I'm back!

Wow, that was a long time without posting. I'm sorry >_< I've just been very busy with things and not had a whole lot of time to update with what I've been baking, and now the stupid computer got wiped so I've lost the photos from my brown bread, brown scones, pavlova, chocolate cake, and chocolate cookies :( But never fear! I'll hopefuly be doing some baking tomorrow and I'll be sure to take lots and lots of photos :)
In case you're wondering I was at a musical summer camp, then an art one, and then the last Harry Potter came out, and then I got the new Pokemon game. I've been distracted ;)

Mini Cakes

A mini dessert

Just a quick update to let you know I'm still alive. There has actually been some baking going on, I'm just too lazy to upload the pictures and type up recipes. Instead I thought I'd post these photos from about a month ago, don't know why it's taken me so long to put them up.
I bought these amazing mini cake tins in TkMaxx and had to try them, so I just made four mini sponge cakes (same as ever). I think they worked really well, the little slices looked so cute on the plates, plus it lets you try out lots of different icings and fillings at once.

Berries rock for decoration

This is Emiy demonstrating how tiny a slice was ^_^

Cakes together!

Sorry about the picture quality, it's really crappy. They were taken at, like, twelve o'clock so I only had crappy kitchen lighting. Oh well.

And again

They don't look so small on their own

And that's the end of that...

Chocolate Malt Cookies

Cookies!

Apologies for the lack of updates lately, I'm doing a summer camp for the next two weeks so there's not a whole lot of baking going on. There's singing instead! We're doing (DON'T LAUGH!) High School Musical! It's possibly the worst-written thing on the planet, but there people there are sound so it's fun.
For some reason there has been a severe lack of cookie baking going on in this blog, and I intend to put a stop to that right now. I don't know why it is, I guess cookies were some of the first things I baked and now I want to try other stuff. Still, cookies have to be of my favourite things, there's something really satisfying about making them, I guess it's 'cause you get so many at the end ^_^
We, me and my sister, made these cookies after we devoured our pizza and realised we had no dessert! Sure, it was around eleven o'clock, but it's never too late for baking ;)

I love patterned paper :)

Recipe: Malted Drop Cookies

Ingredients:

• 125g butter, softened
• 100g sugar
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 5 tablespoons chocolate malt powder
• 100g plain flour
• 50g rolled oats

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C/ 375 F. Line two baking sheets with non-stick paper.
2. Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Sift the chocolate malt powder and flour together and beat into the creamed mixture along with the oats until all the ingredients are well combined.
3. Drop heaped teaspoons of the dough onto the baking sheets, spacing well apart. Bake in the oven until just golden, 10-12 minutes. Leave to cool on the sheets for a few minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.
   

Now that's a flat cookie

The recipe was taken from Cookies Galore - I never seem to bake cookies from anywhere else these days. We didn't really change much except we used 2 tablespoons chocolate powder and 3 tablespoons malt powder instead of the chocolate malt powder 'cause we didn't have any. We were kinda surprised with how these came out, they were really, really flat. The recipe didn't have any raising agent in it and it makes me wonder if perhaps it was left out by mistake. Perhaps they're meant to be like this, but I'd like to try them again with a bit of baking powder. I've never actually tried adding a raising agent to a recipe before, any tips? I take it I should just find a similar recipe and see how much powder that uses.
Still, they tasted good. I'd probably add some more oats next time too, but they deliver what they promise: Chewy, chocolaty goodness.
I'm going to leave it at that for now, I'm exhausted after today. I'll try and update again this week, but I'm not making any promises ;)

Pizzas

The best dinner I've had all month!

You know when you just get sick of eating the same thing for dinner every night but it seems like way too much effort to come up with something new to cook? That's me. I've been living off brown pasta, brown rice, vegetables, omelets, quorn, and kidney beans for the past I don't know how long. I was getting so sick of eating dinner and that's just not right. Food is supposed to taste GOOD. So I finally worked up some enthusiasm and made fresh pizza, and let me tell you it was the nicest, and unhealthiest, thing I have had for dinner in quite some time. I was very, very happy last night.

Onions!

When I say I, I do in fact mean my sister, Emily, and myself. She deserves credit too, especially 'cause I don't think she'd be too happy with me if I didn't give it to her. We got the recipe for the dough from a bread making bread book called 'The Complete Book of Bread and Bread Machines' (yup, I bought another new one! But it was only seven euro so I couldn't resist). I'm pretty impressed by this book, not so much because of the results, which were pretty damn good, but because of the sheer quantity of recipes in it. This is the first thing I've tried from it but there's enough in there to keep me going for the rest of my baking days. It won't stop me from buying more but I certainly don't need any. No kidding, there is every type of bread that could possibly exist, hundreds of them and they're all so different, I can't wait to try more.

