craig, Author at Urban Homesteading

Author: craig

Out Now: My First Cookbook!

Posted on June 13, 2025June 13, 2025 by craig

I’m excited to announce that my first cookbook is out now!

I’m a book lover by nature and while this site will continue to grow and will continue to be 100% free, I can’t help but write it all down in book format, accompanied with full page photos. Preserving Your Urban Harvest contains 73 recipes for 21 common home garden favourites, with some recipes found here on this site, but with so many more not found here.

I’m releasing in paperback first and will follow up with an ebook in the near future for those who prefer a digital cookbook.

Here’s the cover:

Cover of Preserving Your Urban Harvest cookbook, which features four jars of preserved foods

And here’s the blurb:

Preserve your harvest. Enjoy it all year.

Whether you’re growing tomatoes on a balcony, or tending a backyard garden, Preserving Your Urban Harvest shows you how to make the most of your crops with 73 simple, delicious and time-tested recipes.

From apples to tomatoes, this book covers 21 common garden favorites with easy methods like water bath canning, pressure canning, fermenting, pickling, and more. Create pantry staples and creative treats—without needing a farmhouse or a root cellar.

Inside, you’ll find step-by-step instructions for:

Butter Chicken Curry Sauce

Fermented Garlic Scape Hot Sauce

Bread and Butter Pickles

Pressure Canned French Fries

Saskatoon and Grand Marnier Jam

Written by self-taught food preserver Craig Jamison, who shares years of hands-on experience preserving garden produce with his husband, this book is for anyone who wants to turn homegrown food into year-round abundance.

Ready to fill your pantry with flavor, not just food? Let’s get preserving!

Paperbacks are available right now on Amazon! Click here to get yours now!

I’m already hard at work on my next book about making wine from your garden crops, and then I’ve got a few other ideas after that—so if cookbooks are your thing, there are plenty coming from me in the future!

How to Make Chive Blossom Vinegar

Posted on June 12, 2025June 12, 2025 by craig

Chives are one of the first plants to come up in the garden every year. They have a lovely aroma and a delicious taste—sometimes I’ll just pluck one and eat it as I walk around the garden. In late May and early June, the chives start flowering with a gorgeous pastel purple flower.

When used fresh, chives are excellent on eggs or sprinkled atop any dish that could benefit from a burst of green colour and the soft bite of oniony chive flavour. But preserving chives is remarkably difficult. While it is possible to dehydrate them, they lose a lot of their flavour in the process. I’ve chopped and frozen some, but the flavour again starts to fade. The best way to enjoy chives is to enjoy them fresh.

A chive plant with pastel-purple flowers

For those set on preserving them, though, there are a few options. I’ve done up a batch of fermented chives a few times (using this recipe) and they come out tasting like very oniony sauerkraut, which has its place on the table with certain dishes.

The pastel purple blossoms are where some unique preservation options come up. The first is chive blossom jelly, which I’ve got here, or if you prefer a low-sugar version you can find that here, though the required low-sugar pectin is difficult to find in Canada. The second is chive blossom vinegar, which is a unique showstopper—it’s vibrantly pink, has a tantalizing aroma, and a delicious taste.

I typically use chive blossom vinegar with dinner—I’ll add a dash of it to the pan to help deglaze, plus the acidity adds a brightness to the flavour of whatever I’m cooking. It would work very well in a simple homemade oil and vinegar salad dressing and would also add a unique taste when sprinkled on fries.

How to make chive blossom vinegar

The first thing you’ll need is chive blossoms. Unfortunately, one of the only ways to get these is either by having your own chive plant or knowing someone that does, as I’ve never seen chive blossoms available for sale anywhere.

You’ll need about two cups, plus some chives for extra added flavour.

A Pyrex measuring glass filled with chive blossoms and chives

The only other ingredient you’ll need is vinegar. You’ll want a mild vinegar so that the taste of chives is allowed to shine. I typically make this with white wine vinegar, but I’ve also made it with unseasoned rice vinegar. I’d likely avoid white vinegar as it can be a too harsh. While I’ve never made it with apple cider vinegar, that may work well to hav an apple/chive taste, though the colour likely won’t be as vibrant.

Step one: Combine all ingredients

You may want to give your chive blossoms a rinse in case any insects or dirty have come along for a ride. Once patted dry, add the blossoms and chives to a large jar and top with two cups of vinegar. Put the lid on and tightly close it.

A mason jar filled with vinegar, chives, and chive blossoms

Step two: Let it sit

This recipe is remarkably easy, because all you do is let it sit for two weeks in a dark place at room temperature. It’s good to shake it daily, so I like to keep it in the cupboard right in front of my pots and pans, so whenever I go to make dinner, it’s in my way and I remember to shake it.

Step three: Strain and bottle

After two weeks, the vinegar should be bright pink and have an amazing chive aroma. Strain the vinegar, dissolving the solids, and transfer the vinegar to whichever bottle you want to use to store it.

A bottle of chive blossom vinegar; the vinegar is a brilliant pink colour

Step four: Enjoy

Use the vinegar as you might use any flavoured vinegar. You’ll find uses that work for you, such as salad dressing, deglazing pans, or a homemade fresh salsa (don’t use it for canning since you can’t be sure of the acidity level).

Over time, the colour will fade and the vinegar will turn brown. This is purely a colour change; the taste should remain just as vibrant and amazing and you can continue to use it as you like.

Chive Blossom Vinegar

5 from 1 vote

Brilliantly pink and with an amazing aroma and taste, chive blossom vinegar is a showstopper of a condiment.

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 10

Infusing Time 14

Course: condiments

Ingredients Method

Ingredients

2 cups Chive Blossoms

1 handful Chives
2 cups Vinegar with a Mild Flavour like White Wine Vinegar or Unseasoned Rice Vinegar

Method

Wash and pat dry chive blossoms to remove insects or dirt.

