Delivered as promised!

Here are the Best Ever Cafe Scones...
This was the Gingerbread Apricot Pudding from Slow Cooker by Sally Wise, which she stipulated be done only in a 4.5L slow cooker. Well I had the choice of a 3.5L or a 5.5L, so I went with the 3.5L after the specified cooking time the batter was still uncooked in the very center of the pudding. I wil try it again as the bits that were cooked where delicious but I will either add cooking time to it in the 3.5L or test it in the 5.5L.

This was the Fruity Bread and Butter Custard which was a raging success! It was absolutely delicious but my mother refused to eat it because it was a "baked custard" but it wasn't, to eat it it was like a really luscious soft spongy fruit pudding. Divine!


Here's some dished up....It may look quite brown on top because right near the end of cooking time you sprinkle a mix of brown sugar and cinnamon on top of it.

I made a list of everything we have tried from Sally Wise's Slow Cooker book and the thoughts on the various things we've made.

Tilly's Indian Sweet Curry Beef - It was sweet, and no one liked it at all.

Goulash with Herb Dumplings - So far this has been the most popular dish we've tried, not surprising it's absolutely delish with a bit of a bite!

Hedgehogs - Lovely, even if most of the rice worked it's way out into the sauce and some of the balls fell apart. Still good to eat.

Meatballs with Spicy Barbecue Sauce - YUM! YUM!

Satay Chicken - Lovely, I do like a good satay sauce and this was wonderful.

Citrus Chicken - Everybody including my mother ate this but Miss Stash said after she hadn't liked it. It was lemon and orange, we are talking of trying it again bit with a lemon-lime combo instead.

Bedevilled Chicken - Once again something everyone ate but Miss Stash apparently dosen't like this either.

Black Forest Self-Saucing Pudding - The first pudding we attempted in the slow cooker, I think of Dylan Moran talking about a cake from a French bakery and how you want to get a room and be alone with your cake because it's that good. That was this pudding! I bought pitted cherries but one of them turned out to have a stone in it, next time I might give them all a prod with a fork just to check them.

Savoury Beef - I didn't like this, it didn't actually taste of anything. I'd certainly add more of something to it. But everyone else seemed to like it.

And of course the above photoed Apricot Gingerbread Pudding and Fruity Bread and Butter Custard!
We also have the Year in a Bottle by Sally Wise, not yet made anything from it, but I am very excited to try a number of things. My preserving these days seems to be limited to a large batch of apricot jam once a year.
When I was much younger and my grandparents were also much younger they had a huge garden and I can reall my fave times being when we went to visit on holidays when everything was ready to be picked and helping to make jams and bottle the fruit.
Although there was also freezing of vegetables, but the best job you could get here was if you were put in charge of sucking the air out of the bags with the vacumn pump, it did seem a bit like magic.