Cathryn Dresser's Roasted Vegetable Strudel

I want it to be summer all over again.  Well a proper summer, not the non-event of a summer that we've just had.  But a proper warm, English summer when you know that you have several weeks of good weather guaranteed ahead (the last time this happened was circa 2003) and you can plan an outdoor social event with confidence. Because I want to make and eat this strudel again.  And share it with my nearest and dearest who wouldn't whinge and whine that it's meat free.

Ready to eat

This recipe is from the current series of the Great British Bake Off and to cut a long waffle short, the flavours in this were amazing.  And I didn't even stick to the actual recipe because I don't have the time, space or patience to make my own filo* nor could I find Slipcote Cheese in the local Morrisons and so I made do with regular feta.  I only made enough for one person - okay so it was a greedy one-person portion that could have been eked out to two people with a green salad, a bottle of chilled chablis and a decadent dessert to follow - but I'd love to go the whole strudel (it's meat free, remember?) and serve this at an evening soiree held at the end of a beautiful summer's day.

Although the recipe sounds involved, it's actually not.  Chop up a lot of veg into little pieces and roast them.  Make some couscous.  Wrap it in liberally buttered filo with some cheese and herbs.  Butter again. And again.  This is a very James Martin-esque recipe.  Bake.  And butter again.

Dame Mary admitted during the programme that she finds it perfectly acceptable to buy your own filo so that makes the whole experience easier.  Plus if you read the original recipe, you need to make the pastry on a massive clear space like your huge, country kitchen table** or similar space.  Or just cheat and use shop-bought filo which will save your time and sanity.

Inside - pre-bake

I learnt from this recipe that the art to successful baked Filo wrapped things is to butter in between every layer.  Ordinarily, I just butter the outside to keep the fat down.  But having buttered the pastry to within an inch of its life, the crust was perfect and crispy - just how I like it.  My arteries are slightly more furred than they were this morning, but it was fully worth it.  Definitely on the make again list.

You can find the recipe online here.  Even though the weather is as miserable as sin outside, and everyone only wants to eat huge, fat winter stews, I can highly recommend this little taste of the Mediterranean to blow those autumn blues away.  And I'd like to wish Cat the best of luck with the rest of the GBBO.

*If you didn't see the episode where Cat made this, she was being shown the Filo-whacking technique by one of her fellow bakers and her pastry ended up on the floor, covered in bits of green carpet.  I don't know if this added to or detracted from the bake that was served on the tellybox, but a similar accident in my house would leave it full of dog hair and bits of chewed up crayon - hence why it's easier to use pre-bought pastry.

**Why is it that none of the GBBO contestants have tiny, clutter-filled kitchens like I do?

Paul Hollywood's Eight Strand Plaited Loaf

This wasn't so much about trying out a new recipe as trying out a new technique.  I've had a plaited loaf on my mental 'to-do-list' for the past year but just never gotten round to doing so.  I'd intended to make Challah which is a similarly complex plait but with a slightly sweeter bread.  But I gave up on the 'Bread of the Week' idea in about week two and have just never gotten round to it.

I picked the recipe for a number of reasons.  One because it was the technical challenge on the Great British Bake Off this week, two because I've just been given a pile of plums and apples which I intend to turn into Dan Lepard's Plum Glitter Jam tomorrow (and the bread will be great to test the jam on) and three because....dammit, I'm sure there was a third reason and my mind has gone totally blank save for random Three Letter Acronyms from the Prince2 course I've just completed.

Anyhoo, I was reading an article by The Silver Fox this week where he confirmed my previous assertions that there are just six basic baking recipes and everything else is a variation on a theme.  If you look at sponge sandwiches, they all use the same sugar/butter/flour/egg ratio, the only variation is the tweaks in flavouring and the quantities depending on the size of your baking pan.  Likewise with bread.  It is flour, yeast, salt and water.  Yes you can add loads of stuff to it; shape it differently; cook it differently; but at the end of the day, you still start out with the same basic ingredients and are ruled by the science of baking as to whether or not you get the perfect product.


And so it was that I attempted the eight strand loaf this morning.  It's a basic white bread dough but with double the yeast.  This meant that within 45 minutes, my lovely pillowy dough was making a break from the confines of its bowl for the work surface.  I knocked it back, tried to roll out my 'sausages' but it was just so stretchy and full of air that it kept shrinking back on itself.  In fact, it would've made for an amazing pizza base.

I had been surprised at the advice to use flour for kneading.  Hollywood normally recommends oil as he says extra flour on the board or your hands can change the consistency of a loaf.  In order to work with this very 'wet' dough though the flour was definitely needed.  I eventually ended up with eight springy and rather uneven dough sausages and it was time to commence with the plaiting.

Actually, it wasn't that hard to do.  Yes, the instructions could've been better laid out.  But if you can count to eight, it really isn't that hard.  Sadly my uneven sausages made for an uneven plait.  I've never been any good at rolling sausage shapes.  Even back in the days of doing it with playdough as a child, mine were always mishapen and not perfectly smooth and wrinkle free like my peers were making.

I also think my very soft dough conspired against me with the loaf ending up quite flat in shape after its second rise.  I do have problems with my free-form loaves seemingly expanding more sideways than upwards.  I could do with a tip or two from Sir Paul of Hollywood as to why this happens but I guess I'll probably have to end up asking Google.

So I've done it.  It baked okay and made an average loaf.  Nothing to write home about.  At the end of the day, it's a bog-standard white bread and I think my Giraffe/Tiger bread is more impressive than this.  But next time I'm making a bog-standard white loaf, I may just give it another go if I can find out if it was because my dough was too soft.

You can find the recipe/instructions here.

Looking ropey

Paul Hollywood's Focaccia

If you're a regular follower, you may be aware that I'm on another one of those 'trying to be good' jags.  If I want to be slim, I have to work bloody hard at it and the minute I stop being good, the pounds just pile on.  I was ten pounds lighter when I started this blog.  I deluded myself that as I was training for a half marathon in March and responsible for keeping you entertained everyday with my long-winded tales that I had to eat interesting (read higher calorie) things.