Combine all ingredients in a large jar and tightly close.
Store in dark place for two weeks, shaking daily.
Strain vinegar, discarding solids. Transfer vinegar to a bottle or jar.

What To Do With Too Much Rhubarb

Posted on June 6, 2025June 6, 2025 by craig

Home gardeners who grow rhubarb know that once the plant establishes itself, you soon have too much rhubarb. We don’t have rhubarb in our garden, but both of our neighbours do, and neither one wants their rhubarb, so we harvest it all. Last year was the first year we tried to harvest all of it, as it’s usually too much to bother doing that. We ended up stocking away over 100 pounds of it in our freezers. I had to figure out pretty soon what to do with too much rhubarb.

Depending on your climate and your specific rhubarb plants, you may have already harvested yours or are looking at doing so pretty soon. For us, a few of our plants seem to be a month behind anyone else. When everyone else’s lilac bush is full of purple blooms, ours is just warming up for the season—and then when everyone else’s blooms fall off, that’s when ours looks gorgeously purple. Our rhubarb is similar—we tend to harvest it in July or August, so it’s more of a mid-summer crop for us rather than a spring one.

Here are some of the projects I undertake with rhubarb, as well as a few great ideas from around the internet that haven’t quite made it on this site yet:

Freezing rhubarb

The first and easiest is to simply freeze the rhubarb. It freezes well and holds together decently when thawed and frozen rhubarb is good for most uses. If you prefer to pickle rhubarb, you shouldn’t freeze it first because it will affect the texture, but for juicing, jelly-making, and alcohol uses, frozen rhubarb is fine.

After harvesting the rhubarb and chopping off the toxic leaf, I wash and dry every stalk, then chop them into one-inch lengths. I set them all out on a towel for a few hours to fully dry, then bag them up, date them, and freeze them.

Bags of chopped rhubarb ready for the freezer.

I’ve gone on to use this frozen rhubarb for juicing, kombucha flavouring, wine making, gin flavouring, and jelly making. My step-father likes to make rhubarb crumble and rhubarb pie and will use our frozen rhubarb for this and the results are just as good as fresh.

Rhubarb ginger gin

Of everything I make, this is by far the most popular. Rhubarb ginger gin is sweet and juicy with just a hint of warmth from the ginger and it makes for easy drinking. It mixes phenomenally well with Coke.

The process is simple—combine gin, rhubarb, sugar, and ginger in a large jar and let it sit for a month, then strain, bottle, and serve. You can find the full recipe and instructions here.

If you’re not a ginger fan, you can omit the ginger and make rhubarb gin. I’ve also done this and the results are a little sweeter.

Rhubarb schnapps

Not much of a gin fan? You can also make rhubarb schnapps. It’s a very similar process, but it uses vodka instead of gin. This recipe isn’t on my blog since I haven’t made it in a few years (as I’m much more of a gin drinker than a vodka drinker), but this looks like a great version here.

Rhubarb juice

Rhubarb juice cans easily. And if you have a steam juicer, that makes the process phenomenally easy.

This post explains how to extract rhubarb juice and safely can it.

Rhubarb juice is acidic enough to be canned as-is, but most people add sugar to sweeten it and balance the taste. For myself, I tend to use the rhubarb juice in other recipes (some of which are below), so I can unsweetened juice so I’m never unsure of how much sugar to add for the future recipes.

Rhubarb jelly

One such use of unsweetened canned rhubarb juice is rhubarb jelly. I will sometimes make rhubarb jelly for some folks that request it and the process is very easy when I already have pre-canned juice on hand and don’t have to juice the rhubarb as part of the recipe.

An easy step-by-step guide to making and canning rhubarb jelly can be found here.

Rhubarb wine

There are two staple wines I make every single year—dandelion wine and rhubarb wine.

Rhubarb wine is a great starter recipe for folks new to home winemaking. You can find a complete recipe with instructions here.

A bottle of rhubarb wine with two glasses that are half filled with wine.

While the recipe is easy to make as is, as the first step is to just dump sugar and chopped rhubarb in a bucket and let it extract the juice, I’ve found I get far superior flavour if I use the canned rhubarb juice I made. While wine made from rhubarb chunks is delicious, it seems the chunks sometimes add just a hint of bitterness to the final taste—but using only juice removes that bitterness and I’m left with a wine that is incredibly smooth, juicy, and delicious.

I may experiment with the rhubarb wine recipe a little bit this year. Last year after mis-understanding a recipe, I threw some ginger into a dandelion wine batch and ended up with a surprisingly delicious dandelion ginger wine—the ginger is just a background note but complements it perfectly. I suspect I’d get the same amazing result with rhubarb ginger wine. So if that’s a success, it will appear on this site eventually.

Pickled rhubarb

One of my favourite things to do in home preserving is to pickle things. I pickle cucumbers, hot peppers, beets, carrots, cauliflower, and more. Pickled rhubarb is one of those more surprising ones with a unique flavour and texture. You can find a good recipe for it here.

Dehydrated rhubarb

Every home preserver has their preferred preserving method. For me, it’s canning. But for some, it’s dehydrating. Dehydrating rhubarb is easy and because it shrinks so much (since a lot of what makes up rhubarb is water), dehydrating can be a real space saver if you have a lot of rhubarb. This site has easy-to-follow instructions, as well as some ideas of how to use your dehydrated rhubarb.

More to come…

As this site grows, I’ll come back here and update this list with more fantastic ways to use up your overwhelming rhubarb harvest.

How to Make Sourdough Pizza

Posted on May 27, 2025May 27, 2025 by craig

It seems I’ve really gotten into a sourdough kick over the past couple months. I’ve baked some bread, made English muffins, baked some cookies, made some crackers, experimented with spaetzle…and now I decided to tackle pizza! I’ve always found the thought of making homemade pizza from scratch to be somewhat overwhelming. But I figured now was the time to teach myself how to make sourdough pizza.