We didn't really do anything to the dough recipe. The quantity was enough to make two 30 cm pizzas (we thought my brother wanted one too, but his friend had already stuffed him!). I was going to be good and make it with whole wheat flour, but we weren't sure if it would go with the topping so we said screw it and just made it like the book said.

The topping was mostly Emily's creation, and I think it was pretty amazing. Caramelised onions have to be one of the nicest foods in the world, I just love onions anyway, but these things are seriously amazing. Who ever thought that cooking onion in vinegar, sugar, and olive oil would taste so good? For the cheese we used blue cheese which has a really distinctive flavour, so much better than mozzarella which tends to taste of not a whole lot. And then we put some spinach on because it's just really good on pizza.

Blue Cheese!

Recipe: Basic Pizza Dough

Ingredients:

• 280ml/ 1 1/4 cups warm water
• 30ml/ 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 450g/ 4 cups white bread flour
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp granulated sugar
• 1 tsp easy-blend dried yeast

Method:

1. Pour the water and olive oil into the bread pan
2. sprinkle over the flour to cover the liquid. Add the sugar and salt in separate corners of the pan. Make an indent in the flour without exposing the liquid and add the yeast.
3. Set the bread machine to the dough or pizza dough setting and press start. Lightly oil two baking sheets.
4. When the cycle has finished remove the dough and place it on a lightly floured surface. Knock back gently and divide into two equal pieces. Preheat the oven to 220 d
   

As for the topping, that's really up to you. We used pissata mixed with a bit of sun dried tomato paste for the sauce, blue cheese, spinach, and caramelised onions. I really do recommend it, and the smell that fills the kitchen is amazing ;)

To caramelise onions:

1. Chop up a good load of onions (they shrink a lot during cooking).
   
2. Heat 25g of butter in a frying pan and sprinkle over 1 tablespoon of caster sugar and a tablespoon of vinegar.
   
3. Add the onions and cook over a medium heat for one hour, stirring frequently, until they are transparent and golden.

Everything that's good in life (and on pizza)

As you've probably guessed, this was super pizza. Okay, it wasn't the best I've ever had, but I really liked it. I think I'm probably being won over so easily because its been ages since I last has pizza. The base was good, thin but not invisible, and it had that wonderful squishy quality even though it was well cooked, not burned and dried out. The fact that it was freshly baked is what made it so good - I'm sure there are better dough recipes out there, but this one is good for me - It's so easy to make and it gives good results. The topping is what made it, I can't say good enough things about onions and blue cheese. The only thing I would do differently next time (Emily suggested this) would be to leave the caramelised onions off 'til after the pizza had been baked, we think the oven burned some of them as they'd already been cooked for about an hour.
After this I'm keen to get more interested in cooking as well as baking. Who knows, this could be the start of a new obsession!

Meaty!

We put the leftover base in the fridge, covered in plastic wrap, and it kept fine 'til the next day. I was a bit nervous about it but there weren't really any problems (I forgot to grease the baking sheet that it was on so there were some 'issues' with getting it off). We used it to make a pizza for my brother the next night.

Mmmm, pizza

His was pretty much the same as ours, but with meat (chicken), mozzarella and Cheddar cheese, onions, peppers, mushrooms, and spinach. He seemed to like it, and managed to eat all but one slice! I think a nearly a whole 30cm pizza with that much topping is pretty impressive for a fourteen year old.

This time it had a big crust

Curd Cheese Tart and Custard Tartletts

We finally had a bit of sun... for about five minutes...

Thank you library. I told you there's be more baking, didn't I ;) After much deliberation I decided that I'd try making a dessert from 'Desserts: A Lifelong Passion' by Michel Roux. This book is swish, all the recipes are so, well, fancy! It's definitly a more advanced cookbook, he expects you to know what he's talking about in his recipes, there aren't really any explenations of how to go about creaming things etc. Still, once you know the basics there's really no need for that. The pictures in it are spectacular and all the recipes sound so good, I never want to have to bring it back >_<

The icing sugar kinda dissolved in the middle

I've been wanting to bake a cheesecake for ages, and although this isn't quite what I had in mind it came close enough. I was a bit worried that it wouldn't set properly, the mixture just looked so liquidy. But it all worked out well in the end. I made some pastry a couple of weeks ago from some fat that was about to go off and froze it, so I got a chance to move some of that out of the freezer too :)

The only modification I made to this recipe was to substitute ordinary shortcrust pastry for his sweet pastry, it sounded like it would have been overpoweringly sweet. I think this was a change for the better, though if you're a big fan of sweet things then you might like it that way. He also suggests using puff pastry if desired.

