Pleased as Punch

I have not seen a Punch and Judy show for a long time but they were in full flow at the Ruby Country Market at Hatherleigh today and despite the chill in the air they had a full audience of enthralled children. The market was packed with stalls and entertainment and was really well organised. I do hope that both the organisers and stall holders were delighted with the turnout. We came away with local wine, bread and cheese, perfect.

It was only when I returned home and looked into a little of the history to Punch and Judy that I learnt the phrase 'Pleased as Punch' comes from this very old puppet show. I hope Punch will not mind my borrowing it for my title, but it really sums up how I feel about my Good Friday hot cross bun baking.

The #ShortandTweet challenge this week focussed on  the sweet and fruit bread section of Dan Lepard's book Short and Sweet and I went for the 'Banana maple pecan buns', pictured above, and the 'Spiced stout buns'. I had just planned to do the stout buns but when I found myself with some spare ripe bananas it seemed a good idea to try them both.

I managed to get the banana buns out of the oven in time for a late breakfast on Good Friday and we ate them still warm and with plenty of butter. This recipe has quite a mix of flavours as it includes cocoa, cinnamon, ginger, raisins and muscavado sugar as well as the banana, maple syrup and pecans.  Quite a balance to strike but it does work and the buns made a very welcome lazy breakfast.

The recipe I was even more intrigued by was the 'Spiced stout buns' as you not only added stout to the dough you also soaked the dried fruits and peel in hot black tea. As the recipe was already quite exotic to keep with the theme I rummaged in my tea leaf stores and found my Russian Caravan tea from Drury Tea & Coffee ,which seemed up to the task in hand.

These buns are packed with spice and fruit which I think of as traditional and personally love, but I realise many folks do not enjoy highly spiced and fruited breads.

They baked to a lovely moist crumb with a thin crust and odd as it may sound they went really well with some cheese for lunch. I am also fond of eating gingerbread with cheese for an afternoon snack so cheese purists should possibly turn away now. The dark ale that I used was Cotleigh Peregrine, described as a porter and to my taste more suitable than Guinness type ales.

The recipe makes a lot of buns so many are now in the freezer but we have enjoyed them toasted for breakfast since the day they were baked and I will most definitely be using the Stout bun recipe again for my Easter buns.

So in the words of Punch  "That's the way to do it!"

One step forward, one back

This weeks #shortandtweet challenge offered a range of loaves to try with the hope that the sunny weather would continue and we could indulge ourselves with home made loaves for a picnic in the sunshine. Well the weather has stayed pretty light and sunny but my loaves are rather leaden.

I have made two attempts at the Multigrain and Honey Loaf from page 39 of Dan Lepard's book Short and Sweet. In my first attempt I produced a very damp loaf that had a beautiful looking and tasting crust but there the beauty ended. The crumb was damp and leaden and only very thin slicing and toasting made it at all pleasant to eat.

Grain and Honey Loaf Loaf Version 1 

I blamed myself for this as I had not allowed the loaf to rise quite as much as I thought it should but I was running late and wanting it baked up so I could get to bed. I had baked it for the full amount of time in a hot oven so was quite surprised when the crumb was so damp and heavy.

Grain and Honey Loaf Loaf Version 2

I really liked the flavour of the loaf, so a few days later I had another go but when making the 'porridge' of oats and seeds I only added 75ml of boiling water instead of the 100ml called for. The dough was less sticky to handle and I was optimistic of a better result. I may have proved the loaf slightly too long though as when it was baked up I had no oven spring at all. My central cut barely moved apart during the baking.  I baked the loaf for longer than stated giving it another 15 minutes out of the tin, directly on the hot bake stone.

I do have a better crumb this time but the crust is not so good, thicker and hard, rather than crispy and sweet.

So good flavour, serious problems with texture and not really a picnic loaf but not bad toasted and buttered and as Dan said it does stay moist.

Reasons to be Cheerful

Dan Lepard has won the Andre Simon award for his book Short & Sweet which is great news because this book really does showcase Dan's craftsmanship as a baker, writer and photographer. The booksellers shelves are a little flooded with baking books at the moment and all I can say is don't buy anything until you have had time to take a good look at Short & Sweet. It may not have an accompanying tv series and  t-shirt but it has enough carefully honed recipes to keep you in delicious baked goods for a long time.

And on the subject of delicious baking if you took part in this week's #short&tweet challenge, and chose the Saffron Peach Cake on page 137 of the book, I bet you have been smiling since you took your first bite.

I have to confess to subbing frozen nectarines for tinned peaches as I had plenty of nectarine slices in my freezer from last summer, but I don't think this was a bad move. Here is the cake fresh out of the oven:

The cake has a very tender moist crumb which I think must be helped by the addition of ground almonds.  I may have sprinkled more flaked almonds on the top than Dan intended but I love them and the recipe does call for a 'handful'. When you really want to you can get a lot of flaked almonds in one hand.

I have often baked yeasted buns and loaves with saffron but this is the first cake I have baked with the addition of saffron and the flavours worked really well together.