As with most of my sourdough projects of late, I hopped onto Zoom with my bestie and we worked through the recipe together. What’s nice about doing it together is that we compare the results and discuss the steps as we go, so we figure things out faster.

How to make sourdough pizza

The first and most important thing you need is a healthy and active sourdough starter. If you’re new to sourdough and don’t have a starter going, check out my post about that here. It can take up to a couple weeks to have a really active starter.

The night before doing this recipe, you’ll want to feed your starter so it’s active and bubbly in the morning when you start making your dough. It’s okay if the starter has fallen by the morning; we don’t need this at the height of its activity.

This recipe makes one regular size pizza. You can either double it if you’d like for two pizzas, or split the dough in half when you roll it out for two individual size pizzas.

This recipe can be made with a simple pizza pan and does not require a pizza stone or any other specialized equipment—but if you have those, you can use them.

Step one: Make your dough

In a bowl, combine 1/4 cup of your starter, 240 grams (2 cups) of flour, 3/4 cup water, 1 teaspoon of salt, and 1 tablespoon of olive oil. (I didn’t have olive oil on hand so I used vegetable oil and the results were fine.)

Mix it with a spoon until you get a shaggy dough, then mix it a bit more by hand using the stretch-and-fold method. If you find your dough is too sticky, you can work some extra flour in. Tacky dough that feels sticky but doesn’t actually make a mess of your fingers is fine; sticky dough that adheres to your fingers is too wet.

Step two: Two sets of stretch and folds

Let the dough rest for about 10 minutes, then do a set of stretch and folds.

Let the dough rest for an additional 10 minutes, then do a second set of stretch and folds.

Step three: Let rest and rise

Place the dough ball in a lightly oiled bowl (to prevent the dough from sticking to the bowl) and let it sit at room temperature for about 8 hours, or until it’s approximately doubled in size.

Step four: Stretch out dough and form your crust

Preheat your oven to 475 F.

If you’d prefer to make two individual sized pizzas, split the dough ball in two.

On a floured surface, roll out your dough until it’s thin and the size of your pizza pan (or the size that you want). Roll up the edges to make a ridge around the pizza.

Step five: Top and bake your pizza

For my pizza, I spread on some pizza sauce (which is my pasta sauce repurposed for pizza), pepperoni, mushrooms, and cheddar cheese.

Bake for 13-15 minutes or until the crust looks cooked and the cheese is bubbly. Turn on the broiler and let broil for about 3 minutes to darken the top of the crust.

Remove from oven and let sit for a couple minutes before slicing and enjoying.

Sourdough Pizza

5 from 2 votes

Easy to make and delicious to eat, sourdough pizza is a staple at our house. This recipe is for one pizza or two personal pizzas. Feel free to double or triple the recipe as needed.

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 8 30

Cook Time 20

Course: dinner

Cuisine: Italian

Ingredients Method

Ingredients

¼ cup Active Sourdough Starter
240 g All-Purpose Flour (2 cups)
¾ cup Water

1 tsp Salt
1 Tbsp Olive Oil

Method

Place all ingredients in a bowl. Stir with a spoon until it comes together as a shaggy ball

Gently work the dough with your hands. If the dough is too wet, add flour as you go. It should be tacky, but not sticky. When you pull your hands away, the dough should stick to itself, not clump on your fingers. Sometimes I need to add a lot of extra flour.
Once you have a tacky ball of dough, let it rest for ten minutes. Then do a round of stretch and folds, going around the dough two or three times. You may need to add a little extra flour.
Let it rest another ten minutes, then do another round of stretch and folds, adding flour if needed.

Transfer the dough ball to a lightly oiled bowl (to prevent dough from sticking to the bowl), cover with plastic wrap or a towel, and let rest for eight hours, or until dough has doubled in size.
Preheat oven to 475℉. Roll out dough on a floured surface, stretching it to larger than your pizza pan. Transfer dough to pan and roll the edges to form a crust around the pizza.
Add sauce and toppings.

Bake for 13-15 minutes at 475℉, or until cheese is bubbly and crust is beginning to brown. Turn on the broiler in the oven and let it broil for about 3 minutes, to brown the crust a little more.
Remove from oven and let sit for a few minutes before slicing and serving.

Spring is here! A garden update for May 2025

Posted on May 12, 2025May 12, 2025 by craig

I think we can finally say it—spring is here and garden season has begun! Normally we wait till the May long weekend to make that declaration because weather can still be rocky in early May and there’s still a chance of frost, but this year has been warmer than usual so far and the garden is already in the swing of things, even though we haven’t done much yet. The trees and bushes are starting to bud, the chives have come up, flowers are starting to grow, and all the birds are back.

Garlic

We finally planted our garlic. We typically do a fall planting, let it overwinter, and then it’s the first thing to grow in the spring. Last fall was warm and wet and we ran the risk of the garlic simply rotting and opted for a spring planting. Ideally, we would have done it a little earlier since garlic can handle a little cold, but nevertheless, it’s in the ground.

This year’s garlic is in a new spot. We like to rotate our crops to test out different areas of the garden for the different foods. Rotating crops is also good for soil health since different plants both take and deposit different minerals into the ground. I’ve noticed that last year’s garlic patch has garlic currently growing in it. I must have missed a half dozen heads of garlic during last year’s harvest. We will likely dig them up and move them to the garlic patch, because where they are now would be in the way of this summer’s crops.

Mushrooms

We’ve also set up our mushroom beds! Last year, we tried growing mushrooms at the bases of a few of our trees. We laid out lots of sawdust, spread out the grain spawn, and gave it a good water. We got one small clutch of oyster mushrooms and that was it.

This year, we’re trying three different types of mushrooms—wine cap, shiitake, and pioppino—to see if any do better than others. And this year we’re also upping our mushroom setup. Mushrooms really need better conditions than what we’d set up last year, so we’ve changed our tactic this year. We laid out a layer of dead and decaying squash vines and leaves from last year, a layer of wood chips we bought at the hardware store, the grain spawn, more wood chips, and more leaves and vines. We gave it a good water. The directions say it’s best to cover with a clear tarp for the first while, so I’ll get one and set it up soon. Hopefully we get some mushrooms or even a bountiful harvest—this is one of the crops we really want to succeed but have difficulty with every year.