Double, double, toil and trouble...

The gain probably hasn't just been caused by the blog though.  Having been in not such a good place, I've been prone to snacking at work too.  And of course licking one too many cake bowls.  I mean I'm hardly Morgan Spurlock, stuffing myself full of Maccy D's every day.  But still, I could've been a little more responsible to myself.

So last week, I vowed to myself to make an effort to maintain a food diary, resume my running and reduce the amount of baked goods I've consumed.  At the time I figured it meant no bread.  Mostly because I am far to weak to resist a slice or several of freshly baked bread, slathered with butter.  Yesterday I cracked on that front and realised that I need to follow the old mantra of 'a little of what you fancy does you good'.

Pre-baby, I used to fuel my runs with a piece of coffee cake every now and again.  I swear in that sugar- and caffeine-fuelled state I ran far better than normally.  It was my treat.  And because it was only once a month, I savoured it and the intake was balanced by the running.

I hit on the idea of making a focaccia because for the amount of flour you use, you get a lot of bread.  Plus it can be carved up into bits and popped into the freezer for later.

I was then surprised to find that my beloved Dan Lepard book doesn't have a recipe for focaccia.  It took me a while to recover from that and eventually settle on the Silver Fox's recipe from the Great British Bake Off book.  It was one of the technical challenges in the last series, however it's quite a time consuming recipe and with a full time job, I thought I mightn't get my fix til the weekend.

Dan to the rescue.  He helpfully points out that you can do an overnight rise in the fridge and just reduce the yeast by half.  Excellent.  Which is why I was faffing with my stand mixer at about 5am this morning, getting the first knead and rise underway.

Anyone who has watched Mr Hollywood in action knows that he mixes everything with his hands.  And I mean EVERYTHING.  Even runny icing.  It's something to do with getting the feel for consistency.  Or at least that's what he says.  But I didn't have time for ten minutes of kneading.  Nor the inclination to do so that early in the morning.

Impatient?  Moi?

So into the fridge it went and when I came home, it was trying to escape from the bowl.  The recipe is supposed to make two loaves, but I settled for making one in my large roasting tray.  The dough felt bitterly cold whilst shaping it to go into the tin and I was worried that the second rise would take forever but after two hours, aided by some residual heat from cooking Miss A's tea, it was merrily blowing bubbles and rising nicely.

Hollywood doesn't put the characteristic dimples in his loaf so I followed suit and instead scattered one end with sundried tomatoes and black olives and then sprinkled the whole thing with Maldon sea salt and a good drizzle of olive oil.

Into the oven and oh my gosh my belly was rumbling.  Fresh bread has never smelt so good as it does when you're on a diet.  Twenty five minutes later and I had to cut the first square out and eat it straight away just for research purposes of course!

Luckily, I'd been pretty good all day - eating salads and eschewing the gorgeous and raved about orange and pistachio carrot cake - and so I have plenty of scope to have another piece or two before bed time.  And to those who say that you shouldn't eat carbs after 6pm?  Pah phooey!

You can also find the origina recipe on the BBC's website.  My adaptation is below.  If you do the first rise at room temperature, use two sachets of yeast.

Focaccia, adapted from the Great British Bake Off book

• 350g strong white bread flour
• 150g 00 grade flour (the type you use to make pasta)
• 2 tsp table salt
• 1 sachet dried easy blend yeast
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 400ml cold water 
• olive oil, for drizzling
• Maldon sea salt
• Additional toppings of your choice (optional) such as sundried tomatoes, sliced olives, prosciutto, chorizo, rosemary, thyme etc (but not all of them at once!

• 40cm x 25cm x 5cm baking tray/roasting tin

1. Place the flour, salt, yeast, olive oil and 300ml water into a large bowl. 
2. Gently mix to form a soft dough then knead the bowl for five minutes, gradually adding the remaining water.  The dough will be really soft and sticky so knead gently in the bowl for a further five minutes.  Lightly oil your work surface and knead for a further five minutes.
3. Return to the bowl, cover with clingfilm and place in the fridge for 8-12 hours.
4. Remove the bowl from the fridge and flatten into the baking tray.  Leave to rise at room temperature until doubled in size (this could take anywhere from 1 to 2+ hours depending on how warm your room is)
5. Preheat the oven to 220C/200C fan/Gas 7. Drizzle the loaf with oil, sprinkle with sea salt and your other toppings if using then bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes until golden.  
6. Cool slightly on a wire rack (it gets sweaty if left in the tin) then serve whilst still warm. 

Orange and Pistachio Carrot Cake

Telling someone you'd like your coffee wet may lead to them thinking your deluded.  Or at least more deluded than they'd previously thought you were. But every day is a school day and now, one of my colleagues is fully versed up on the complexities of how to order coffee.  If he thought he was a hardcore caffeine addict, he has just met his match!

Most days, he'll appear in the office brandishing a Starbucks cup.  Not unusual to most people, but when you work in the back end of beyond (or at least it feels like it), seeing a Starbucks cup is like seeing an oasis in a desert.  Everyone wants to know where it came from and why they didn't get one too.  Being such a generous chap, he has offered in the past to collect me a coffee so long as I remember to give him my order the previous evening.  I always forget.

Top of the cake with my carrot 'blobs'

But today, when I showed him a picture of the carrot cake that I've made this week (he got to choose what I made), he kindly offered again and I felt it rude to say "I'll email my order later".  So I requested my usual which is a grande skinny almond latte - extra hot and wet.  Grande and skinny because I'm being good (and I now actually hate anything other than skimmed milk).  Almond because skimmed milk has no taste.  Extra hot because Starbucks is about six miles from the office.  And wet.  Because you get more in your cup.

Starbucks have this tendency to fill the cup with at least a third of foam.  Fine if you're ordering a cappuccino but I don't buy a latte for the foam.  I buy it because I want a decent milky coffee.  So you can order your latte wet which means it comes without any foam.  Or, if you want it really foamy, you order it dry.  Which means you get about two teaspoons of milk and a cup full of hot air.