I didn't threaten to fall apart when I took it out of the tin, to my relief

Recipe: Curd Cheese Tart

Ingredients:

• Shortcrust Pastry (see recipe here)
  
• 150g soft curd cheese (fat content of your choice) (I used cottage cheese)
  
• 50g caster sugar
• 150ml milk
• 3 eggs, separated
• Juice of 1 lemon
• Zest of 1 lemon, thinly slivered and blanched
• 20g flour, plus extra for dusting
• 30g cornflour
• Icing sugar, for dusting

Method:

1. On a lightly floured surface roll out the pastry to about 2 mm thick. Use it to line a 22cm/ 8 1/2 inch loose-bottomed pie dish.
   
2. Refrigerate until firm. Line with tin foil and baking beans. Bake blind in an oven at 200 degrees Celsius for 15 minutes. Leave to cool.
3. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
   
4. In a bowl, whisk together the curd cheese, sugar, milk, egg yolks, lemon juice and zest, flour, and cornflour. Beat the egg whites stiffly and delicately fold them into the mixture with a spatula.
   
5. Fill the pastry case with the mixture and bake in the oven for 20 minutes. Reduce heat to 150 degrees Celsius and bake for a further 15 minutes.
6. Take the tart out of the oven and place it on a wire rack to cool for five minutes. Remove from tin and leave to cool completely.
7. Dust with icing sugar. Serve cold, but never chilled (this will destroy the flavor).
   

It reminds me of mountains

The thing that impressed me most about this recipe was that fact that it contained so little fat. I'm not saying it's sin-free or anything like that, but for such a creamy tasting dessert it has very little in it; no butter, no cream, just some cottage cheese which isn't exactly indulgent :P If you wanted to make it richer you could use a curd cheese that has a higher fat content, but I really don't see the need to.
The texture is like a baked cheesecake, and the lemon flavor is very subtle, I think I would like it a bit stronger but my mum, the one who wanted it, says it's supposed to be like that, so I guess I can't argue. It wasn't complicated to make, again I was just afraid that it wouldn't set, but it obviously did. It started browning quite early on and needed to be covered with tinfoil, otherwise I would have ended up with what would have looked like a burnt cloud!

Overall, it was a success :)

Then the sun left

I still had some defrosted pastry left over from the tart, there was no point in waisting it, so I made custard tartletts! Not exactly complicated, but they're still really nice.

I love these little foil cups

Ummm, I can't really post a recipe for them. All I did was line the foil cases with the leftover pastry, baked them blind for about 10 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius, removed the foil and beans, reduced the oven to 150 degrees, and continued to bake them for another seven minutes or so until they browned. Then I just made some thick Bird's custard in the microwave and filled them with it. Top with berries, leave to cool, and enjoy!

Until next time...

Brioche

If only it had had custard in it...

Brioche is a delicious enriched, French bread that tastes really buttery, even though this recipe didn't have that much butter in it :) It's usually served with jam, butter, or used to make French toast, but I there is no beating it with patisserie cream. The first time I tried it I almost died of food related joy, it was like heaven. The squishy, sweet bread combined with the cool cream, topped with sweet icing is one of the nicest things I've ever had. Whenever we get it it's gone in the same day. Unfortunately I have absolutely no idea how they get the custard in it! We usually buy it in Lidl so there's no one to ask about it in the shop. It comes in a foil container, the bread is quite flat - almost like a pie - and the patisserie cream is rippled through it in streaks of pure food magic, but we got one from Alid where it was a braid and the cream was sort of platted into it. I was trying to work it out but nobody really seems sure how to do it.
I did get the suggestion of somehow making it like Cinnamon swirls, and that's looking to be the most promising way of doing it at the moment, but if anyone can help I would be forever in your debt.

Before Baking

Recipe: Brioche

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs at room temperature
• 2 tbsp hand-hot milk
• 225g strong white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp caster sugar
• 55g butter, melted
• 1 1/2 tsp easy-blend dried yeast
• sunflower oil, for greasing

Glaze:

• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tbsp milk

Method:

1. Lightly beat the eggs with the milk in a bowl, then pour into the bread pan. Sprinkle the flour over the liquid to cover. Place salt, sugar, and butter in 3 corners of the pan. Indent the flour without exposing the liquid and add the yeast. Set the bread machine to the dough setting and press start.
   
2. With the lid shut, let the dough rise in the machine for an extra 30 minutes
3. Remove finished dough from pan. Knock back gently on a lightly floured surface.
4. Slice of one quarter, wrap in oiled clingfilm, and set aside. Oil a brioche mould or round cake tin.
5. Kneed large piece of dough, shape into a ball, place in mould, and indent the top. Unwrap the smaller piece and lightly kneed into a pear shape. Place on top.
6. Cover with clingfilm and set aside to rise in a warm place for about 1 hour to rise.
7. Remove the clingfilm. Lightly beat the egg yolk and milk together to form glaze. Brush brioche with glaze. Bake in a preheated oven at 180-200 degrees c for 30-45 minutes, until golden brown.

