The Genial Hearth
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Archive for Baking
December 22, 2008 at 11:34 am · Filed under Advent, Baking, Blogging, Domestic Life, Food, Puggle, Season
Three dozen Fruit Mince Tarts made:-)
I haven’t actually made them in years, so this is a nice change:-)
I didn’t make my own Fruit Mince this year (maybe next year, I reckon Puggle may well be able to do it himself by then), but I still had home-made Fruit Mince, thanks to Lizzy_bbb. I did fail to check I had enough Shortcrust pastry (I had already decided to just use ready-rolled sheets, to simplify matters), so we did the rest with Puff pastry… They’re not as good (they don’t look right:-( ), but they’ll taste fine:-)
No recipe this year, basically circles of shortcrust pastry, place them in a tin, add a teaspoon of fruit mince and top with a cross or some other decoration out of the leftover shortcrust. Bake for about 15-20 minutes in a moderate/hot oven.
December 7, 2008 at 9:30 pm · Filed under Advent, Baking, Bilby, Books, Domestic Life, Family, Food, For Children, Picture Books, Puggle, Season
Today we read Room for a Little One
. We enjoyed it last year, and we’re enjoying it again this year… it’s so peaceful:-)
Puggle and Bilby also made the rest of the gingerbread up… I’ve really enjoyed Bilby requesting that we ‘woll, woll!’
December 6, 2008 at 10:00 pm · Filed under Advent, Baking, Bilby, Blogging, Books, Cygnet, Domestic Life, Family, Food, For Children, Paddington, Picture Books, Puggle, Season
Today the task was to read The Secret of Saint Nicholas
. This was one of the books we had from the library last year, and Puggle recognised it when we got it out again:-)
This gave us a chance to catch up on our cooking:-) So while I put Bilby down for her nap, the boys baked:-)
December 4, 2008 at 11:00 pm · Filed under Advent, Baking, Blogging, Domestic Life, Food, Plans, Progress, Season
Today’s task was to help cook Gingerbread.
We didn’t quite get to this in a timely fashion. Mostly because they were so taken with the card making:-) In the end, I made the dough (I did remember to add more ginger to this batch, we’ll see how it goes) and they will play with it tomorrow.
December 2, 2008 at 9:00 pm · Filed under Advent, Baking, Blogging, Christmas, Domestic Life, Food, Season
The activity in today’s pocket was to “Help Make the Christmas Cake”. So a baking we did go:-) I’ve altered the recipe a little in more recent times, I only have plain flour now, so I add 2 dessertspoons of baking powder. And I now use wholemeal flour for this—so it’s good for us:-) The cake has now been doused with sherry, and I’ll wrap it up and put it away until Christmas Day (or, more likely, Boxing Day:-) ).
October 31, 2008 at 9:50 pm · Filed under Baking, Food, Recipes, Season
At the last school I taught at, all the year nine food students made Gingerbread houses at Christmas time. It was fabulous to watch their progress (they were made over a number of sessions, the dough, shaping and baking, assembly, decoration).
The last couple of years, I have considered making one at home for Christmas. Each time I have decided against it on the grounds that we already have enough to do (well, and the kids were really too young to get into it:-) ). But I really wanted to make them with the kids… Last year, it suddenly occured to me that Halloween might provide the ideal opportunity:-) (You know… what with Hansel and Gretel and the witch in the gingerbread cottage…) And because it’s not a celebration we’ve ever really ‘done’, I don’t have anything else competing with it as an activity:-)
So this year, that’s what we did:-)
I used my usual Gingerbread recipe (although, I’m thinking I need to up the ginger in it… it seems rather more bland than I’d remembered). (I kept some aside to make gingerbread men—Puggle has got a bee in his bonnet about them and insisted we made some:-) I think I might forget about playdough, and just use gingerbread when we have a need for dough play—it’s such a pleasant dough to use). I just managed to get two houses out of the remainder. Sadly, it was a bit too close, and some of the final pieces shrunk back rather when they were cooked:-( (Somewhere I’m sure I have some tinplate leftover from making the shirikin Tin Ducks… I should ponder making gingerbread house cutters—it would make that stage much quicker!)