Making a plan

I ordered seeds a few months ago and they’ve been patiently sitting our kitchen, waiting to be put in the ground. Next is to purchase seedlings and live plants. We tend to go on or around the May long weekend to pick up what we need, and we focus on things that we have trouble growing from seed, or take too long to grow from seed, such as chamomile, hot peppers, herbs, leeks, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts. It sounds like a small list, but we inevitably come home with two to three times the amount of things we set out to buy.

My husband will start tilling the ground and planting seeds and plants in the next few weeks. In early June, my step-dad will come to the city and immediately be put to work in our garden—the two of them quickly power through the whole project and get this massive garden installed in a matter of two to three days.

Barren garden, waiting to be tilled and planted

Assessing our stock

The preservation recipes I undertake every year will vary based on what’s coming up in the garden, but also on what we still have on the shelves in our food storage room. While canned foods are theoretically good indefinitely as long as the seal on the jar hasn’t been broken, I find for many things the quality degrades after a year and a half to two years. (As well, some canning companies recommend using food up within 18 months, as the seal may degrade past that date.) So, for example, I still have a lot of hot sauce in storage from last year that will be fine for the coming year, so I will likely skip hot sauce this year. On the other hand, we’re almost out of green tomato chutney, so I’ll make a big batch of that to last the next couple years.

This is also the opportunity to assess if there’s anything we thought we would use up but just ended up not. This happened a few years ago with peony jelly—it’s a nice recipe and I’ve found a few folks who love it and happily took it off my hands, but if I hadn’t, I would have ended up throwing out the jelly because we simply don’t use it up ourselves.

Assessing the inventory of food we still have has also been interesting in the sense that there is still a LOT left and it feels like we have too much…but then I realize that harvest is still a few months away and for some things they’re not really harvested until October, which is a full four months away. We will very likely have an overlap of old thing still around while we’re preserving new things, so we’ll have to make sure we’re clearly marking the dates on things so we use the older ones first.

Preserving food is an odd cycle, but a predictable one. In October, I’m exhausted and never want to do it again. In February I’m relaxed and enjoying the bounty of our harvest and could see myself doing more canning when the time comes. And now in May I’m eager for things to just grow already so I can harvest and make all of these wonderful things.

Here’s hoping 2025 is a bountiful year for all of us!

How to Make Sourdough Discard Crackers

Posted on May 1, 2025May 1, 2025 by craig

We hosted a dinner party recently and it evolved into a potluck where our guests were bringing the salad, sides, and the main course. We whipped up a dessert, but we were feeling like we should be doing a bit more since we’re the hosts, and it felt like our guests were doing all the hard work. So, I decided to add some appetizers to the menu and whip up a batch of sourdough discard crackers to serve alongside some hummus and toum.

As anybody who maintains a sourdough starter knows, you end up throwing out a lot of the starter. Every time you feed it, you discard a portion of it. While flour and water aren’t expensive, it does feel like a waste, so sourdough discard recipes are great ways to use up this discard instead of throwing it out. I recently made sourdough discard chocolate chip cookies, and as I grow this site more discard recipes will appear on the recipe index page.

These sourdough discard crackers come together quickly and easily and are highly customizable when it comes to the flavourings. I used a few teaspoons of Herbs de Provence, which is a traditional French and Mediterranean blend of herbs, typically including thyme, rosemary, savory, marjoram, oregano, and tarragon. But if I didn’t have Herbs de Provence on hand, I would have gone with just rosemary. I made these crackers on a Zoom call with my bestie who was also making it in her kitchen—she went with salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese, and they turned out excellent too.

How to make sourdough discard crackers

The first and most important thing you will need is a sourdough starter. If you haven’t got one going yet, you’ll need to do so and maintain it for at least a week before you start using it for recipes like this. You can find instructions on making a starter here.

For the dinner party I made these crackers for, I whipped up a double batch. I fed the starter an extra large helping the night before so I’d have a lot of discard on hand. Thus, all the photos in this post are for a double batch.

Step one: Setting up

Preheat your oven to 350 F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Melt two tablespoons of butter and let it cool slightly.

Step two: Mix the ingredients

Put a bowl on a kitchen scale and hit the tare / zero button. Then add 200 grams of sourdough starter discard, which will amount to approximately 3/4 cup of discard.

Add the melted butter, 1/4 teaspoon fine salt, and 2 teaspoons of dried herbs (or hard cheese like parmesan).

Give everything a good mix until it’s well combined.

Step three: Spread out on parchment paper

Scoop or pour the batter onto the parchment paper lined baking sheets.

Spread it out really thin. This can get a little tricky with the dough sticking to your spatula or knife and pulling up the parchment paper, so you may need to hold down the parchment paper as you do this.

Sprinkle the top with 1/4 teaspoon flaky or coarse salt. I went with coarse sea salt, but if you have a flavoured sea salt or butcher’s salt (coarse salt with dried herbs mixed in), these would work well too.

Dough is thinly spread and ready for the oven

Step four: Bake the crackers

Put the baking sheet in the oven.

Optional: After ten minutes, if you want to score your crackers to make nice squares or rectangles, take the baking sheet out and gently run a knife or pizza cutter through it. If you prefer to break the crackers afterward for a more rustic look, skip this step.

Crackers may take as short as 20 minutes or as long as 50 minutes, depending on the variations in oven temperature and how thinly the dough was spread. Crackers are ready when they look dry and hard and are starting to turn golden brown. I found it took about 30 minutes to reach this point.

Step five: Let cool and enjoy

Let the crackers cool completely and then break them into appropriate sizes. Crackers can be eaten immediately or stored in an airtight container for about a week.