And after

The recipe came, one again, from 'Essentials: Bread' by Linda Doser. I didn't make any changes to the ingredients, figured it was best to leave it as it was. The one thing that shocked me was the oven temperature and cooking time - originally it says to bake it for 40-45 minutes at 220 degrees C, surly a mistake. After 20 minutes at around 200 degrees mine was thoroughly cooked and so brown it was nearly burnt. I think it would be more reasonable to bake it at 180-190 degrees C for about 25-30 minutes.

The bread turned out very nice, and had a really rich flavour for the amount of butter that was in it. I didn't have a brioche mould so I just baked it in a cake tin, it didn't give too bad a shape. After rising the little pear-shaped ball was beginning to slide a bit, but a bit of egg wash sorted it all out.I will attempt it again as soon as I find out how to make it with patisserie cream and, believe me, I will!

Eggy goodness!

In other baking related news I just came back from the library with four borrowed baking books to devour. My library doesn't have a huge selection, but I could have spent hours agonising over which ones to get. In the end I got two bread machine books, a dessert book, and the Avoca Cafe cookbook. I think I shall have a baking day tomorrow, so expect to see more from me soon!

The bread with the hole in it

Yup, more bread! I've just been on a kick lately. I decided to make bagels after re-discovering my love for them covered in peanut butter while I was in the Bagel Factory the other day. It is the food of the gods! Granted they don't really toast their bagels very well, but it still tasted good. I'm way too picky about my food, I hate to have it just the way I like it, and when people don't toast bagels properly it really irritates me. Plus it's impossible to buy wholegrain bagels in anywhere, and they're the type I like, so I figured I might as well try to make my own.
It was really weird; the day after I made them I discovered that the Daring Baker's challenge for this month was to make bagels! Of course theirs were made without the help of a bread machine and they all turned out looking and tasting, I'm sure, spectacular. It's really worth checking out their entries and seeing their photos if you have the time :)

They weren't exactly perfect circles, but circles nonetheless

This time I had to go online to get a recipe, the only one I had looked really complicated and confusing. I could see it ending badly. All Recipes provided me with a recipe for bread machine bagels that seemed to have worked out for lots of people, so I figured I'd give it a go. I did require some alterations though, based on other people's comments I added an extra 100ml/ 1/2 cup of water, left the to rise for at least 30 minutes rather than 10, and I substituted half the white flour with wholegrain. I had some trouble converting the American measurements to metric because tablespoons and teaspoons differ slightly - I was ending up with too much sugar, but a bit of guesswork and Google sorted it our in the end.

Close up!

Recipe: Whole Wheat Bagels

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups/ 300 ml warm water/ (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons/ 9g salt
• 2 tablespoons/ 15-20g white sugar
  
• 1 1/2 cups/ 205g strong with bread flour
• 1 1/2 cups/ 205g strong wholemeal bread flour
  
• 2 1/4 teaspoons/ 9g active dry yeast
• 3 quarts/ 3000ml/ a big pot of boiling water
  
• 3 tablespoons/40g white sugar/
  
• 1 tablespoon/9g cornmeal
• 1 egg white

Method:

1. Place water, salt, sugar, flour and yeast in the bread machine pan in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Select Dough setting.
2. When cycle is complete, let dough rest on a lightly floured surface. Meanwhile, in a large pot bring 3 quarts of water to a boil. Stir in 3 tablespoons of sugar.
3. Cut dough into 9 equal pieces, and roll each piece into a small ball. Flatten balls. Poke a hole in the middle of each with your thumb. Twirl the dough on your finger or thumb to enlarge the hole, and to even out the dough around the hole. Cover bagels with a clean cloth, and leave to rise for at least 30 minutes.
   
4. Sprinkle an ungreased baking sheet with cornmeal. Carefully transfer bagels to boiling water. Boil for 1-3 minute , turning half way through. Drain briefly on clean towel. Arrange boiled bagels on baking sheet. Glaze tops with egg white, and sprinkle with your choice of toppings.
5. Bake in a preheated 375 degree F (190 degrees C) oven for 20 to 25 minutes, until well browned. Turn bagels over halfway through cooking.
   

Now where's my peanut butter?

Overall I was happy with the way these bagels turned out. I was a little anxious because of the confusion in converting the measurements - my weighing scale isn't very accurate so weighing out 9 g's of ingredients was impossible, but it was okay in the end. I forgot to add the sugar to the pot of boiling water, I don't know if this effected the bagels or not, I didn't notice anything wrong with them, but I would say it probably did. After seeing bagels that have been topped with seeds etc. I think I'll give mine a topping next time, it makes them look finished. Ideally bagels are meant to first sink in the water and then float when they're cooked, none of my bagels sank, I gather from reading entries by the Daring Bakers that a lot of theirs floated too. I'm not sure what makes them sink, but I know I want mine to! Oh well, maybe next time...