Roasted Strawberries / Strawberries en Papillote

I shouldn't be having a blog. People who don't have much to say shouldn't have a blog where they actually have to wax lyrical about everything. Hence, I wont. Going to back to being my normal, practical self where I think, speak and write in bullet points :-)



Roasted Strawberries are amazing
They bring an extra pop to these babies
Not the mention an accentuation of the flavours
En Papillote, in a cover, its even better, cos it cooks in its own steam, in its own juices, mingling, intermingling like... oh I have some funny words I shouldn't use here. Why are food blogs so polite by the way? Why does nobody ever use cuss words? Chefs are not known for their polite language.




In preparation for the end of the strawberry season, I picked up three boxes of strawberries. I had plans to make some more liqueur ('bewdi' rises), some scones and well, just have them around, till they grew mouldy and I'd cry and say 'oh! they've gone bad' and bin them. Yeah, well it happens. I'm not going to be diplomatic. Food waste is an issue I'm tackling on an everyday basis. I ration my shopping to eliminate any kind of waste. But sometimes, between work, sleep and a lot of sleep I miss, I forget and then its misery.

Anyway I wanted to make balsamic strawberries. But I didn't. Today was a day for the unexotic, about as adventurous as orange zest.



Ingredients

500g strawberries hulled and halved
4 tsp brown sugar
zest of two oranges
parchment paper

How

1. Spread out parchment paper. Mentally divide into two halves.
2. Spread strawberries, sugar and orange zest on one half.
3. Cover with other half of parchment and seal edges to make envelope
4. Bake in Oven at 200C for 20 mins or till sugar melts and all the flavours copulate (I did use that word finally)



Open up and eat... There's a lot more liquid than shown above. I used the syrup to soak a cake, picked out the zest and chucked them, snacked on a LOT of the berries and then took the snap.

You could also layer the cake with a cream cheese filling and the strawberries, top with some more cream cheese mix and chocolate ganache and finally more strawberries. Just cos they make the cake look so pretty and being pretty in this world means everything. The cake tastes pretty good even if it does look kinda wonky.




Happy Birthday Mum! Even if you're kilometers and kilometers away, and even if you haven't got a birthday cake of your own, we still celebrate your birthday with a cake cutting of our own.