In all honesty, I could've just asked for a latte with two sugars.  I feel a bit rotten now for being so hard to please when it comes to coffee.  At least I didn't' insist he drove to Costa (about six miles in the other direction).  And I hope the cake is a fair exchange for my complicated coffee order!

I was originally going to make a Hummingbird Bakery Carrot and Ginger cake (from Cake Days) but wasn't sure I'd get time to faff around with icing it nicely so I settled on making a traybake because you can just slap the icing on over the top.  Plus, it's easier to transport.  So I chose a recipe from the Great British Bake Off Cookbook to get the basic quantities, adapted it with some tweaks of my own and inspiration from the Hummingbird recipe and then used the Hummingbird's frosting on the top, just because I could.

Will update tomorrow with the feedback and a picture of it when it's been cut, but in the meantime, here's how I did it.

Recipe - fills a 20x25cm traybake tray (adapted from The Great British Bake Off 'How to Cook' and Hummingbird Bakery 'Cake Days')

• 225g self-raising flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1.5 tsp ground cinnamon
• 0.5 tsp ginger
• 0.5 tsp all spice
• pinch of salt
• 100g soft dark brown sugar
• 100g caster sugar
• zest of half an orange
• 2 tsp orange blossom water or juice of half an orange
• 75g unsalted pistachios, chopped
• 3 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 150ml sunflower oil
• 350g carrots, grated

For the topping

• 150g icing sugar, sifted
• 25g butter
• 150g full fat cream cheese
• 2 tsp orange blossom water or juice of half an orange
• zest of half an orange

1. Preheat the oven to 180c/160c fan/gas 4.  Grease and baseline the baking tray.
2. Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl.  Add the sugar, zest, spices, salt and pistachioes eggs and carrots and mix well.
3. Pour into the tin and level the top.  Bake for 45 minutes or until it passes the skewer test.
4. Cool in the tin.  If serving on a plate, you can remove for icing, but I iced mine in the tin to make transporting it easier.
5. While the cake is cooling, mix the butter and icing sugar using an electric mixer on slow speed until it forms fine crumbs.  Add the orange blossom water or juice and the cream cheese and mix until light and fluffy.
6. If you want to decorate with piped carrots, remove two tablespoons of the frosting into two separate bowls (1 tbsp in each) and colour (gel colours work best as the icing is very soft).  Refrigerate before using to pipe.
7. Spread the rest of the frosting over the cold cake with a palette knife and make a swirly pattern. 
8. Decorate with pistachios and carrots (if desired).  Cut into 15 squares for serving.

Cherry Viennese Whirls

Viennese whirls are my all time favourite biscuit. My mum used to make them on special occasions and if we were really lucky, she'd make Vienniese fingers with the ends dipped in plan chocolate.


Many recipe books call them Melting Moments, with some having a slightly higher flour content so you can mould the dough into balls and then flatten them slightly with the tines of a fork. I prefer the pretty, piped method. 


Although I'm happy with my own method, I was intrigued by the pretty red-tinged ones that Mary-Anne made on the Great British Bake Off.  I have the book, but you can also find the recipe on Mary-Anne's own blog.


The effect is achieved by painting a stripe of red gel food colouring down the side of a piping bag. This is where disposable piping bags come into their own as gel colouring is a b*gger to wash off anything. I had to spread my Wilton gel with a knife as it was too shock to paint with but you can see from the picture that it worked well.


A lack of forward planning meant I was light on time (the child got up from her nap and was hanging off my leg demanding to cook something) so just made regular buttercream for the filling.  I paired it with my favourite cherry jam which is a Polish brand called Mirabel that you can get in Lidl.  We don't have a Lidl close by so I rely on pilfering jars from my mum's cupboard when I go home (or asking my grandad to pop in and stock up on it for me).  It really is the best jam.  English jam is okay on scones under a pile of clotted cream, but anything I bake that's sweet, I like to have a sharp or salty contrast with.  The Polish jams do just that.  Even the 'Extra' fruit jams from companies like St Dalfour and the very tasty French jams just can't compete with these.  It's worth a trip to Lidls just to buy some.

Pretty pink biccies

The overall biscuits were lovely and crumbly and melt in the mouth.  I'm sure this is from the cornflour.  I really should've popped in a pinch of salt to lift the flavour (I always forget this when I use unsalted butter).  However, because I'm a traditionalist, I do prefer my own recipe because they're just like my mum used to make (I can't remember the last time she made them - it's high time she did!) As for the funky red effect - I think I'm going to adopt that as my own from now on.


Having just checked out the recipe on Mary Anne's blog, I note that the oven temp she gives is 20c more than they tell you in the book.  Or, maybe I misread it which is why mine took ages to cook and didn't brown!  Ah well.  They tasted okay.


Sadlly the picture is a bit rubbish.  It was hurried due to Miss A needing my attention with her own cooking activity and I've just realised I missed getting the jam and cream into the shot.  They're now packed away in a box ready to proffer to my work colleagues tomorrow and are so fragile, I don't want to unpack them again.  You'll have to use your imaginations!



Ingredients:  
250g Plain flour
60g Cornflour
60g Icing sugar
250g Unsalted butter at room temp.
1 tsp Vanilla extract.