Sourdough Discard Crackers

5 from 2 votes

These crackers are not only a great way to use up sourdough discard, but they're also delicious and easy to make.

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 10

Cook Time 50

Course: Snack

Ingredients Method

Ingredients

200 grams Sourdough Discard (about ¾ cup)
2 Tbsp Unsalted Butter

¼ tsp Fine Salt
2 tsp Dried Herbs or Seasonings (such as Herbs de Provence or black pepper and parmesan cheese)
¼ tsp Coarse Salt

Method

Preheat oven to 350℉ and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Melt butter and allow to cool slightly.
Into a bowl, weigh out sourdough discard using a kitchen scale.

Add melted butter, fine salt, and herbs or seasonings, and mix until thoroughly combined.
Spread dough thinly onto parchment paper. Sprinkle the top with coarse salt.
Put in the oven and bake for 20-50 minutes, or until starting to turn golden brown. If desired, after the first 10 minutes, remove the sheet from the oven and score the crackers with a knife or pizza cutter.

When done, remove from oven and allow to cool. Break crackers into appropriate sizes. Crackers can be consumed immediately or stored in an airtight container for about a week.

How to Make Raspberry Crumble Loaf Cake with Lemon Drizzle

Posted on April 24, 2025April 24, 2025 by craig

While this pre-garden period drags on where there is no outdoor stuff to do, I continue to explore indoor projects. One of our goals every year is to use up what we have stocked away by the time we start stocking away new stuff from this year’s harvest. I’ve been eyeing a bag of raspberries I froze from last year that’s looking for an excuse to be eaten.

My bestie and I often hop on Zoom calls and tackle food projects together, so to use up my raspberries, we whipped up a raspberry crumble loaf cake with lemon drizzle. It’s not too sweet, has a bit of tartness from the raspberries, a sweet crumble topping, and a light lemon drizzle. It pairs perfectly with coffee or tea to make a nice afternoon snack.

The recipes I was looking at as inspiration all called for heavy kitchen appliances—a stand mixer with special attachments, a food processor—but this recipe here can all be done by hand without much effort. If you prefer to use a stand mixer and/or food processor, I’ll include those instructions as well, so you can adapt your method to what tools you’d like to use or not use.

A slice of raspberry crumble loaf cake with lemon drizzle waiting to be eaten

How to make raspberry crumble loaf cake with lemon drizzle

This batter comes together pretty quickly and you’ll soon have this in the oven. While you could certainly eat a warm slice when it’s fresh out of the oven, I’ve found it tastes better once it’s been refrigerated and is nice and chilled. Regardless of how you eat it, let’s learn how to make it!

Step one: Make the crumb topping

Add 90 grams of flour (or 3/4 cup), 66 grams of sugar (or 1/3 cup), and 1/4 teaspoon of salt to a bowl. With a whisk or fork, give it a quick stir to fully mix the ingredients. I find baking projects work best with the flour and sugar weighed, so if you have a scale I recommend pulling it out, but if you prefer to use the volume measurements, that’s fine too!

Add five tablespoons of cold unsalted butter, cut into small slices or cubes. With a pastry cutter, potato masher, or fork, combine ingredients until you get a crumbly sand-like mixture. I’ve found that it looks like it’s not working and it’s just clumping together, but as I keep going at it with the pastry cutter, it’ll suddenly turn and all come together to the desired consistency.

Crumble topping fully mixed and with a sand-like texture

If you prefer to use a big Kitchenaid-style mixer, you can put all of this in the mixing bowl, use the paddle attachment and sit it to mix on low until you reach the desired consistency. Alternatively, if you have a large food processor, you could pulse the whole thing in there until the consistency is reached.

Put the crumb topping aside until needed.

Step two: Make the batter

Preheat oven to 350 and spray a 9-inch loaf pan with cooking spray.

Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl—180 grams (1 1/2 cup) flour, 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Give it a quick stir with a whisk or fork to combine ingredients.

In a separate, larger bowl, combine wet ingredients—1/4 cup vegetable oil, 3/4 cup sugar, 2 large eggs, 3/4 cup plain unsweetened yogurt (I used Greek yogurt), and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract. Give this a good mix with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula to combine ingredients.

If you want to use a Kitchenaid-style mixer, combine all the wet ingredients in the mixer’s bowl and use the whisk attachment until well-blended. If you’re using a mixer, remove the bowl from the mixer for the remaining steps.

Add the dry ingredients to the bowl of wet ingredients. Mix with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula until just combined and most lumps have disappeared. Be careful not to over-mix it.

Step three: Assemble the cake

Pour the batter into the greased/sprayed loaf pan.

Sprinkle 1 1/2 cups of frozen or fresh raspberries on top. Gently press the raspberries down so they embed in the batter, but do not submerge them. The end result will be cake with a layer of raspberries.

Using clean hands, pick up handfuls of crumb mixture and distribute them evenly over the cake, gently squeezing as you do so to create larger crumbs for a variety of textures and sizes.

Fully assembled raspberry crumble loaf cake ready for the oven

Step four: Bake the cake

Bake the cake for 55-65 minutes. Test with a toothpick to see if it’s done; a toothpick should be inserted in the centre and removed and there should be no wet batter on the toothpick. The raspberries may get in the way and make it difficult to do an accurate test, so you may want to move some raspberries aside with the gentle help of a butterknife.

Let the cake cool. When cool, remove from pan and transfer to a plate or serving dish.

Raspberry crumble loaf cake fresh out of the oven

Step five: Make the lemon drizzle

In a cup or small bowl, add 1/2 cup of powdered sugar, a pinch of salt, 1/2 tablespoon of milk (milk alternatives work fine, I used almond milk), and 1/2 tablespoon of lemon juice. Give it a stir with a teaspoon and it’ll soon come together to make a runny whiteish drizzle. If you feel it’s too thick, you could add a tiny splash of lemon juice or milk (like 1/8 of a teaspoon) to thin it out a bit.

