tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804924587908639472024-03-14T02:49:30.954-07:00Cooking, RationallyCooking with a maths and science geek.Averixushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13318865724856042500noreply@blogger.comBlogger43125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-31613856234446779002013-09-08T04:18:00.001-07:002013-09-08T04:18:50.015-07:00The Essence of GranolaGranola has been a recent discovery for me.<br />
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I am extremely happy about this.<br />
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I had some shop-bought granola while I was away and it was something of an epiphany: <i>this is the breakfast I should have been eating all my life.</i><br />
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But I'm not bitter. Just glad that I eventually discovered it. And I immediately decided I needed to make some of my own.<br />
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I devised a ratio, but it's not as strict as some of the others. With cake, you can't afford to tweak the quantities without disaster. But with granola, it's really down to taste.<br />
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I first tried making it with as little sugar and fat as I possibly could. I figured that if my homemade cereal was going to be as unhealthy as a shop-bought one there wouldn't be much point. I eventually settled on these as the minimum amounts which will allow the oats and other ingredients to stick together. Much less than this and you'll have nothing but a pile of loose, burnt oats.<br />
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But you could easily add more fat and sugar, to your own taste. The more you add, the closer it will come to being a flapjack instead of granola. They exist on essentially the same spectrum.<br />
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During my research, I was getting annoyed by recipes giving ridiculously specific measures of added ingredients - "35g of raisins, 28g of almonds, 43g of sunflower seeds...". It's pointless to expect people to follow such detailed amounts - especially when the whole point of homemade breakfast cereal is that you get to decide what you want in it.<br />
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So I combined the quantities of all the oats, nuts, and seeds in the granola. That way, you can make it using entirely oats, or half oats and half nuts, or even 'paleo' granola with no oats at all. As long as the proportion of butter and sugar to other ingredients is about right, it will stick together and have a good texture and flavour. Here is the ratio:<br />
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<span style="color: red;"><b>7 Dry Ingredients : 1 Sugar : 1 Fat</b></span></div>
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You might notice I haven't included dried fruit, even though it's a popular ingredient in granola. That's because the dried fruit doesn't get baked with the other stuff - it just gets added at the end. </div>
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I also haven't specified the type of fat or sugar. This is something you can definitely play around with. I used butter and honey, because I didn't want to be too adventurous (and also because I just love both butter and honey). You could swap the butter for margarine, coconut oil, even olive oil. Just think about the flavours that you want and do what you like. Similarly, you can use any type of sugar - brown, white, honey, maple syrup.. anything that's mostly sugar or sweetener will work just fine.<br />
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The method is pretty intuitive:<br />
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<li>Weigh out and mix together your dry ingredients. For my batch, I used 4 parts oats, 1 part dessicated coconut, 1 part sliced almonds, and 1 part sunflower seeds.</li>
<li>Put your fat and sugar together in a small pan (or microwave bowl) and warm them up just until they combine.</li>
<li>Pour them over the dry ingredients and mix together. At this point you might want to add a splash of water to help the bits stick together, especially if you like clumps in your granola (I certainly do).</li>
<li>Spread the mixture out onto a lined baking tray. If you like clumps, then press it down thoroughly. This'll help it stick together while cooking.</li>
<li>Now bake it - about 180C is fine. I'd advise cooking for 5-10 minute bursts. Because it's quite dry, it can burn easily. So if the top is looking browned, stir it up and turn it over. It's done whenever it looks like you want to eat it for breakfast - that's down to taste. If you're worried about the possibility of over-cooking it, there's no harm in cooking at a lower temperature for longer.</li>
<li>Once it's out of the oven, you can add in any dried fruit you like. It's delicious on it's own as a snack, or served with yoghurt, milk, fresh fruit, whatever you fancy. It lasts fairly well because it's dry. It doesn't need to be in the fridge but it might last a little bit longer in there.</li>
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<br />Averixushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13318865724856042500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-79220780035483399892013-09-02T10:46:00.000-07:002013-09-02T16:40:17.326-07:00Secondhand Book Jackpot<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I went on holiday with my family - hence my brief silence.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>We stayed in a cottage near Alnwick, Northumberland. While there we visited <a href="http://www.barterbooks.co.uk/html/About%20Us/The%20Bookshop.php">Barter Books</a>, one of the biggest secondhand bookshops in the country. It was absolutely incredible! Barter Books is the home of the <i>original</i> 'Keep Calm and Carry On' poster. Check out this video for more information about it:<br />
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I've never really been to a secondhand bookshop before - not if you exclude general charity shops. Barter Books is an amazing place. It's in a refurbished Victorian railway station, complete with a small cafe in the old waiting room, and a model train running through one of the rooms. If you ever go anywhere near the area, it is <i>definitely</i> worth a visit.<br />
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I bought three books - quite restrained considering just how many were actually available. I'll describe them to you in reverse-age order.<br />
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First is <i>Snuff</i>, by Terry Pratchett. Terry Pratchett is my favourite single author, by far. <i>Snuff </i>is one of his newer books that I haven't read yet, so it was great to pick it up for £3.20!<br />
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The next oldest is <i>The Complete Plain Words. </i>This one's pretty geeky. It's essentially a grammar rulebook for the entire English language. I've been vaguely wanting something like this for a really long time, but always half-assumed it wouldn't actually exist. Although it's a pretty old edition, language doesn't generally vary all that much so I doubt the age will be very noticeable.<br />
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But the last, oldest, and by far most exciting book is this: <i>The Science, Raw Materials and Hygiene of Baking.</i><br />
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This is essentially the book I've been looking for - consciously or not - for my whole life. It has an entire section covering the basics of physics and chemistry as they apply to baking. Then sections on the general science of baking itself, chapters on individual ingredients, and a whole other section about hygiene and nutrition.<br />
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There's even a fold-out periodic table at the back. It has literally everything I've ever wanted to learn about baking, in just the way I hoped it would be presented, and all in one book.<br />
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Then flicked to the cover page and saw it is a <i>first edition</i>. And not only that, but it was published in <i>1952</i>! A book 60 years old and it took me this long to find it. But I'm so glad I did.<br />
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I'm only a little way through it so far, but I've already given in to my obsessive side and started marking pages with post-its. Why not?<br />
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I will absolutely post further updates with things I learn from it, and probably be using the general information for pretty much everything I ever learn and bake from now on.<br />
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<br />Averixushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13318865724856042500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-70948479764671743362013-08-04T13:14:00.000-07:002013-08-07T10:38:16.405-07:00The Quest For EgglessnessSo... I've been away a while.<br />
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I could spend a whole post talking about my reasons and the activities of the last eleven months. But it wouldn't be very interesting or relevant, so I'm not going to bother. I'm here now, and I hope to get back into blogging more consistently.</div>
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Eggs have been a problem for my whole baking life. My dad is allergic so I've always tried to figure out ways to avoid using them when I can. But recently, my brother also developed an intolerance to egg white. Which means that 2/3 of my main target audience are now egg-free. It's all very well to make chocolate biscuits for the non-egg people once in a while, but sometimes I just want to be able to make a cake that my whole family can eat.<br />
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So I began to do research. I trawled through pages and pages of vegan baking blogs, lists of egg substitutes, and countless articles telling me that eggless baking was impossible. I was starting to believe it. I experimented with lots of different alternatives but nothing had just the right qualities. Yoghurt adds fat and moisture but at the expense of structure. Mashed fruit provides binding but also has a strong flavour of its own. Baking powder creates lift but no additional substance.</div>
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My experiments consistently returned dense, sticky, caved-in cakes. Always completely unsuccessful. I decided I needed to get right to the source, and figure out why eggs were so special and unique. The composition of a whole egg is about 75% water, 15% protein, and 10% fat. It doesn't seem too special. But actually, one of those is missing from every egg substitute ever suggested - the protein. It's not surprising. Protein is unexpectedly hard to come by in baking. Eggs have some. Flour has some. And that's pretty much it.<br />
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But protein is incredibly important. In fact, without it, pretty much anything you put in the oven would come out a soggy mess. Protein is made of long chains that hold things together and - most importantly - solidify when heated. It's no wonder my eggless cakes were always a sticky, collapsed mess. There was nothing to hold onto the bubbles that are supposed to make the cake rise, so they fell out of the mixture as soon as the heat was gone.</div>
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Then I had a revelation while I was thinking about protein. <i>Bread</i>. Bread doesn't have eggs in it. All the structure and texture comes from the protein in the flour. So why shouldn't that work for eggless cake?</div>
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I experimented some more, and gradually refined my method. It took me more repetitions than any other single technique to get right. Of course it's not <i>perfect, </i>the<i> </i>cakes are still a bit more prone to sinking. You could still probably tell the difference between a cake made with this substitute and a cake made with eggs. But it's much more passable than any other alternative I'd tried before.</div>
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And it's actually really simple. There are only three ingredients: baking powder, bread flour, and yoghurt. For the weight of eggs being replaced (one egg generally weighs 50-60g), replace with ingredients in these proportions:</div>
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<span style="color: red;"><b>10% Baking Powder, 90% Bread Flour</b></span></div>
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<li>Mix them together. Then add as much yoghurt as you need, so that it comes together with a sticky, doughy texture. If you wanted, you could swap the yoghurt for milk or even water. But I prefer using yoghurt because it provides moisture which is otherwise missing. </li>
<li>Once it's a stir-able consistency - get stirring. What we're essentially doing is 'kneading' in the same way as for bread. Stretching and exercising the flour to form strong gluten, which will be doing the job usually done by egg proteins. It's probably easiest to use a spoon or fork to mix it because of how sticky it gets. Mix it vigorously until the texture is noticeably smooth and elastic. A few minutes by hand will probably be enough. It starts out looking like this:</li>
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and end up looking like this:</div>
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<li>And it's as simple as that. You can add it into any cake, muffin, or even biscuit recipe - just as you would add eggs. Because of the way it's made, it will slightly increase the volume of the mixture, compared to the same batter using eggs. If you want, you could compensate by slightly reducing the size of the recipe, but the difference probably won't be significant enough to cause problems.</li>
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One thing to note is that you shouldn't make it too far in advance. The baking powder starts to react as soon as it comes into contact with liquid. If it's left to sit for more than a few minutes it'll use up all of its rising power before making it to the oven.<br />
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It should be perfectly easy to make this completely vegan, by substituting soy yoghurt or another alternative. But unfortunately, it's not possible to make it gluten- or wheat-free. It's too central to the mechanism of this substitute. A gluten-free alternative would have to be something completely different developed from scratch, and is a project for another day (or maybe for another blogger).<br />
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Pound cake drizzled with honey = perfect dessert for all occasions.<br />
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Averixushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13318865724856042500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-7689676369911455392012-09-15T14:27:00.000-07:002012-09-15T14:28:27.499-07:00White and Dark Chocolate Layered CakeThis is it. I was commissioned for my aunt's 60th birthday, and this is The Birthday Cake.<br />
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And it would be completely honest to say this is my best-looking baking achievement of all time.<br />
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This is the part where I tell you how easy it was and (I imagine) you don't believe me. But seriously, it was easy. It's just a load of <a href="http://cookingrationally.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/essence-of-cake-part-1.html">sponge cake</a> and some <a href="http://cookingrationally.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/essence-of-chocolate-ganache.html">ganache</a>. Both of which I have written about on here before.<br />