Red Gel Food colouring 


For the filling:

• 250g icing sugar
• 80g butter
• 25ml milk
• 1 tsp vanilla bean paste
• Maribel Cherry Jam (or other jam of your choice)

1. For the biscuits: Put the butter and sugar in a bowl and mix together until pale and fluffy.
2. Add vanilla extract and mix in.
3. Sift the flour and cornflour, add to the butter mixture and mix well until smooth.
4. Now, if you want, you can add a line of food colouring to the inside of a piping bag, this will pimp the biscuits up, or you can have them plain. 
5. Spoon the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a large star nozzle.
6. Pipe circles of the mixture onto a baking paper lined baking tray. Pipe a circle of about 3-3.5cm diameter finishing in the centre and lifting the nozzle to form a small peak. Place each swirl at least an inch apart. You should get about 30 biscuits from the mixture at this size.
7. Place the trays of biscuits in the freezer for 15-20 mins. This will help them hold their shape when baked.
8. Preheat the oven to 200c/180c Fan
9. Bake the biscuits for about 12 minutes until pale golden and turning very slightly brown at the edges.
10. Leave to cool for 10 minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack. Be gentle with them.
11. For the filling: Beat the butter, vanilla bean paste and icing sugar together until it resembles sand.  Slowly pour in just enough milk until the mixture begins to combine into a smooth paste.
12. Beat until light and fluffy then put into a piping bag and use to sandwich the biscuits together with a dab of jam.

Updated 10th June 2012 @ 20:55

I've decided to enter this into the June 2012 Alphabakes Challenge hosted by Ros over at The More Than Occasional Baker.  I'd love to do another 'V' recipe but I'm on holiday later in the month so am making do with an oldie, but a goodie.

Peanut Butter Cookies

I have a new rule in my life.  I only eat cake or sweet biscuits if they are home made.  It's part of my new healthy eating regime and would work really really well if I didn't bake myself.  Because I've mentioned before that nobody I know (except my mum on rare occasions) bakes.  And by people I know, I mean people in the physical world, not the two-hundred odd baking tweeps that I follow in Twitterville.

One of the things that (still) irks me is that some people don't appreciate how much home-baked goodies can cost.  In fact, often two or three times as much as buying cake from a shop (depending where you shop!)  The husband is attuned to this fact and often chides me for baking for my colleagues, telling me it would be cheaper just to buy a couple of bags of Tescos doughnuts for £2 and that the guys would still be just as happy as they would with home made.  Deep down, I know he's right.  But the rule also extends to proferring cakes to people too.  If it aint home made, I'm not giving it to them.

Lots of cookies :)

The cost of food was the subject of a recent conversation I had with an acquaintence.  This chap is a friend of my husbands and I bumped into him outside our local Tesco Express last week as I was running late for a presentation.  Formalities dispensed, we somehow got round to a recent conversation this chap had had with my hubby about food bills.  This guy spends £50 on his weekly shop for three, including all his cleaning and personal hygeine products.  He then spends another £20 on beer.

He was horrified when my husband shared how much our food bill is (or at least how much the husband thinks we spend - we have separate finances and food and household shopping comes out of my bank account).  This budget doesn't include the 2-3 bottles of wine my husband drinks a week.  It does include nappies (yes, I'm bad.  But something had to give and cloth nappies was the one bit I didn't do).  Some of the extra spend has been on things I've needed for this challenge; but mostly the difference in bills is because every night I cook three separate dinners.  I can't think of one common meal that all three family members will eat.

This chap then proceeded to lecture me in how to reduce my shopping bill.  "I scour the supermarkets for the best deals on crisps.  My budget is to spend no more than 12p per packet on crisps.  Last week, I got a really good deal and I got them for 8p per pack.  So I bought enough to last until 2014.  You should go to xyz supermarket and stock up" he said.

"But we don't eat crisps" says I.  He eyed my less-than-svelte figure rather suspiciously, scratched his chin  in the manner of a super-villain stroking a white cat and uttered "Yee-eeeesssss"  Okay, I'll admit that we do eat crisps.  Except because I love crisps so much, I just can't have them in the house.  I will eat through a tube of Pringles just like that.

The husband, although he denies it, is just as bad.  When I first met him, and I'd just bought my own house and I'd bought a couple of multi-packs of crisps for my housewarming party.  He came to stay the night before the party.  Next day, getting ready, I hunted high and low for those 12 packets of crisps.  I figured I was going mad and must've left them in the supermarket or something.  Putting the rubbish out post-party, I discovered twelve empty crisp packets in the bin.  He'd eaten them all with the bottle of wine he'd had after I'd gone to bed.

So now we have a rule.  One small pack of Kettle chips each.  Only on Friday nights.  Only when it's a Big Brother Eviction night (he watches it, not me!).  Roughly 13 packets each per year.  Although they probably cost me as much annually as Mr One-Pack-A-Day-Every-Day-For-8p's do.

Anyhoo, back to the recipe.  My no shop-bought sweet biscuit policy doesn't apply to Miss A who mostly eats ludicriously expensive, tasteless organic biscuits or if she's lucky, mini malted milks.  But once in a while, we bake our own gingerbread men or cookies.  Today's cookies of choice were Great British Bake Off Winner Jo Wheatley's Peanut Butter and Choc Chip Cookies from this month's edition of Good Food Magazine.

I adore peanut butter and am so glad that Miss A likes it and isn't allergic to it.  I was really bad and ate it all the time during pregnancy; but I now understand that that, coupled with breastfeeding when the mum scoffs lots of peanut butter can minimise the risk of peanut allergy.  Phew!

I do buy Whole Earth Peanut Butter now as it has no added salt, sugar or preservatives.  And to be honest, my adult palate prefers it to some of the other, more commercial brands these days.  We do also only buy smooth as I used to worry about her with the nuts in crunchy.  It's a shame because the cookies were lacking that little bit of bite you'd've gotten from the crunchy variety.  I also wish I'd added a pinch of salt to the mixture.  I use unsalted butter and I just think the mixture needed it as there was no salt coming from the peanut butter either.

We only had dark chocolate chips in the cupboard.  I think they worked well for me because I feel the high sugar content of the biscuits with even more sticky sweet white chocolate would've been a little too much.

Abigail's cookie before she got her mitts on it

Mr "Crisp" would be horrified as they were expensive, Waitrose Belgian chocolate chunks that cost loads of money.  I'm sure he would've hand cut a bar of Sainsbury's Value Chocolate instead.  But after running 8 miles this afternoon, I really couldn't be bothered with the faff.  Besides if you're going to make something a treat, it needs to be a top-notch treat!