Then, scooping it up with a spoon, drizzle it over the cake.

Raspberry crumble loaf cake with lemon drizzle

Step six: Enjoy!

You can slice into the cake at any time, but I do find it tastes better once it’s been in the fridge for a while and is nicely chilled. To keep it from going dry after slicing into it, put it in an airtight container or cover it with plastic wrap (you can put toothpicks in the cake to prevent the wrap from coming in contact with the cake). It’s best to consume within a few days, but good luck letting it last that long!

Raspberry Crumble Loaf Cake with Lemon Drizzle

5 from 2 votes

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 20

Cook Time 1

Course: Dessert

Ingredients Method

Ingredients

Crumb Topping

90 grams Flour (about ¾ cup)
66 grams Sugar (about ⅓ cup)

¼ tsp Salt
5 Tbsp Butter, cold and cut into small cubes

Cake

180 grams Flour (about 1 ½ cups)

1 ½ tsp Baking Powder
½ tsp Baking Soda
½ tsp Salt

¼ cup Vegetable Oil
¾ cup Sugar
2 Large Eggs

¾ cup Plain Unsweetened Yogurt (can use Greek yogurt)
2 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 ½ cups Raspberries, fresh or frozen

Lemon Drizzle

½ cup Powdered Sugar
Pinch Salt
½ Tbsp Milk or Milk Alternative

½ Tbsp Lemon Juice

Method

Make the Crumb Topping

In a bowl, combine all crumb ingredients. With a pastry cutter, blend the ingredients until they come together and form a sand-like texture. Alternatively, you can do this in a stand mixer with a paddle attachment or in a food processor.

Make the Cake

Preheat oven to 350℉ and spray a 9-inch loaf pan with cooking spray.

Add flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt to a bowl and mix with a wire whisk or fork until evenly blended.
In a separate, larger bowl, add oil, sugar, eggs, yogurt, and vanilla. Mix using a whisk, spatula, or spoon until evenly blended.
Add dry ingredients to the wet ingredients bowl. Mix until lumps have mostly disappeared, being careful not to over-mix (so do this manually rather than with a mixer).

Transfer batter to the prepared loaf pan. Sprinkle raspberries on top and gently press them partway into the batter.
Sprinkle crumb topping on top, gently squeezing fingers while doing so to create larger crumbs.
Bake for 55-65 minutes. When done, test with a toothpick—when inserted into the cake, it should come out clean and free of batter. If the raspberries are in the way and making it difficult, gently move some aside with a butterknife and try again.

When baked, allow to cool. Transfer to a wire rack when safe to do so.

Make the Lemon Drizzle

Combine all drizzle ingredients in a small bowl or cup and stir until thoroughly mixed. Using a spoonful at a time, drizzle over the cake.

How to Make Sourdough English Muffins

Posted on April 17, 2025April 17, 2025 by craig

Continuing with my seasonal shift in homesteading—winter and early spring being prime time for sourdough and other baking projects—this past week I hopped on Zoom with my bestie and we taught ourselves how to make sourdough English muffins. This is quite an easy recipe with very delicious results. While our sourdough English muffins didn’t turn out quite as airy and fluffy as traditional English muffins, the end result was pretty bang-on perfect.

After we let our English muffins cool for a bit, we proceeded to make Eggs Benedict for brunch—a toasted English muffin, topped with ham or bacon, topped with a poached egg, and smothered in hollandaise sauce. It was—chef’s kiss—perfect!

Eggs Benedict made with homemade sourdough English muffins

To tackle this recipe, you will need an active sourdough starter. If you’re new to the world of sourdough, you can find my guide to creating your starter here.

While English muffins do have some milk in them, you can make them dairy-free / vegan by swapping out the milk with a milk alternative. I didn’t have milk on hand so I used unsweetened almond milk and got great results.

How to make sourdough English muffins

As mentioned above, you will need an active and bubble sourdough starter. If you’re new to sourdough or haven’t made a starter in a while, you’ll want to create one first using the instructions on this page. It takes about a week for a sourdough starter to really thrive and be useful. If you’re in a colder/drier climate like me, it can take a couple weeks and then it might not get really strong for quite some time. However, my bestie is in a warmer/humid climate and her starter was very active and bubbly within a couple days and could be used almost immediately.

Now, let’s learn how to make sourdough English muffins!

Step one: The night before, getting it started

Like most sourdough recipes, this is intended to be a two day project, starting the night before. In a large bowl, combine 1/2 cup of active, bubbly starter, 240 grams of flour, and 1 cup of milk (or a plant milk if preferred; I found almond milk worked fine). The recipe I was working from called for 2 cups of flour here, but I’ve found I get better results for bread if I weigh the flour. Sometimes it comes out a little too wet and I have to add flour, but it beats having a too-dry dough from too much flour when I measure by cups.

Give it all a good stir until fully combined, then cover with plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature overnight. You could leave it longer if you want — a pastry chef once told me that the secret to a good sourdough project is a long, slow rise, so you could go 18 or even 24 hours if you want.

The dough for English muffins, mixed and ready to rest overnight

Step two: The next morning, adding ingredients

Add 80 grams of flour (or 3/4 cups if you’re going by volume), 1 Tbsp sugar, 3/4 tsp salt, and 1 tsp baking soda. Mix this all with a spoon or spatula. I found this came together really easily, but if your dough is a bit dry, you may need to dive in with your hands.

The rest of the ingredients mixed into the English muffin dough

Step three: Knead the dough

Flour a countertop or table and roll the dough out of the bowl and onto the floured surface. Knead the dough for 4 to 5 minutes. If your dough is wet and sticky — and if you measure flour by weight like I do, there’s a good chance your dough is too wet — gradually add flour in small amounts until the dough is tacky but not sticky. It should feel like it’s sticking to your fingers when you remove your hand, but your hand comes away clean. If dough is sticking to your hand, it’s too wet.

