Posted by kim on March 13th, 2010
Last weekend was our Cajun/Creole/Deep-South cook-off. We were in the kitchen from 9am until 5pm when our family arrived to consume our creations. The menu ran like this:
So while I work through the glut of photos I took during the day I thought I ‘d write up one of the easier recipes, the baking powder biscuits!
If you clicked on the link in the list above and read the wiki article you’ll see that they’re very similar to the English savoury scone (I pronounce it sk-own, by the way!). The main difference that I can see is that instead of using self raising flour as in the scone you use all-purpose (plain) flour and baking powder instead. This isn’t really a big difference, and I guess they’d work well using self raising too. The recipe is simple, and quite relaxing to make. Infact, I was just trying to get the recipe right and I wasn’t entirely happy with the one I made last week, so I whipped some more up just to get the quantities better. These turned out perfect :)
You’ll need:
300g plain flour
3tsp baking powder
60g butter/lard (go for the butter if it grosses you out! but lard is also an option, I used a mix of both because I ran out of butter and had some lard in the fridge from seasoning our new wok)
Pinch of salt
190ml milk
Preheat the oven to 200ºC
The method is SIMPLE, super super simple. Put all your dry ingredients into a bowl (don’t even bother sifting, it’s not worth the effort), mix them through. Add the butter/lard to the mix in small chunks, get your hands in there and rub the butter into the dry ingredients (you know, like you would if you’re making a crumble). Now, you don’t want it to be the consistency of a crumble, not super fine bread crumbs or whatever, but you want to get the bigger bits of butter worked in good. Then simply add your milk, little at a time, mixing as you go until you have a soft dough ball. Don’t worry if you’ve not used all your milk, or even if you think you need a little more, it’s all good.
Turn your dough out onto a floured surface and roll it to about 1.5-2cm thick. Cut out circles using a cutter, I used the ones with the fancy edges, the generic scone-cutting-devices. If you haven’t got them, get some, they’re cheap in any supermarket’s cookware section. Size doesn’t really matter with this (that’s what she said… HOHO!), go for whatever you think best… these rise upwards, not outwards, too (that’s wh.. no, not twice in the same sentence.. sorry).
Place them on an ungreased baking sheet, or if you have a none stick baking liner thing use that, those are amazing. Put them in the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown, you may need to check the centres just to make sure they’re cooked through, if they’re not just turn off the oven and leave them to cook through with the residual heat. This usually stops them burning on top.
Enjoy! they’re tastey with cheese, jam, honey, or just on their own.
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Posted by kim on February 27th, 2010
Here’s a fun one, bagels! ‘oh nooooo they must be super hard’ I hear you cry, but fear not! this recipe is beyond simple :)
So, bread. I know bread, you know bread… it’s nice. The basic bread recipe is so unbelievably versatile, the same ingredients that go to make delicious pizza bases also create such delicacies as bagels. Who’d a thunk it? Certainly not my Physics Boy ‘Hey, you know, this recipe is totally like those pizza bases I made’.
It’s all in how you handle the stuff, how much you get the gluten pumped and how you go about baking. Bread science is epic fun!
Onto the bagels (not beagles, which my fingers seem determined to type). Contrary to popular belief, bagels aren’t just a generic bread dough shaped into a ring, no no, they’re a different entity entirely! They should be chewy and soft and squidgy, with a thick consistency (no fluffy white buns here, hell no!). They should also go perfectly with lashings of cream cheese. Unguguhg.
You want them now, right? That image of a toasted bagel with an inch of cream cheese just set your saliva glands going? Ok…
See how simple? I bet you have most of these things in your cupboards already!!
You’ll need..
1kg Strong white bread flour (please don’t just use generic plain flour, this doesn’t have the right gluten content and your bagels will end up pathetic and lame)
1x 7g sachet of Easy bake Yeast
1 tbsp Vegetable Oil
1 tbsp Sugar
1 tsp Salt
300-350ml Warm Water
Optional extra
Someone with bigger muscles than you OR a food mixer with dough attachments.
The dough mixture is the simple part, seriously simple. Sieve all the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl. I’m using my most favourite batter bowl, she’s pretty.
Give them a good mix through. Create a well in the middle of the dry stuffs, you know, just part the dry stuff a bit. Done that? Good, I’d worry if you found that hard…
Righto, the wet stuff. In your measuring jug you need 300ml of luke warm water (luke warm, tepid, not hot… you’ll kill the yeast babies!). In the same jug just add 1tbsp of vegetable oil and 1tbsp of sugar, stir it around a bit.
Dump this whole wet mixture into the dry stuff well, and then get your hand in. AGH sticky! It’s ok, it’ll get better. Just work it baby! Mix it all up good until you have some weird half-dough half-flour monster.
Flour a surface with some of the strong white flour and dump the dough-monster on there, this is where it gets tough. You see that nasty looking dough-monster, with the flaky dry bits and flour falling all from it? Yeah, you need to get that to look like a beautiful smooth doughy lump. KNEAD! KNEAD IT! you really, really have to go for it with this dough. I tried, oh god I tried, but my weak arms were pathetic. I passed it over to the boy after about 5 minutes (this thing needs at least 15 minutes of manual kneading, less if you’re using a machine).