I used a template from here. I decided on a basic Gable design—keep it simple for now:-)
My plan had been to break the steps up over a number of days, but the reality of nap times this week (really reliable!) meant that I didn’t get as much done ahead of time as I’d hoped… For future reference, any assembly that I’m going to do must happen while the children are not requiring my attention—I think it will be at least another year before Puggle can begin to assemble his own, so I’ll be doing them for a while yet:-)
I found a selection of images of gingerbread houses online, a mix of professional and homey, and made a screen-saver of them. I had this on for most of the day. Next year, I’ll include some images of our houses from this year.
We used far more of a batch of Royal Icing than I would have believed! (One egg white, beaten slightly, mix in well-sieved icing sugar to make a runny paste… add a dash of white vinegar or lemon juice. Keep in an airtight container in the fridge until it’s all used up. Mix small quantities with more well-sieved icing sugar to the desired consistency.)
I chose to use mini-ziploc bags, which I think was a good plan. While not the cheapest option, I really appreciated the strength of the plastic (more durable than the paper cones I usually use—not an issue for me, but I think it would have made for a rather more sticky kid experience), and being able to put the icing in the bag and seal it, put me under less time pressure. In the end, I also used an elastic band to seal the icing into the corner. That meant the kids didn’t have to work to keep their icing under pressure unless they were actually piping. To be more organised, it might be worth preparing a number of bags ahead of time, and then just snipping the corners as they were needed (Puggle tended to run out of icing far more quickly than I did, even though I gave him more:-) ) I also needed to be more careful with the consistency of the icing, although some of that is probably because I’m out of practice—it needs a bit of ‘run’ to it if you want to do interesting piping:-)
I think though, that they turned out really well… Puggle certainly enjoyed the experience (Bilby wasn’t so keen on using the ‘glue’… she liked putting things on the gingerbread, but unless they happened to end up where I’d iced, they didn’t stay. She preferred playing with the dough when they were shaping the Gingerbread men).
So, here they are. Puggle’s is at the front (lots of lolly experimentation:-) ) and you can just see mine in the background. We’ll keep Puggle’s here to eat (not sure how one goes about that yet, I suspect there’ll be some smashing involved:-) ) and we’re taking mine to be part of a morning tea on Sunday (I don’t think we need to eat two whole houses—especially with all those lollies:-) ).
October 27, 2008 at 8:10 pm · Filed under Baking, Domestic Life, Food, Menu, Recipes
Now that Cygnet is here, I figured it was time to return to bread-making (partly prompted by reading In Defense of Food… Paddington talked about it here… Not sure if I’ll actually get to write a review myself, but I definitely thought it was worth a read). Only, I couldn’t see that I was actually going to get to it:-( Then I remembered that although my father had borrowed our bread machine, he hadn’t actually begun using it (after about a year)… In spite of my preference to make it entirely by hand, I thought that might be the solution.
Of course, I’ve never actually used a bread machine before. So I figured I’d start with a mix, to get a feel for how the dough works (I really don’t like the upright shape of the loaf, or the paddle hole in the bottom, so my plan was to use it for the dough, and then shape it, rise it in a loaf tin and cook it myself). Then I’d make the transition to using my own recipe (unless the bread mix was fabulous!) We got a multigrain mix which essentially was just like the bread we’d been buying (aside from slicing it ourselves)… but that meant it was kind of white. So I’ve started experimenting with making my own.
I wanted to stick to a 680 gram loaf (I’m keen to end up with a nice sandwich shaped loaf—so I need a reliable size:-) )I started with mum’s recipe and compared it with the quantities used in the mixes I had, and the recipes in the book (there were no wholemeal recipe in the book, or I’d probably have tried that for starters). The flour quantities were close (as far as I could work out, given mum’s is measured by volume, but the book uses weights), but there was more than twice as much water, and double (or more) the quantity of yeast in any of them. I tried halving the water… which was too dry. I was watching the dough at that point, and added more—but too much… it was rather sticky:-( But it worked. It turned out though, that I thought the yeast was more of an issue. It almost opened the top of the bread machine when it was rising, and I had to lower the shelf in the oven when I turned the bread around, because I couldn’t fit it back in!