I also loved Jo's tip about banging the tray mid-way through cooking to expel the air and make them chewier.  The first tray, I banged with a little too much vigour.  The second one, less so.  I think I preferred the look of the 'more banged' ones.

A lovely little recipe.  Worth buying Good Food Mag this month if you don't already for the other recipes from the lovely Jo.  Will make again with a few little tweaks.  Miss A's opinion was 'Mmmmmm....niiiiiiice....'  High praise indeed from a nearly-two-year-old.

Tiger Rolls

I adore Tiger Bread.  I have been known on occasion to go to the supermarket, buy a loaf of it, peel off the crust and stuff my face (whilst sitting in the car in the car park) and then bring the rest home and use it to make breadcrumbs.  This is, a rare occurrence.  Partly because I would prefer it to be slathered in butter first.  And only when I've for some reason not eaten for hours on end.  Honest guv!

My mum always used to have it when I went to stay with her until I got her back into baking her own bread when Miss A was first weaned.  And then, when we visited, it was just boring old home baked white or granary.  Nice as it is, everyone needs a little 'GROWL' in their life every now and again.

Sunlit rolls

Last time I visited, Mum had made her own Tiger Bread.  It tasted right, but wasn't scaly like you get from the supermarket.  She said she'd had a trial run the previous weekend and it had worked well but for some reason, this particular one didn't crack properly.

The recipe had come from the interweb but I forgot to ask where from.  All I knew was that you mixed a paste, brushed it on top of the proved loaf and then baked as normal.

So, the other day I was idly blog-hopping and happened across a post by Mary-Anne Boermans from the Great British Bake Off.  I follow all three of the finalists from the last series on Twitter (@wotchers, @joannewheatley and @hollybellmummy) and they're all really lovely ladies and full of advice.  The list of recipes I want to try from them would probably keep me busy for the rest of this blog-run.

It seemed like the perfect thing to go with the Chilli Jam from yesterday.  And a real treat with some nice strong Cheddar after the seven-mile hilly run I had planned for this morning.  Trouble is as I write, having consumed one already, the rest are busy taunting me from the kitchen and whispering how lovely they'd be with a huge pile of crispy-edged smoked bacon, lashings of butter and a good dollop of the Chilli Jam. Divine!

The recipe is a doddle.  It's just a basic white bread recipe with the special topping which is a combination of yeast, oil, sugar, salt, water and rice flour (this is important - don't use ground rice; although I've also seen a recipe that uses cornflour).  Boermans helpfully tells you the consistency that you're looking for with the topping.  Using the ratio she used, mine seemed too doughy so I thinned it down with some more water.  I also found that I had too much and could've gotten away with half the amount.  Whilst they were baking, I was a little worried that the crackle effect wouldn't work but they came out perfectly.

I had intended to make a loaf, but figured that I'd get  more crust for my bread if I went with rolls.  It also meant that they were nicely portioned and I wouldn't just cutting off slice after slice as I would with a normal loaf.  Or rather picking off the outside and leaving the middle.

Lunch! A very posh ploughmans.

The finished result was so good that the husband wouldn't believe I'd not nipped out to the shop and bought them (he was only convinced when he twigged Miss A was still in her pyjamas).

One thing that was lacking though was the taste that the shop-bought Tiger Loaf has.  There's something unique about that flavour that I always associate with Tiger Bread.  My mum's bread had that flavour so when I eventually got round to speaking to her about it, she informed me that her recipe used toasted sesame oil in the topping whereas the Boermans recipe doesn't specify what kind of oil to use.  With that knowledge, I could see how it would change the taste and I'd probably take that option next time.

All in all, a bit of fun and something I would definitely do again in the future if I wanted to show off if I had guests or when we provide lunch to clients at the photography studio;  not something for every weekend although the husband thoroughly approved of them so I have a feeling I'll be making them again soon.

The recipe can be found on Mary-Anne's blog which is worth a visit for all the other lovely things she bakes.  My adaptation is below.

PS: Don't be fooled by the perspective in the picture of my lunch.  The rolls are HUGE!

Recipe - Makes 8 (adapted from Time To Cook Online by Mary-Anne Boermans)


Basic White Bread Dough

• 600g strong white bread flour
• 1 x 7g sachet easy-blend yeast
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp oil (sunflower, olive etc)
• 400ml warm water (I always use 2 parts chilled to 1 part boiling)

1. Mix the flour, yeast, sugar and salt in a large bowl.  Make a well in the centre and pour in the water and oil.  Combine to make a smooth dough then turn out onto a lightly floured board, lightly oil your hands and knead for 10 minutes.  Alternatively, you can use a stand mixer with a dough hook and knead the dough with this for five minutes.
2. Leave the bread to rise for an hour.  In the meantime, mix the ingredients for the topping.

Tiger Bread Paste

• 80 ml warm water
• 80g rice flour
• 1 x 7g sachet easy blend yeast
• 1 tbsp toasted sesame oil - essential if you like the Tiger Bread 'flavour' otherwise plain oil is fine
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt

Equipment

• Bowl
• Soft baking brush – silicon for preference.
• 2 baking trays

Whisk all ingredients together in a small bowl. Cover and leave to rise.

Shaping the rolls

• When the dough is ready, tip it onto a floured surface and gently pat down.
• Cut into 8 even pieces.
• Shape each piece into a roll and lay on baking sheets to rise. Best to use 2 sheets than try and squash all eight rolls onto one.
• After the rolls have been proving for 15-20 minutes, stir the paste vigorously and then brush lightly over the rolls. The paste will have the consistency of thick, pouring cream. NB Be careful you don’t deflate the rolls as you brush the paste onto them.  Also – the thicker the layer of paste, the larger the ‘scales’ on the finished bread.
• Leave the rolls to rise for a further 15-20 minutes.
• Heat the oven to 200°C (180°C Fan) and then bake for 15 minutes. NB Turn the baking sheets around after 10 minutes, to get an even colouring.  (I found my rolls needed a higher temperature to get nicely brown but this may just be my cooker)
• Leave to cool on wire racks.