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It's only the presentation that makes it look impressive. I made two big-ish sponge cakes - one white chocolate and one dark chocolate, and sliced them both in half so I had four layers. Then I used white chocolate ganache as glue in between the layers, and topped the whole thing with dark chocolate ganache.<br />
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<ul>
<li>Make the first sponge cake (it doesn't matter what order you make them, but I had to do them one after the other because I only had one tin of the right size). If you haven't already, you may want to familiarise yourself with the sponge cake essence linked above. Each cake was made with <b>200g of Flour</b>, and I added <b>2 tsp Baking Powder</b> because I wanted to make sure it rose plenty seeing as they were big cakes. First cream together <b>200g of Butter</b> and<b> 200g of Sugar. </b>Then add <b>200g of Eggs (4 Eggs) </b>one at a time, and finally the flour. Now add the chocolate. I used about <b>100g of Chocolate</b> per cake, although it was a 100g bar which is actually a bit more than 100g. Melt the chocolate first (in this case the white chocolate) and let it cool a bit so it doesn't scramble the egg. Once it's cooled a bit, mix it in with the rest of the mixture and then put it in the oven to bake at 180C until done with the toothpick test.</li>
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<ul>
<li>The next cake is almost exactly the same. Instead of white chocolate, you use the same amount of dark chocolate. I also replaced about 50g of the flour with cocoa powder, although that isn't completely necessary.</li>
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<ul>
<li>Once both the cakes were baked and completely cooled down, I sliced them into two layers using a breadknife.</li>
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<ul>
<li>Now time to make the white chocolate ganache. I made each batch of ganache using <b>200g of Chocolate</b> and <b>200g of Double Cream</b>. The easiest way to make it is to heat up the cream until it's steaming and almost boiling on the hob, and then pour it over the broken-up white chocolate. The residual heat of the cream will melt it completely. Once the ganache is liquefied, put it in the fridge until the texture gets just firm enough to spread and not dribble all over the place. It won't take long for it to cool down, so keep an eye on it or it will get too solid.</li>
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<ul>
<li>Then I just put the layers together. So, put the first layer down. Then get a blob of ganache and spread it around all over the surface of the first part. Try not to let it dribble over the sides, but get it as close to the edge as possible. Then put the next layer on top, and repeat. Just without the ganache on top of the final layer (that is what the dark ganache is for).</li>
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<li>Once the layers are together, make the dark ganache using the same method and the same quantities, but this time with dark chocolate. Again, let it cool until the consistency is right. Now it's time to spread it all over the surface of the cake. It's a bit more important to be neat at this stage because this is going to be what people actually see when they look at the cake. My method is to do a very thin layer first. This keeps the loose crumbs stuck down so they don't show up in the surface. Once the first layer is done, you can put the rest on more freely, and as long as you're fairly gentle you don't need to worry about crumbs showing up.</li>
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<ul>
<li>Because I knew I wouldn't be able to make a perfectly smooth surface on the ganache, I sprinkled finely grated chocolate all over the surface too. This is a good way to cover up slightly shoddy workmanship on icing, because I'm not very neat.</li>
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<ul>
<li>The finishing flourish was the writing. I just used melted chocolate in my smallest piping nozzle. It took me a few tries to get right, but I think it makes it look nice and professional.</li>
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Unfortunately I didn't get many good photos of what the inside actually looked like. I was only able (obviously) to take photos at the actual party, and it was all cut up and distributed so quickly I didn't get much chance. But, I did get one. And I think it looked pretty awesome.<br />
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Admin note: Due to the aforementioned motivation difficulties and the fact I'm now back at college, this may be my last post for a while. I'm not giving up or anything, it's just that I can't really say that I will reliably post once a week anymore. But I will keep doing my best!</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-39445491893599654092012-09-10T15:47:00.000-07:002012-09-10T15:47:54.524-07:00Lemon Drizzle Cake And ApologiesI've been neglecting you again. I could tell you I've been madly busy and had no time at all. But the truth is, I'm experiencing motivation issues. I really do like baking and writing for this blog, but for some reason I have recently been struggling to get up and DO it. So I apologise, and I promise I'm doing my best.<br />
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I made Lemon Drizzle Cake though, will you forgive me?<br />
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It was my aunt's birthday (Happy 60th!) and I was tasked with making The Cake. I actually made two cakes, and the lemon cake was only the <i>secondary </i>cake. You have the primary cake to look forward to in the next post.<br />
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Before I start I should make a confession. I hate lemon cake. I just don't like the taste of lemon. It's all very well as a minor seasoning, or mixed with something else. But desserts whose primary flavour is lemon don't make sense to me.<br />
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I didn't let it stop me though! And I've had some positive reviews for the cake, so hopefully it was still a success.<br />
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As usual, it was based on the <a href="http://cookingrationally.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/essence-of-cake-part-1.html">ridiculously simple sponge cake ratio.</a> I'm serious. If anyone has read that post and still think they can't make a cake or are too scared to try it, then I have failed at everything this blog is trying to do. If that is the case for you, then please do tell me, and tell me exactly what I could do to improve it! I'm serious.<br />
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Anyway. The lemon cake. You start with a basic sponge cake mix, which is just equal part of sugar, butter, flour and eggs. Then you make it lemony by adding - gasp! - lemon. I used lemon zest. The zest is where you get a fine cheese grater and grate the lemon peel. You have to stop grating as soon as you can see the white underneath the shiny yellow - that bit tastes bitter. Also make sure you buy unwaxed lemons, or rinse them under hot water and give them a scrub before you use them.<br />
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The 'drizzle' part is what makes the cake special. It's what makes it incredibly moist and <i>extremely </i>lemony. The drizzle is done by just making a syrupy mixture of lemon juice and sugar, and then soaking the cooked cake in it. You do that by pricking little holes all over the surface of the cake with a toothpick, and then pouring the syrup slowly over the top so it can soak in.<br />
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The last touch was the icing, which was just a simple glace icing (that's just the kind made of icing sugar and water), but in this case, made with orange juice for the liquid. Then I finished it off with orange zest (it works the same way as lemon zest - fine grater, white is bad).<br />
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<ul>
<li>This was a really big cake. I used a sponge with 400g of flour. I'm going to give the ingredients in halved quantities, because that will make a more normal-sized cake. So, my ingredients were:</li>
<ul>
<li><b>200g Butter</b></li>
<li><b>200g Caster Sugar</b></li>
<li><b>200g Eggs (4 Eggs)</b></li>
<li><b>200g Plain Flour</b></li>
<li><b><b>2tsp Baking Powder</b></b></li>
<li><b>2 Lemons</b></li>
<li><b>100g Icing sugar, plus a bit more (I didn't measure the extra bit)</b></li>
<li><b>1 Orange</b></li>
</ul>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>Start off by making the sponge cake. I added baking powder because the cake was going to very big and I wanted to make sure it would rise because I didn't have time for a second chance. As I say on a regular basis, you don't need baking powder. If you mix the cake right, it would still rise perfectly well without it. If you decide not to use baking powder, refer to the sponge cake post (linked above) for detailed instructions about how to get enough air into the mixture. Otherwise, you can mix it fairly simply. Beat together the butter and sugar until they're combined, then mix in the eggs one at a time, and finally stir in the flour with the baking powder.</li>
<li>Now add the lemony part. I used zest from half of all of my lemons. But if I did it again, I would probably zest all of them. So I recommend you use the zest of both the lemons. Just mix it into the cake batter.</li>
<li>Now bake it. 180C until it's done. Depending on the size and shape of your cake, the time will vary. Check it regularly and use the toothpick test to decide if it's done - a toothpick stuck into the middle should come out clean.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>Time to make the drizzle. Squeeze the juice out of both lemons. Make sure the strain the juice so there are no lumps or pips - it's important to strain it finely because if there are bits, they will just sit on top of the cake and be very conspicuous. Add the icing sugar to the lemon juice and mix it together. If it seems like it's not dissolving, you could microwave it for a few seconds. I mean that, a<i> few seconds</i> and no more. Just enough to make it lukewarm to help the sugar dissolve.</li>
<li>Once the cake has cooled down a bit, but is still in its tin, you can prick the surface all over with a toothpick. The holes can be very small, just enough to break the crust on top so there is somewhere for the syrup to go. Now pour the syrup over the top. Start with just a teeny bit at a time, letting it soak in before you pour on any more. If you do too much at once, it will all pour off the rounded top of the cake and get stuck down the sides, leaving you with madly lemony edges and a flavourless middle (no one wants a flavourless middle).</li>
<li>Leave the cake in the tin for a while to make sure it is all fully soaked in, then take it out onto a rack to cool down properly.</li>
<li>Time for the final icing. You need the juice of the orange. But you will also (in a minute) need the zest of the same orange, and it's much easier to zest a whole orange than to zest the shrivelled halves of a squeezed orange. So grate the zest off first and keep it. Then squeeze the orange (strain it for pips and bits). You probably don't need all of the juice - in fact you don't need to use a real orange at all. You could use orange juice from a carton, or you could use extra lemon juice, or you could even just use water. But either way. Put some of the orange juice into a bowl, then add some icing sugar and mix it. Keep mixing until it is fairly thick, but runny enough to pour in a continuous stream off a spoon.</li>
<li>Get the icing into a small jug, and start pouring it in lines across the cake. Again, you don't have to do lines, you could do dots, or cover the whole top, or whatever you want. Lines is what I went for. It can be tricky to get the thickness right and avoid blobs, so practise on some paper first if you want (I did).</li>
<li>Finally, sprinkle the orange zest over the top. Make sure to sprinkle it as soon as you have finished pouring the icing, because that way it will stick to the still-wet icing.</li>
</ul>
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Also, I was experimenting with using some black-and-white pictures, because sometimes it's really hard to take good colour photos in artificial lighting. What do you think?</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-14044071762195693762012-08-19T07:57:00.000-07:002012-09-20T16:09:06.251-07:00The Essence of DoughnutsI've been psyching myself up to make doughnuts for a while.<br />
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As often happens, it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be.<br />
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I was most nervous about the deep frying thing, but it turned out to be pretty simple and not particularly stressful. I also baked half of the batch, to investigate the differences between them from the same mixture. The general conclusion is that the fried ones were nicer, which makes sense because that's the general way for doughnuts.<br />
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In fact, I got an astonishing compliment from my dad:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This might be the best doughnut I've ever eaten.</blockquote>
High praise indeed, especially for such a doughnut connoisseur as he is.<br />
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Doughnuts have yeast in them. Did you know that? I didn't know that. They're just bread. It kind of makes sense when you think about it. In fact, maybe everyone knew that except me. Anyway. They're bread, with extra stuff in. Kind of like <a href="http://cookingrationally.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/challah.html">this</a>, in fact. The ratio starts with half the amount of liquid as flour. <a href="http://cookingrationally.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/essence-of-bread-part-1_09.html">Sound familiar</a>?<br />
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<span style="color: red;"><b>10 Flour : 5 Milk : 2 Sugar : 2 Egg : 2 butter</b></span></div>
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<ul>
<li>Warm up the milk. It doesn't need to be boiling, just lukewarm. The easiest way is probably to heat it in the microwave, or in a pan on the hob. It only needs to be warm because the yeast is going to be mixed into it, and yeast likes to be warm. If put it into milk straight from the fridge, it would take <i>forever</i> to start working. So, add the yeast to the milk. The general amount of yeast to use is 1% the weight of the flour. So, 200g of flour, 2g of yeast. But realistically it's fine to use a bit more than that. I used 500g of flour, and those packets of dried yeast contain about 7g - I just used a whole packet. Mix in the yeast and then leave it for ten or fifteen minutes. By the end of that time, there should be some foamy bubbles on top of the milk. If it looks exactly the same as it did before you left it to rest, that means the yeast isn't working and you'll need to try again with different yeast.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>After the yeast has started working, you just need to mix in all the other ingredients. The order doesn't really matter, except for what might make it easiest to mix. When I made mine, I added the flour half at a time and mixed that, then I added the eggs, then the butter and then the sugar. My batch was 500g of flour, 250g of milk, 100g of sugar, 100g of eggs (two eggs) and 100g of butter (melted to make it easier to mix in). It made about 20-24 middle-sized doughnuts.</li>
