Month: August 2017

Blackberry Frozen Yogurt

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Blackberry5I picked a huge bowl full of Blackberries at the beginning of August and then I was daydreaming what I could make with them. It could be muffins, tart, cake and bread… I mainly used them for baking but there was one recipe for dessert that I wanted to try. It was a plain Frozen Yogurt. So I combined the recipe with my beautiful Blackberries in my mind and started making the dessert.

Blackberry Frozen Yogurt

I used a tub of Greek Yogurt flavoured and sweetened with honey. The original recipe I referenced had lots of sugar mixed in so I add just 2-3 Table spoon full of sugar on top. It was quite good and not too sweet and had some sourness from the Blackberries and yogurt too. If you prefer the sweetness for the chilled dessert which sold in a shop you can add some more sugar on this recipe.

Blackberry Froze Yogurt1p

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Blackberries and Mirabelles

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It was about a month ago that I picked the first Blackberry of the year. On the way back home from a little walk to the local Sunday market I noticed the berries were just getting ripe. It means that one year has passed since I had missed all the possibilities to pick Blackberries last summer and I did not want to miss the chance this time again. So, my Blackberry picking time started!

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I have picked Blackberries twice so far this summer. Since then the weather became very rainy in London and I haven’t had a chance to do the third one yet. Apart from eating them fresh as a dessert with some other fruits and yogurt I made Frozen Yogurt and Sourdough Bread with them and also added Blackberries to anything I bake.

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The Memory of Summer Holiday – Goldfish

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When schools break up for summer holiday, it is the signal that lots of local festivals are ready to start all around in Japan. Many stalls appear in a square that sell food or goods to the people visiting. There are some stalls for offering games too and ‘Kingyo-sukui’ is the one of them. ‘Kingyo’ means Goldfish and ‘Sukui’ is a noun form of a verb to-scoop in Japanese. So what does ‘Scooping-Goldfish’ mean?

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Children enjoying ‘Kingyo-sukui’

On the Kingyo-sukui stall they bring a pond with many small Goldfish. The customers pay to get a small ladle which is made of paper and can keep scooping goldfish until the paper tears up and it is no longer possible to scoop up any fish. That is the time that game is over! At the end of the game you can take the goldfish home you scooped. I have to say I was very good at Kingyo-sukui when I was a child. I could get about 20 goldfish easily with just a one paper ladle.

So when I see Goldfish it reminds me of the Summer holiday. It is very nostalgic and that is why I chose Goldfish as the design for the sweet for August.

Goldfish

Although the fish is called Goldfish, the main colour of them is Red, bright red so the Goldfish on my sweet is also Red.

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Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

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You might not have guessed but I am a quite Harry Potter fan. I have to admit that I am not the young generation who grew up with the characters whilst the books were published but I have read all the stories and saw all the films. I even read the sequel story “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” which was written in the theatre script format. I generally like going to theatres and am also accustomed to reading scripts, however, in this book I occasionally had problems visualising the scenes described how it would be created on the live stage. As you can image the story was about the wizardry world so there are several scenes the characters are using magic or some un-natural event occurs. That is why I wanted to go and see it for real. For the people who would like to see the play, don’t worry I am not going to give away any spoilers here.

Harry Potter5

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Mango Mochi

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I want to know whether we are still in the summer in London. It’s neither hot or warm any more. It is actually quite cool. It is the first day in August today but I already feel like that summer has gone. Autumn must be coming soon or we are already in Autumn. I know usually Indian summer comes around September but still it is too cold for mid summer.

In order to get rid of this cold rainy feeling I had to make something very summery sweet. In my mind ‘Summer = tropical = fruit = … Mango!’ That is why I chose Mango as the flavour for my Mochi for August.

Mango Mochi

Mango Mochi 1

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