Step four: Roll out the dough and cut it

When your dough is fully kneaded and not too sticky, use a floured rolling pin to roll it out to 3/4 inch thickness. Using a drinking glass or a round cookie or pastry cutter, cut out your English muffins and place them on parchment paper. If you have cornmeal (I didn’t), you can dust each side with a bit of cornmeal.

If, like me, you’re horrible at judging size and you end up rolling them far too thin, you can stack them together (before dusting with cornmeal). You should end up with 6-8, whereas I got 16, which told me I had made them way too thin. If you stack them, you don’t need to press them together; they will stick together when you cook them.

Let them rest for 45 minutes.

Uncooked sourdough English muffins, resting before cooking

Step five: Cook the English muffins

Put a large pan on the stove and set the stove to medium heat. Let it prewarm a bit. Since I didn’t have cornmeal to dust the English muffins, I gave the pan a quick spritz of cooking spray.

Once the pan is nice and warm, cook the English muffins for 6-8 minutes per side. Keep an eye on them because if your stove runs a little hotter, you may need a shorter cooking time. My first batch took 6 minutes per side and the second took about 5 per side. They can burn a bit, so keep an eye out for that too.

Sourdough English muffins cooking in a pan on the stove

Step six: Let cool and enjoy!

For best results, let the English muffins cool before cutting into them. Breads can sometimes still cook a bit with the heat retained inside and cutting them open can cause that heat to dissipate. Opening them before cooling can also allow steam to escape and make the bread a little drier.

Homemade sourdough English muffins, cooling before eating

English muffins are an integral part of Eggs Benedict, which is what we proceeded to make with these. We used my husband’s recipe for hollandaise sauce, but if you’re looking for a recipe, this one looks pretty good.

Sourdough English Muffins

5 from 1 vote

These sourdough English muffins are easy to make and a delicious part of breakfast!

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 12

Cook Time 16

Course: Bread, Breakfast

Ingredients Method

Ingredients

½ cup Active, Bubbly Sourdough Starter
330 g Flour (or 2 ¾ cup)

1 cup Milk (can be plant milk)
1 Tbsp Sugar
¾ tsp Salt

1 tsp Baking Soda
Cornmeal, for dusting

Method

The night before
In a large bowl, add sourdough starter, 240 g / 2 cups flour, and milk. Stir with a spoon until combined. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit overnight, or longer, at room temperature.

The next day
Add 90 g / ¾ cup flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda. Stir to combine.
Roll out dough onto floured surface and knead for 4-5 minutes. If your dough is wet and sticky, slowly incorporate additional flour until it's tacky but no longer sticky.
With a floured rolling pin, roll dough to ¾ inch thickness. With a drinking glass or round pastry / cookie cutter, cut out muffins. You should end up with about 6-8 English muffins.

Dust each side with cornmeal and let them rest on parchment paper for 45 minutes.
Preheat a large pan on the stove to medium heat. Cook English muffins for about 6-8 minutes per side, careful not to burn them, until they are ready. Allow English muffins to cool before slicing and using.

Preparing for the upcoming garden season (A garden update for April 2025)

Posted on April 10, 2025April 10, 2025 by craig

Another month and another inch closer to spring. During much of March, the snow had melted and it looked like we were headed to a very early spring—though it would have still been unwise to plant anything until the May long weekend because a good frost could kill anything.

The garden in March with most of the snow melted

But then right around the shift from March to April, the city was hit with a big dump of snow. While a lot of it has since melted, there’s still a considerable amount of snow and ice around. While we can’t plant yet, we’re still busy preparing for the upcoming garden season!

The garden in April, buried in a fresh layer of snow

Early plantings

Despite the risk of frost between now and the May long weekend, there are two things we want to get in the ground nice and early, and which can withstand some frost.

The first is garlic. We normally plant this in the fall, let it overwinter under the snow, and then it’s the first thing to come up in the spring. But last fall was unseasonably warm and very rainy and there was a very real risk that the garlic we plant would either sprout in the fall or simply rot, so we’re going to do a spring planting instead. If we get it in while the ground is still very cold, there’s a chance the garlic will still grow at the usual time.

We really wanted to replant the garlic from last year. It’s the second generation of seed garlic we had purchased from a local farmers market vendor—these ones have nice giant cloves, with only about four cloves per head. Sometimes our garlic doesn’t last till spring so we were worried it might sprout or go bad before we had a chance to plant them, but they’re still doing good, chilling out in a bag and ready to go. (We had considered freezing them to mimic the conditions of being frozen outside over winter and to make sure they don’t sprout or go bad, but just never got around to putting the garlic in the freezer.)

The second is mushrooms. We settled on wine cap mushrooms. They’re supposed to be beginner friendly, work well in outdoor beds, and dehydrate/rehydrate well. They can also withstand a little bit of frost, so getting them in around late April or early May is ideal as they fruit in the spring and fall when it’s a bit cooler.

Unfortunately, my local mushroom supplier seems to be out of wine cap spawn, so I’m looking elsewhere. I’ve found a handful of places that sell spawn online within Canada, but the shipping is very expensive (so it’s worth it to find a local supplier to save the shipping cost!). I’m continuing to explore options because we’re determined to have mushrooms this year.

Update since the first draft of this post: I’ve found an online mushroom vendor from Quebec and I’ve ordered wine cap, shiitake, and pioppino mushroom spawn. We’ll try all three and see what comes up!

New kitchen gadgets

My birthday was last month and my mom had originally planned to register me for a cheesemaking class at the local cooking school, but it was unfortunately cancelled. I definitely want to learn how to make cheese, so I’m keeping an eye on their website for when that comes up again.

However, in the absence of a cheesemaking class, my mom offered to buy me some items off Amazon. I poked around the site and loaded up on gadgets to help build this homesteading kitchen.