<li>When it's mixed, it will be a really sticky and fairly unappealing-looking dough. Now you have to knead it, which is quite difficult given the texture. Put loads of flour on a worktop and plenty on your hands too, and then just try to squidge it around as much as you can. It doesn't need to be for a really long time, just a few minutes.</li>
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<ul>
<li>Now let it rise. Leave it in a bowl somewhere warm (I used the top oven with the bottom oven on the lowest heat it has) until it's doubled in size (if you can handle that description). A better one I've heard recently is that, when you poke it, the indent should stay. If it bounces back up, it isn't risen enough.</li>
<li>After it's risen, knead it again for a few minutes and then shape it however you're going to cook them. I just made mine roundish blobs. If you're baking them, you can just shape them and put them straight onto the tray you'll be baking them in. If you're frying them, take care not to leave them on a baking tray which they will stick to, thereby requiring you to squish and mangle them to pull them away from the tray before the frying, and destroy the whole process of rising they just did. Speaking from personal experience, that sucks. Let them rise again, until doubled in size or until the indent stays.</li>
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<ul>
<li>Now it's cooking time. Baking them is easy. Just cook at 180C until they look sort of, cooked. Golden-browny and appealing.</li>
<li>Frying is a bit more tricky, but it's not as scary as I thought it would be. So don't be scared if you've never done it before. Two things to remember about using hot oil:</li>
<ul>
<li>1. Hot oil is hot. It's much hotter than hot water. It will really hurt if it gets on you.</li>
<li>2. Hot oil is not malicious. It doesn't <i>want</i> to hurt you. As long as you don't do anything silly, there is not reason that it <i>will </i>hurt you.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>You also need a cooking thermometer. The same one you would use for cooking <a href="http://cookingrationally.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/essence-of-fudge-part-2.html">fudge</a> if you're into that kind of thing. They're really cheap and easy to get hold of, and will make the whole process much less stressful, so I really recommend one. You'll need about a litre of cooking oil (not olive oil) in a medium-sized pan. To fry things like doughnuts, the oil should be between 175-185C. If it gets too hot (250 or more) it will catch fire. Yes, it will <b>catch on fire</b> spontaneously if it gets too hot. Better safe than sorry, so keep an eye on the temperature and if in doubt, turn the heat off and let it cool for a while. When your oil reaches the right temperature, you can just turn the heat off. It cools down very slowly, and if it gets too cool it's easy to heat up a bit more again. And don't make the mistake I did, while heating it, and take the thermometer <i>out </i>once it got up to 180C, assuming it was fine. If I'd left the thermometer in, I would have seen that it was going to keep going up to over 190C, and that my first few doughnuts would cook far too quickly and burn when I put them in.</li>
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<li>When your oil is at the right temperature, you can put your first doughnut in. If you've never deep-fried before, I'd recommend doing the first one on it's own to get the hang of it. Get a slotted spoon, and put the doughnut into the spoon, then lower the spoon into the oil and tip it out. The oil will bubble a bit around the doughnut while it's cooking, but it's not going to explode or anything. Just exercise reasonable caution. If the temperature is right, it should take between 2-5 minutes to cook. It will gradually turn golden brown on the outside, and when the colour looks right (when it looks like the colour of a doughnut you would want to eat), you can take it out, using the same slotted spoon, and put it on some kitchen roll (this is just to soak off the extra oil). Don't forget to turn over the doughnut regularly while it's in the oil, otherwise it will cook too much on one side and not enough on the other. Once you've done your first one, you can cook the rest in batches of two or three at a time.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>Now they're cooked, it's decorating time. I guess some people put icing and stuff on doughnuts, but that's just wrong as far as I'm concerned. All you need is sugar - lots and lots of sugar. Get a smallish bowl of caster sugar and roll the doughnuts around in it until they're covered. It's best to do this right after they're cooked, because they'll still be covered in oil to soak up and stick to the sugar. For baked doughnuts, melt some butter and roll them in that before the sugar, to help it stick.</li>
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They really are best eaten straight away. It doesn't get much better than a warm doughnut. But if you have to save them, then try to eat them within a day or two because they go stale fast.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-28199178454318688642012-08-12T15:20:00.000-07:002012-09-20T16:09:13.392-07:00Cheese and Onion SlicesRemember when I made rough puff pastry a million years ago and promised that I'd make a post about fillings?<br />
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<br />
This is that post, and I can only apologise.<br />
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With pastry, I find a good general rule for making small-ish filled pastries is to use an equal weigh of filling to the weight of pastry. So, weigh your pastry when you're getting ready to fill it. Say it weighs 1kg. Then if you want to fill your pastries with steak and kidney (though why you'd want to do that is beyond me), you would use 500g of each, to make a total of 1kg.<br />
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My first filling is cheese, onion and potato. I used 1/3 of the weight of each, to make the total weight of my pastry. Preparation was simple. I cut up the potatoes into cubes of about 1cm (the size you choose would depend on the size you want your finished pastries to be) and then boiled them for about five minutes. They were just starting to get soft but nowhere near the falling-apart stage. Then I chopped the onions up into pieces of a similar size, and fried them until they were nice and soft but before they started to brown. And finally, I divided the cheese roughly in half, and grated one half, then chopped the rest into 1cm cubes again. This was just for variation of texture, and you could really do the size and shape however you like.<br />
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Once all the fillings were ready, I just mixed them together a bit and then filled the pastries. First I rolled out the pastry, then cut it into rectangles (the shape would obviously depend on the shape you want the pastries to be). Then just put some of the filling on one half of the pastry, and fold the other half over. I brushed a bit of milk around the edges to help the pastry seal, but this isn't always necessary.<br />
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To finish them off, I pressed a fork around the edges and scored the tops with a sharp knife. These make them look nicer but also aren't really vital. Then bake, at 180C until they look done. It's pretty easy to tell, because the pastry will be deliciously puffy and golden. Enjoy!<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-28385760447364032812012-08-04T05:36:00.001-07:002012-09-20T16:09:22.715-07:00I've been away...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTvl-uBHtakxMXTC4mhZ6YM9hk5Hi7ZIpsRxWk_gSdnyBMNn2hTc-FZ0mEri-mWiKeLAo9hMCP7bHV6xjR6Ep6Q1kmCosZIWVa21pY90Aluv8XbThQWD5V0RCT0hazugA2dL3HW8VRP5o/s1600/P1050013.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTvl-uBHtakxMXTC4mhZ6YM9hk5Hi7ZIpsRxWk_gSdnyBMNn2hTc-FZ0mEri-mWiKeLAo9hMCP7bHV6xjR6Ep6Q1kmCosZIWVa21pY90Aluv8XbThQWD5V0RCT0hazugA2dL3HW8VRP5o/s640/P1050013.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
...and I forgot to tell you!<br />
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I can't believe I neglected this blog so badly while I was gone. It was only a week but it feel like even longer. I'm sorry!<br />
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I was so busy before I left I didn't even have time to prepare or get anything ready to post while I was gone. Please forgive me!<br />
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I'll give you some pretty pictures of the holiday for now. We stayed in a converted barn in the Wye Valley.<br />
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Real wooden beams and everything.<br />
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<br />
And it rained.<br />
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But we had fun! And now I'm back, and normal order will be resumed within the week.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-55837177832703355432012-07-22T16:08:00.000-07:002012-07-22T16:08:09.747-07:00The Essence of Rough Puff Pastry<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.5pt;">This post is going to be a bit more of a tutorial,
rather than an 'essence'. The ratio is dead simple, but in this case, it's the
method that's the tricky part. I've got lots of lovely pictures of my technique
and the appetising results, so it shouldn't be too boring.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">Hands up who knows what rough puff pasty is? I'm not at all embarrassed
to admit that I only heard about it while watching The Great British Bake-Off.
In short, it's an easier version of normal puff pastry.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Hands up who knows how normal puff pastry is actually made? It just
comes out of the freezer, right? It’s actually microscopically thin layers of
butter in between the layers of pastry, that make it puff up. When the water in
the butter evaporates and turns to steam in the heat of the oven, it expands
and pushes the pastry layers upwards around it. No chemicals required.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In ‘real’ puff pastry, those layers are extremely precise. You lay the
butter out between two layers of pastry and then you keep folding and rolling,
keeping all the butter in straight and uniform layers. It’s a delicate process
and it takes a long time. That method is pretty similar to what you use for
<a href="http://cookingrationally.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/essence-of-danish-pastry.html">Danish Pastry</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For rough puff, the layers are more uneven. Instead of spreading the
butter uniformly in one layer, you just leave it in chunks, and fold and roll
it a few times to flatten it out. It has a similar effect. The rise is (very)
slightly reduced, and a bit less uniform looking, but it’s barely noticeable
and still delicious.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The ratio, as I said, is dead easy:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: red; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">1 Flour : 1 Butter<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It's important to use butter. You could probably use lard, but it has to be something with the same melting point as butter - solid at room temperature. If you use margarine or anything soft, it will all just blend in with the flour and won't create the layered effect we need. There’s
also water involved, but it’s an indeterminate amount and it doesn’t affect the
ratio. The amount of pastry you make will be equivalent to a bit more than the
total weight of the ingredients. If you use 250g of butter and 250g of flour,
you’ll get about 600g of finished pastry. Most recipes tell you how much pastry
you’ll need by weight, so it’s easy to adjust your own amounts. I’ll talk more
about fillings later. Onto the method.</span></span></div>
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<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; text-indent: -18pt;">Cut up the butter. It should be in cubes of about 1.5-2cm across. It doesn't have to be very exact, and it’s probably better to have the chunks too big than too small, because you can always break them up a bit more later.</span></span></li>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdQMkgBGvCj1jy1hlRlstynE0I9PuMuoPLBJhwhUJoVom4f3NmFnXw_uHhrXHUTBOWizAHvb_3ogVSkvYtLJD-JXqwcwSdbrKkinD4QpYHQpBFpi5ccg7ad2cSqGDzFt8dtJm8XoVAlYI/s1600/P1040884.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdQMkgBGvCj1jy1hlRlstynE0I9PuMuoPLBJhwhUJoVom4f3NmFnXw_uHhrXHUTBOWizAHvb_3ogVSkvYtLJD-JXqwcwSdbrKkinD4QpYHQpBFpi5ccg7ad2cSqGDzFt8dtJm8XoVAlYI/s640/P1040884.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<li><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: small; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">Weigh in the flour. You could sieve it if you want, I almost never bother with that these days.</span></span></span></span></li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIpZW9l1h92zhk0zAwNL3Uppq427sJjnulVfCUvdpV_jaFzdwF2n_m74GP5YDlNBjfqYWF8d9vjeh2UiIkOMilmi932wGGDGJtibryAQ7rcJov5tgLs5wdgbYxfXhGV6UqvE8lYcbgpdw/s1600/P1040886.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIpZW9l1h92zhk0zAwNL3Uppq427sJjnulVfCUvdpV_jaFzdwF2n_m74GP5YDlNBjfqYWF8d9vjeh2UiIkOMilmi932wGGDGJtibryAQ7rcJov5tgLs5wdgbYxfXhGV6UqvE8lYcbgpdw/s640/P1040886.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<li><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: small; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">Get some cold water. As cold as possible. We need to do everything in our power to stop the butter from melting during this process. Run-cold from the tap is good, a small jug of water in the fridge beforehand is even better.</span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: small; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">Add a bit of cold water to the bowl, and mix it. It’s much easier to use your hands than to try and use a wooden spoon or anything. The bits of butter are big and get in the way of the mixing, so it’s easier to turn it all over by hand.</span></span></span></span></li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj92mix0aBwFdIq6Fd7PMzp3hWjrIABq5l-BbH10iKxYGNafFlsiyvT6ruQ7TsqBINknVCeGveexEPJtuemal5eufP8Gq_BBVNg5evgWtTt_QmEJLG3QL5HnseUe4PTrPbagEsp5IJ5b9Y/s1600/P1040888.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj92mix0aBwFdIq6Fd7PMzp3hWjrIABq5l-BbH10iKxYGNafFlsiyvT6ruQ7TsqBINknVCeGveexEPJtuemal5eufP8Gq_BBVNg5evgWtTt_QmEJLG3QL5HnseUe4PTrPbagEsp5IJ5b9Y/s640/P1040888.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: small; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">Keep adding the water bit by bit, until it turns into a sort of dough. It can be tricky to tell when it’s got the right amount, but you have to try and trust your instincts. You want it to all be stuck together – if bits of it would pour out between your fingers there’s not enough water. But you don’t want it to be too wet – if it would stick to the underside of your hand, there’s too much water. If you add too much water, just add flour until the consistency is right again.</span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: small; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">Now it’s rolling time. First, clean your surface, and then make sure it’s dry. After that, flour it. (That just means, sprinkle some flour on it, like this:)</span></span></span></span></li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSYhmB52d-q4DMU4aaicws-XQcMsKkC6dxtsT8BiMzEUL1NRPqoHoGYksEpqrRTVPvBp4ajXjQtS8IPNL2o0wbZ5Cs1vYQluLrC2fZd8EEjx6ndGIutn8QdzXGnpHdy9iuOavUo2a2TXE/s1600/P1040889.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSYhmB52d-q4DMU4aaicws-XQcMsKkC6dxtsT8BiMzEUL1NRPqoHoGYksEpqrRTVPvBp4ajXjQtS8IPNL2o0wbZ5Cs1vYQluLrC2fZd8EEjx6ndGIutn8QdzXGnpHdy9iuOavUo2a2TXE/s640/P1040889.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<li><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: small; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">Turn your dough out onto the floury surface and get yourself a rolling pin or similar-sized cylindrical object. Start rolling. It will look like it’s impossible to flatten out at first.</span></span></span></span></li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ5P6oZtYgZ4zVbRR7q9Is2yRf9AQYldmv8vRDRwG3ILtQzBtVJO9YZaAnJYj7YsKGgRD1ggRlPEOX0BGyanxkdjUDmYj5VKroqK3X2vBajlvovA-NdVMZpSBndlKTlFClaBHT8X9Nem0/s1600/P1040890.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ5P6oZtYgZ4zVbRR7q9Is2yRf9AQYldmv8vRDRwG3ILtQzBtVJO9YZaAnJYj7YsKGgRD1ggRlPEOX0BGyanxkdjUDmYj5VKroqK3X2vBajlvovA-NdVMZpSBndlKTlFClaBHT8X9Nem0/s640/P1040890.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: small; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.5pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.5pt; text-indent: -18pt;">Keep going. It will soften up gradually, and start to spread out. You might find it easier to pick up the pastry and turn it over, or turn it by 90</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.5pt; text-indent: -18pt;">°</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.5pt; text-indent: -18pt;"> in between rolls. Just make sure there is always plenty of flour all over the surface – if it starts to stick when you pick it up, then add more flour.</span></span></span></span></span></li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir-Lqu3_Gar-Ncu3mCWimCzOOR-KGkQ1T6ldiO376h15C52CCoPzUhAt8aU6D6c1xqrE8P4mUhIWetM0NPpKF7Remy0p9SQ-yBiWkZPd6lQZ8PWXDn6RKQMfrqZz9u_DLQaDLEVW8jIC4/s1600/P1040891.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir-Lqu3_Gar-Ncu3mCWimCzOOR-KGkQ1T6ldiO376h15C52CCoPzUhAt8aU6D6c1xqrE8P4mUhIWetM0NPpKF7Remy0p9SQ-yBiWkZPd6lQZ8PWXDn6RKQMfrqZz9u_DLQaDLEVW8jIC4/s640/P1040891.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></div>
