Growing to Bake

Rhubarb & ginger cheesecake

We’re loving  baking with home grown fruit this season. Fresh fruit, vegetables, herbs and flowers just taste so much better when local & in season. It’s  important to us to try to get our produce from sustainable sources and keep our food miles down. That way what we eat isn’t just good for us and our tastebuds but good for the environment too

Our desire to get the freshest ingredients lead to me getting more involved in growing our own produce and working with other people growing food.  I’m now are working with a few organisations to help them get growing and cooking with their own produce. I teach cooking at Orb Community Arts Knaresborough  and Harrogate Skills 4 Living Centre . I’ve also helped set up a community growing project in Guiseley Incredible Edible Aireborough and  I have an allotment now too.

Summer pudding with allotment berries

Plum Crumble Muffins

Thanks all this we have access to a lot of own grown produce. I’ve been experimenting and developing  recipes to make the most of our seasonal fruit. July & August are most bountiful months in the garden. We’ve had lots of rhubarb, raspberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants, whitecurrants and plums to bake with

Red currants seem to be the trickiest fruit to get people using as there’s really only so much redcurrant jelly & summer pudding you can make! I was really excited to come across a recipe by Nirvana Cakery for Redcurrant Quinoa bars. I adapted it a bit to make it more tempting and came up with this recipe for Red Currant Almond Crumble Bars. I’m sharing it here so you can have a go. It can be made with chopped plums instead if, like me, you’ve got those on your garden too.

Redcurrant & Almond Crumble Bars

I’ll be developing more plum recipes and then apple and blackberry ones so keep following for inspiration or tell me your favourite fruit bakes