Buns (second attempt)

Next challenge. We've been living in the UK for more than a year now, and since the very beginning we have had the same problem - bread. Awful bread, or rather, no bread at all.*

Well, for me it's not a problem at all, if you consider my flour allergy, but my husband was very poor without normal bread. So finally, after a year of hesitation, I decided to become a serious baker and specialise in buns (bread will come when I grow up). Obviously, the first attempt was a big fiasco, like seriously - my buns appeared to be little sisters of cannon balls. But I do not give up easily ;)
Check out the second attempt:



I took the simplest recipe from cincin and baked

Yeast buns which grows at night

2,5 dg butter or oil
1 cup milk
2,5 dg yeast (or 1,5 teaspoon dried yeast)
0,5 teaspoon salt
1 egg
0,5 kg flour

milk, egg yolk, sesame seeds or linseed and poppy on top

Melt yeast in a small amount of milk then add oil (or melted butter), salt, egg, rest of the milk and flour and mix thoroughly until smooth but still very light dough (you don't need to use the whole flour, unless you want to have cannon balls). Then form small buns and put them on a flat baking tray. All this put to the fridge for at least two hours. I left them overnight. They didn't suffer too much. Instead they grew nicely.

Preheat the oven (250 C). Spread milk and egg yolk on tops, add seeds and bake them for 5 mins (or a bit longer if your nasty oven doesn't heat to 250 C!).


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* there is one bread you could possibly eat and not get sick, namely sainsbury's taste the difference walnut pave, but it's hardly ever available in the store

Easter Cakes (Lambs)

I made these lambs a year ago. I really wanted to have a lamb for Easter. Not a chocolate bunny, not chocolate eggs, just a lamb.
And the only way to get a lamb for Easter in this country was to DIMyself.

This year, I don't bake anything for Easter, I believe. We go to my mum, who makes amazing yeast cakes (babas), we eat and don't think about anything at all, especially not about our studies.

Easter Lambs:

225 g flour
100g caster sugar
100 g butter, cubed

Mix ingredients until the dough looks like crumble. Then add 1 egg and continue mixing with your hands until smooth. On a flat baking tray form a lamb shape. Bake in 170 C until brown.
Use marzipan, cashew nuts and dried cranberries (or anything else you like) to create fur.

Hint: I like this cake, because it doesn't need to spend hours in the fridge before baking.

Wagamama mandarin and sesame chicken salad

Since I am alone at home, and there is no one to eat my fancy food, I don't cook at all. I just eat salads (no surprise?). However, this time I decided to make something special - my favourite Wagamama salad:

Mandarin and sesame chicken salad

shredded ginger
garlic
lemongrass
marinated chicken strips, grilled
asian leaves (or mixed salad)
mandarins
coriander
mangetout
caramelised red onion
spring onions
roasted cashew nuts

dressed with a sesame, mandarin, thai basil and mint dressing
and
garnished with mixed sesame seeds

mmmm... good

+ just to remember to try:

Grilled asparagus

asparagus spears grilled with chilli, garlic and salt
coated with a citrus yakitori sauce garnished with black and white sesame seeds

Sbrisolona Crumbly Cakes

Alias zbryzolone ciastka (B.).

This recipe comes from my gigantic cookbook Culina Mundi I bought in London.

I just had to put this recipe here. I haven't tried it yet, but I will, as soon as B. comes back. (update: done)

100 g yellow conrmeal
100 g flour
100 g butter, cubed
100 g, sugar
1 pich salt
100 g ground almonds
1 tbsp vanilla sugar
1 egg plus 1 yolk
1 lemon
30 g butter for the molds
flour for the molds

Combine the conrmeal and flour and tip ontothe work surface. Make a well in the middle. Add the butter, sugar and salt to the well. Mix with your hands until you have large crumbs of dough.

Add the almonds and vanilla sugar. Form a well again. Break the egg into it, and then add the yolk. With the tips of your fingers, work into a golden yellow dough.

Rinse and wipe the lemon. Grate the zest and work in into the pastry.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan and brush it on the interior of individual molds 14 cm/5 in around. Flour the molds, then invert them and tap the bottoms to knock off excess flour.

Fill the molds with the dough. Bake for 45 minutes at 170 C, then lower the temperature to 160 C and bake for 25 to 35 minutes more. Remove from the oven and cool.

Unmold the cakes onto a wire rack. Enjoy them broken into small pieces, with a glass of wine or a cup of chai tea with soya milk for dipping.