So the next batch I did, I used half the water plus a dessertspoon, and half the yeast. The texture of the dough was better (and the bread was the same), but it still rose the same way!
So next I lowered the quantity of sugar, but that made no difference.
The only other thing to try was adjusting the flour/gluten flour mix. Mum’s recipe is supposed to be stone-ground flour, but I generally just use wholemeal… If you’re using stone-ground, you really need the lift of gluten flour to make good bread. (When I eventually sort out somewhere for the grainmill to work, I’ll have to play with this again, but that could be a while:-) ). The next loaf was rather flatter, because I tried without any gluten flour. So, I added some back, and that seems to be working out:-)
So, all that’s left to do is experiment with adding some grains so that we have a Wholemeal Multigrain Loaf (why are multigrain loaves all white?)
Wholemeal Bread Machine Loaf
300 millilitres of water (for a Breville upright, for others you may need to adjust)
450 grams wholemeal flour
50 grams gluten flour
1 teaspoon yeast
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon olive oil
pinch of salt
Place the ingredients in the machine, in the order listed. Set it on the dough cycle.
At the end of the cycle, remove dough and place in an oiled loaf tin. Bake at 180˚C for 30 minutes.
June 11, 2008 at 2:02 pm · Filed under Baking, Birthdays, Books, Cooking, Domestic Life, Food, Season
Puggle decided he was going to decorate my cake:-)
He chose the design (a sewing machine) from the Children’s Birthday Cake Book
.
He told me on Sunday that “on Monday we’ll make the cake, Tuesday we’ll decorate the cake, and on Wednesday we’ll eat it!” I suggested that it might be better to wait until Tuesday to start:-)
Sadly some disorganisation on my part saw me making the cake today… but he was to decorate it—of course, I hadn’t realised that (apart from choosing the colours!) icing it wasn’t part of decorating it:-) So I did that as well. I also showed him how to make the marshmallow flowers (and I did cut the shape!)
I’m not sure that you can see from the photo, but there’s some decorative ’scratching’ on the chocolate icing so I would “know it was special”… There are also a couple of finger prints—Bilby was very keen to help:-)
April 10, 2008 at 9:47 pm · Filed under Baking, Domestic Life, Food, Recipes
Reading Calli’s plans for the day, I noticed she had soup and bread listed. Just what I had planned. Then I realised that while I had planned bread, I hadn’t actually considered it in the scheme of my day:-( I commented as much, and that I didn’t really feel like Foccacia (my usual quick bread) would go so well with soup. She pointed me towards this recipe.
No-time Bread
4 ½ teaspoons yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
1 ½ cups water
3 ½ cups bread flour
1 ¼ teaspoon salt
¾ teaspoon balsamic vinegar
In a bowl put the yeast, sugar, and water and let it sit.
Heat the oven to 230˚C. Put a Dutch oven (or one of these alternatives) in to warm as the oven heats. Get out your flour, salt, vinegar, spray oil, and anything else you need.
Now that the yeast has had a few minutes to bubble up, add 3 cups of the flour as well as the salt and vinegar and beat for several minutes with the paddle. Add the last 1/2 cup of flour and beat for seven minutes. Alternately, knead vigorously for five minutes, or until the dough becomes extremely elastic. This will still be a wet dough, but not goopy. The dough will clear the sides of the bowl but still stick to the bottom.
Oil a microwave-safe bowl and transfer the bread dough to it, rolling it in the oil. Cover the bowl with a very wet towel. Cover the whole thing with a dry towel and put in the microwave for 25 seconds.
Let rest in the microwave for about five minutes.
Microwave for another 25 seconds, then remove.
Let rest and rise for another 15 minutes.
Shape into a ball and plop into the preheated pan. Quickly slash the top with a knife. Cover and bake for about 30 minutes, then remove the cover and bake for another 10 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown and the internal temperature hits 100˚C.
