meant to be easy!
Not so the past few weeks here. It has been hectic!
And in between work, etc. I have been harvesting vegetables and fruit and trying to find time and inspiration as to what to do with them!
We have had a mammoth amount of redcurrants this year, so I made some pots of jelly. I then discovered The Daily Spud’s recipe for lemon drizzle cake with redcurrants – it is delicious! Made it again last night, this time with a mix of currants and raspberries….. truly, truly, scrumptious!
Lemon Cake
Then we had all the blackcurrants…. so we’ve made Blackcurrant Schnapps and Blackcurrant Juice, so far – and there are still 3 more bushes to harvest.
Blackcurrant
And then there were raspberries! Now I don’t mind how many raspberries we get. They are my favourite fruit of all!
I may have mentioned before that a neighbour gave us a load of raspberry canes at the end of Spring. I put them into the ground and wasn’t sure if they would take. But take they did and we have even had some fruit off them! Including some yellow raspberries!
Raspberries
And all of the above does not include the gooseberries!
So any suggestions on what to do with all this fruit welcome?
There’s only such much jam needed in the house!
A Year In Redwood 
So glad you liked the cake – it’s a good ‘un alright. I’ve been trying to dream up all sorts of way of using my redcurrants – probably a good job I don’t have any other fruit bushes, I’d be completely overwhelmed!
I do try to balance out all the jam and jelly making with chutneys and pickles. Have tried redcurrant pickle & chutney for the first time this year, so not sure how they’ll mature yet. I suppose the good thing about all of those fruits is that they freeze well, so if you can’t use them all up now, you can keep yourself stocked through the winter with frozen berries.
Aoife, I will be freezing some. But what happened me this year was that as the strawberries were about to come in, I still had tons of fruit from last year in the freezer! Trying to freeze less this year! But I agree it is lovely to have them throughout the winter!
Margaret
Hi – as we are in the middle of a cold, frosty winter – your pictures are so welcome! If you have enough jam, why not freeze the fruit, either on a tray individually or in syrup. I freeze my apricots and enjoy them now!
Kind regards from the Cape
Hi Andrea, Lucky you to have apricots! We got 2 kiwi fruit from our tree last year so am hopefully of more this year! Will keep you posted!
Margaret