I was sitting on our balcony on Sunday afternoon, enjoying the slightly unexpected sunshine, when I noticed, much to my amazement, that we had a couple of small tomatoes growing on our tomato plant!
The tomato plants really have a life of their own. From tiny little plants just a few months ago, there’s one that’s nearly as tall as me. Until now, however, their upwards growth (and stupendous ability to consumer water) had not been matched by the production of anything other than green leaves.
This was true for most of our plants (or, at least, the ones that I didn’t kill) but in the last few weeks, we’ve had a little more success. First there were a couple of strawberries. After that, a relatively good crop of salad leaves kept us occupied for a while. The herbs are growing faster than I can use them. Finally, we got our biggest haul. Seven raspberries!
I think the raspberries are the most miraculous to me. When I first planted the canes, back in March, I couldn’t believe that what was, essentially, a pile of twigs would ever grown leaves, let alone produce fruit. But here I am today with doughnuts (because what kind of celebration doesn’t involve doughnuts) which are topped with a glaze made from our very own raspberries.
These doughnuts are my pretty standard doughnut recipe, made a little bit fancy with a dash of rose water (not too much, just enough to give a hint of something floral in the background). The glaze is sweet and tangy and bright; it’s nothing more than crushed raspberries and icing sugar. I like to sprinkle freeze dried raspberries on top but I bet crushed pistachios would be pretty amazing too. Here’s to many more happy harvests!
Ingredients
- 70g buckwheat flour
- 20g ground almonds
- 30g cocoa powder
- 90g dark brown muscavado sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 45ml milk
- 45ml plain yoghurt
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 1 egg
- 1/2 teaspoon rose water
- 115g (1 cup) icing sugar
- 6 or 7 ripe raspberries
- Freeze dried raspberries, to decorate
Instructions
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, ground almonds, cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder and salt. In a separate bowl, lightly whisk together the milk, yoghurt, olive oil, egg and rose extract until smooth.
- Add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold through until the flour has just disappeared; don’t overmix! Set the batter aside for half an hour or so just so that the buckwheat flour absorbs as much liquid as it needs to; you should end up with a fairly air-filled batter once the baking powder has started working. Much the better.
- Preheat the oven to 180C/350F and grease a 6-hole doughnut pan with a little olive oil (or butter). Spoon the batter into the tin until filled just below the top and bake for 8 – 10 minutes until risen. Check to see if the doughnuts are cooked with a toothpick – it should come out clean. Allow the doughnuts to cool for a few minutes in the tin before transferring to a wire rack.
- When the doughnuts have cooled, make the glaze by pushing your raspberries through a sieve to get a couple of teaspoons of juice. Whisk it, little by little, into a bowl of icing sugar until you have the consistency that you want. Cover the doughnuts in the glaze and top with whatever takes your fancy!
Notes
These are only really very lightly adapted from my chocolate and orange doughnuts but I was too excited by the raspberry glaze not to share them again.
http://londonbakes.com/2015/07/chocolate-rose-raspberry-donuts-gluten-free.html