While I don’t think it will become my first choice for a loaf, it was certainly nothing to sneeze at! It worked really well as a soup accompaniment, and was pretty forgiving (Bilby has become not at all keen on me being in the kitchen, while she realises it means food, she wants it now! As a result I’m trying to do things quickly with her becoming more and more distressed, so I was pretty sure I’d skimped on the kneading… It probably could have been better, but the loaf was none-too-shabby in any case!)
We had it along with Linstar’s Chicken and Corn Soup
1 litre chicken stock
1 litre water
2 chicken breasts, skin off
2 cobs corn, kernals removed, cobs saved
salt
pepper
1 cake long life chinese noodles
Poach the chicken breasts in the chicken stock, with some additional salt and pepper. When they are done (10-15 minutes), remove them and add the water and corn cobs. Shred the chicken.
After 15 minutes or so, remove the corn cobs and add the shredded chicken and corn kernals. Add a salt and pepper to taste.
Simmer for 10 minutes.
Add the noodles and simmer for another 3 minutes.
Serve with crusty bread.
(Actually, this isn’t the quantities of chicken and corn we used, rather the quantities I intend to use next time… it was rather more dense than I felt it needed to be.)
March 16, 2008 at 10:29 pm · Filed under Baking, Domestic Life, Food, Recipes
I was looking through Bread for All Season
last week, when I came across this recipe in the Autumn section. I was quite excited!
We’re in Autumn, and they seem appropriate for St Patrick’s Day! (How often does that happen? A seasonally appropriate food for a feast—in Australia!)
Today though, was the day that we had people around. (A surprising number arrived to craft… I had been thinking it would be very quiet.) So this morning I made them. I discovered some oddities with the recipe (I had already picked up that the maths didn’t make sense, it’ll make 12, but you should put it in 14 muffin pans?) On making it though, the quantity of flour didn’t work with the instructions. Fortunately, I’m reasonably confident with bread making, so the measurement was less important than the description—but it did cause me to pause:-(
Sweet Potato Cloverleafs from Bread for All Season
1 tablespoon dry yeast
1 teaspoon maple syrup
1/2 cup warm water
1 cup cooked puréed or mashed sweet potato or yam (I used a white one, but I think a yellow/orange one would have been better)
Grated zest of one orange
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3 eggs
4 tablespoons (60 grams) butter, melted
1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour (I used wholemeal)
2 1/4–2 1/2 cups plain flour (this ended up being about right)
melted butter for brushing (optional)
Sprinkle the yeast and maple syrup over the warm water, stir to dissolve and let stand till foamy. By the time I had assembled the remaining ingredients it was well and truly foaming!
Combine the sweet potato, orange zest, salt, nutmeg, eggs butter and wholemeal flour. Add the yeast mixture and 1 cup of the plain flour. Beat until smooth and creamy (this would have been easier if I had mashed the potato better:-( ) Gradually add the remaining flour, half a cup at a time, until a soft dough is formed that just clears the sides of the bowl.
Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and knead until satiny and elastic, adding only 1 tablespoon of flour at a time to prevent sticking. This should be a smooth dough (aside from the lumps of potato:-( ) Place in an oiled bowl, turn to coat and cover with plastic wrap. Leave to rise at room temperature until doubled in bulk (about an hour).
Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface and divide into 4 equal portions. Divide each of these into 3, and each of these into 3. Form these portions into small balls (should be about walnut sized). There should be 36. Arrange three balls of dough in each of 12 lightly greased muffin cups. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and set to rise at room temperature until doubled in size, about 30 minutes. Pre-heat the oven to 190˚C.
Bake in the pre-heated oven until golden brown, about 20 minutes. Remove from the muffin cups immediately to cool.
(You can apparently brush the tops with melted butter after forming the rolls, cover loosely with 2 layers of plastic wrap [allowing for expansion] and refrigerate for between 2 and 24 hours. When you want to cook them, leave them at room temperature for 20 minutes while you pre-heat the oven.) I’ll be making these again, although not with white sweet potato. I’ll probably try an orange one, and I might well give it a go with butternut. I think it’s probably a good one to try for breakfast sometime:-)
(Edited to add the photo.)
