Super-easy apple cider

  When I read you can make scrumpy from apple juice, I had to try it. The instructions were simply ‘buy good quality juice, drink a small amount, add bakers yeast, leave out for two days, fridge for two weeks’.

  Note there are no amounts in the above instructions.

  We set up one bottle with 2 teaspoons of yeast, and the other with one-note that each bottle is 1.5 litres. After a few days we could definitely tell it was working, and by the end of two weeks it was sufficiently alcoholic to drink. But very yeasty. The smell put me off it so the husband had the job of drinking it. It also went sour fairly quickly, so I would guess that 1 teaspoon is too much, and a quarter of a teaspoon would be my next try. Plus, as much as the label touted this juice as natural and wonderful, it was reconstituted. I think the next time I get homebrew urgings i’ll start with real fruit, homegrown for the natural yeasts.

  It did make us go into our local homebrew shop and ask them to set up a kit for us-I think this is something I could get interested in……………..watch out liver!

Making banana ‘ice-cream’

  This stuff is so good. Like, really, really good. Creamy, and sweet, and so more-ish. And the only ingredient is bananas. No sugar, no dairy. It’s especially great if you have a whole bunch of bananas that need eating quickly, or you pick up a box of overripe ones cheaply. I always have bananas in the freezer for baking-well, I did, until I discovered this.

Take some overripe, frozen bananas, soak for a minute or two in hot water until you can peel them. Whip them up using a food processor or stick mixer until it’s creamy.

Whack it back in the freezer for half an hour or so, then devour.

Or eat it with dessert, such as this banana batter pudding (guess who harvested a huge bunch of bananas from the mulch pit last week?!)

It really is that easy. And it’s an entirely guilt-free feast, suitable for yourself and the kids to gorge on.

Apparently you can also do it with mangoes, but seeing as the mango crop failed this year, and we got one measly fruit, we didn’t get to try it. Maybe next year.