Good Food Thoughts

Last night we traveled to The English Market in Cork to support Good Food Ireland Cork Week. We have been Members of Good Food Ireland for a couple of years and last year were lucky enough to win an award for our Café.
We took along some baskets of cup cakes made from our popular beetroot cake recipe, to add to the fantastic range of food and food products supplied by other members. It was great to meet so many like minded people who work to provide seasonal, local, artisan food on a daily basis, supported and encouraged by Good Food Ireland.
The event was very successful with a huge crowd of people coming to taste everything on offer. Congratulations to everyone involved.
This morning we’ve woken up to a promising spring day, so it’s back to the garden. The vegetable garden needs a lot of attention. After a wet autumn and a crisp frosty winter I haven’t given the garden much time and now I need to catch up. We have practiced a no dig system for many years with great success, maintaining fertility by mulching with our own compost, seaweed, lawn mowings and sometimes manures. Normally all our raised beds would have been heavily mulched for the winter, but it didn’t happen this year, which is worrying. So now we have to catch up.
We have lots of compost and an easy source of seaweed but I’m worried that the soil is still too cold to mulch. A heavy mulch will hold the cold in the soil, slowing down the potential for growth. There are plenty of other jobs to do. I’m going to clean up the border that edges the south and west side of the garden. In this mixed border we grow flowers, herbs, rhubarb and ornamental vegetables such as ruby chard and decorative kales. A varied mixture which encourages beneficial insects, butterflies and birds to our garden as well as looking really beautiful.

Below is the recipe for the beetroot cake:

250g light muscovado sugar

200g sunflower oil

3 eggs separated

150g beetroot (grated)

150g raisins

1/2 a lemon

250g self raising flour

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

pinch of salt

1. Beat the sugar and oil together (about 1 minute)

2. Add the egg yolks, beat

3. Add the beetroot, raisins and the juice of half a lemon, mix

4. Sieve the flour, baking powder, salt and bicarb and add to the mixture with the cinnamon. Fold in with a metal spoon.

5. Whisk the egg whites and fold in.

6. For the cupcakes it takes about 20 minutes at 170*C.

For the Icing ::

150g icing sugar

250g mascarpone

200g philadelphia

Zest of 1 orange

Mix them all together.