January 29, 2008 at 1:51 pm · Filed under Baking, Domestic Life, Family, Food, Season
Easter is early this year, so next Tuesday (the 6th) is Shrove Tuesday. We plan to do the same as we have done the last couple of years. We will cook pancakes a plenty, and everyone is welcome. Please bring either a savoury or sweet filling/topping for the pancakes, and whatever you’d like to drink. I’ll plan on being ready from about 5 (I’ll try at any rate!) so those with kids can come earlier if they choose and start eating.
I’m going to have some paper plates, (and hopefully some elastic) and glue, and maybe some stuff to use to decorate them, if any of the kids feel like making Carnival masks.
Hope this is enough warning for everyone:-)
(Some idea of numbers would be appreciated, so that I can work out how many batches to make 
)
January 18, 2008 at 8:36 pm · Filed under Baking, Domestic Life, Food, Recipes
Today is the birthday of A. A. Milne. Obviously honey is required for the celebration:-) However, unlike Pooh, I prefer my honey on something:-)
Redbraids gave me this delightful book
for Christmas. This seemed the perfect opportunity to try Crumpets:-) (I had made them when I was in Guides, but aside from the fact we made them, and cooked them on tins over candles, I can’t remember them at all.)
They were the perfect choice!
They were remarkably simple—and very forgiving! Although, I did forget to have a candle as befits a birthday celebration:-)
Crumpets (from Tea with the Bennetts)
(The recipe is supposed to make 12, but I used egg rings rather than crumpet rings and made 18)
300 mls milk
50 mls water
1 tablespoon dried yeast
1 teaspoon caster sugar
225 grams plain flour
1 teaspoon of salt
butter for greasing
Warm the milk and water, stir in the yeast and sugar, and leave in a warm place for 15 minutes or until frothy.
Sift the flour and salt into a mixing bowl. Make a well in the middle, and stir in the milk mixture. Use a wooden spoon to work the flour in, and beat to make a smooth batter. (I stuffed this all up! I got distracted in the middle and added the yeast to the cold milk/water combination, and the sugar to the flour. I tried to warm the milk without over heating the yeast, but then gave up, and mixed the whole lot together immediately.)
Cover the basin and leave in a warm place for 45 minutes. The batter will be frothy. (We started too late. It probably only had about 20 minutes before we started cooking. I certainly wasn’t frothy by the time we began—but was beautifully so by the end… and the batter had really made a change in consistency, becoming much more dough like!)
Use a thick based frying pan or griddle and crumpet rings (usually about 10 centimetres in diametre—as I said, I used egg rings which are around 7.5 cms) and grease the insides well. Place the pan over a medium heat for a few minutes, place the rings on and spoon some batter into each ring until it is about 3-4 millimetres deep (I used about a soup spoon and a half for each ring—I think they were dramatically thicker than 3-4 millimetres!) Let them cook for about 4 minutes. Holes will appear on the surface. Remove the rings (I had to use a pair of tongs), turn the crumpets over and cook the other side briefly. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
Toast the crumpets before serving, and spread generously with butter (and honey!)
