favourite recipes

Simple flower salad 

Add a punnet of in season edible flowers to your favourite salad leaves.  Choose a variety of flavours and textures in the leaves.  Flowers suitable are pansies, bellis daisies, cornflowers, nasturtiums.

Lavender vanilla tarts

For the pastry:  40z butter, 40z plain flour, 2oz icing sugar, 1 egg, a little milk (a very shortbread kind of mix)

Beat butter and sugar together until creamy, fold in flour and add egg, until smooth, adding a little milk until you have a smooth paste.  Chill for 1/2 hour.  Roll out thinly and cut out tart bases, for loose bottom tart tins.  Bake blind until golden.

For the custard: 200ml milk, 12 sprigs fresh lavender, vanilla pod, 300ml creme fraiche,  80g caster sugar, 2 eggs, 2 egg yolks

Warm milk with lavender and vanilla and allow to cool seeping for an hour.  Remove vanilla pod & lavender and add creme fraiche, reheating gently.  Beat eggs with sugar until smooth, then pour into warm milk mixture.  Pour custard into pastry cases and bake for approx 35 mins at 160'.  They are ready when the sugar just caramelises on top!  Serve warm with lavender lemon ice cream.

Lavender lemon Ice cream

Ingredients for a 1 litre mix: 600ml double cream, 300ml full fat milk, 2 lemons, 15 sprigs lavender, 4 eggs, 100g caster sugar.

Warm milk with lavender and allow to seep for an hour. Remove lavender, add cream and reheat gently.  Beat eggs  with sugar.  Add juice & zest of lemons and pour warm milk mixture into egg mixture, heating until it just doesn't boil.  Set aside to cool in fridge before churning in ice cream maker.

Elderflower cordial

Pick off the clean insect free flowers from 20 or so elderflower heads and seep in 200ml boiling water.  Add 2 roughly sliced unwaxed lemons with peel on.  In a heavy bottom pan dissolve 1.8kg granulated sugar in 1 litre of water, heating to dissolve sugar.  Pour syrup over elderflowers, add 75g of citric acid & leave overnight.  After 24 hours, sieve through muslin and bottle the liquid in sterile bottles & seal.  Keep in fridge and serve mixed with lemonade or sparkling water, ice and a flower or two of borage.

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