Want me to make it harder for you? Yeaaaaah. You need to add more flour to that dough now. Ouch, sorry. But you do. We did this by just putting more on the surface and continuing to knead it in. This will be this thickest, most elastic dough you’ve ever made. Seriously.
TADA! You should now have a wonderful dough baby. Make it into a ball and then put it into an oiled bowl for an hour for the yeast to work it’s wonders, it should double in size. Go have a beer, play scrabble, I dunno.. something fun.
Oooo see, doubled in size. Poke it, go on… poke it. Did it leave a dimple? Yeah? It’s ready for the next step. Otherwise, leave it longer.
You now need to flatten all that air out of it. Punch it, Chewy!
Now we need to separate the dough into 15 lovely balls, you can do this however you want, but going through a series of fractions will probably work in your favour (split into 3, then split each 3 into 5). You’ll need to use a knife to cut the dough, it’s just way too stiff to pull apart. GLUTEN POWER! Lovely little dough balls, roll them into bagels! like this…
Sausage, wrap and pinch. Repeat this for the whole 15, laying them on a greased baking sheet when you’re done. Preheat your oven to it’s maximum temperature.
Leave your raw bagels for 20 or so minutes to swell up a little, cover them with some kitchen towels to keep them snug. Meanwhile, get a big pan of water on the boil.
This is the fun part, we need to boil the bagels. So, we did this two at a time, which is a good number if you’re only just starting out. They need about 1 minutes worth of boiling on each side. This gives them the lovely shiny appearance of a bagel. Nice. When they’re done, lay them back on the baking trays.
Put the trays into your preheated oven, and after 10 minutes (or when they’re golden brown) you’ll have 15 deliciously homemade bagels!
Oh, if you wanted to add any toppings to them (like sesame seeds, sunflower seeds etc) then do so just after they come out of the boil. Just have a plate with the topping on and kinda plonk it on in there!
Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it? ENJOY!
Source: Adapted from How to Be a Domestic Goddess and ‘Homemade Bagel Recipe‘
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Posted by kim on September 2nd, 2009
With it being a bank holiday and all I got my usual baking bug. This time I decided to try some carrot cupcakes, but I wanted to make them healthier… enter splenda (or any other granulated sweetner). I don’t think the taste was compromised too much, although it will never be the same as using regular sugar (there’s just something that can’t be copied!). I made the cupcakes from a few recipes, which were all changed up so much that eventually I ended up just writing my own ingredient list and method. I’ve named these as a healthy cupcake, that’s not to say that they’re 100% devoid of sin.. just a little less than the usual amount. So don’t go thinking you can stuff your face with the entire batch! This recipe makes a batch of 12. The carrot cake cupcakes are quite a grown-up cupcake, not overly sweet and quite dense.
Ingredients
150g Plain white flour
150g Plain wholemeal flour
350g carrots (finely grated)
150ml Vegetable Oil (if you prefer a very moist cake, add 25ml extra)
10 tbsp Splenda (or alternative granulated sweetener)
50g ground almonds
2 tsp mixed spice
1tsp Vanilla extract
zest of 1/2 a lemon
zest of 1/2 an orange
1.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 medium eggs
50g of raisins
milk to loosen
Pinch of salt
Preheat oven to 200°C/Gas Mark 6
The method for these cupcakes is SUPER easy.
In your bowl, sift all your dry ingredients and stir to combine. In a separate bowl beat the eggs, add to these the vanilla extract, oil and zest. Add this mixture to your dry ingredients… Now, if these are destined to be muffins then don’t stir too much, however if you’re going down the cupcake route and want a consistent spongey texture then give them a good stir, as you would cake batter. You may find you’ve got a very dry, lumpy mixture… enter the milk. Add enough to get a thick batter consistency. Better thicker at the moment, you can thin it a little more later but chances are the carrot will loosen it up more. Finally, add the remaining ingredients and stir well.
Using muffin size cups, spoon a decent amount of mixture into each (this batch should make around 12). Bake in the upper half of the oven for 20 minutes or until golden.
Now to top them. I’ve used a simple cream cheese frosting here, but made a slightly healthier than normal version. Instead of full fat cream cheese I used extra low fat philly, and I replaced part of the icing sugar with splenda. The process is easy peasy. Mix 150g of cream cheese with 1 tbsp of splenda and 2 tbsp of icing sugar, mix until it’s smooth. Add more or less splenda/icing sugar to taste. For this recipe I also added the zest of 1/2 a lemon. Refrigerate for a few minutes (or until your cakes are cooled) just to make things a little easier when you come to top the cakes. Smooth the frosting on top, no need to be delicate, these are rustic cakes! And you’re done! Enjoy.
Posted by kim on July 13th, 2009
Just a quick post with some photos I took of our kitchen last night. All of the cupboards are now in, and most of the fronts are on (they need adjusting though). It’s starting to take shape! We can actually use it as a functioning kitchen now, too. There are more photos on flickr, including some of the fancy things the tall cupboards do!
The amazing hob, it’s just… amazing.
