Addison Embroidery
at the
Vicarage

Ipsden altar frontal: Japanese Anemone

As we near the end of our time in the vicarage life is getting more like bedlam – not so much physically as psychologically. I don’t enjoy change and the process of trying to find a house/flat to rent is my most unfavourite activity. Unfairly, even cruelly, I hand this task of searching over to the vicar but reserve the right of final veto. We made our first visit to prospective properties on Thursday, thought we had found somewhere ideal, offered the asking price and settled details of the offer with the estate agent. The landlord took his time getting back to the estate agent, being ‘in a meeting’ (twice) and then saying he needed to go home and ‘talk to his other half’. We were braced for a refusal when it came, though shared the surprise of the estate agent that the property had suddenly become a short let…

So, thank goodness for the soothing therapy of hand embroidery.

Clare Leighton’s Japanese Anemone (from Four Hedges, Little Toller books, 2010)

Here is a Japanese Anemone just like the ones that flourish in the raised bed outside our living room window. Leaves and stems have shot up recently but sadly we will not be here to see them flower this year. (Let’s not think about it).  True to form this plant was difficult to establish but now shows every sign of taking over the entire bed. Others planted on the other side of the garden which are in even greater shade from the line of (listed) beech trees are less vigorous which is a pity because it would have been lovely if they had become rampant just there where little else seems to grow.

Ipsden altar frontal: Japanese Anemone

Japanese Anemone is a bit of a misnomer for these plants were originally native in China. But the Japanese embraced them, finding their stature and flowers ravishing grown against rocks and in the shade under trees. Plant hunter, Robert Fortune (1812-80), came upon them amongst tombstones in a Shanghai graveyard and brought them to Europe. The one I have embroidered is Honorine Jobert, the now popular hybrid of a C19th French nurseryman, called Jobert who named the plant after his daughter Honorine. Sarah Raven says she loves them on her website, which is great because I do too.

A scrumptous biscuit adapted from the latest Mary Berry book, Foolproof Cooking.  (I replaced 25 g of the flour with 25 g ground almonds, because I find it almost impossible to make biscuits without them). Very  very quick and easy, producing a real treat of a biscuit that belies the simplicity of the recipe and the comparatively cheapness of the ingredients. If you like chocolate, cherries and a hint of almond this is the biscuit. Also great to serve with a good quality vanilla ice cream as an excellent dessert.

Chocolate and cherry biscuits – based on a recipe in Mary Berry’s Foolproof Cooking (BBC Books 2016)

100 g butter, cubed and softened

50 g golden caster sugar

100 g Self Raising flour

25 g ground almonds

15 g cocoa powder

75 g chopped glacé cherries (or dried cherries)

Preheat the oven to 180 °C/ 160°C fan oven /Gas Mark 4 and grease 2 baking sheets with Lakeland’s ‘CakeRelease’ (or of course line two baking sheets with baking paper).

Beat butter and caster sugar until creamy. Add sifted flour, cocoa powder, ground almonds and chopped cherries. Mix together and then bring the dough together with your hands to form a ball.

Mary divides this into 16 balls but I made 20 as I find a slightly smaller biscuit better. (A certain amount of redistribution of the cherry pieces went on at this point as I probably hadn’t cut them up enough in the first place.) Place the biscuits on the baking sheet and then flatten each by pressing down on them with the back of a fork (dip the fork in hot water if it picks up the dough.

Bake for 12- 15 minutes (nearer the 12 for me, especially as Mary warns they become dark vert easily). If you want to add an extra cherry half on top do this the minute you take the biscuits from the oven. Leave on the baking tray for about 5 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to complete the cooling process and firm up.

Mary suggests dusting with icing sugar when cool. I didn’t, preferring to see them in their chocolatey brown loveliness.

I made a second batch of these biscuits and added tiny pieces of fudge. These were also excellent but do press the fudge well into the dough or it turns to toffee brittle when it dribbles down on to the baking tray – of course some people enjoyed the biscuit even more when this happened.

Chocolate and cherry biscuits – based on a recipe in Mary Berry’s Foolproof Cooking (BBC Books 2016)

The Sunday service issued invitations to pets and we enjoyed the addition of dogs and a very well behaved chicken. Two passing sleepy bees were treated to a warm syrup of diluted sugar.( A wasp that turned up later wasn’t so lucky.)

The cherry trees in the lane by Cross Farm have been beautiful for about a week but are now over. In the last few years they have been prolific with more than enough fruit for birds and people. There are lambs in nearby fields again, although they have lambed elsewhere since the farmer stopped having his own flock and let the field to tenants. The general consensus is that the ducklings will have been picked off by foxes and I have as yet met no one else who had even a passing glimpse of them. Sic transit gloria mundi …