The garden is buzzing again. Well, buzzing, flapping and crawling in fact. Each day, once the morning fog has lifted and the air warms up a little, there are bees, butterflies and ladybirds out and about and looking for food.
They’ve spent the winter hiding out in sheltered spots, and now their priority must be to find food. The ladybirds would be more than happy with a meal of aphids, and the early growth of nettles is supposed to be good for attracting aphids… yes, that would be another reason to let a patch of nettles grow in the garden. But if it’s early in the season and there aren’t enough aphids to go around, the ladybirds will broaden their diet and feed on nectar and pollen too.
The bumblebee queens that are fresh out of hibernation are also looking for nectar. They need the sugary liquid to build up energy reserves, and fuel their flights in search of a suitable nesting site. The crocus flowers were getting a lot of visitors over the weekend. Even the pots of flowers on the patio got plenty of attention – just goes to show that you don’t need a garden to be able to grow some nectar for the bees.
The weather has been good enough for us to eat outdoors too… almost unheard of in these parts so early in the year. A (very) late breakfast on Sunday made the most of the warm, still conditions, and we were able to enjoy home baked teacakes and a cup of coffee sitting on the steps at the back of the house. I’ve been using the Hairy Biker’s recipe for spiced teacakes, which is very good, for a while now. After making them a few times, I started to use my new favourite spice mix in place of the individual spices in the original recipe. I’d seen Lebanese 7 spice called for in some of the recipes in Anissa Helou’s book Levant and, curious as to how it would taste, I bought a pack when I saw it at the supermarket. Turns out it’s just right in these teacakes – making a traditional English bake with a Middle Eastern flavouring. The next step in the evolution of the perfect teacake came about more recently. This month, The Spice Trail over at Bangers & Mash has ginger as the featured spice.
Ginger in any form is acceptable, including that lovely sweet, sticky preserved ginger that comes bathed in an even sweeter and stickier syrup. Using chopped ginger in place of some of the dried fruit adds even more flavour to the teacakes. Split them, toast them and serve them spread with some good, salty butter – very good for breakfast… even on a day when the sun isn’t shining.
Spiced teacakes
375g strong white bread flour
¼ tsp sea salt
2 tsp fast action dried yeast
3 tsp Lebanese 7 spice
zest of 1 orange
50g golden caster sugar
4 knobs of preserved stem ginger, about 75g, chopped
55g currants
150ml semi-skimmed milk
50g unsalted butter, melted
1 egg, beaten
1 tbsp syrup from a jar of preserved stem ginger
Mix the flour, salt, yeast, spices, orange zest, sugar, ginger and currants together in a large mixing bowl.
Add the milk to the melted butter, then beat in the egg and ginger syrup. Stir the wet ingredients into the flour mix to form a soft dough. Turn the dough out onto the work surface and knead for 5-10 minutes. Return the kneaded dough to the mixing bowl, cover and leave to prove for 1½ hours.
Divide the dough into six equal pieces, and shape each one into a flattened round. Place the teacakes onto a greased baking sheet. Cover and leave to rise for 45 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 190oC, 375F, gas 5. Once the oven is heated, bake the teacakes for 15-18 minutes, until they are golden brown and sound hollow when the underside is tapped. The original recipe says the teacakes should be eaten within 24 hours. But we have, on rare occasions when they’ve lasted more than one day, toasted and eaten them on the second day without any complaints…
There! somestimes it is warmer where you are than here in ‘sunny’ Italy. The cold wind at the weekend meant that all meals and even mid morning coffee was consumed indoors; its warmed up now so you don’t have to feel too sorry for me.
So that was the one weekend of the year when the UK was warmer than parts of southern Europe… good to hear things have got back to normal, I was about to send a parcel of thermals out to you!
Beautiful pictures! Spring has sprung. Hurray.
Best time of the year – all that promise of plants to bloom and harvest later in the year!
Mmmm, you’ve got me thinking of hot-cross buns now! I looked up the spice mix and apart from fenugreek I have everything there so must try it. The teacakes look so pretty in the sunshine!
Thanks Cathy – hope you like them if you do make them. I bought the spices already mixed… perfect for lazy cooks like me!
It’s been glorious here too and everything is springing to life. Amazing photos. Tea cakes for breakfast sound good, especially eaten sitting in the sunshine.
It was a very late breakfast – still not quite warm enough for sitting out before the sun gets nice and high, but the good weather is very welcome after all that rain.
Mmmm, teacakes in the garden, perfect. Looking forward to your photos as everything comes alive again – beautiful.
Teacakes in the garden sounds so much more civilized than it really was – more teacakes sat on the doorstep really… but good all the same!
They sound delicious. I’ve written down the recipe, might have time to make some later.
Hope you enjoy them, the original recipe from the Hairy Bikers is very good too!
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I am extremely partial to a toasted teacake and I love your idea of including some delicious stem ginger – sounds wonderful. And an excellent entry for this month’s Spice Trail ginger challenge. Thank you so much for taking part.
Thanks Vanesther… I love an excuse to cook with ginger, it’s one of my favourite ingredients!
Teacakes with ginger, sounds wonderful. Anything with ginger is good as far as I am concerned! Lovely post and so informative too!
I’m with you on the ginger with anything being good! One of my favourite spices.
Love the ladybirds! Makes me realise how long since I’ve seen one here. Ours seem to have a lot more black spots than the English variety… Funny how even the simple little things have their own local characteristics!
Even here there are a whole range of ladybirds with different colours and numbers of spots – but my favourites are the red and black ones!
What beautiful photos and the tea cakes look mouth watering. I’m harvesting spices at the moment. Well I’ve got some black cumin at the moment! It’s very satisfying to sit and press the seeds from the pod. I might mix them with some panko breadcrumbs and cover a lucky piece of fish with them 🙂
Growing spices always seems very exotic. Hope you enjoyed your fish!
I haven’t made tea cakes for ages. I love mixing things up to produce different kinds.
I also loved your bee pictures. Ours have started to emerge again, and this weekend our urban heron was back, stealing my frogs. I have to chase him off. There are plenty of frogs elsewhere, I need all of mine.
Your poor frogs – did some of them survive the heron’s visit?
I think we suffered one or two casualties, but overall they did pretty well
as always GD (though it is in no way meant to diminish the compliment): glorious photos.
it is wonderful to read how insects and plants (and humans!) are waking up to spring in your garden, making the most of what ever sunshine comes along. now we are heading into autumn and its shorter days, i am making the most of every sunny opportunity – before it disappears! coming home from work and staying in the garden for as long as possible. soon i will be coming home and staying indoors. i do so enjoy reading how we are the ‘flip’ of one another 🙂
Thank you! Like you, I love to read about gardens on the other side of the world… your summer garden has kept me going through the cold of winter here!
I’m so envious of your being able to have a meal outside…it must be lovely. I enjoy ginger in foods and your teacakes sound delicious.
Don’t be too envious… the weather’s changed and we’ve a cold wind again, so there’ll be no sitting outside this weekend!
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