And the only question is: where is BRYZOL?

Perfect muffin chase

It is a challenge and a process at the same time. If my husband likes something from a store or from a restaurant I have to make it better or at least as good. This was the Sainsbury's Banoffee case, taste the difference pizza case, wagamama noodles case, and many other cases :)

But I never succeeded with muffins. There was always something wrong, or rather something that might be improved.
I know the well known truth that muffins are very difficult to spoil. You can mess up with ingredients and they are still good. But if you want them perfect, I mean moist and puffy at the same time, and beautifully shaped, and nicely browned, then the story begins. Or maybe I am just obsessed?

Hitherto, this is my favorite recipe, but this is not the end of my chase:

300 g flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
80 g brown sugar
1 egg, bitten
180 ml buttermilk (or milk, or yogurt, or orange juice, but I prefer buttermilk)
125 ml oil

and

everything that makes them aromatic and tasty and beautiful:

- blueberries and almonds,
- raspberries and white chocolate
- raspberries and nutella (or dulce de lece - this is delicious but I still don't know how to stop them exploding in the oven)
- dried cranberries and marzipan
- poppy and almonds
- pear, ginger (ground) and honey
- fig and pumpkin
- dried cranberries and pumpkin
- dark chocolate and cherry
- white chocolate and nuts

(+ 1 banana, diced, to make them moist)

And optionally, crumble on the top.

This time I made them with with raspberries, white chocolate and guitar. B. said they were really good :)

Bloody Valentine's Pizza

and I die a little more on each st. valentine day


there is a tradition. a new secular tradition. each valentine day must be celebrated in a sort of bloody way. I mean, we go to cinema and watch the bloodiest movie we can find. it started in 2000 (at the beginning of this century, heh, it's actually not THAT new) when we found ourselves enjoying fight club on February 14th.
this year's pick no country for old men fully satisfied the tradition's requirements, I guess. but the only thing I could do after we came home was...
...a bloody pizza for my true love

or, actually, something completely different, but pizza sounds like a perfect bloody meal, doesn't it?

Pizza base:

1 cup warm water
2 spoon milk
1 teaspoon sugar
1,25 teaspoon salt
1 spoon butter
1 spoon olive oil
1 spoon cornflour or semolina (I used polenta)
0,5 cup rye flour
2,5 cup flour
1,5 teaspoon dried yeast

Mix warm water, milk, sugar, salt, butter and oil in a bowl until sugar and salt melt. Then add yeast and flour and mix until smooth but not sticky. Then cover the bowl and leave for about 45 minutes. The dough should double its size. Then press the dough and leave it for another 15 minutes.
After that form one large pizza (or two small 25 cm pizzas) and put whatever you like on the top. Heat the oven (230 C) . When hot put your pizzas inside. Bake them on the lowest shelf for about 10-15 minutes.

Pizza sauce:

1 can whole tomatoes
1 spoon balsamic vinegar or lemon juice (or a mixture of both)
1 pinch freshly ground black pepper
0,5 teaspoon dried basil
0,5 teaspoon dried oregano
3 garlic cloves, mashed
0,5 teaspoon salt

Mix all ingredients thoroughly. Don't boil them!


And the recipes comes from www.cincin.cc

British Version of a New York Style Cheesecake

Use shortbread as base (see recipe).
Bake the base separately (25 cm spring form pan) then prepare the cheese.

0,9 kg cream cheese
1 cup sugar
240 ml sour cream
2 eggs
1 cup flour (I used much less but next time I will try it with a whole cup of flour)
3/4 cup heavy whipping cream

Mix cream cheese and 1 cup granulated sugar on low speed until cream cheese is softened and smooth. Place in bowl 240 ml sour cream and continue mixing until well blended, at this time add 2 eggs, mix for 2 minutes then add 1 cup flour, and 3/4 cup heavy whipping cream, mix on second speed until smooth and creamy.

Take the shortbread and add slowly your cheesecake, now you should have a full pan.
Preheat your oven to 135°C and not more, when your oven is hot place the cake in it and bake for 55 minutes then shut off the oven and let it in there for 3 hours, at the end of this time you should have the most beautiful cheesecake you ever seen, let the cake on the table for 1 1/2 hours then place it in the refrigerator for about 2-3 hours. Now remove it from the pan and enjoy.
You can top it with anything you like. This time I used strawberries and white chocolate.


The oryginal recipe comes from http://www.andies.cashhosters2.com/