Beef and Red Wine Pie Filling

I was going to make a croquembouche for dessert today.  I did my research, found my recipe, tweeted the lovely @Wotchers (Mary-Ann from the Great British Bake Off) for advice.  I then got given the GBBO book for Christmas and decided I'd use the recipe in there to create my masterpiece.

Dinner tonight was going to be a proper dinner party.  But I'd deluded myself that because we have guests, my husband might actually attempt to eat what was in front of him without being all whiney like a spoilt toddler.  School-girl error.  I picked something that was relatively low cost, not poultry based and not creamy as I wanted to do the choux buns for pudding.

Ingredients

I've mentioned before that he will generally only eat chicken and sausages.  Every so often, he'll eat a beefburger or if he's feeling radical, a lamb kebab (the mush-on-a-stick ones that you get from the supermarket in barbecue season).  Why on earth I thought I might be able to change this, I don't know.  And now having thrown my toys out of the pram and flounced upstairs to spill my woes on my blog, I'm feeling rather silly.  We've been together nearly eight years so I should know by now that he will do as he pleases.

We're trying to economise as he is running his own business and we've gone from being a two salary, no child household to a one salary household with child and astronomical business expenses to boot.  He recently (on my birthday!) visited a friend of his who lives in a smug, self-satisfied world of thrift.  They got to discussing how much each household spends on their weekly shop.  The friend - £60 for two adults and one child, allegedly including beer for three nights of the week.  Us - around £120.

I know a lot of people who would throw their hands up in horror at my weekly spend.  We get through a lot of fruit.  I include nappies in that figure and all the other household cleaning stuff (why do I spend so much on that and still live in a dump of a house??).  The child eats an awful lot of expensive fruit - I can't believe how expensive grapes are these days.  But a lot of it is squandered on me planning the food for the week and then when the husband says a couple of hours before dinner 'I don't want that', dashing off to Tesco Express to buy something else for him.  My freezer is positively groaning with stuff I've had to freeze that he decided he didn't want to eat that day.  And I rarely dare defrost anything just in case 'he doesn't feel like that today'  and it ends up in the bin.

That's not burnt (bottom right) it's the red wine reduction

Conversely, Mr Smug knows 40 days in advance what is for dinner on any given day because they have a planner.  How organised.  The husband tried to tell me I should do this to save money.  I pointed out that much as it would make my life so much easier as a full-time working mother, it wouldn't work because of him.  He thought about that one for a while.   And agreed.  So the cycle has not been and will never be broken.  Just my cooking spirit.

So just why did he buy me Lorraine Pascale's Home Cooking Made Easy for Christmas?  Because there's nothing in there he will eat (well other than cake) so I doubt I'll ever use it as we never have dinner guests.  He said the other day that he was really proud of me keeping up this blog for so long and he actually read it and thought it to be not bad.  But I've shifted away from my original goal which was to try to get him to eat new food.  On that front, I've completely failed, although really I was doomed from the start.

Finished pie filling

When we've been out to restaurants, he'll eat stuff I wouldn't dare offer him at home.  He took me to the Ritz for our first wedding anniversary and he actually ate and enjoyed ballotine of duck.  He once at someone else's lamb curry (it was a friend of ours!) at a Thai restaurant.  But in his own castle, he is king.  And if he doesn't want to eat something, it's harder than trying to feed a toddler with pursed lips.

I thought he might at least eat the profiteroles (after everyone failing to keep the child out of the kitchen while I was cooking yesterday I figured that hot caramel for a croquembouche was a bad idea) but no, he doesn't even want those today.  He's just going to eat the leftovers from Christmas.  How eco-friendly of him so I can't denounce him for not trying something new, can I?

Anyway, the pie filling is made and I want to blog now while I still have some spare time and sanity - the child is out at the zoo with the grandparents.

In the end, I ditched the BBC Good Food recipe I was going to use in favour of one from the GBBO book.  This is a really lovely book with loads of recipes from the series plus practical guides on how to do things.  Not sure who cooked this on the Bake Off but it's a really nice recipe.  This from someone (me) who doesn't like beef much and especially not beef pie, but is willing to make a sacrifice at Christmas for other people who will (hopefully) enjoy it more (my family - if they've not stuffed themselves silly pre-dinner like they did yesterday).

Fills a 23cm pie dish

• 750g lean stewing steak, cut into 2.5cm dice
• 1 1/2 tbsp plain flour
• 3 tbsp vegetable oil
• 2 medium onions, finely chopped (I used whole shallots)
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 350ml red wine
• 250ml beef stock
• large sprig of fresh thyme
• 125g small button mushrooms
• salt and black pepper

1. Toss the beef in the flour, seasoned with a little salt and pepper, to coat thoroughly.  Heat the oil in a large, lidded frying pan.  Add the pieces of meat, a few at a time and fry for about 2 mins on each side or until nicely browned.  Remove with a slotted spoon to a plate.
2. When all the meat has been browned, turn the heat right down and add the onions and garlic to the pot, stirring well to dislodge any bits stuck to the base.  Cover the pot and cook very gently, stirring occasionally, for about 12 minutes or until the onions are very soft and lightly golden.
3. Meanwhile, simmer the red wine in a small pan until reduced by about one-third.  Pour into a measuring jug and make up to 500ml with beef stock.   Uncover the onions and stir in the wine and stock mixture followed by the beef (plus any juices on the plate) and the leaves from the sprig of thyme.   Bring to the boil, then lower the heat, cover the pot and cook gently for 1 hour, stirring from time to time.
4. Add the mushrooms and stir well.  Simmer, uncovered for another hour or until the meat is tender and the gravy is very thick and coats the meat.  Taste and add mofe salt and pepper as needed.  Leave to cool then cover and chill until you are ready to fill the pie.