<div style="text-indent: -24px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: small; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.5pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.5pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.5pt; text-indent: -18pt;">Soon it will look like you might expect pastry to look. Keep rolling, trying to keep it in some kind of rectangle. It doesn’t matter if it’s a long and thin rectangle or an almost-square rectangle; just try to keep the edges fairly straight. Roll out until it’s about half a centimetre thick. At this point you may decide to split your pastry into two parts, and roll them separately. If you can roll your pastry out to half a centimetre thick without going off the edges of your work surface, then there’s no need. If it keeps nearly going off the edges or is getting uncomfortably big, just cut it straight down the middle, put one half to the side and work on the other half first.</span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYCwOfC46EK_TR-9s52_Tvl4uqyrsE_OeBXXZHhUYIIn9qyimfeWGD4XjAfnhckpcH_AeRVeZAUTG1EtnXb_yd3-Hi2TL9OOTUDB_YorjBWx0rDtpOsaZMieEN26k3mzvgMRPRB1-gaWk/s1600/P1040892.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYCwOfC46EK_TR-9s52_Tvl4uqyrsE_OeBXXZHhUYIIn9qyimfeWGD4XjAfnhckpcH_AeRVeZAUTG1EtnXb_yd3-Hi2TL9OOTUDB_YorjBWx0rDtpOsaZMieEN26k3mzvgMRPRB1-gaWk/s640/P1040892.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: small; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.5pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.5pt; text-indent: -18pt;">Now you should have a nice big rectangle(-ish) of pastry that’s about half a centimetre thick. Time for the folding. You can fold it any which-way you like really. As long as you get lots of layers in there, it’s up to you. A general guide would be to fold it into thirds at least two or three times, or to fold it in half at least three or four times.</span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: small; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.5pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.5pt; text-indent: -18pt;">What that actually means: when your pastry is fully rolled out the first time, fold it up. Either, fold one half straight over the other, leaving it half of the size (this is folding it in half). Or fold one third across the middle, and then the other third across that one, like a letter (this is folding in thirds). Once you’ve folded it, get rolling again. Keep rolling and turning until it’s back to the size and thickness it was before. Then repeat as many times as you want. If you’re folding in half, I’d recommend a minimum of three to four times, or for thirds a minimum of two to three times. Or you could mix and match and do some of each. As long as you get a decent number of folds you can’t fail.</span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm-QmVfF8SXv7700FIWczn4MFeUi-oEdcDnpSumKIfneNJSLA63UhEkr1wSL6Aqb_MqWRT-TGRY6KG6OxNFyoFhvY2YIFJArMUkcJCh_cM0jy9y4QRfQChb3Z9L-dIn1fTieKP-2jWsb8/s1600/P1040893.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm-QmVfF8SXv7700FIWczn4MFeUi-oEdcDnpSumKIfneNJSLA63UhEkr1wSL6Aqb_MqWRT-TGRY6KG6OxNFyoFhvY2YIFJArMUkcJCh_cM0jy9y4QRfQChb3Z9L-dIn1fTieKP-2jWsb8/s640/P1040893.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: small; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.5pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.5pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.5pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.5pt; text-indent: -18pt;">If at any point you notice the pastry looking greasy, or it feels very warm or you can actually see patches of butter melting, then take a break. Fold it up into a manageable size, wrap it in clingfilm and put it in the fridge for half an hour or so. It’s important to keep the butter solid, because if it melts into the pastry then it won’t have the puffing effect, and you’ll just have extremely rich <a href="http://cookingrationally.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/essence-of-pastry.html">shortcrust pastry</a> instead.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij5gHIcGvb5K8UpQttbmfz-dzTbzc6sVtbRTXwGzvRuYeHFn18TaWzy5lz270iw-LaUveJ0buZ1LjnabPiD2vFOkjdRECYp9a_TjtQTkZWCSfn1NKK80XvIJP_SEXlOegfYj8HXuCjpew/s1600/P1040898.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij5gHIcGvb5K8UpQttbmfz-dzTbzc6sVtbRTXwGzvRuYeHFn18TaWzy5lz270iw-LaUveJ0buZ1LjnabPiD2vFOkjdRECYp9a_TjtQTkZWCSfn1NKK80XvIJP_SEXlOegfYj8HXuCjpew/s640/P1040898.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: small; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.5pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.5pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.5pt; text-indent: -18pt;">Once you’ve folded it enough times, just fold it up into a manageable size again and put it in the fridge. It will easily keep for several days, and will probably freeze well (although I haven’t tried that myself).</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuBxRQ1QpFJVYOTb1HPHFEveLqCOXMXiTPjioKA2kdKfnzdf2NgZn1v7kk-sygFbmwxSXmm0wrUeOuHeo-GIJM3u1JvEnQYacfY7BBx8ICDQgH8vNq5UDFFdAuwcGGaKtdGrxGhrzu-nU/s1600/P1040901.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuBxRQ1QpFJVYOTb1HPHFEveLqCOXMXiTPjioKA2kdKfnzdf2NgZn1v7kk-sygFbmwxSXmm0wrUeOuHeo-GIJM3u1JvEnQYacfY7BBx8ICDQgH8vNq5UDFFdAuwcGGaKtdGrxGhrzu-nU/s640/P1040901.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.5pt; text-indent: -18pt;"> </span><br /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.5pt; text-indent: -18pt;">I’ll be
making a post next week about what I filled mine with, and some other info and
suggestions about fillings.</span><br /><br /><!--[if !supportLists]--></span></div>
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<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-43335361575825286942012-07-15T09:05:00.000-07:002012-08-05T15:22:29.142-07:00Honey and Maple Syrup Cake with Coffee FrostingI have a new cake tin. This is cause for celebration!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-g0rSrtKzbOSQiNWdhwjuPCNdNoq0kD9o36esxVYfHT-oO-bFDo_ndQblRv7wAh5bmBJiJIlCqcEXhuPDe2xTgfPYXWHsG3K3_h7I67jzC9foJsS_WwNsXCqJaiFb0lX7ebeec84Wmnc/s1600/P1040820.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-g0rSrtKzbOSQiNWdhwjuPCNdNoq0kD9o36esxVYfHT-oO-bFDo_ndQblRv7wAh5bmBJiJIlCqcEXhuPDe2xTgfPYXWHsG3K3_h7I67jzC9foJsS_WwNsXCqJaiFb0lX7ebeec84Wmnc/s640/P1040820.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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It's all small and deep and loose-bottomed. Very exciting.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMOrxnd6vhupro5bOIT7F3BhiIQLkW1yjbEScRvsONZYwcfSUGubn20uxW5ezVwtGqABiY2CsB3o8whu1IOQl-hXSf_9aWcxbflVVhh3BXwPH7Hk2pnrouLl1gyheXDSYMr6Reas90Baw/s1600/P1040800.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMOrxnd6vhupro5bOIT7F3BhiIQLkW1yjbEScRvsONZYwcfSUGubn20uxW5ezVwtGqABiY2CsB3o8whu1IOQl-hXSf_9aWcxbflVVhh3BXwPH7Hk2pnrouLl1gyheXDSYMr6Reas90Baw/s640/P1040800.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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I've been looking for a smaller tin for a while, because we only have an 8" and a 9", which means that if I make a small quantity of cake mixture (because in my house we never finish big cakes), it ends up as a really wide and flat cake. Which looks rubbish.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJKMGiNT7QZRZY_n7uYwVzOCrFyL-dL3cYFrV0Nqt4cYiriXhoTCToj3Vyi4HLlPVfBtFakHjPPU62PcW_0iDnP4jJ21fbYrqb53EsBJggNpLl_s_azG0totZLO-EbC8kj-sYcaBH9qXQ/s1600/P1040791.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJKMGiNT7QZRZY_n7uYwVzOCrFyL-dL3cYFrV0Nqt4cYiriXhoTCToj3Vyi4HLlPVfBtFakHjPPU62PcW_0iDnP4jJ21fbYrqb53EsBJggNpLl_s_azG0totZLO-EbC8kj-sYcaBH9qXQ/s640/P1040791.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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So now I can bake small-ish cakes in my lovely 7-inch tin, and they will still look (fairly) nice. I was pretty stuck for inspiration for a while, though. There were too many different things I wanted to do, and I didn't know how to combine them in the right ways. But I got my family to help me with working out what would be nice, and then this cake was born.<br />
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And I don't want to brag or anything, but it was really quite good. It was very sweet - almost too sweet. Well, almost. I think it's because maple syrup is so sweet that it's sweeter than sugar. So you have to use less to make up for it (and I didn't). Oh well.<br />
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It's a pretty easy method to make the cake. But now I think about it, it could have been even easier. So I'll tell you what I did, and I'll also tell you what I would do if I made it again.<br />
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<ul>
<li>It's based on the one and only cake ratio - equal parts of flour, fat, sugar and egg. Except, not quite. Because this time we have five ingredients - flour, fat, egg, sugar and honey/syrup (they're classed as one because they're basically interchangeable). So instead of doing equal parts of all of those (that would be madly sweet and far too rich), I reduced all of them slightly. Leaving me with 2/3 the amount of flour, of everything else. In other words, <b>270g Flour, 180g Eggs (3 big ones), 180g Butter, 180g Sugar, 180g Honey/Maple syrup.</b> I used half-and-half honey and syrup, but you could easily use all one or all the other. However, if you use all maple syrup, I would recommend you reduce the quantity a bit more because of how sweet it is - maybe 150g or something.</li>
<li>I also added baking powder. I know, I know, I go on about how you don't need baking powder in cakes (and you still don't!), but because I was making this cake in a way that would have made it difficult to generate enough air manually, I added some just in case. I added about <b>2tsp Baking Powder.</b></li>
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<ul>
<li>Getting onto the actual method then. I based it on the method used for a lot of honey cakes, which is to melt together the fat, sugar and honey, and then add that to the eggs and flour. I put the sugar, butter, honey and maple syrup in a small pan and heated it up until they were all fully liquefied and mixed together. Then I let them cool for a while - at least half an hour at room temperature, or you could put it in the fridge if you want it to be quicker, but make sure you keep an eye on it. You want it to be lukewarm, not chilled, because the butter will go solid again.</li>
<li>Once it's cool enough that it isn't going to cook the eggs, mix it with the eggs, flour and baking powder. Then you can bake it.</li>
<li>That's the method I used, but if I did it again, I would do it differently. I wouldn't bother with the melting part, I would probably just make it like a <a href="http://cookingrationally.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/essence-of-cake-part-1.html">pound cake</a>. That is, mix together the butter and sugar, (adding the honey/maple syrup at this point), then add the eggs and flour. There is no reason the ingredients need to be melted except to make them easier to mix together, and if you mix them in the right order, then it's just as easy when they are all still room temperature. So that's what I'd do, but of course it's up to you.</li>
<li>Bake it at 180C until done. The time will depend on the size and shape of your tin, and your oven (and the phase of the moon). (Not really). Mine was about 40 minutes or so, but I left it in too long and it got a bit overcooked. More on that later. You can use the toothpick test as usual.</li>
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You may have noticed that I decorated this cake too. This is a fairly rare occurrence for me, and something I'm quite proud of. The frosting was really simple, though.</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Equal parts butter and icing sugar. For this cake, I used <b>220g Butter</b> and <b>220g Icing Sugar.</b></li>
<li>For the coffee-ness, just add dissolve some instant coffee granules in a little bit of water. I used about <b>3tsp Coffee</b> and dissolved it in as little cold water as I could.</li>
<li>Mix it together. It will go nice and fluffy if you can use an electric hand whisk or something, but a manual whisk would be fine.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>Spread it on however you like. Then keep it in the fridge.</li>
<li>For mine, I just sort of spread it all over as evenly as I could, and then splodged it around to make the sticky up shapes, because I knew I wouldn't be able to get it perfectly smooth, so I wanted it to look deliberate.</li>
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<i> </i>I mentioned that I overcooked my cake. This often spells disaster, but because I was already planning to cover it all over in icing, I had a solution. I cut the crust off, all over the surface. That's why the cake looks like it's been cut into a shape with straight sides in some of the photos - because it has. It was luckily unnoticeable under the icing, and still tasted good.</div>
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<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-55179301564708753702012-07-08T09:18:00.001-07:002012-07-15T14:23:18.566-07:00The Essence of MacarOOnsIt seems there's a bit of confusion when it comes to macaroons and their cousins. From where I stand, it seems there are two things. One of them looks like a little pile of dessicated coconut, usually dipped or drizzled in chocolate. That's what I'm making.<br />
