Tip:  before you eat your orange or clementine, strip the zest from the outside.

Pop it in a jar, and when you have a handful, whizz it up with an equal weight of sugar until the zest is evenly distributed in the sugar.  

Use this for flavouring cheesecakes and custards. It is totally delicious. 

Or a tip from Linda at With Knife and Fork cover with vodka, and top up as you add more zest. Sweeten to taste. (you can read how Linda makes her legendary fruit vodkas here )

Or another thought from me, cover with vinegar, steep for a week, then sweeten slightly for a delicious fruit vinegar.

Have you any other thoughts for how to use the zest? 

I'm loving the pastry that Carla Tomasi popped on Twitter, it is simply brilliant for that crispy crunchy pastry that you find in the best patisseries.  This one has some left over frangipane over cherry jam from Vickie Humber at Humbers Homemade Jams who told me about her special jam on Twitter. 

With tea from Kate at Lahoo Teas.. can you guess where I know Kate from?

I love my Twitter suppliers and cook friends... 

My postie always arrives late in the afternoon.  So I have all day to wonder what the post will bring me.

But I wasn't expecting today's envelope. I would have been so excited if I had known. I would have been sitting on my hands all day waiting.  So just as well it took me totally by surprise.

My friend Linda has been playing with her vintage Letterpress printer for some time, and is now so good that she is making her cards available to us all. And she kindly sent me a couple so I could see how impressive they are.  

And how gorgeous the packaging is. I do like a nice bit of packaging.

You can buy your own at http://www.etsy.com/shop/goodshoeday 

Get in there early and get a nice low limited edition number on the back. 

I'm keeping mine safe for when Linda is really famous*, and I can go to a gallery showing of her work and say nonchalantly "Oh, I have one of her early pieces..." . 

*more famous than she is on Twitter if that is possible

Just a little Tweet, a follow and a retweet. To celebrate Anchor's birthday. 

And winging through the post, came this lovely mug...

How nice I thought! And made some tea in it..

But then yesterday, the postman came....

What a lot of Anchor goodies!!

Thank you Anchor and Happy Birthday!!

(with thanks to Helen at Fussfreeflavours for the original tweet)

I have two birthdays to celebrate tonight. 

You know who you are.

You have cake coming... 

Sometimes nothing is as pleasurable as deflowering a virgin pot of Marmite.  

Look at the lovely viscous flow of it.... 

mmmmmmmmm

Chatting on Twitter this morning (as I so often do..) the subject turned to porridge. The weather is closing in and getting chillier and porridge seems to be the stuff of wintry legend.

I like mine with salt, no sugar, but with lots of fruit. But it seems this is a healthy option not necessarily loved by many others, because....

Jax @Bebejax likes Camilla @RudeHealth 's porridge, the seedy one

Camilla @RudeHealth herself wants porridge and toast (hungry!)

Jane @CaterFor is up for honey and raisins

Robert @Tractorpieman always has brown sugar

as does Linda @goodshoeday although she wants cream as well..(how rich is that! )

Late breakfast time for Signe @scandilicious who is opting for spice as well as the brown sugar

But I think that Linda @goodshoeday 's other suggestion of a fried egg on top and Jane @CaterFor 's riposte of adding snippets of bacon might be one good thing too far.  Now to put those new additions on a separate plate and add in some nice mushrooms ... well now you are talking :)

So how do you like your porridge in the morning?

It is Becky's 21st birthday tomorrow, so I made her a cake.

She rather likes Pink, and so do I.

So I even got pinky with the fresh chantilly cream inside

I sandwiched it with pink cream and some of my secret stache of Picota cherry jam from my friend Vickie at Humbers Homemade (it was a very limited edition, so sorry, you are tooooo late to get some! )

How pretty is that :))

I grew a chili plant from the seeds in a commercial chili, just one of those bullet shaped ones bought from the supermarket.

But I really was giving up all hope of getting anything from it. It didn't want to grow, it hadn't got any flowers. But I reckon it was our lack of summer.

It was a decidely chilly chili.

And now... we have our Indian summer

and I have discovered that I have a chili.

When it gets chilly again.

I really didn't think we would have much in the way of pears this year from our garden.  I had to take nearly all the pear babies off in the late spring as they had pear mites and were all full of teeny wiggly worms. ugh.

But some of the ones at the back, that hung over the fence into next door had escaped being infested, so I let these grow on, and I had a rough dozen of pears to pick.  These are Williams pears, so they race hell for leather from hard as nails to soft and wooly inside. So I don't usually eat them raw, but cook them, either poaching them in red wine with cinnamon and lemon peel, or in vanilla scented brown sugar syrup.

But for a change this year, I had a real yen for a proper crumble.

By which I don't mean a traditional English crumble - rock hard yet powdery and sticking to the roof of your mouth. I like mine richer, more like shortbread, with plenty of nuts in there somewhere.

So delicious with clotted cream icecream... mmmmm

Slice peeled and cored pears into fat chunks, toss with sugar and cinnamon, and pop into a shallow dish. Sprinkle with a little water.

Cover with crumble - I make mine in a food processor, so easy and quick.

for about 3 pears (enough for 2 people) I use:

200g plain flour

50g ground almonds

150g unsalted butter

100g golden caster sugar

Woosh all together in food processor until crumbly, then, with machine still going, trickle in just a tablespoon or so of water - not enough to make it come together like pastry, just enough to make it clump a little.  Sprinkle lightly and loosely all over the fruit, do not press down. Depending on how shallow and therefore wide surface area, you may or may not need all the crumble.

Sprinkle with flaked almonds and bake at Gas Mk 4 until the fruit is cooked and starting to bubble up around the edges, and the top is brown and crisp.