What’s in Season for April
APRIL
Easter usually falls in April, lambs are everywhere in the fields, spring flowers in the meadows and it’s hopefully getting warmer with lovely light nights and mornings. A wider variety of home-grown fruit and vegetables are becoming available too.
| Fruit | Vegetables | Meat |
| Kiwi fruit* | Asparagus | Spring Lamb |
| Strawberries | Broccoli | Wood pigeon |
| Jersey royal potatoes | Cockles | |
| Purple sprouting broccoli | Cod | |
| Radishes | Salmon | |
| Rhubarb – outdoor | Sea trout | |
| Rocket | ||
| Rosemary | ||
| Sorrel | ||
| Spinach | ||
| Spring onions | ||
| Watercress | ||
| Wild garlic |
There are lots of new vegetables coming into season, especially green vegetables. Home-grown asparagus is only around for a very short time so enjoy it while it lasts, it tastes wonderful and makes your wee smell funny!
Jersey royal potatoes are not to be missed, eat them with the skins on so you get the benefit of all the lovely nutrients. Cook them with a little mint and serve with a knob of butter.
Watercress is very high in iron and vitamin C, it’s quite peppery to taste and mixes well with salads, try some raw with baby spinach and a squeeze of lemon or make it into watercress soup.
Strawberries coming in from the Mediterranean appear from April.
Make the most of children being on holiday from school for another few days and make Beverley’s Garibaldi biscuits, or dead fly biscuits, always popular in our house.
Written by Beverley Glock - Visit Website Edit
Written by Beverley Glock - Visit WebsiteFEBRUARY
Nights and mornings are starting to get lighter, citrus fruits are still available from Spain including blood oranges with their gorgeous blood red juice. Try our Sweet Potato and Blood Orange Cupcakes recipe, the pink icing is made from the juice of the blood oranges.
Fruit Vegetables Meat
Blood oranges Beetroot Guinea Fowl
Kiwi fruit Brussels sprouts Hare
Lemons Cauliflower Venison
Oranges Celeriac Clams
Passion fruit Chicory Haddock
Pomegranate Jerusalem artichoke Lemon Sole
Walnuts Kale Mussels
Leeks Oysters
Parsnips
Potatoes
Purple Sprouting Broccoli
Rhubarb – forced
Squash
Swede
You’ll notice that rhubarb is in the vegetable section not the fruit, rhubarb is the only vegetable we eat as a fruit as we eat the stalk of the plant. At this time of year we eat ‘forced’ rhubarb that is deep pink in colour and has been grown in the dark over the winter. Forced rhubarb has a lovely, sweet flavour and is nice eaten raw dunked in a little sugar. In spring we’ll eat outdoor rhubarb that has a green stalk, this has a slightly more ‘tart’ flavour and is not quite as sweet but is great made into a crumble or compote.
Written by Beverley Glock - Visit WebsitePancake Day
The days are getting longer, it’s silly how excited I feel when it’s still daylight at 5.30pm but at least it feels like coming out of hibernation. Pancake Day or Shrove Tuesday is tomorrow and we have just uploaded our 
Saturday morning cooking club video making pancakes to help if you would like to have a go, we’ve also got some lovely pancake recipes to share as well.
Blueberry Pancakes – a drop scone recipe with blueberry compote, lovely for breakfast or an afternoon snack
Chocolate Banana Pancakes – chocolate drop scones with a delicious chocolate sauce and bananas so you can kid yourself that it’s slightly healthy.
Classic pancakes – the original pancakes, lovely served with lemon and sugar, freshly squeeze blood orange juice in season at the moment or something wicked like nutella
History of Pancake Day
Pancake Day’s proper name is Shrove Tuesday and this is the night before the beginning of Lent. Traditionally an evening when families used up flour and eggs to mark the beginning of the fasting period before Easter. This year Shrove Tuesday falls on 12 February.
Pancakes are a flat, thin batter cake cooked in a hot frying pan – hence the name ‘pan-cake’. They are cooked on one side then flipped (or tossed if you’re feeling brave) to cook the other side. They can be sweet or savoury and can be eaten at any time of day and not just on Shrove Tuesday.
My childhood memories are of spending two weeks persuading my Mum to cook pancakes for Pancake Day, helping her mix up the batter and seeing if I could eat the pancakes faster than she could make them. In the winter months pancakes are a standard Sunday breakfast in our house – what do you like on yours? Lemon and sugar? Maple syrup? Freshly squeezed orange juice? Nutella? Grand Marnier? Ham and cheese? My vote is for lemon and sugar.
Pancake races take place all over Britain, this is one those classic British traditions like the Pantomime, Boxing Day Dips and Morris Men, slightly mad but lots of fun (I know Morris Men aren’t mad and there are amazing traditions to their dances, I love them so please no letters!).
The pancake race originates in a place called Olney in Buckinghamshire; the story goes that a housewife was cooking when she heard the shriven bell at church calling for the start of the service. Not wanting to be late she dashed out of the house still holding her frying pan. Olney has held a Pancake Day race since 1445. In other parts of Britain men dress up in aprons and bonnets and run whilst tossing a pancake in a frying pan. They have to toss the pancake at least once at the beginning and end of the race and the first across the line wins.
Written by Beverley Glock - Visit Website
It’s that time again, Stir Up Sunday is Sunday 25 November the classic day to make your Christmas pudding and we’ll be making these in Saturday Morning Cooking Club on the 24th November.
Splat Cooking’s Edible Christmas workshops are up on the website, we’ll help you beat the recession and inspire you to make your own Christmas Gifts, from Christmas Muffin Mixes and Lavender Sugar in a gorgeous kilner jar to learning how to temper chocolate and make popping candy chocolates, chocolate bark and tipsy truffles.
Everything will be wrapped ready for you to give as gifts and you’ll take home the recipes to keep recreating more edible goodies so you can carry on making edible Christmas presents at home too. The children have their own workshops to make goodies for family and friends on Saturday 15 December too.
Our Christmas Baking workshops take you through making your own Christmas pudding, mincemeat and pastry, stollen and incorporates some delicious edible gifts such as biscotti too.
We have classes for children as well as adults so check out the workshops and date and book quickly as these are really popular.
Christmas Baking - Silverstone on Friday 30 November and Friday 14 December £65
Christmas Cake Decorating – Princes Risborough – bring your own marzipanned cake and we’ll teach you to cover and decorate it Friday 7 December from 10.30am-2.30pm
Christmas Cookies – Princes Risborough – royal iced biscuits like Peggy Porshen makes on Wednesday 12 December from 10.30-2.30pm £75
Edible Christmas Gifts (adults) – Princes Risborough on Friday 14 December from 10am-2pm £75
Edible Christmas Gifts (children) – Princes Risborough on Saturday 15 December from 10am-1pm £37.50
Gingerbread chalet and biscuits (children) – Princes Risborough on Saturday 15 December from 3-5.30pm £37.50
come on, let us help you make your own Christmas this year
Christmas Muffin Mix
Making Christmas Puddings
We made these homemade versions of garibaldi biscuits back in June at Saturday morning cooking club and I thought I’d publish the recipe as they’re ideal for making for Halloween under the alternative name of Dead Fly Biscuits.
Here’s the recipe for Garibaldi Biscuits