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The other one looks like a fluorescent hamburger made of meringue. That is not what I'm making.<br />
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I think there is a bit of an America/UK divide in the naming of them. Because according to a lot of the internet (i.e., America), the fluorescent hamburgers are called macarOns, while the coconut piles are called macarOOns. This makes sense to me. But when I said macarOOn to British people, they all thought I meant fluorescent hamburgers.<br />
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For the purposes of this blog, until I get further information, I'll be using the single/double 'O' to distinguish them. So. Today is macaroons. Maybe I'll do macarons one day.<br />
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They're actually really easy, and I don't know why I didn't think to make them before, because I really like them. I love coconut, and chocolate, and almond and they're just generally delicious.<br />
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The ratio is simple. I do seem to say that about everything, but that's because it's normally true (it's kind of the point, after all).<br />
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To complicate things further, this kind of 'coconut pile' macaroon can also be made with almonds only. They end up looking like a biscuit, but they're still called a macaroon. It's all very confusing, but I'm hopeful that I'll be able to simplify things by way of this ratio.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: red;"><b>1 Egg White : 1 Sugar : 4 Nut</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: red;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
As you can see, I didn't specify the type of nut. (What's that? Neither almonds nor coconuts are technically nuts, they're seeds? Shhh.). This is because it <u>doesn't matter</u>. You could use entirely dessicated coconut, and you'd get a distinctive coconut-pile macaroon. You could use entirely ground almond, and you'd get something that looked like a biscuit.</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
In my case, I used roughly half-and-half. And the result still looked basically like a coconut macaroon, which is good. I think the ground almonds helped it to stay solid rather than fall apart like it might have done if it was only coconut. So if you want coconut macaroons, then unless you have a specific reason not to, I'd recommend you use half coconut and half ground almond.</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
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<ul>
<li>Whisk together the sugar and egg whites until they're frothy. They don't have to be hugely whipped up, but they should be a bit airy.</li>
<li>Fold in the nuts. I say fold, because you want to try not to lose too much air from the egg white. Don't obsess about it, just be a bit gentle when you mix it in. I find a plastic or silicon spatula is the ideal implement for the job.</li>
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<ul>
<li>Portion it up and bake it. I tried a couple of different styles for mine. For half, I made piles and them carefully smoothed and rounded them out with spoons, so they were neat little hemispheres. For the other half I piled them up more scraggily, so they were uneven-surfaced pyramids. The style you go for is up to you. But you should keep it in mind when you bake them. As you can see from mine, the scraggy pyramids started going very dark on the uneven parts, while the smooth round ones stayed an even colour all over. You can bake them at 180C as usual, but keep a close eye on them. A lot of recipes said 15 or 20 minutes or more, but mine only needed about 10. I don't know if it's something I did, or something I didn't do, or just a random fluctuation, but anyway. Check them regularly, especially if their surface is uneven, because they will burn quickly when they do burn. It's easy to tell when they're done, because they look done. Nicely golden, going a little bit hard on the surface, but not brown or burnt.</li>
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<ul>
<li>As far as I'm concerned, if you don't finish them off with chocolate, you're doing it wrong. I half-dipped the smooth ones and drizzled over the scraggy ones.</li>
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<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-84129464189688790632012-07-01T14:43:00.000-07:002012-07-02T02:37:02.813-07:00The Essence of CheesecakeCheesecake makes me slightly nervous, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.<br />
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I've always been a bit suspicious of it, purely because of the whole 'cheese...cake' thing. Even from the time before I knew it was actually made of cheese.<br />
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Don't laugh like that, I'm sure everyone used to think the same way. Just like with carrot cake. "It can't possibly be a cake made of carrot, can it? No, no, it must be a silly name that doesn't make sense, like angel cake that isn't made of angels."<br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">Anyway, even before that I was suspicious because I wasn't </span><i style="background-color: white;">completely </i><span style="background-color: white;">sure. And since I learnt that it really was made of cheese I just became even more doubtful. I'll be honest, I've only eaten cheesecake once or twice in my life. And even after I'd tried it I was a bit doubtful.</span><br />
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But I decided to make it, because as they say, you should always know your enemy, and maybe they'll become your friend. Or... something.<br />
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It's important to note here that I'm talking about <i>baked</i> cheesecake. Several people asked if I would make unbaked cheesecake when they heard about it. The trouble is, because unbaked cheesecake is (surprise surprise) not baked, it's not really something you can describe rationally. There isn't any kind of minimum amount of egg you need to get the texture right, or precise ratio of flour to liquid to make sure it sets. You just bung some cheese and sugar and whatever else tastes nice together, and put it on a biscuit base.<br />
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So, no, is the short answer. Baked cheesecake only for the foreseeable future.<br />
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I distilled a ratio as usual, and it's got quite a few elements, but I decided they were all necessary. I'll include some example quantities if it makes you feel better.<br />
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<span style="color: red;"><b>6 Biscuit : </b></span><b style="color: red;">3 Butter : </b><b style="background-color: white; color: red;">24 Cream Cheese : 6 Sugar : 1 Flour : 6 Egg : 3 Cream</b></div>
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Whoah. So long it only just fits on one line. Still, it's not too complicated to make. In fact it's super-duper easy.</div>
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<ul>
<li>Quantities first. For mine, which made a flattish cake in a 9-inch or so pan, I used the following:</li>
<ul>
<li>150g Digestive Biscuits</li>
<li>75g Butter</li>
<li>600g Cream Cheese</li>
<li>150g Sugar</li>
<li>25g Plain Flour</li>
<li>150g Egg (3 Eggs)</li>
<li>75g Cream</li>
</ul>
<li>Start by crushing up the biscuits. The easiest way is to put them in a big freezer bag and then bash them up with a rolling pin (very therapeutic).</li>
<li>Melt the butter and mix it together with the crushed biscuits. Then spread it into the base of the tin and press it down as much as possible. Remember to grease/line the tin first.</li>
<li>Put the tin in the fridge while you make the rest of the mixture. It's not essential but it helps the butter in the base to firm up before you pour on the mixture.</li>
<li>The next step is to just mix all the other ingredients together. The order is really optional as long as they end up mixed by the time you're done. I first mixed the cheese and the sugar, then added the flour, then the eggs one at a time and then the cream last.</li>
<li>Pour the mixture into the tin over the biscuit base.</li>
<li>Now bake it. For once, I'm breaking my golden 180C rule. Cheesecake needs to be cooked at a much lower temperature to stop it from burning and to keep the texture soft and creamy. Bake it at about 150C. It takes quite a long time. Mine was between 1 1/2 and 2 hours. It can be difficult to tell when it's done if you've never made it before (like I hadn't). Looking at the top of the cake is a good way - check the colour. It should be a bit golden brown, but not too dark and definitely not crispy. Another technique is to jiggle the tin a bit and check the texture. You want a little bit of wobble in the middle, but it shouldn't be slopping around or looking like it's actually liquid.</li>
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When it's done, make sure you let it cool completely before you eat it. The top will sink a lot once it's out of the oven, because it will puff up hugely while it's in there, but don't panic.</div>
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I did of course taste my finished cheesecake. It got some pretty good reviews from family members. But I'm afraid I have to tell you that I just don't get it. It's just a dense and creamy cake, which sort of tastes like cheese. Am I missing something?</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-67408203575919489762012-06-24T11:33:00.001-07:002012-06-26T08:20:33.605-07:00Banana Quick BreadI've titled this 'quick bread' in the hope that no-one will notice it's yet another muffin adaptation. But I felt a bit dishonest, so I'm confessing. I promise I'm going to be getting on with some new original things soon.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a>We had some overripe bananas so I impulsively decided to make banana bread. I'm not very good at acting on impulses, so I'll be honest and tell you it didn't go brilliantly. It wasn't a disaster, but there were definitely some things I would do differently if I made it again. Luckily it was a learning experience, and my Dad will eat anything (<b style="background-color: white;">anything</b><span style="background-color: white;">) made with bananas.</span><br />
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Most of the adaptations were simple. I added banana, and reduced the fat, sugar and moisture to compensate. But the biggest change was that I didn't use any eggs. There were a number of reasons for this. The main one was that my Dad is the main person who likes bananas, and he's also allergic to eggs. So if I'd made an eggy banana bread, it probably wouldn't have got eaten, because the only person who would want to eat it wouldn't be able to. In the past, we've made banana pancakes which replace the egg with banana, and they have always turned out fairly similar to traditional eggy pancakes. So I hoped that the same sort of thing would happen in this case. And it did pretty much work.<br />
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<ul>
<li>It's a batch with <b>200g of flour</b>.</li>
<li><span style="color: blue;">I added <b>180g of banana</b>, just because that was the amount that two bananas weighed.</span></li>
<li>Because of the added bananas (sweetness, structure and moisture), I also reduced the amounts of fat, liquid and sugar. <span style="color: blue;">So <b>60g of butter</b>, instead of what would have been 100g. <b>160g of milk</b><i style="font-weight: bold;">, </i>instead of what would have been 200g. And <b>60g of sugar, </b>instead of 100g. I used brown sugar too, because I thought it would suit the kind of sticky and dense banana-bread-ness.</span></li>
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<ul>
<li>First mix together the wet ingredients. I started by mashing the bananas in the bowl, then mixing in the milk and melted butter.</li>
<li>Then mix in the sugar, and then the flour (don't forget the <b>2tsp baking powder</b>!).</li>
<li>Then bake in a loaf tin. I used a small tin but it still didn't really fill it up properly, so if you wanted a full-size loaf, I'd double the ingredients.</li>
<li>Bake at 180C til done - you should be able to tell using the toothpick test as usual.</li>
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It was pretty good. It was very banana-y, but I can't really complain about that. The only negative point was that it was extremely moist, to the point of not seeming cooked even once it was. I think the main reason for that is using too much banana. When I made this, I completely ignored my own previous advice to use an equal amount of additional ingredients as you do of butter, sugar and eggs. So in this case, it should have been 100g.<br />
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But all in all, it wasn't as bad as it might well have been. And we did use up the bananas, and my Dad did eat it. I just need to work on my ability to be impulsive.</div>
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<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-27063747102561640242012-06-17T08:28:00.000-07:002012-06-24T06:47:01.761-07:00Chocolate CupcakesThese cupcakes aren't anything particularly special.<br />
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They were really nice and everything, but they're not exactly difficult, or spectacular, or unusual.<br />
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They're just cupcakes.<br />
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I partly made them as an exercise in frosting, which (as I have mentioned before) I tend to avoid like the plague. I dug out my piping set and decorated them with nice swirly spirals. Although it wasn't fantastic by any means, I was pretty pleased with the results.<br />
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They were also an exercise to prove - partly to myself, but primarily to other people - that you really don't need to use chemical leavening to make cake. Let me say it again, because I think some people still won't believe me. You <i>don't</i> need to use <i>any</i> kind of leavening in cakes.<br />
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That means you don't need baking powder, you don't need bicarbonate of soda, you don't need self-raising flour. I made these cupcakes using plain flour and nothing else, and you can see how much they're risen - they're positively exploding out of the cases.<br />
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They were also made to satisfy a sudden chocolate cupcake craving, for which they did an excellent job. All-round pretty successful cupcakes, I'd say.<br />
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And, of course, easy to make too!<br />
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<ul>
<li>They were based on my <a href="http://cookingrationally.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/essence-of-cake-part-1.html">Essence of Cake</a> post. That means equal parts of flour, fat, eggs and sugar.</li>
<li>I used a batch of <b>200g Butter</b>, <b>200g Sugar</b>, <b>200g Eggs (4 Eggs)</b>, and 200g Flour. <span style="color: blue;">Except! I actually swapped 50g of four for cocoa powder. So that's </span><b>150g Flour</b>, and <b>50g Cocoa Powder</b>. My batch made about 12 cupcakes.</li>
<li>I used the sponge cake method. So first, beat together the eggs and sugar for a few minutes using an electric beater. If you're not using any leavening (and you don't need to!), then this stage is extra important. This is the only way you get any air into your batter, so don't rush it. Beat it for a good three or four minutes at least, until it's increased in volume and gone really pale and bubbly.</li>
