Fruit
Fruit will only give your baking whatever sparkle
the fruit already has. A pale, crunchy pinkish
strawberry in winter won’t give you the full-blown
joy of a perfumed, red all the way through, just-
wanna-wear-the scent-as-a-perfume one grown
in summer. Wait for the first of the new-season
apples to bring mellow blossomy aroma or acidic
spritz to a pie, choose nectarines on the cusp of
being ripe for your superstar juicy, tangy strudel
stuffing. Match your bakes with the seasons, and
be flexible – if the nectarines are looking better
than the peaches, or blackberries better than
blueberries, play to those strengths. After a winter
of tangelos, I count the hours until the first stone
fruit and berries, and peach and then quince
season, and then back to my beloved tangelo –
anticipation off the charts. Good frozen berries
fix a fresh fruit dearth, and can be used on Brown
butter frangipane tarts (page 109). Don’t pine (too
much) for the produce you can’t have. Always love
the produce you’re with.

If you have the very good fortune to grow your
own, or are able to buy produce direct from a
grower or at a farmers’ market, do it! Quality
greengrocers and friendly market provedores
will engage you in chats about their produce and
carry rare/old-fashioned varieties that were once
grown for distinctive flavours, not transportational
hardiness. Start a fruit chat today!

Dried fruit The old-fashioned in me loves to

use dried fruits, especially prunes. Buy them
plump, glossy and best untouched by heavy
preservatives. Snip dates and prunes with
scissors lightly sprayed with cooking oil –
much easier, and less sticky!

Freeze-dried fruit This adds a concentrated

sparkle and colour to cake tops, or it can be
pulverised into a fruity dust to enhance a
buttercream or frosting. Some are better than
others – all the berries are great, freeze-dried
apricot not so much. I also like dried passionfruit
powder to sprinkle on the Passionfruit curd sponge
roll (page 146). Almost shockingly tangy!

Weigh fruit I like to refer to fruit by purchase and

prepared weight, because four bananas, peeled,
may weigh 600 g (1 lb 5 oz) OR 400 g (14 oz)
and that’s going to affect the ratios and balance
in your recipe. In the recipes, I might say 500 g
(1 lb 2 oz) apple (350 g/12½ oz prepared weight),
by which I mean with skin off, cored and the bad
bits binned.

Reduce the juice (re-juice!) Zested citrus (or

‘nude’, as I call it) deteriorates quickly. So I
concentrate the juice and use it to pep up creams,
frostings and custards without adding excessive
liquid. Using a microwave is the BEST method of
doing this – it retains the juice colour and you can
see the level of reduction through a clear plastic
container. Choose an oversized plastic container,
as the juice will bubble a lot. Zap the strained fruit
juice on High (100%) heat bursts of 2–3 minutes
until the target amount is reached. This method
is also nifty, as it means you can keep putting the
plastic bucket on the scales to check how far it
has reduced. Just don’t zero/tare it off in between
zaps. If you don’t own a microwave, reduce your
juice using a saucepan – just be wary not to let
the flames lick up the side, as this will brown
and discolour the juice. If you over-reduce and
the juice becomes a too-sticky syrup, add a little
water (that’s what has evaporated) or extra juice
to make it flow. If you burn the juice, add a little
extra water or milk – it will still have the zest.