let's cook: jam and scones

Another cooking challenge - this time we made jam and scones. Mine are the ones with the blueberry jam on the left, and my mum's are the raspberry ones on the right.

I really enjoyed this challenge - it was nice to have two different elements which were then brought together for a nice cream tea feast. Perfect for a mid-summer challenge.



So, how did we get on?

Let's start with the jam...

My mum probably deserves a bonus point as she went fruit picking and collected her own punnets of berries to use in the recipe. And she ended up making two different jams with them (one raspberry batch and one blackberry).

The jars of raspberry jam look great!



I found this recipe from Angela of Oh She Glows for blueberry, vanilla and chia seed jam which I was really tempted by, both because I hadn't used chia seeds in any recipes before and because it uses the natural sweetener of maple syrup, rather than white sugar, to sweeten the recipe.

I thought this might appeal to my no.1 judge (Ben) as he's always claiming he's not into super sweet things. Turns out I was wrong, as he voted it not sweet enough. Oh well!



It's nice to have a jam that contains a superfood though. The chia seeds were the magic ingredient that thickened up the jam a treat, and it has a really nice consistency.

Both me and my mum ended up with a few jars of jam so we've kept one aside to swap when we next see each other. I expect she'll agree about the sweetness though, as I found myself with the same opinion as Ben. A touch more maple syrup next time maybe?



Now to the scones...

We both opted for plain scones (in fact I think we may have both used the same recipe from Mary Berry). I think we both wanted to keep it simple so as not to clash with the jam too much. I'd like to try some cheese scones soon though.

My mum was a bit disappointed that hers came out a little on the flat side, but she said they tasted good and they look like they've got a nice colour to them.



I ended up making some heart-shaped scones (it turns out I don't have a circular pastry cutter) and I was really happy with the results. They had a nice height to them and were pretty tasty.

I ended up with quite a large batch so we enjoyed them with cheese and chutney for lunch for a few days after. Mmm...

The results

I think my scones outdid my jam - Ben gave me a 7.5 overall which I think was a fair score.

My mum said that her jam was better than her scones but she scored very highly with 9/10 from my dad and full marks from her friends. Very good show!



Next up, we'll be making stuffed breads. I've started adding some recipe inspiration over on Pinterest.
I think it's going to be a tasty one!