Sponge Drops and Winter Garden

Sponge Drops.  Somewhere between a scone and a sponge cake.  A sort of cupcake-sized sponge cake arrangement.  As easy as anything, and a perfectly delicious sweet treat on a dreary Winter day, with a cup of tea.  Tabitha calls them 'dot cakes', and can eat a vast quantity in once sitting.

Sponge Drops

From How to be a Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson

2 large eggs

75g caster sugar (I use my vanilla-infused)

50g self raising flour

25g cornflour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

150ml thickened cream whipped

Excellent jam

Berries, optional

Lightly whisk the eggs, then add sugar and whisk until pale and voluminous - thick ribbon stage.  Sieve in the combined flours and baking powder, then fold through with a large metal spoon.

Drop scant dessertspoonfuls of mixture onto baking sheets lined with baking paper, allowing room for spreading.

Bake at 200 degrees for 5 minutes, then remove them onto a wire rack to cool.  Sometimes, it's easier to yank the piece of baking paper, puffs and all, off the hot tray and onto the wire rack, then to gently peel them off the paper once they are cool.

To serve, sandwich with plenty of cream, some jam, and crushed berries if you have them to hand.  Nigella recommends blackberry jam with crushed blackberries and this is an absolute winner.  But today, raspberry jam!

Apart from sitting eating sponge drops and drinking tea, I have also been getting out in the garden.  Each season seems to bring its own special mood to the garden, and I appreciate them all.

The Spring garden is moist and pretty, colourful and sweet-smelling, with mild blue skies and bulbs competing for space.  The Summer garden is relentlessly hot, carrying the smell of tomatoes and basil, crunchy mulch helpfully blanketing the cool, moist soil from the harsh sun.  The Autumn garden is my least favourite - leggy, overgrown relics of Summer begging to be tidied up, cool-weather plants in but not yet growing.

But Winter, what a glorious garden you bring.  Everything covered in delicate dew drops, green bulb tips poking through the soil already, and beautifully rich green plants growing robustly.  Plenty of colour thanks to marigolds and potted plants, and the pea straw keeps bring up self-seeded, pretty purple pea shoots and flowers in forgotten corners.

In the mornings, the sun comes up over the gum trees that fill the park behind our house.  Here is a hanging basket of dward sweetpeas.  I planted them months ago, and they did absolutely nothing - I thought they'd died - but have suddenly sprung to life.  The cooler weather seems to agree with them.

So many self-seeded peas from the pea straw.  I pull out most of the shoots (and toss them to the grateful, clucking chooks), but I provided a climbing frame for a few that grew next to the decking.

Love the flowers.  So chic.

Tabitha's little fairy garden sits nestled in between spring onions and carrots.  We actually had some real mushrooms spring up amongst these ones, the other morning - perhaps some fairy magic?

We have a couple of small pots of flowers, different colours of pansies, which keep things looking cheerful at this time of year.  They seem to thrive as long as they get lots of sunshine.

The Daddy build large cages over the raised veggie beds, to keep the chooks out.  They are cheeky ladies, and will devour entire plants in minutes if given the opportunity.  The cages are not particularly glamorous, but they are incredibly effective.  The sides come off for access.  At the moment, in the caged beds, we have Brussels sprouts, bok choi, carrots, lettuce, coriander, leeks, rainbow chard, chilies, and some nasturtiums, sweet alyssum and marigolds.

Garlic cloves - from my aunt's beautiful biodynamic hobby farm in Tasmania - were flung out on a chair, and promptly forgotten about.  They sent out green shoots to remind me they needed planting.  So I've popped them in.  Never grown garlic, fingers crossed!

Truly, there is something magical about the tiny beads of dew that cover the garden in the mornings.  Even the neighbours' ancient Hills Hoist looks gorgeous, like a gigantic dew-covered spiders web.