Edible gifts

Nicola Galloway shares sweet treats with advent flavours that are perfect for gifting.

As the weeks fast forward toward the summer break and accompanying festivities, I like to have some bakes at the ready for sharing with visitors and gifting to those who positively impact our lives throughout the year – teachers, neighbours, wha¯nau and friends.

Although it can be a hectic time of year, putting aside an afternoon to get creative in the kitchenmay be just what is needed to slow down and enjoy the tactile experience of cooking. Today, I share a recipe for spiced and gloriously iced biscuits for gifting. Plus a simple tea loaf with advent flavours to enjoy over a cup of tea. Findmore edible Christmas gift ideas on Stuff.co.nz.

Spiced biscuits with plum icing

These biscuits are fun to makewith young children. If it’s a hot day, chill the dough well before rolling and work efficiently as it will soften fast. The pretty pink icing is coloured and flavoured with freezedried plum powder, which also complements the festive spices in the biscuits. If you can’t find plum powder (I used Fresh As) any freeze-dried berry powder can be used. You could also separate the icing into 2-3 bowls and use a few drops of food colouring in each to make different coloured icing. Get creative and enjoy the process. 100g room temperature butter

1⁄ cup (70g) brown sugar

3

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon mixed spice

1⁄ teaspoon ground cloves

4

Generous twist of cracked pepper (optional)

1 free-range egg

1 cup (150g) plainwhite flour

1⁄ cup (60g) ground almonds or

2 hazelnuts 1⁄ cup (40g) wholemeal flour or

4 extra white flour

1⁄ teaspoon baking powder

2

Pinch of salt

Icing

1 egg white

2⁄ cup (100g) icing sugar

3

1 tablespoon freeze-dried plum powder (see note)

1. In amixing bowl use a spatula to beat together the butter, sugar and spices. Add the egg and 1 tablespoon of the flour and continue to mix until combined. Add the remaining dry ingredients and mix into a firm dough.

2. Tip onto a lightly floured bench and knead briefly into a smooth dough. Shape into a disc, place in a lidded container and chill for 30-40 minutes to firm the dough for rolling.

3. Preheat the oven to 180C. Line two flat baking trays with baking paper.

4. Lightly flour the bench and a rolling pin. Roll out the chilled dough to 5mm thickness. Keep dusting with flour as needed to prevent sticking. Use cookie cutters to cut into different shapes. Re-roll off cuts until all the dough is used.

5. Use ametal spatula to carefully transfer the shapes to the prepared trays leaving a little space between each.

6. Bake for 10-12minutes until lightly golden and fragrant. Cool on a rack.

7. Make the icing. Place the egg white into a bowl and vigorously whisk by hand for 1minute until thick and frothy. Add the icing sugar and dried plum powder and mix into a thick paste.

8. Drop teaspoon amounts of the icing onto the middle of each biscuit then use the tip of the spoon to spread out towards the edges. Don’t go too close to the edge as the icing will spread a little as it sets. Set the biscuits aside for eight hours or overnight for the icing to set.

9. Once the icing is set, store the spiced biscuits in an airtight container. Orwrap 5-6 biscuits in baking paper and secure with string for gifting.

Sultana and marmalade tea loaf

I’m not going to pretend this is a stand-in Christmas cake because it is really quite different. However, I do like the idea of a slice of fruit cake with a smear of butter for afternoon tea at this time of year. With the marmalade and spice adding a hint of the season’s festivities. Apricot jam can also be used if marmalade is not your favourite or is unavailable. 3⁄ cup boiling water

4

1 English breakfast tea bag (can use any tea here, rooibos is also lovely) 1 cup (150g) sultanas

3 eggs

1⁄ cup (50g) brown sugar

4

1⁄ cup olive oil or 80g melted butter

3

2 tablespoons orange or grapefruit marmalade

1 1⁄ cups (225g) plain flour (can use

2 gluten-free)

1 1⁄ teaspoon baking powder

2

1 teaspoonmixed spice

Pinch of salt

Marmalade glaze

1 tablespoon marmalade 3 tablespoon water

1. First brew the tea. Place the boiling water and tea bag into a bowl and leave to brew for 10 minutes. Remove the tea bag and add the sultanas. Set aside to rehydrate for at least 1 hour.

2. Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease and line a 21cm x 11cm loaf tin.

3. In a large mixing bowl whisk together the eggs, sugar and oil/ melted butter. Stir in the 2 tbsp marmalade along with the plump sultanas and soaking liquid.

4. Sift over the dry ingredients and use a spatula to fold together until just combined. Scoop the batter into the prepared tin and bake for 45-50 minutes until an inserted skewer comes out clean. Cool in the tin for 5minutes.

5. To make the glaze combine the marmalade and water in a small saucepan, bring to a simmer for one minute. Brush the glaze over the hot loaf then remove from the tin and transfer to a cooling rack. 6. Wrap the cooled loaf in baking paper and store in an airtight container. Consume within 5 days. Serve slices of the tea loaf for afternoon tea spread with butter and extramarmalade.