These were great! I will obviously try them with wholemeal flour, and I think it would be good to try freezing them (the commercial ones do fine in the freezer). They’re a bit small, but really, I don’t think I’ll be searching for crumpet rings (although, if I found them at a jumble or something I might be tempted!) Actually, they’d probably still work for lunch (a slice of tomato and a slice of cheese, grilled… mmm! They are around the size of the tomato slice:-) )
Definitely to be repeated:-)
Next time I’m going to try the Cheese (English) Muffins:-)
January 17, 2008 at 10:12 pm · Filed under Baking, Domestic Life, Food
(Especially for Redbraids:-) )
Dawn posted today about her plans for the next couple of days—the birthday of A. A. Milne, and Popcorn Day. She included a link to a fabulous looking Popcorn cake, that I just had to share—it might be a little easier to eat than the last one I tried:-)
January 6, 2008 at 7:35 pm · Filed under Baking, Christmas, Domestic Life, Family, Food, Recipes, Season
Today we had an extended family afternoon tea. Seeing as it’s Epiphany, I thought I would try making a King’s cake or bread or something. I did look at a few recipes, but nothing leapt out at me. I decided that the Spanish breads were similar enough to the Cinnamon Pinwheels I had been meaning to make all week that I would basically do that. I put them in a larger tin than specified, and arranged them in a circle (to be crown-like), then decorated them with glacé cherries as jewels:-) I only used a half quantity of the dough, so I can do another batch in the next couple of days:-) (This is really part of a bid to re-create the Cinnamon Buns of my childhood summer holidays:-) )
Rich Sweet Dough (from Margaret Fulton’s Cookbook)
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons salt
125 grams butter
1/2 cup warm water
1 egg
1 sachet (7 grams) dry yeast
4 cups plain flour
Scald the milk and stir in the sugar, salt and butter. Cool to lukewarm. Pour the warm water into a large, warm bowl. Stir in lukewarm milk mixture, beaten egg, yeast and half the sifted flour. Beat vigorously until smooth. Stir in remaining flour to make a stiff batter. Cover tightly with cling wrap or foil. Chill dough at least 2 hours, or up to 3 days.
Cinnamon Pinwheels (from Margaret Fulton’s Cookbook)
(makes 20 in two batches)
1 quantity Rich Sweet dough
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 cup sultanas
70 grams melted butter
2 cups icing sugar, sifted
2 tablespoons water
Prepare the dough, and chill. When ready to shape, combine the sugar, cinamon and sultanas. Divide the dough in half and roll each half on a well-floured board to a rectangle 46 cm x 23 cms. Brush with the melted butter and sprinkle with sugar and sultana mixture. Roll up from long sides, like a Swiss roll. Cut in thick slices and place, cut-sides up, in two 20 cm sandwich tins. (I did 1/2 the dough, in one 26 cm tin.)
Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, for about 1 hour. Preheat the oven to 190˚C. Bake for about 25 minutes. Remove from the tins and drizzle with icing while warm. Sprinkle with a little extra cinnamon (or cherries, as I did today).
In future, I wouldn’t bother to mix the sultanas with the cinnamon and sugar—it was too hard to spread it all evenly. I’d just do one and then the other.
It was pretty good! I don’t think I’d use so many cherries another time… 50 grams is probably ample. I also forgot that with this only being half the quantity, it would only need half the icing:-) I didn’t put a bean or anything like that in it this time, because I didn’t remember until after they were in the oven, but I’ll try that next year:-)
A half batch made 10 scrolls. I’m going to cut the other piece in two and freeze one of them to try later. If that works it would be good—5 is probably a better number to make for us than 10 one day and 10 three days later! It’s definitely not an everyday recipe… but it’s easy enough to be anytime you want a treat, rather than needing an ‘occasion’ to justify the effort:-)
(I learn so much from blogging! I was checking the wikipedia on Epiphany, to include the link, and came across a reference to the Irish custom of Women’s Christmas—who knew there was such a thing?!)
December 26, 2007 at 11:54 pm · Filed under Baking, Birthdays, Domestic Life, Food, Recipes
Someone was asking about simple cake recipes, and I realised that even though I took a photo in May (!) I still hadn’t actually blogged my family’s bog-standard cake (we use it for every occasion—fetes, cake stalls, birthday cakes, you name it…)
So, without further ado, may I present the
Chocolate Simplicity Cake (I think it was originally from a Snowflake flour recipe book and is correctly titled ‘Simplicity Chocolate Cake’—but we never call it that!)
1 cup Self Raising Flour (that’s about a cup of plain flour with about a teaspoon of baking powder, I believe)
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1/2 cup (125 mls/4 fl oz) milk
a couple of drops vanilla essence
3 tablespoons butter, melted
2 eggs
Place all ingredients in a bowl and beat really hard for 3 minutes. It does make quite a ‘wet’ batter. Pour into a greased cake tin and bake in a moderate oven (180˚C/350˚F) for 30-40 minutes.
Allow to cool for a few minutes, then turn onto a wire rack to cool completely before icing.
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by A. A. Milne
by Andrew Lang