As served (pic taken after blog was posted originally)

I'm planning to serve this with puff pastry lids, new potatoes and fresh asparagus (I know it's not in season here!).  Pudding will now be leftover mince pies, birthday cake or Christmas pudding (in the spirit of thrift) and I may just put my toys back in the pram and not give up on this blog - I'll just give up on the idea of my husband ever trying something new.  Although if the husband reads this and doesn't forgive me, there may be no blog tomorrow as I may be homeless.  Watch this space...

Danish Pastry

Today's blog has been partially pre-recorded.  There are two reasons for this.  One it's my birthday and I'm hoping that the husband is going to take me somewhere lovely and special (although judging by the pouring rain hammering on the Velux window as I write this first part, I have a feeling we're going to be stuck home all day).  And two, the recipe I'm trying takes two days to make.  Yep.  Two days.  But was it worth the effort?

As I've mentioned before, this blog was inspired by my lovely cousin Laura, @BridestockBride.  She tweeted me during GBBO and asked if I'd ever made my own Danish pastries.  The answer was no.  But I'd love to give it a go.

So today and tomorrow (or yesterday and today, or the 20th and 21st December 2011 depending on when you're reading this) I'm trying out Joanne Wheatley of GBBO fame's Danish pastry recipe.

Now there's no two ways about this.  Proper Danish pastry or French croissant dough is a faff.  Like puff pastry, there's lots of rolling and folding and resting and rolling and folding and resting.  This recipe requires four lots of the above at hour-intervals.  So not something I'll be doing every day.  Or probably again any time soon.  Unless there's a particularly special occasion, I'll just pass if it's all the same.  

It's too labour intensive for a full time working mother of a toddler who struggles to deal with the constantly full laundry basket (I struggle to deal with the laundry basket and the toddler - I'm not using her for slave labour just yet).   So the idea that I might have time for the frivolity of making my own Danish on a regular basis is just a pipe dream.  And if I won enough money on the lottery to give up work, I'd just move to France where someone else could make said patisserie for me.  

Back to my birthday.  I'm not high maintenance.  Far from it.  In fact, most of the guys I know wish they could have a spouse/girlfriend who is as undemanding as I am (my husband would not agree with the preceding statement in public).  Take yesterday's lunchtime conversation.  I am the only woman in a team of 20.  Topic for the day 'What are you buying your other half for Christmas?'  After listening to endless tales of the luxuries required by my colleagues wives, I was asked what I wanted for Christmas.  "Oh nothing" came my reply.  When pushed "well I'm hoping to get a sugar thermometer.  I'd like some time to myself to go running.  I'd like to not have to cook three separate meals every evening."  No shoes, no handbags, no perfume or expensive trips to New York.  If they were offered, of course I wouldn't say no.  But I'm not one to ask for them.

When we lived in London, one birthday we had a private flight on the London Eye and Tea at the Ritz.  I didn't ask for it.  I never would.  I loved the surprise.  If it was offered again, I'd love it just as much.  But to me, the perfect day would be breakfast in bed and then a trip out with my little family with no tantrums (from either the toddler or the husband).

Every year, the husband asks what I want to do on my birthday.  Every year it's the same reply.  Breakfast in bed - croissants or pain au chocolat, fresh juice and coffee.  Every year he nips off to Sainsburys at 9pm only to find that they've not restocked the shelves yet and returns empty-handed.  I wouldn't even consider suggesting buying bake your own croissants from a can that you can sometimes get in the chilled section of the supermarket.  And with Greggs being the only bakers in town, nearly-French patisserie isn't really an option.

So this year, I decided to have a go at making my own pastry.  With a day off work and Miss A at nursery (another wish - not to be judged by my friends who are lucky enough to have family who take their kids off their hands for sending Miss A to nursery once in a while when I have a day off so I can catch up on housework) I had some time in between cleaning ready for Christmas to give this recipe a whirl.

I found the pastry really difficult to work with.  I'm rubbish at rolling pastry out evenly at the best of times (I can turn a shop bought, perfectly oblong block of pastry into a weirdly shaped polygon in no time) but this pastry was a whole other level of strange to work with.  It was like trying to roll bread dough out.  Except the lumps of butter made it hard to even attempt to roll evenly and every time I rolled it one way, it just contracted itself back to half the size.

Then when I put it in the fridge - a step that is supposed to slow the yeast growth - it just took on a life of its own and multiplied its width three times.  I'm was thinking that maybe my fridge was too cold as the butter seemed so solid and I would have expected it to need a slightly warmer butter consistency as it didn't spread evenly through the pastry - it just hung around in nasty lumps.  But then if I'd left the dough in a warmer climate, it may well have turned into a behemoth given its propensity to grow in my cold fridge.

Anyhow, it's now resting overnight so that I can bake my own pastries first thing in the morning.  What's the betting that tomorrow, the husband will proudly present me with some croissants he procured at Sainsburys last weekend?

Here endeth part one.

Day Two

Well this is definitely one recipe I'm going to need to work on.  I think I need a better understanding of the science behind the bake before I attempt it again.  I'm not sure quite what went wrong because despite worrying my pastry had lumpy butter, it looked a lot like Jo's pictures in her blog, but when baked it didn't work.

Mmmm...chocolat

I hopped out of bed this morning and made four pain au chocolat for the husband to bake.  Instructing him to cook them for twenty-five minutes, he did so to the second and they were singed beyond recognition.  Just can't get to grips with my oven.  Some bakes take ages and on this ocassion, they obviously needed a lot less time.

Just baked one now whilst putting together some goodies for F-I-L's christmas hamper (more on that tomorrow) and it took 30 minutes to cook, it was dripping in butter and the result tasted very buttery but had a bready texture, rather than the crisply-soft pastry that a true French pain au chocolat would have.  All my mistakes, I'm sure - especially as these helped Jo to win the Great British Bake Off in 2011!

