Let's talk about blueberry pie.

Actually, let's start off by talking about blueberries. I present you with an amalgamation of my blueberry-related memories/knowledge.

1) Does anybody remember the children's book 'Blueberries for Sal'*? That's what I think of every time I eat blueberries. Despite being written in the late 1940s, it was seemingly still super popular in the early 90s. Because I went to an American school until I was 7, and hung out with mainly American kids, this book was read to me at practically every sleepover I went to. It was also heavily reenacted by us in pretend play. Nobody ever wanted to be the bears.

*Quick plot summary for all the non-North Americans out there who have no idea what I'm on about: little Sal goes blueberry picking with her mum. At the same time, a bear cub and his mum are out eating berries in preparation for the winter. Sal and cub wander off, and both accidentally end up following the wrong mum. The book is for kids, so it obviously ends on a happy note, i.e. not realistically at all (which would probably be Sal getting mauled, bear cub getting shot with mum's Marlin rifle).

2) It is now widely known that in addition to being delicious, blueberries are also super healthy. As a preteen, I found out via my dad's Men's Health magazine that they're good for prostates. Great! I was then informed that I do not have a prostate. Never mind. Apparently they're a superfood for both boys and girls.

3) Blueberries are expensive in the UK. Wahhhh.

4) Blueberries make a lot of things more delicious. We all know this. Think pancakes, muffins, yoghurt, granola. Also, salad. Believe it.

5) Pie is also a great excuse to eat blueberries. Or is it the other way around? 

Whatever. Anyway. PIE.

The award for the best pie maker ever goes to my mum's good friend Kathy, who writes a darn good food blog with her siblings. She is the goddess of pie. And a few years ago she passed her pie knowledge onto my mum. Obviously I begged mum to teach me, too.

Here is how you pie. The link leads to Kathy's recipe for the crust. The rest is jotted down below.

Thank you Kathy!

Just an excuse to show off pretty nail polish from OPI's new Spiderman collection. 

For the filling:

- 4 cups blueberries ( Or any kind of fruit for that matter, if blueberry pie really isn't your thing. Frozen fruit works as well, by the way. Baking times will change though.)

- 1 cup sugar

- 1/4 cup cornflour

Assembly:

While the dough chills, prepare your filling by mixing the 3 ingredients together in a big bowl. Super easy, right?

Divide the dough into 2/3 for the bottom crust, and 1/3 for the top crust. Roll out the bottom crust on a well-floured surface, and ease it into a 9 or 10 inch pan. Trim the edges.

Next, pour the filling into the pan, distributing it evenly. Roll out the top crust and cover the pie with it, crimping the ends. Press together the edges further using fork tines. Sprinkle the top with water, then dust with some extra sugar.

My berries were frozen, which is why this looks somewhat odd.

Make a concentrical pattern in the top crust with a knife before sprinkling the sugar.

Bake at 220 degrees for the first 10 minutes, then at 190 degrees for 50 more minutes, or until the crust is golden.

The piece on the right is mine.

Mega props to my mum for helping with the photos ("MOOOOOOMCANYOUTAKEAPICTURE?").

Everybody must get sconed!

Hello from Northern Michigan! I'm making the most of these 10 days of freedom before heading back to London to start New Job. This involves being somewhat outdoorsy during the day, watching the Boardwalk Empire box set all night every night, and spending some time in the kitchen again. And assaulting you all with terrible Bob Dylan song lyric puns, apparently. Forgive me. It comes a bit too naturally when I'm around my dad. 

I've been coming Up North since I was tiny. It has everything a kid could possibly want - woods, wide open spaces, lakes, lots of other kids, and a place to play mini golf. Oh the memories. Not much here has changed over the past 22 years. Coming back is like travelling back in time, only now I'm a slightly taller kid who can drink, and drive a automatic car badly.* I still enjoy the mini golf (it's pirate themed, can you blame me?), and I still wander around in the woods. Only now I no longer pretend I'm Pocahontas.

What can I say, it's a special place. Aww. Anyway. Moving on.

Let's make cheddar and spring onion scones! 

I wrote down this recipe ages ago from somewhere, but I altered it by making these savoury instead of sweet. An excellent idea, if I do say so myself. I reckon substituting cracked black pepper for the spring onions would also be yum. Just do yourself a favour and use mature cheddar. None of that "mild" crap. Gross.