Gnocchi-making supplies

My husband and I love gnocchi, which are pillowy-soft potato dumplings from Italy that are served up with sauce. I’ve tried making them before but they were a kitchen disaster. I’m determined to learn how to make them soon, so as part of the birthday gift, I got myself a potato ricer (to make perfectly smooth potatoes) and a gnocchi board (to get the traditional ridges). I’ll be hopping on Zoom one weekend soon while my bestie and we’ll teach ourselves how to make this.

A potato ricer and a gnocchi board for making gnocchi

Spaetzle-making supplies

Spaetzle is a type of noodle. A while back I came across a recipe for how to make it using sourdough discard. I attempted it a couple weeks ago and it was delicious. However, I didn’t have the appropriate device for making it easily, so I added this spaetzle maker to my Amazon cart!

The dough is pushed through the holes, directly into boiling water. When I attempted it previously, I used a colander, which does the job, but it’s awkward.

A spaetzle maker -- a metal disc with holes in it, with a plastic scraper to push dough through the holes

Wine siphon

I make a lot of country wines. For some of them, I make big five-gallon batches and have all the right equipment for that. For other recipes, I make small one-gallon batches, and one thing that’s I’ve been missing is a small siphon to transfer wine. This will help me get clearer sediment-free wine from my small batches. (And I will have more wine recipes on this site over the next year, I promise!)

The busyness begins next month!

This was a relatively quiet month but May will soon be upon us and we’ll be diving head-first into six months of gardening, harvesting, and food processing. When I’m at the end of it, around September or October, I’m always exhausted and wishing we could scale it down and just not do as much. But when this time of year rolls around, I’m back in love with it all and I can’t wait to get started. See you next month!

How to Make Irish Soda Bread

Posted on April 4, 2025April 4, 2025 by craig

Every year for St. Patrick’s Day, we invite a friend over and put on an Irish dinner, which usually consists of an Irish stew, Irish soda bread, and either some whisky or a Guinness. I’ve made this dinner a few times now, and sometimes play around with the menu, such as adding Guinness and Cheddar Dip, Irish Potato Bread, or an Irish Drop Shot for a drink. But I’ve never really gotten the handle on the Irish soda bread—it always comes out way too dense and tough. This year I was determined to do it right, so I pulled up a few recipes online and compared them and taught myself how to make Irish soda bread. I’ve since made this recipe a couple more times and it’s turned out perfect every time, so I think I’ve finally hacked it!

What I was doing wrong before was measuring the flour by volume, when really flour should be measured by weight. The amount of flour in a cup can really vary from measurement to measurement—similar to brown sugar, it can be lightly packed or tightly packed, and that can make a big difference on your end result.

While the recipes I looked at called for flour measured by volume, I switched to a weight measurement and instantly all of my Irish soda bread is light and fluffy and soft and delicious!

How to Make Irish Soda Bread

Step one: Setting up

Preheat your oven to 425 F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Step two: Mix dry ingredients

Add flour, baking soda, and salt to a bowl and whisk to combine.

Step three: Add buttermilk

Create a well in the centre of your dry ingredients and add your buttermilk.

If you don’t have buttermilk on hand, you can make it with 1 3/4 cups milk and 1 3/4 tablespoons lemon juice. If you’d like to make it vegan (or, like me, forget to buy milk but have vegan milk on hand), you can make buttermilk using the same ratios with soy milk, almond milk, or other vegan milk. For these photos, I forgot to buy milk, so this is made with almond milk.

Mix until combined.

Mix ingredients - this dough is still a little too wet

My dough was a little too wet so I added a bit of flour and mixed some more.

Step three: Knead the dough

Transfer the dough to a floured counter or table and lightly knead the dough. If it’s too wet and sticky, add flour in small amounts until dough is still tacky but holds together and doesn’t stick to your hands. I usually have to add some flour for this reason.

Step four: Prep the loaf for the oven

Roll the dough into a round loaf and place on the parchment paper lined baking sheet. With a sharp knife, score the top with an X.

Place on a baking sheet and score the top with an X

Step five: Bake the bread

Place the baking sheet in the oven for 30 minutes or until loaf is golden brown. It should sound hollow when tapped.

Freshly baked Irish soda bread, golden brown in colour

Let the loaf cool for at least half an hour before slicing. Cutting into it while still hot can lead to moisture evaporation, which can make the bread drier and tougher.

Step six: Enjoy!

Irish soda bread lasts for several days in an airtight container at room temperature. It may last longer, but we always eat it by the third day because it’s just so darn delicious!

I have a carb-loving cat who will steal bread, pasta, cereal, and more any chance he gets. I happened to turn my back for about 30 seconds after slicing some bread, and…

Irish Soda Bread

5 from 2 votes

Light, fluffy, delicious, and easy to make, this Irish soda bread is a sure winner at the dinner table!

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 10

Cook Time 5

Course: Bread

Cuisine: bread, Irish

Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients

480 grams All-Purpose Flour
1 tsp Baking Soda

1 tsp Salt
1¾ cup Buttermilk

Method

Preheat oven to 425℉ and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, whisk flour, baking soda, and salt.
Create a well in the centre and add buttermilk. Stir until combined.
Transfer dough to a floured counter or table and lightly knead to form a round loaf. Add more flour in small amounts if dough is too wet and sticky.

Place the round loaf on the parchment paper lined baking sheet. With a sharp knife, score an X on the top of the loaf.
Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown. Bread should sound hollow if tapped.
Let cool at least 30 minutes before slicing. If sliced while still too warm, moisture may evaporate and bread may become tough.

Notes

The flour is about four cups, but you’ll get better results by weighing it rather than using a measuring cup.

If you don’t have buttermilk on hand, you can mix 1 3/4 cup milk with 1 1/2 Tbsp lemon juice.

If you’d like to make this vegan, buttermilk can be made from almond milk or soy milk, to varying degrees of success. The photographed bread in this post was made with buttermilk made from almond milk.