Pick Your Own (PYO) farms can be great value for money, very satisfying, and provide a great, cheap day out for the family. Why not get your kids doing a bit of child labour in the fields, harvesting berries, tomatoes - whatever's available?! Mine LOVED their session picking strawberries and mange tout, pottering about with their little punnets, comparing what they’d picked etc. Obviously it won't be economical if you have to drive miles to get to one of these PYO farms. But I happened to be going past one on my way to visit Granny. See what’s in your area www.pickyourown.org/unitedkingdom.htm and look at their websites for prices of seasonal produce. I went to Secretts Farm in Milford in Surrey www.secretts.co.uk. Here’s a snapshot of their prices in mid-August compared to Tesco’s/Sainsbury’s. In some cases I’ve picked the organic or premium range as that would be about the same quality.

Secrett’s Farm Price                              Supermarket Price

Strawberries - £3.75/kg                        £10.93/kg     Tesco Finest

Raspberries - £5.95/kg                         £23.92/kg     Tesco

Rhubarb - £1.65/kg                              £4.98/kg      Sainsbury’s

Redcurrants -£3.75/kg                          not available

Blackcurrants - £3.75/kg                       not available

Blackberries - £3.75/kg                         £5.96/kg      Tesco

Cherry Tomatoes - £3.25/kg                 £3.92/kg      Tesco (organic)

Peas - £1.95/kg                                   £3.98/kg      Tesco

French Beans - £2.95/kg                       £4.30/kg      Tesco

Broad Beans - £1.75/kg                        £4.98/kg      Sainsbury’s  

Runner Beans - £2.75/kg                      £4.40/kg      Tesco

Courgettes - £2.25/kg                          £1.98/kg      Tesco CHEAPER!

Sugar Snaps - £3.95/kg                        £6.13/kg      Tesco

Mange Tout - £3.95/kg                         £5.83/kg      Tesco

Recipe: Homemade Strawberry Jam

Makes – 2kg (4 lbs)

1 kg strawberries

1 kg jam sugar (has added pectin)

Juice of 1 lemon

4x1lb (454g) jam jars or 2x 1kg kilner jars

Method:

Put 2 saucers in the freezer. Wash and hull the strawberries. Put in a large heavy-based (not aluminium) saucepan with the lemon juice and heat to soften the fruit and get the juices running. Add the sugar, stir and bring to the boil. Wash the jars and lids (and rubber seals if using Kilner jars) and put in a sink full of very hot water (boil the kettle) to sterilise. Stir the jam so the hot sugar doesn’t burn on the bottom. Boil for 10 minutes, then test a teaspoon on the freezing saucer. After a few minutes, when it’s cooled, run your finger into the jam and if it wrinkles nicely, with a dry skin, it’s ready. Otherwise boil for 10 minutes more and repeat the test with the other cold saucer.

Drain the hot jars on kitchen paper then ladle in the hot jam carefully. If you put boiling hot jam in cold jars YOU WILL CRACK THEM. Put the lids on tightly while hot, to seal. When cool, I like to store in the fridge if I have room. 

Uses: 

1. Stir a dessert spoonful into chilled 0% fat Greek yoghurt.

2. Mix with 50:50 whipped cream and Crème Fraiche and freeze = delicious strawberry ice cream.

3. On bread and scones, obviously

4. Mix with FREE hedgerow blackberries and top with crumble mix. Bake at 180 degrees C for 30 minutes until bubbling and golden.

Shop-bought birthday cakes are expensive for what they are - sugar/fat/white flour and - I'm betting - vanilla essence, not extract.

For example, in Sainsbury's, a Nestlé Smarties Celebration cake (feeds 16 with tiny slices) is £7.99. Disney Cars Occasion Cake (serves 16) is on offer at £7.99. And the supermarket's own brand Football Cake is £5.69 for 8 servings. They all have a list of ingredients as long as your arm (Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Flavouring, Colouring (Curcumin, Annatto, Ponceau 4R, Brilliant Blue FCF) anyone?

I haven't done an exhaustive price comparison, calculating the cost of a teaspoon of baking powder etc, but common sense says it'll be cheaper. If you're doing the work, rather than Sainsbury's/McVities/whoever, it'll WILL be cheaper, won't it? I knew that economics degree would come in handy someday.

So I made my own for my daughter's recent 5th birthday party and, in the process, roped in 2 kids for a cheap afternoon's entertainment - helping me mix, bake and ice it. This is also a key consideration when the summer holidays are upon us, remember.

A tip is to use ground almonds to keep the cake moist, provided you don't have any kids coming with nut allergies, which is increasingly common now.

Recipe: Chocolate Birthday Cake

Ingredients: (serves 8)
125g butter
125g sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
75g ground almonds
75g plain flour
1 rounded tsp baking powder
2 rounded tbsp cocoa
Milk (about 100ml)
Icing:
75g butter
100g icing sugar
2 rounded tbsp cocoa

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Lightly oil an 8" (20cm) springform cake tin (with a removable bottom) and line the bottom with a disc of greaseproof paper (if you, like me, haven't come into the 21st century and embraced silicone bendy cake moulds). Cream the room-temperature butter and sugar, then add the eggs one at a time and mix in. Add the flour, almonds, baking powder, vanilla extract and cocoa and mix further. Add enough milk to make a soft dropping consistency. Or use the "Stork all-in-one method" invented by margarine manufacturer Stork in the 70s, and bung everything in together and mix. It works just as well. Bake about 30 minutes until a knife inserted into the bottom comes out almost clean (the almonds mean it's meant to be moist).

Let the cake cool in the tin then turn out onto a fancy plate.

For the icing, mix the room-temperature butter and icing sugar with the cocoa. Slather over the COOLED cake (otherwise it'll just melt and run off - I've been there). Decorate with sprinkles, jelly babies etc, or leave plain for an adults' cake.