To quote Prue Leith "you have to ask yourself is it worth the calories" and my answer is a most resounding YES. You could even stretch a point  and call it a meal in one with fruit, nuts, eggs and a few other not so good things, all carefully moderated by the virtues of saffron (see quote below taken from Wiikipedia for saffron's reputation)

Saffron has a long medicinal history as part of traditional healing; several modern research studies have hinted that the spice has possible anticarcinogenic (cancer-suppressing)......... A 1995 study suggested that saffron stigmas, and even petals, have been said to be helpful for depression....

I quickly realised I was going to have to get most of this cake in the freezer fast before I ate it all, but I did keep a good sized piece back for today as it is St Patrick's day, and that is always a good excuse for an Irish Coffee and with a good coffee you need a good cake.

My final reason to be cheerful today is that two of my chickens had a nasty shock this morning when a neighbour's spaniels came into the garden on a mission to kill, but both girls escaped. I was lucky enough to see the dogs come into the garden and although by the time I got outside they had Thelma by the feathers I was able to get her away from them. She is now just a bit bald in patches but otherwise in good health. Her companion Louise managed to escape into the bushes, she's a bit more nimble.

So cheers,

   keep calm and eat cake!

Paris-Brest, a challenging subject

This week's Short and Tweet challenge from Dan Leppard's book Short and Sweet focussed on choux pastry and I chose the option to make the Paris-Brest. As Dan explains in the recipe notes the pastry's name comes from a Paris to Brest bycycle race and the pastry is piped to suggest the wheel of a bycycle.

Dan fills his choux with a coffee pastry cream and garnishes the top with caramel and nuts.  Although these are described by Dan as  mini coffee Paris-Brest we are still talking a full dessert portion each here. The total recipe only makes six and I think I made mine a bit large so think penny farthing rather than tour de france.

Pastry and I are not the best of friends and I felt apprehensive throughout making these. Early in the process I was convinced my choux dough was far too stiff and it still seemed very stiff after beating in the 3 eggs. I think I piped the dough with too small a diameter piping bag end and made too big a 'wheel'.

Once they were in the oven there were some nervous minutes while I watched and waited for the dough to puff. It really never puffed as much as I had expected but if you pipe out mean thicknesses of pastry you cannot expect miracles.

I also felt I had too starchy a mixture for the pastry cream but have to confess to fiddling with this recipe as I wanted a mocha pastry cream, not just coffee.

The caramel behaved but I only made a little as I'm not so fond of crunchy sugar. For someone who claims to eat anything I have to accept that I can really be rather picky with how things are made.

The finished pastry did taste very good but I really don't think I would make them again unless I can rid myself of the fear of pastry; it just makes the process feel hard work rather than fun.

Simple Bagels

For this week's Short and Tweet challenge I had trouble deciding whether to go with the pita or the bagels from Dan Lepard's book Short and Sweet. I really like pita bread, buy it quite a lot and especially when I get it from Persepolis ,  I am not convinced I could make better myself but I was tempted to try.

Bagels, however, I only buy when the moon's dancing and have never even thought about trying to make myself before, so having promised myself that 2012 will be the year I venture into new territory bagels it was.

The first few steps of Dan Lepard's bagel recipe are familiar territory apart from the slightly less common addition of wine vinegar to the bread dough. I knew the dough texture should be firm so stuck with the amount of water stated despite wanting to add some more.

I think it was when it came to the shaping that I was a little concerned about how uneven things were looking but still felt I had done my best. I had scaled out each piece of dough so I knew they were the same weight even if the shapes were getting a little random.

The next stage was the quick poaching and I had read somewhere the longer the poach time the chewier the bagel so I wanted to stick to the timings given which I found a bit tricky even with just four bagels at a time in the pan.

So I did my best to keep the poaching to no more than one minute per side and to scoop each one out and onto a baking sheet without taking a pool of water with it.

I tried to sprinkle on the sesame seeds as soon as they came out of the pan so that they would stick better but this may not have made any difference to their ability to drop off rather too readily.

Once they were all poached it was into the oven for a twentyfive minute bake. Here they are just as they go in to the hot oven.

And here they are just as they come out of the oven:

I am no bagel expert so am not sure if I should have retained a bigger hole in the centre and if they should really be a bit flatter in shape.  The picture below shows the inside where you can see I have a few big air holes and I suspect a more open crumb than a traditional bagel. No complaints though as they were delicious and I was actually quite proud of them. They made a perfect Sunday brunch with soft cheese and smoked salmon and I will definitley be making them again.

Nearly didn't make them, glad I did

So this week's #ShortandTweet challenge focussed on meringues and I claim to not like meringues so this challenge nearly didn't happen.

On Sauturday morning I was checking back through the challenge options and grumpily announced to my husband 'it's meringues' expecting him to look bored, but a hopeful smile ran across his face and after checking he had actually heard what I had said I realised he would quite like some meringues, thank you. So meringue prejuduces aside I went into the kitchen.

Well, they were very easy and very delicious, delicate crisp outer shell and soft mallowy centre, what more can I say.