You can find the recipe here http://josblueaga.blogspot.com/2011/08/danish-pastry.html

I will be trying them again and may also give this recipe a go where they use softened butter spread straight on to the pastry rather than a chilled sheet. http://mymorningchocolate.com/2010/04/09/how-to-make-pain-au-chocolat-photos/ 

Chocolate and Cherry Roulade

Watching the Great British Bake Off recently, I was surprised to see that Chocolate Roulade was one of the technical challenges.  For these experienced bakers, surely it couldn't be *that* difficult, could it?  So when I had the urge for chocolate cake with lots of whipped cream and cherries today when my day was slowly falling apart at the seams, I figured that I'd quickly knock out Dame Mary's chocolate roulade with some cherry compote and eat the entire thing myself!

Baking the sponge was a small challenge.  Not technically, but because my darling daughter managed to smash one of my mixing bowls early this week.  You need one to melt the chocolate, one to whisk the egg whites and another for the egg yolks and sugar.  I ended up whipping egg whites in my casserole dish!

Of course, I fully appreciate that I had the luxury of a step-by-step recipe.  I understand from the voiceover from the program that the bakers only get sketchy details of what to do and have to rely on their instincts.  Still, if you've made a whisked sponge before and know the ingredients, it's not too demanding.

Safely on the plate

Then I got on to the assembly bit.  The cake is very fragile.  You only have to look at it and it seems to scream back 'I'm going to fall to pieces if you so much as breathe on me in the wrong way.  To it round the right way, you have to take this delicate, thin sponge and flip it over without it breaking.  If I'd been on GBBO I'd've either been the one dropping it on the floor or in their funniest outtake sessions as I cajoled this temperamental piece of cake onto my chopping board.  Whipped cream slathered across the top, cherries scattered hither and thither, I managed to roll it up without it falling to bits but getting it on to the plate was yet another work of art.

Oh go on...just a small piece...

My spaniel sat drooling at my feet, willing me to wobble and let it slide in his direction, but with a sweaty brow and trembling hands, I finally got it to the plate.  Then the husband arrived.  On his way out to the studio, pro-cameras in tow, he decided it was worthy of a proper picture.  I literally had to beat him off to stop him taking it with him 'so I can take a decent photo under decent lights' - erm, no, so he could eat it all himself.  So the pictures are still only rubbish smartphone pictures.

I'd seriously intended to eat the whole thing myself - skipping both lunch and tea for that exact reason.  But one slice was plenty.  Gooey, creamy and rich - it was a little too sweet for my tastes and I think it needed the tartness of the cherries to cut through it.  But will definitely make it again - maybe with Baileys whipped cream for Christmas.

The recipe can be found on the BBC website.

I then used tinned cherries which had been hanging round in my cupboard for months.  I wanted to reduce the juice down to a sticky syrup but they had a very bland flavour.  So I added a tablespoon of caster sugar and the juice of half a lime then simmered everything for about 20 minutes.  Gorgeous!

Mary Berry's Coffee Battenburg Cake

There really aren't enough green things appearing on this blog.  I'm currently suffering from carb overload from and decided last night, after the annual post-fireworks curry that I need to make more vegetable based things.

So what do I do today?  Discard the recipe for eggs Florentine (spinach, onions - green enough??) that I'd been planning for breakfast as I don't have any sabayon dishes to pop under the grill and instead, I decided to give Dame Mary's coffee battenburg from the Great British Bake Off a whirl.

Whilst my character was busily being assassinated earlier this week at a management 'development centre' (a course to most people), I was reminded that I'm always on the defensive about everything.  I always have to justify myself even when someone asks me a simple question.  The husband will say 'Oh, you have new shoes?'  He's looking for me to say yes.  Instead, I will always launch into some huge explanation about how they were cheaper than getting my old ones re-soled and heeled (shoe repairs are extortionate) plus they were in the sale, and they are blah blah blah blah.... until his eyes glaze over and he wishes he'd never bothered to ask.

You'd think he'd've learnt by now that he should say 'I like your new shoes' and then I might just say 'Thank you' instead.  Although knowing myself on that front as well as I do, I would probably still give a five minute justification.  Which is why my blogs are never short and why I always wander of on tangents.

Today's justification is that I wanted to give this recipe a go because I intend to put one in my father-in-law's christmas hamper but didn't want to test it out the night before the hamper needs packing.  Last year, I turned every local supermarket upside down looking for a last-minute battenburg but none were forthcoming and he ended up with a box of bakewell tarts instead.  Like my husband, he finds shop-bought cake perfectly satisfactory.  I still refuse on a matter of principle and so he will get homemade cake in his hamper this year, whether he likes it or not.

If the husband gets to try a bit of this cake (I may well take it to work tomorrow) he will inform me that a) it's not real battenburg as it's not pink and yellow and b) it's too dry and not soft enough.  Husband, that is because it is real cake and has not been rammed full of chemicals to make it all soft and fluffy and able to sit on a supermarket shelf for 12 months.  I know which I'd prefer.

Slightly lopsided - I blame my scales!

As it's a 'whole' cake, I've not had a slice yet, I've just tried the trimmings from the edge.  It does seem a little dry and it's a bit lopsided as the vanilla sponge didn't rise as well as the coffee one.  I did try to weigh the mixture when I divided it but my scales are well and truly burgered and I have a feeling that this may well be why it's not the finest sponge I've ever made.  But it may be much nicer with the lovely coffee buttercream and marzipan that's now been added to it.

So new scales, a new washing line (that's another story) and a new dog-proof gate for the kitchen are on this week's shopping list.  But definitely no shop-bought battenburgs!

Incidentally, I got a tweet from the lovely @HollyBellMummy today in response to my question to her about whether it's best to use butter or marg in cakes.  She uses Stork in her cakes so I will be taking her advice, saving me from having to soften my butter on top of my radiators and thus avoiding greasy puddles on the floor when I forget to remove it quickly enough!  Another top tip if you need soft butter and yours is straight from the fridge - grate it.  Yep, that's right.  Get a box grater, use the fine side, not the thick side and it will give you a huge pile of pretty soft butter strands.