on. It's pretty nice to find some undamaged examples like these, which I dug up last Saturday.