No piping, no overnight low ovens, just whisk, fold, dollop and bake. Another trouble free winner from Dan Leppard's very impressive book Short and Sweet.

There was also an option to make the easy lemon curd with the egg yolks you would have left from the meringues but I wanted to avoid the buttery richness of lemon curd so I made a citrus sabayon sauce instead. I had a nice batch of blood oranges in the house and orange liqueur a plenty from Christmas so with these beauties and the 3 egg yolks a sauce was quickly made. We had this in the evening as a sort of sundae with the meringues and some fresh fruit, delicious.

I have had a low fat and citrus theme to the week as we needed a birthday treat for a colleague who has to keep their fat intake very low so the answer to that was a pair of fruit salads and some apricot and ginger bisocotti.

The first fruit salad was segmented oranges and  mango in a star anise syrup and the other dried apricots in a cinnamon syrup. The biscotti recipe was from the epicurious web site and the only fat it contains is from the egg yolk so really quite low. I hate it when recipes are referred to as fat free or perhaps more commonly sugar free when what they really mean is no added butter, oil, sugar ingredients etc. It is just misleading to call a recipe sugar free if it is full of dried fruit for example. The recipe for the biscotti   is in american measurements so you will need cups or a conversion chart. I upped the amount of candied ginger as I am a ginger fan. The dough was pretty sticky to handle when trying to shape the log for baking but after that it was no trouble at all.

Here is the baked log being cut into diagonal slices before the second bake. You need to slice when the dough is still warm but not straight from the oven. I also find a serrated knife better than a standard chefs knife to get a clean cut.

The slices are baked for a further ten minues on each side and then cooled.

I could not resist dipping some of them in dark chocolate but they really don't need it, I just cannot help myself.

The final citrus treat of the week was to make marmelade, a small batch of traditional seville orange marmelade and an even smaller batch of bergamot marmalade. A good bergamot is pretty hard to find but my source for the last two years has been the Natoora online shop they sell a really wide range of excellent products so I have a bit of a splurge when it is bergamot season.

Here are the bergamot fruits :

And here is the marmelade:



I kept back some of the bergamot pips/seeds and popped them in compost this morning so who nows in ten years or so I may be harvesting my own fruits.

Hope you have all had a great weekend too!

Drop Everything the Drop Scones are Ready

Well I have always called them drop scones even when the recipe refers to them as Scotch Pancakes or more particularly Betsy's Scotch Pancakes which is how they are titled in Dan Lepard's book Short and Sweet. This was the recipe I chose to attempt from the 3 that were targeted for this week's #ShortandTweet challenge.

They did not go entirely smoothly but here is my plate of fresh off the griddle, ready for the butter pancakes.

My first hurdle was a batter that was too thick, even after adding the full amount of milk, and then I could not get the temperature of the griddle right, way too hot to start with and you can see a rather singed offering peeking out from under some more tender morsels in the picture above.

Getting the heat right so they cook quickly enough but did not burn was not easy and judging when to turn was also a bit tricky to start with but here I have tried to show that you will see bubbles forming, and once they are showing across the whole pancake that seemed the best point to flip them over.

 I was going to eat these for Sunday brunch with a mixture of savoury and sweet toppings so I cut back the sugar from 75g to 50g and am glad I did.

So here is my sample of plated pancakes. The top has blue cheese and a drizzle of forest honey, to the left smoked salmon and ricotta and to the right quince & cider jelly and ricotta.

The blue cheese, Borough Blue, was bought yesterday at Halwill Community Market from the lovely Shebbear Cheese  stall and very good it is too. I cannot remember where I read the suggestion to drizzle honey on blue cheese but it worked really well and I chose a forest honey rather than a floral one to play safe. The quince and cider jelly was a gift from a work colleague and was made by her mother who lives in Germany. It was so much better than the basic quince jelly I had tried to make myself so I will definitley be trying the addition of some good local cider in my next batch.

Yesterday was a bit of a local foodie foray as we started out by driving to Black Torrington to make our first visit to the Reddog Bakery there. The bakery are running some bread making courses this year and as I had signed up for one it seemed a good idea to make sure I knew how to get there. Sat Nav in rural Devon can be a little perplexing when you find a whole village has the same post code, as does my own North Devon hamlet. Well we came away with a wonderful selection of bread, pasties, pain raisin and a superb slab of moist and beautifully spiced carrot cake.

After a stop off at the Halwill market for the cheese and some devon red beef we drove on to Okehampton to visit the new cafe/cookshop called eat toast. I was delighted to find the place buzzing with customers and they served us some really good coffee. I would have sampled the cakes too if we had not already snaffled a pain raisin each from our earlier bakery shop.

A quick flash back to last weeks challenge when I did make the wraps but got them so wrong it did not seem worth a post. I managed to produce something more akin to scandinavian cripsbread than a wrap so I ate one with some chopped beetroot, feta and a sprinking of za'atar but the rest were donated to the chickens' treat bucket. Again I think my downfall was too hot or certainly too long cooking, supple they certainly were not.

Here is a glimpse.