Lavender Lemon Cake

Bobby Blanc moved into his new quarters yesterday. Now he sleeps in the barn sun-room and has access to the corridor paddock.  He literally trotted around and around thrilled to bits to be out and about. Kicking up his heels and holding his head high.

 Naturally TonTon and Mary’s Cat  spent a very busy day laying about in there as well.  They quite wore themselves out being companionable.  

No animal is alone on the farmy!

I harvested some lavender flowers though not too many. It is a dangerous business picking lavender with the bushes full of bees.  The best time to harvest lavender is early morning when the bees are still sleeping and the buds are high in oil.  I should have remembered. 

To make a lavender lemon cake. Take your favourite butter cake or pound cake recipe. When you cream the butter and  sugar add a cup of lavender buds. Just buds, no stalks.   Make sure to Press the mixture together and let it settle. Herbs need to be squeezed and played with just like babies, so they exude their fragrance.  I let the butter sit with the herb for at least  half an hour. This way the  flavours have tons of time to exchange.

Here is my recipe:

• 1/2 pound of butter
• 1 and 1/2 cups of vanilla infused sugar
• 1 cup honey
• 1 cup of lavender buds,
• the juice of half a lemon and the zest of that lemon.

Press together with your hands,  let it sit for a while, then whip together until creamy.

• Add 6 eggs one at a time
• 3 cups of flour alternating with 2/3 cup of cream from your own cow!

Place in cold oven and bake at 350 for about 40 minutes.

After it is baked and while it is still piping hot, squeeze the juice from the other lemon on top, sprinkle with sugar and fresh lavender buds.

The lavender jelly failed this time because I tried to exchange half of the sugar for honey.  I have not given up yet though, so stay tuned. Even though it did not set, I drizzled a little onto the sauteed ‘fresh from the garden’ zuchinni at the end of it’s cooking time and it was divine.

Last night we also had mashed potato with truffle oil, on the recommendation of Sopsta, my beautiful daughter who is off to Melbourne soon for a look-see. She is thinking of relocating there. She is a professional waitress. She is looking for the best restaurants and the sweetest back packers.  I had an old friend who travelled a lot, he was a Catholic priest actually. And he said when you travel, sleep cheap and eat well!  This has become a family mantra. With the family addition of the last two nights away are always, always spent in a ridiculously expensive hotel. Has to be done!

If you have any tips about Melbourne for my beautiful daughter we would love to hear from you.  The cats have discovered that the barn has milk!

And look at the grapes. 

We really are looking at a bumper crop.

Good morning! My coffee this morning has creamy fresh milk in it. We are now officially drinking Daisy milk. It is pure white and tasty, of course.  Yesterday I also began a big pot of yoghurt. This morning I will set it to strain, making it thicker and more like a  greek yoghurt. The pigs will have the whey!

I hope you are all going to have a lovely day.  My lovely day is about to begin. I have to weed the frog garden after all the chores today. The second sowing of beans are coming up!

celi