<li>Now just add everything else. First the melted (and slightly cooled) butter, and then the flour and cocoa powder. Try to fold it in fairly carefully so you don't lose all of your bubbles.</li>
<li>Bake at about 180C until done. Depending on your oven, could be fifteen to twenty-five minutes.</li>
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I said they were easy!</div>
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Now, I made frosting too. I've never made it before but I looked at a few recipes and sort of guessed. I wanted to use real chocolate rather than cocoa powder to make it, just because that seemed right. So I just went for equal parts of butter, icing sugar, and melted chocolate. I used about 100g of each. First I mixed the butter and icing sugar until it was smooth and creamy, and then I just mixed in the melted chocolate until it was all combined.</div>
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There is a slight problem with this type of frosting. Because it's made of butter, ideally it should be kept in the fridge, otherwise it will go melty and not last as long. But, because it's made of chocolate, when you leave it in the fridge it goes really hard - harder than you want frosting to be. So, my solution is to take the cupcakes out of the fridge a while before you plan on eating them. But I'll be working on frosting more in future, and try to solve this problem some other way.</div>
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Then I used a star-shaped piping nozzle to pipe it onto the cupcakes into a sort of spiral. Towards the end, I couldn't squeeze it out of the bag anymore, so I just spooned it out and spread it into a swirly pattern, which is why some of them look different to the others.</div>
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Delicious.</div>
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<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-88730781891130626972012-06-10T14:54:00.000-07:002012-06-24T06:46:18.442-07:00The Essence of Flapjacks... Maybe?Flapjacks are tricky. I wasn't sure I'd even be able to do an 'essence' for them.<br />
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Because they aren't flour-based, the whole ratio thing is just a lot less important.<br />
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For example, if you're making bread, and you add twice the amount of water you meant to - bad stuff will happen. The dough will be the wrong consistency, and it won't cook right and it generally just won't be bread at all.<br />
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But with flapjacks, there's a lot more leeway. A whole lot more. So much in fact, that you might argue I shouldn't have bothered with this post. But I thought I should, just for the principle. Because it's always good to have a starting point in my opinion. Even if (in this case) you can pretty much do what you like with the starting point.<br />
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Allow me to explain. Here is my ratio:<br />
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<span style="color: red;"><b>2 Oats : 1 Sugar : 1 Butter : 1 Syrup</b></span></div>
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This is basically the simplest way to make flapjacks. If you use this ratio, your result will most definitely be flapjacks - and nice ones too.<br />
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The important difference is that you could mess about with this ratio a <i>lot </i>if you wanted to. And you'd <i>still</i> get flapjacks. Just different ones. Now, I haven't made every possible adaptation, so I can't tell you exactly what would happen. But I imagine you could probably take out the syrup and replace it with half (extra) butter and half (extra) sugar. It might taste a bit different, it might not be very different at all. You could replace the syrup (or some of it) with honey or maple syrup. You could probably take out the sugar completely, and add just a little bit more syrup. You could increase or decrease the amount of the oats by quite a bit, just to make them more or less sweet/rich/healthy. But I'm not here to tell you the best way to make perfect flapjacks. I'd just like to help you <i>start</i> making flapjacks. And they're super-easy and delicious, so all the more reason.</div>
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<ul>
<li>I made a batch using 200g of oats and 100g of all the other ingredients. It made a fairly thin layer of flapjacks in a roughly 20cm-square pan, so if you wanted to fill a medium pan or make them fairly deep, I'd use 300 or 400g of oats.</li>
<li>Put the sugar, butter and syrup in a saucepan. Heat it up until all the butter is melted and it's all mixed together and dissolved.</li>
<li>Put the oats into the pan with the other stuff. Or if you used too small a pan, then put the oats into a bowl and pour the melted things onto it. Mix it all together and then put it into your baking tin.</li>
<li>Bake them. 180C, until they look kind of cooked. If you want them more soft and chewy then cook them less, if you want them crispy cook them more. It should be fairly obvious when they are cooked to your liking. </li>
<li>I find the best way to cut them up is to let them cool slightly before doing anything - until they've firmed up a bit, but not completely. Then cut them while they're still just a bit soft, then leave them in the pan until they've cooled down completely. That way they're nice and solid when you actually take them out of the pan, but not really difficult to cut up.</li>
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<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-64320619078663108802012-06-03T09:11:00.000-07:002012-06-03T13:28:17.546-07:00Breakfast MuffinsI make a lot of muffins. I know. They're by far my most customised and overused standard ratio. But it's only because they're so <i>easy</i>, and so <i>delicious</i>, and generally <i>great</i>!<br />
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So I've made some more. These ones are extra-special healthy. They've got oats, oatmeal, raisins and honey, so they're perfect for breakfast and nice cut in half and buttered too.<br />
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*I'm currently experimenting with the best format for my 'customised-ratio/recipes'.</div>
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For this one I'm going to try having the method and ingredients all together, and</div>
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to highlight the explanations/justifications in a different colour. Please comment</div>
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on whether you think this format works or if it would be better a different way!</div>
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<ul>
<li><b>400g Milk.</b> <span style="color: blue;">This is just according to the ratio.</span></li>
<li>Mix in <b>200g Egg (Four eggs).</b><span style="color: blue;"> Amount according to the ratio again. </span></li>
<li>Mix in <b>200g Melted Butter.</b><span style="color: blue;"> Amount also according to the ratio. I actually made a bit of a mistake with measuring and ended up putting in more butter than it meant to, but the muffins didn't seem to suffer any noticeable ill-effects.</span></li>
<li>Mix in <b>50g Brown Sugar </b>and <b>50g Runny Honey.</b> <span style="color: blue;">The total weight is half the amount of sugar required in the ratio, because I didn't want them to be too sweet as they're breakfast muffins rather than dessert. I used half honey just for fun, and brown sugar instead of white because I wanted the overall impression of the muffin to be 'brown'.</span></li>
<li>Mix in <b>200g Plain White Flour </b>and <b>200g Wholemeal Flour.</b> <span style="color: blue;">The total amount is still according to the ratio, I just used half brown instead of all white.</span></li>
<li>Add <b>4tsp Baking Powder.</b> <span style="color: blue;">As per the ratio again.</span></li>
<li>Now mix in the extras - <b>100g Raisins </b>and <b>75g Oatmeal.</b> <span style="color: blue;">This is still sort of according to the ratio - the total amount of additions should be about the same weight as the eggs and butter. The minus 25g of oatmeal is sort of on principle, because it doesn't really matter, but it's because of the last addition:</span></li>
<li>Once they're in the muffins cases, sprinkle the tops with <b>Whole Oats. </b><span style="color: blue;">I guessed that there'd be a total of about 25g so I subtracted that from the amount of oatmeal to keep things even. As I said, it really doesn't matter that much.</span></li>
<li>Back at 180C til they're done. Probably twenty-thirty minutes.</li>
</ul>
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Have a nice breakfast!</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-27244570899625415782012-05-27T05:01:00.001-07:002012-05-28T08:55:24.675-07:00Carrot CakeIt was my Mum's birthday this week-<br />
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Yes, yes. I'm starting to wish I'd never invented the tradition of putting that picture on every birthday post, but I can't very well stop now.<br />
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Happy Birthday Mum!<br />
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She gave me two requests for birthday baking - carrot cake, and brownies. I've made brownies before (<a href="http://cookingrationally.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/essence-of-brownies.html">here</a>), but carrot cake is new for me.<br />
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Actually, that's not strictly true. I have made carrot cake before, and several times. But I'm loathe to admit it because they well all a long time ago, and they were all from... wait for it... a recipe. You have to let me off because this was before I decided that recipes were all that is wrong with cooking! But yes, I used a recipe.<br />
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And it was actually really good. It was so popular that people asked me to make it again and again. So I used my faithful recipe and everyone kept telling me how delicious it was.<br />
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I imagine you can see where this is going. See, my mum requested carrot cake and of course I told her I would make it. And of <i>course</i> I knew that I couldn't use the recipe I had used before. It would go against all of my principles. So I was under quite a lot of pressure. Because everyone else would be expecting this carrot cake to be just as good as (if not better than) it had been when I'd made it before. They weren't to know that I'd deliberately got rid of my previously-successful recipe.<br />
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All I could do was have faith in my methods and hope it would all be OK. So here is my ingredients list, with reasoning:<br />
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<ul>
<li>I started with the basic sponge cake ratio and method (parts <a href="http://cookingrationally.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/essence-of-cake-part-1.html">one</a> and <a href="http://cookingrationally.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/essence-of-cake-part-2.html">two</a>), and used a quantity based on <b>200g of flour</b>.</li>
<li>Most of these changes are actually pretty much the same as those for <a href="http://cookingrationally.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/chocolate-and-spice-courgette-cake.html">courgette cake</a>, because they do similar things.</li>
<li>First, I decided how much carrot to use. I looked at some recipes to see what the consensus was and they were almost all around three-quarters of the weight of the flour. So in my case, <b>150g of grated carrot</b>.</li>
<li>As with courgette cake, the fat is almost always changed to oil rather than butter. This is generally accepted to make it more moist and dense, and generally carrot-cake-y. If I used butter, the cake would probably be a bit more dry and would seem more like just an ordinary cake with bits of carrot in. Which is fine obviously, but as I was aiming for "carrot-cake" and not just "cake with carrot", I used oil. Vegetable or sunflower is fine, olive would give it a more distinctive flavour, which you may or may not want - it's up to you.</li>
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<ul>
<li>I used brown sugar instead of white, because I thought it would suit the kind of cake, and make it nice and moist and dark and sticky.</li>
<li>Then I did the same thing as I did with courgette cake. The carrot adds some moisture, structure and flavour, which means that you don't need as much sugar, fat or egg in the cake. So I reduced all of those down to 150g too. <b>150g of sugar</b>, <b>150g of oil</b>, <b>150g of egg (3 eggs)</b>.</li>
<li>Again, in the same way as courgette cake, I also used baking powder. With the oil instead of butter, and adding a lot of carrot, there's more of a risk of it sinking and becoming too dense. So add the usual amount of baking powder - 1tsp per 100g of flour. <b>2tsp of baking powder.</b></li>
<li>Finally, no carrot cake is complete without some spices. I added <b>1tsp of cinnamon</b> and <b>1/2tsp of nutmeg</b>.</li>
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The method is easy-peasy, it's basically the same as for sponge cake but just including some extra bits.</div>
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<ul>
<li>Put the eggs and sugar together first, and beat them for a couple of minutes to get plenty of air in. This isn't as vital when you're adding baking powder too, but it's still part of the process.</li>
<li>Add in the oil and mix that in too.</li>
<li>Mix in the flour and other powdery things - baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg.</li>
<li>Now add the carrot and mix it all together.</li>
<li>Put it in a tin or pan or whatever you like, and bake it at about 180C.</li>
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And you know? It was actually carrot cake. It certainly wasn't perfect, because it would take a lot more tweaking for that - turning it into a proper 'recipe'. But I'm not really aiming for perfection. And It was still pretty nice. So I'm happy.<br />
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Oh! And, because it was a birthday cake, I actually (sort of) iced it. I say sort of, because it wasn't so much decorative as splodging some nice tasting stuff over the top and in a layer in the middle. But it's still an achievement by my standards. To make the icing, I went radically away from my usual rational standards. By this point, it was quite late at night, I was tired and had already been baking for several hours. So I sort of made it up as I went along. But It turned out pretty well! My approximate method:</div>
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<ol>
<li>Get a tub of cream cheese. A small one - 200g. Put it in a bowl.</li>
<li>Add a spoonful of butter - just a tablespoon or so, no need to measure it.</li>
<li>Add some icing sugar.</li>
<li>Taste it.</li>
<li>Repeat steps 3-4 until you're happy.</li>
<li>Put it on the cake. You might want to put it in the fridge for a bit first if it's got soft from being mixed a lot.</li>
</ol>
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Success!</div>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-79852649215495850152012-05-20T12:51:00.000-07:002012-05-28T08:49:48.118-07:00The Essence of Rice PuddingLast week, we found a tin of rice pudding in the back of our kitchen cupboard. Its best before date was 2005.<br />