Oh yeah, also, the camera broke. I took this as an excuse to use my dad's iPhone. Hello Instagram!

Hi.

You will need:

- 270 g all-purpose flour

- 1 1/4 tsp baking powder

- 3/4 tsp baking powder

- 1 tsp salt

- 2 tsp sugar

- 90 g cold unsalted butter, cut up

- 90 g mature cheddar cheese, grated

- 2 large spring onions, finely sliced

- 350 ml heavy cream

Preheat oven to 190 degrees celcius. Line a baking tray with wax paper, or grease it.

Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar together. Cut the cold butter into the mixture with a pastry blender (or your fingers) until it resembles coarse crumbs. Stir the cheese in. Add the cream and stir until the dough just comes together. Add the spring onion last, incorporate but don't overstir. 

With your hands, drop palm-sized mounds of dough onto the tray, leaving enough room in between the scones. Bake until golden brown, for approximately 20 minutes. Let the scones cool on a wire rack until the are warm before eating.

*(Disclaimer: I obviously don't do these things at the same time. Don't drink and drive. Or whatever the message is that I'm supposed to put here.)

The one where I show you how to make peanut butter cups.

Hello! Still not hugely big on cooking right now, but this weekend I was having an all-encompassing craving for something peanut butter-and-chocolate-esque, and I thought that I should probably take that and run with it. 

This is basically one big excuse to make something that looks and tastes vaguely like a peanut butter cup. When I was 10, I ate five of those things in one go (that's two and a half packs, kids). And then I got on my bike, rode home and had dinner. And them I probably ate the leftover pb cup for dessert, while watching Nickelodeon. Ahh, to be a bottomless pit again…… Anyway, my point is that I really really like peanut butter cups, and they were all I wanted to eat after getting home at 1am on Saturday morning. 

At around 3pm, they became a reality. I don't think you guys fully comprehend that this is the most effort I have put into making something edible since LATE JUNE (that totally deserved caps lock). Still, I wanted something that didn't need baking, where measuring was optional, and where no separating of eggs, endless mixing and shaving of chocolate into tiny microscopic pieces was required. My bullshit tolerance for the summer has been saturated. I wasn't about to fanny around with 2-page recipes.

So without further ado, I give you the peanut butter cup recipe in a few easy steps.

First, stuff you will need. Roughly.

- 140 g peanut butter (Skippy isn't allowed. Use real peanut butter.)

- 50 g of some sort of granulated sweetener (the obvious answer here is sugar, but some people might prefer to use artificial granulated sweetener, or there's this cool stuff called maple sugar and it's apparently better for you but probably only available at Wholefoods where they'll charge you £20 and claim to your firstborn.)

- 110 g butter, or some sort of spread

- 8-10 digestive biscuits, smooshed into crumbs (I recommend the freezer-bag-and-blunt-object method)

- 150 g chocolate (I've only ever used dark chocolate, but since Reese's pb cups are traditionally milk chocolate coated, who the hell am I to argue if you want to do that?)

- 60 mL milk/soy milk

- a muffin tin

- muffin cups

Ignore the agave syrup. I decided granulated sweetener would be better since I didn't want to make it runny. But by all means, try it and tell me how it turns out.

Step 1: Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. 

Step 2: Stir in the peanut butter, biscuit crumbs and sugar and mix well.

Step 3: Remove the mix from heat and evenly divide amongst the muffin cups.

Step 4: In a pan over medium heat, melt the chocolate, stirring in the milk bit by bit. The mixture shouldn't be too runny, so adding the liquid slowly should prevent that. And if you screw up, you can always add more chocolate to thicken it.

Step 5: Spoon the chocolate evenly over the peanut butter mixture.

Step 6: Stick your little babies in the fridge for at least an hour.

Step 7: While you wait, stick on the Forrest Gump soundtrack and have a little sing and dance-along. Entirely optional, but highly recommended.

Step 8: Insert into face.

*I feel I should mention that these have been given the thumbs up by two people who do not actually like peanut butter (HI MELIE AND TOM). For this reason alone you should go and make them. If people who hate peanut butter enjoy eating these, well then I must have created food that everyone loves and nobody can refuse. Right? You're welcome.