Grow popular wild plants For those of us who aren’t too sure about what’s good to gather from the wild and where to go to do it, there’s a simple alternative – grow your own!

A foraging garden in your own backyard is an enjoyableway to include those unusual and reputedly more healthy foods in your diet. And it’s simple to do. Many of the wild foods that excite the foraging fraternity are easy to grow, self-sufficient and casual about the quality of the soil they grow in – in fact you probably have some already in your garden.

A small plot to the side of your regular vegetable or flower plot will serve perfectly as a foraging garden, in it you can grow a half dozen of the popularwild plants.

Wild plants look after their own needs when they’re outside the garden fence, and they’ll do the same thing in your garden. Of course, you can fuss over them if you choose, watering on dry days and feeding with compost or a liquidmix if you want to, but they’ll do just finewith what they can get from the ground.

Tryminer’s lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata), nasturtiums, wild onions or onionweed (Allium triquetrum), chickweed (Stellaria media), plantain (both broad and narrow-leafed plantain Plantago major and Plantago lanceolata), fat hen, red clover, and native spinach (Tetragonia tetragonioides).

Collect and dry nettles now, before they go to flower Stinging nettle is a nutritious and tasty vegetable that requires only a little extra care to harvest. Gloves are not essential for the experienced nettle harvester, but it’s still a good idea to have some on hand. A pair of scissors, longhandled is best, and a sense of cautionwill be enough to get you to the stage where you have leaves to dry or cook if you’ve chosen to make soup from them instead of the usual nettle tea. Nettle soup is a delicacy and has a beautiful colour.

If you are growing the annual nettle (Urtica urens), you need not fear the sting as it’s light and passing. Our perennial European nettle (Urtica dioica) requires a little more care in the harvesting, as it’s stronger, although aside from aminute or two of discomfort is really nothing to worry about.

The native ongaonga (Urtica ferox), on the other hand, is not recommended for the home grower nor the soup fancier, and I’ve never met anyone who says they’ve drunk the ferocious stinger as a soup or a tea.

Don’t pick them all! Nettles are the preferred host plants for red and yellow admiral butterfly caterpillars.

Sow some back-up brassicas These unexpectedly warm bouts of weather cause kale and cabbages to bolt, and an overblown brassica is not much good, coming too early and being too straggly to satisfy. If the heat causes your crop to peak too soon, have replacements at the ready and get them in as soon as you’ve cleared away the bolters.

This applies particularly when your crops are under glass or plastic, in a tunnelhouse or conservatory. There’s little you can do about the extra warmth except ventilate and that’s often difficult where there’s no movement from the wind. It’s advisable, when conditions get too hot, to coat the glass or plastic in some sort of waterbased screen, such as paint or even a coat of clay and water, which will dry and shield the plants from the sun.

Cabbage white butterflies are searching for brassicas to lay their eggs. If you don’t want cabbages chewed or caterpillars lurking in your broccoli then coverwith horticulturalmesh. Inspect plants daily and flick off the eggs and squash the caterpillars. A paint brush is handy to winkle eggs and caterpillars out of kale leaves.

Pack more crops into your garden beds

Space in the garden can be at a premium during peak growing season so think beyond straight rows of just one type of crop to fit more in.

Radishes are quick to mature and ready to harvest four weeks after sowing. Intermix among slower growing vegetables, and they can be grown and eaten before the space is needed.

Spring onions are tall and skinny and can be popped in anywhere there is a spare square centimetre. Varying their microclimate will vary their maturity time, spreading out your harvest.

Consider growing your groundsprawlers upwards. Pumpkins and cucumbers can be directed up a fence or trellis to save room.

Courgettes and determinate (bush) tomatoes need fresh air to prevent fungal diseases. Let them hang over the edge of raised gardens, so they don’t take up too much space but still get the required amount of airflow.

As with all intensive gardening, you’ll need to increase feeding of root zones to ensure your plants are healthy and productive.

Feed and water both tomatoes and strawberries Once tomatoes and strawberries start flowering, switch from using a general-purpose fertiliser (and pat yourself on the back for treating your plants so well) to one that is potassium-rich.

General-purpose fertilisers tend to be high in nitrogen, which is great for getting fruiting plants off to a good start and for salad greens, but can result in lots of leafy growth at the expense of fruit, so use either a liquid or granular fertiliser for fruit and flowers, or feed all your fruiting crops – strawberries, beans, chillies, cucumbers, pumpkins, and so on – with a tomatospecific fertiliser. You can make your own potassiumrich fertiliser by soaking comfrey leaves or banana skins in water before applying.

Consistent watering is key with tomatoes. Aim to water them deeply a couple of times a week and every day or two if they’re in pots.

Water strawberries every couple of days, while the fruit is developing, when you see the first hint of red, pull back on watering to encourage firm, sweet fruit.