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Yes, 2005. And tins last a <i>long</i> time before their best before date, too. It could well have been ten years old.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>I'll add at this point that we have actually been living in our current house for nine years this summer.<br />
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Still, I'm sure it's perfectly normal to have tins that are ten years old in your cupboards... right?<br />
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We haven't actually opened it yet, although my mum is confidently planning to eat it when she does. She's much braver than me.<br />
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Finding the tin made me remember how much I used to love rice pudding when we had it school. I never had school dinners very often, and not for very long in my childhood either. But when I did, it was the rice pudding I looked forward too. They used to give us a spoonful of chocolate shavings on top, and there was always a harsh divide between people who mixed it in as it melted (myself included), and people who left it on the top while they ate it.<br />
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As you can tell, I was inspired to try and make my own rice pudding. Although I was doubtful that it would be much like the rice pudding of old school dinners, I felt like it was the right thing to do.<br />
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Now enters the next debate. Everything I found online about rice pudding kept talking about the skin on top, and making it in the oven. Was I missing something? Rice pudding - the sloppy, porridgey stuff, right? What skin? Why on earth would it be in the oven?<br />
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Turns out that I had somehow missed out on the fact that rice pudding is indeed often made in the oven. But I decided I wasn't having any of it. I'd never wanted skin on my rice pudding. And anyway, all the oven recipes took <i>hours</i> - what on earth would be the point?!<br />
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So I made it on the stovetop. Deal with it. If you want skin on your rice pudding, you have a problem.<br />
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The ratio I worked out is pretty simple:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: red;"><b>2 Rice : 16 Milk : 1 Sugar : 1 Butter</b></span></div>
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The method is easy too. It really is just porridge, but with a different kind of grain - rice instead of oats.</div>
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<ul>
<li>Put the rice and milk (full-fat) into a saucepan. Bring it to the boil and simmer for ages. Depending on the amount, it'll probably be at least 25 or 30 minutes, and possibly more. Basically you can tell it's done when it sort of looks like rice pudding, to your taste. The milk will have reduced and thickened a lot, and the mixture will be all gloopy. Make sure you stir it regularly while it's boiling otherwise it'll stick to the bottom of the pan.</li>
<li>When it's done, at the sugar and butter and stir in until it's all dissolved and melted.</li>
<li>Then it's ready to serve. Chocolate shavings optional.</li>
</ul>
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And you know what? It <i>did </i> taste like school rice pudding. EXACTLY like it, in fact. It was uncanny. It was the most nostalgic flashback in a mouthful I've ever had. And I loved it just as much as I always had.</div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-37940050555132575522012-05-13T14:32:00.001-07:002012-05-28T08:48:34.860-07:00The Essence of Choux PastrySo. It's exam season.<br />
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Oh yes. If you're lucky, those weeks of frantic revision and sweaty exams halls are nothing but a distant memory (or maybe the distant future).<br />
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If you're unlucky, they may be right upon you, as they are me.<br />
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My friend and I decided something must be done. So we gathered together the most indulgent ingredients we could think of - cream, coffee, chocolate - and set out to make the ultimate comfort food.<br />
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Neither of us had made choux pastry before. In fact, I think I've only eaten it a couple of times in my life. But I've been wanting to learn about it for months, and it seemed like perfect timing. Even with minimal experience of eating it, I couldn't possibly deny that it's the perfect food to prepare for the stresses of exams.<br />
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I was a bit nervous beforehand, because I knew there was hob-cooking involved, which is rather out of my baking comfort zone. But I'd barely describe what we had to do as 'cooking' at all. And it was so much quicker and simpler than I expected it to be, too. The moral of the story? Go make choux pastry, now! Exams or not!<br />
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The magical thing about choux pastry is the way it puffs up. There is no leavening in it at all - no baking powder, no yeast, nothing. The simple fact that it has a high proportion of liquid to the other ingredients means that the steam makes huge bubbles all the way through the pastry. When we piped out our little piles of batter, we worried that they would be too small - and they ended up bumping into each other and being huge! I'd say they easily doubled, tripled, quadrupled in size. It really is magic. And all just from water.<br />
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It's partly due to the high water content that the method is a bit different to any other kind of pastry. You start off by heating up the water (and fat) until it's boiling, and <i>then</i> you add the flour and keep cooking it for a minute or two. It's that crucial time that lets the flour absorb the water, and turns the runny mixture into a dough-y batter that's thick enough to work with. If you just mixed all the ingredients together cold, it would dribble off the edge of the baking tray before you got it into the oven.<br />
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So once the flour is cooked a bit, and the dough has thickened up nicely, you then add the eggs. The eggs add richness and structure (as well as a bit more fluid) to the pastry, helping it rise even more. Once it's fully mixed, you just make shapes by piping or spooning onto a tray, and then bake them and watch the magic happen.<br />
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The ratio is actually really simple:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: red;"><b>2 Water : 1 Fat : 1 Flour : 2 Egg</b></span></div>
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<ul>
<li><span style="text-align: left;">First put the water and fat (I used butter) into a saucepan. Heat it up until the fat is fully melted and the mixture is at boiling point.</span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;">Turn the heat down (but not off), add the flour quickly and get stirring. The dough will thicken up quickly as the flour absorbs the water. Let it cook for a minute or two and then take it off the heat.</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">And that is genuinely all there is to the 'cooking' process. It's nothing at all.</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">Let the mixture cool down a bit (or run cold water over the outside of the pan to cool it more quickly), until it's at the upper end of warm. Not so hot that the eggs will scramble when you add them, and not as cool as lukewarm.</li>
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<ul>
<li style="text-align: left;">Add the eggs, one at a time to make them easier to mix in. It takes a minute or two until they fully incorporate but as long as you keep mixing it will come together.</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">And it's ready to cook. Dead easy. You can also keep it in the fridge for a day before cooking if you want to prepare it in advance.</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">We used a piping bag to shape ours. It was my first time using a piping bag, though - I'm sure you can tell by how messy and scraggy they were! For éclairs, pipe lines which are about the length you want the éclair to be (but nowhere near as thick). For puffs or profiteroles, just make little piles. We thought ours were going to be too small and they turned out <i>huge</i>, so if it's your first time making and you're aiming for dainty profiteroles, then err on the small side to be safe!</li>
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<ul>
<li style="text-align: left;">We used the temperatures advised in Michael Ruhlman's book Ratio - 220C for ten minutes, then 180C for another ten or twenty until done. But looking at some of the recipes out there, it seems everyone has a different way of doing it. Some recipes decrease the temperature part way through, some <i>increase </i>it, some keep it the same all the way. And the actual temperatures used vary between unexpectedly low to worryingly high. If I made them again, I would probably just cook them at my safe temperature of 180C. We poked a skewer into one to see if it looked cooked, but you can sort of tell by how they look on the outside anyway - fully puffed up, golden and crispy.</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">A batch with 200g of water (100g fat, 100g flour, 4 eggs) will make about 24 profiteroles.</li>
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<ul>
<li style="text-align: left;">Our fillings were pretty makeshift really. For the cream filling, we whipped a carton of cream and then added the coffee and cocoa (and a little bit of sugar) by dissolving them in some milk and then adding that. We just sort of, guessed the amounts and kept tasting until we were satisfied. The topping was just icing sugar and water, with some coffee and cocoa added by dissolving first in hot water and then mixing in. Again, we just tasted until we were happy.</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">Oh, and the reason a couple of those round buns look a bit strange is because their bottoms were ripped off when we took them off of the baking tray! So we filled and served them upside down. Always grease your baking tray.</li>
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Comfort food at its finest. I think everyone's predicted grades just improved.</div>
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<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-85444117942477919012012-05-06T03:22:00.001-07:002012-05-28T08:47:24.200-07:00The Biscuit Inquisitions: Part 1OK, you're probably as bored as I am of my biscuit posts reappearing and disappearing . You may have noticed my recent biscuit post is gone again.<br />
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The trouble is, I still can't really decide where to put the borderline of the definition of 'biscuit'.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
I think the best way to work out how I need to define a biscuit is to decide what things need to be excluded from the definition. A biscuit is definitely not:<br />
<ul>
<li>Custard or mousse. It's free-standing, and wouldn't wobble or pour off the plate if left alone.</li>
<li>Brownies. Biscuits are not gooey or wet. They might be a bit chewy, but are still dry and solid.</li>
<li>Cake. It doesn't have a bubbly texture, it's solid all the way through. It can be light and fluffy, but it'll never have the distinct kind of bubbles you get in cake. A lot of dictionary definitions call biscuits 'unleavened', but that's not strictly true. Loads of biscuits use baking powder to alter the texture.</li>
<li>Chocolates and sweets. Biscuits are always baked. I know some recipes call themselves 'no-bake' biscuits, but in my opinion there's no such thing. Those recipes are something other than biscuits. (I have nothing against them of course).</li>
<li>Cheesecake. It's random but think about it, if we used just free-standing, solid, and baked, cheesecake would be classed as a biscuit. We've missed the obvious one - they're made of flour. Of course they could be made with a flour alternative, like ground almonds and suchlike, but it's the same principle. The structure comes from that, as opposed to from eggs or something else.</li>
<li>Something really big. OK, I can't think of an example now but if you made something like a biscuit and made it a foot across, you wouldn't call it a biscuit, so it's relevant.</li>
</ul>
<div>
In conclusion then, a biscuit is:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>A small, free-standing, solid, dry, baked food made from flour.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
Any objections? If you think I should add anything else to the definition, please do let me know!</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
Now it's time to start the real legwork. I'm going for third time lucky on this biscuit thing. But it's going to take time. And serious scientific experimentation. There will be lists involved. There are likely to be calculators. There may even be graphs. I will keep you updated on my progress as I track the variation of the biscuit through ratio. It may be a long journey, so I will see you on the other side.<br />
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PS: These biscuit inquisitions will be nowhere <i>near</i> interesting enough to solely maintain the blog for however long it takes. They'll mostly be a supplement to my usual (thrilling) weekly posts - no need to panic.</div>
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-35626873122877708172012-04-28T02:57:00.000-07:002012-04-28T03:53:55.716-07:00ChallahHere's an interesting fact about me: half my ancestors are Jewish. My maternal grandparents, and a big chunk of my family on that side.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
So I've had some interesting Jewish cultural experiences in life, which is great of course. It's pretty hard to imagine what it's like to have two sets of grandparents, and <i>neither</i> of them be Jewish.<br />
<br />
You what? You had dinner with them on a <i>Sunday</i> every week, not a Friday? You've never been to a Seder night, and spent hours sitting round a huge table eating tiny pieces of cracker? You've <i>never tasted Challah?!</i><br />
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Seriously. We should change that. Like right now. No-one deserves to live without tasting Challah.<br />
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OK, if you don't know what it is, it's a Jewish bread. It's made with extra eggs, fat and sugar, so it's deliciously rich and sweet. And it's normally formed into a plait or knot shape.<br />
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<br />
So I went for my usual tactic of looking up every recipe I could find and trying to distil some kind of ratio. Here is everything I found:<br />
<ul>
<li>It's bread, so it's got a lot of flour in it, and quite a bit of water. However, it has <u>less</u> water than in the standard bread ratio of 5:3 - it has about half the amount of water as flour instead. This is because the extra eggs and fat also add moisture, so less plain water is needed. It also has yeast in it (because it's bread). It contains the <u>normal</u> amount of yeast for standard bread - 1% of the weight of the flour. And it also has a bit of salt in it - the same amount as yeast as usual for bread.</li>
<li>It has eggs in it. The average amount of egg used is 1/8 the weight of the flour.</li>
<li>It has honey or sugar in it. There is pretty much an equal amount of recipes which suggest each. I actually used a mixture of the two in mine. The average amount used is also 1/8 the weight of the flour.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>It has fat in it - in the form of liquid oil. Standard cooking oil is fine - that's what I used. The average amount is about 1/12 of the weight of the flour.</li>
<li>All those numbers are a bit confusing and don't really correlate to each other, but I figured out a ratio which pretty much works, although it's kind of unwieldy.</li>
</ul>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: red;"><b>24 Flour : 12 Water : 3 Honey : 3 Egg : 2 Oil</b></span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAQePf2o-NJJ147F98ficw_JWyzV4dgDBLJjm1KvskeBDWlL6tKhGBA5TKG1knSx2arzGGE-wHB4tG5EsgNUwQi1hU5R_qirK7ukSPfnpB2mmnKn-qpmEaNhJojCToP4wqSF2x6Am7XKg/s1600/P1040281.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="475" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAQePf2o-NJJ147F98ficw_JWyzV4dgDBLJjm1KvskeBDWlL6tKhGBA5TKG1knSx2arzGGE-wHB4tG5EsgNUwQi1hU5R_qirK7ukSPfnpB2mmnKn-qpmEaNhJojCToP4wqSF2x6Am7XKg/s640/P1040281.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<ul>
<li style="text-align: left;">Yeah I know, it's not that great. It's certainly not my most proud ratio. In fact it probably hasn't helped much at all, but I felt like I should put it in because I used it to actually make my bread.</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">Shall I just give you some example quantities? Fiiiiine. But this isn't a recipe, OK?!</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">To make one small/medium-sized loaf, I used:</li>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: left;">400g Bread Flour</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">200g Water</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">50g Honey or Sugar</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">50g Eggs (1 Egg)</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">34g Cooking Oil</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">4g Yeast</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">~4g Salt</li>
</ul>
<li style="text-align: left;">I know the 34g is still kind of messy but it doesn't have to be exact. You could probably use equal amounts of sugar, egg and fat, and it would probably be fine. In hindsight, maybe I should have just done that! Well, I didn't, so there you go. </li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>The actual method is pretty similar to ordinary bread. The only difference is the way you mix the ingredients at the beginning. You start with your water (preferably just warm-to-skin), then mix in the yeast, salt and the wet ingredients (honey, eggs, oil). Yes, it looks <i>seriously</i> appetizing at this point.</li>
<li>Then you add in the flour until it turns to dough. This method isn't really any different, it's just to make it easier to mix all the wet ingredients together.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>Once you have dough, you knead it for ten or fifteen minutes, then let it rise until doubled.</li>
<li>Then knead it again, and shape it. I divided mine into three sections and plaited it, just one over the other in the usual way. Then let it rise again until doubled, and then glaze it. I just used an egg, beaten just to combine it and then brushed all over the surface. It gives the finished loaf a beautiful shiny crust, but it's not totally necessary. And then bake.</li>
<li>....At about 180C. The time will depend on the size of your loaf, but it might be 40 minutes or so. You can tell it's done when it sounds 'hollow' when you knock on the bottom.</li>
</ul>
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<div>
This bread is truly delicious. Just make it, trust me.</div>
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-59946851745339607982012-04-13T04:12:00.000-07:002012-04-14T05:10:46.660-07:00Cheese and Onion MuffinsThese muffins had a rather sinister beginning.<br />
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<br />
They actually started life as a cruel and malicious ploy to trick my friend.<br />
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But let me explain, it's not quite as bad as all that.<br />
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<br />
You see, this friend doesn't like cake. She has an aversion to it, refuses to eat it. That's all very well, people are entitled to their opinions (even if they <i>are</i> wrong).<br />
<br />
But because of this, she also has an aversion to muffins. This is where I disapprove, because as I talked about in the original <a href="http://cookingrationally.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/essence-of-muffins.html">muffin post</a>, <b>muffins are not cakes!</b><br />
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I <i>tried</i> to convince her. I tried to explain, I tried to use science and maths to show her the difference, to show her that really, muffins are closer to bread than cake. But she didn't listen to reason. She refused to accept the evidence I put before her. I knew there was only one way I could teach her.<br />
<br />
I had to find a way to remove her prejudices, to let her experience muffins without the assumption that she was going to be eating cake, and then she would understand.<br />
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So all I did was, neglect to tell her that what I made were technically muffins. I just told her they were quick bread, soda bread, the kind risen with baking powder instead of yeast. It's certainly not false, just a bit of a white lie.<br />
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Anyway, I hoped these muffins would be a good one to start her off on, because the fact they're savoury takes away some more of the cake connotations.<br />
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The fact they're delicious also helps, I suspect.<br />
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And do you know, it worked! When I gave them to her, she did mutter "These look suspiciously like muffins", and I think she almost knew she was being fooled, but that doesn't matter. The point is, she ate them, and loved them, and so I win. Well actually I guess everyone wins, because she liked eating them too.<br />
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So, the actual muffins.<br />
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<ul>
<li>I made them according to the general <a href="http://cookingrationally.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/essence-of-muffins.html">muffin</a> ratio, based on 200g of flour. So 200g of milk, 100g of eggs, 100g of butter. And not forgetting 2tsp of baking powder.</li>
<li>The additions were simple. First I added 100g of grated cheese. For any kind of muffins, I'd recommend using additions of the same weight as you would use sugar (i.e., the same weight as the butter and eggs). I put about three-quarters of the cheese into the batter, and kept the last bit for sprinkling on top to give them a nice cheesy crust, although that of course is optional.</li>
<li>Then I fried one onion until it was nicely browned. If you prefer it less cooked, you could just fry it a little bit, or even add it into the batter raw. It would be softened up by the time the muffins were cooked, but would probably add a bit more bite (and stronger flavour). I also added a couple of cloves of garlic, because when has extra garlic ever been a bad thing? It just so happens that the onion weighed almost exactly 100g, which is exactly how much I wanted it to weigh. </li>
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That's everything. Super-easy, super-tasty snack muffins. Easy to make, easy to store (no need to refrigerate) and most definitely easy to eat.<br />
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<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-65749451448351439722012-04-06T08:54:00.000-07:002012-05-26T06:05:44.874-07:00Chocolate and Spice Courgette CakeI'm sorry to do this to you again. I really don't want to have to. It's just - it was my brother's birthday last week.<br />
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I do have a cake for you, which will hopefully make up for it. A courgette cake!<br />
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No seriously, it's a real thing. It actually has courgette in it and everything. Don't be scared though. The courgette makes it wonderfully moist and adds a great texture, but you don't properly taste it. Imagine the misconception you has before you'd ever tried carrot cake - now imagine the first time you actually tried carrot cake and how nice it was?<br />
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..If that story doesn't apply to you then, just roll with me. It's a good cake, I promise.<br />
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The thing I'm most excited about with this cake is not that fact it has courgette in it (although that is pretty exciting), but it's the fact that I didn't use a recipe, at all!<br />
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When my brother requested courgette cake I started looking up a few recipes to see what the general consensus was. That's the stage I normally go through when filtering down a ratio - I write down the quantities of each ingredient in a whole load of recipes, and standardise them to see if they all have similar ratios. But in this case, they didn't - they were all completely different.<br />
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So I (rashly) decided that I could probably do what I liked and it would be fine, seeing as that seemed to be what everyone else was doing.<br />
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OK that may be slightly inaccurate. I still spent a long time meticulously planning exactly how I would make it, I certainly didn't create it as I went along. But the point is that I did create it.<br />
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Now I have a problem at this point. Because now I've started creating foods, by starting from ratios and making simple adaptations (which really is all I've done so far), it's very easy to start making recipes. And that is very much <u>not</u> what I want to do at all. That would defeat the whole purpose of me even making this blog, if I was just going to turn into one of those people who tells you not to deviate from the recipe. And I've decided that the best way I can stop that from happening is to talk you through exactly how I created this cake, step-by-step, and the reasoning behind every element of it. It might not bother you to know that, and if it doesn't then feel free to skip through just to find the quantities I used if that's all you want. But I feel like I need to write it because otherwise I'm losing sight of what I'm trying to do here. So that's just my little heart-to-heart about recipes. Now back to the cake.<br />
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The true origin of the cake is the simple <a href="http://cookingrationally.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/essence-of-cake-part-1.html">sponge cake</a> ratio. But there are several important differences, and several more less important ones.<br />
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Possibly the biggest difference is the fat. In almost every courgette cake recipe I saw, the fat was entirely oil rather than butter. The general impression I got was that this is to make the cake more dense, moist and gooey, rather than being the traditional light and airy butter-based cake. I just used plain vegetable oil, the type you'd use for cooking. Some recipes recommended against olive oil because it has a slightly stronger flavour, but I did see at least one recipe which <i>suggested</i> using olive oil for that same reason. So it's up to you.<br />
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The second big difference is the use of baking powder. In my original cake post I went on and on about the fact that you don't need baking powder in a real cake, because the leavening comes from beating the sugar into either the fat or eggs (in this case the eggs - gold stars for those of you who remembered which one was sponge cake). The trouble was, I didn't see a single recipe which <i>didn't</i> require at least some form of chemical leavening. And I knew I only had one shot to get this right because I was pushed for time. So I decided to bite the bullet and just use baking powder. I guess I was just worried that the use of oil instead of butter, as well as the addition of a large amount of courgette to the batter could reduce the rise, and I didn't want to take any chances. One day I'll test it without, and just see how it turns out. All I know is the texture seemed good and just the right weight, which suggests that maybe if I hadn't added baking powder, it could have been too heavy and dense. But then maybe it would have just been more brownie-like in texture, which certainly isn't necessarily a bad thing. Again, it's your choice.<br />
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I'd actually classify the addition of grated courgette as a fairly small difference. That's because it's just an extra - it's just like putting bits into it, no different to adding chocolate chips. It doesn't really change much about the cake itself at all.<br />
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Except that's not <i>quite</i> true, because it does change the cake a little bit. It's an unavoidable fact that courgette actually does several things to the cake:<br />
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<li>It adds moisture - the same sort of moisture as you'd get from the eggs and fat in a cake.</li>
<li>It adds flavour - just like fat and sugar normally would.</li>
<li>It adds some structure and substance - the kind of thing eggs do.</li>
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All of that means that with so much courgette in the cake, you actually don't need as much egg, sugar or fat. In other words, the ratio is weighted towards flour. Instead of needing to be equal parts of all four ingredients, it will be equal parts egg, fat and sugar, and one slightly bigger part of flour.</div>
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The final small difference is the flavourings - the chocolate (cocoa, specifically) and spices. Because cocoa is a dry powder, it does part of the job of flour. Of course it's not quite the same, but it's similar enough. So when deciding how much flour to use, I decided how much flour I <i>should</i> need, and then substituted part of that for an equal amount of cocoa. I also added small amounts of cinnamon and nutmeg, small enough that they didn't need to affect the ratio at all.</div>
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That pretty much sums up how I made this 'recipe' (for want of a better word). Now onto how you could actually make it, if you so desire.</div>
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I used a batch based on 200g of flour, which nicely filled a medium-sized cake tin. I don't know how wide it was - maybe 8 or 9 inches? I'm sure you could look at your bowl of batter and decide which pan would fit it the best.</div>
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I say it was based on 200g of flour, but technically it wasn't, because I traded some of that for cocoa. Here are the exact quantities of ingredients I used, if you must know:</div>
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<li>175g Plain Flour</li>
<li>25g Cocoa Powder [You could leave this out and put the flour back up to 200g, if you wanted a non-chocolate cake]</li>
<li>2tsp Baking Powder</li>
<li>150g Cooking Oil [e.g. sunflower, or olive if you want more flavour]</li>
<li>150g Sugar [I used half brown and half white, because I thought using some brown sugar would suit the type of dark, moist cake I was aiming for. I don't know if it really would make much difference to use all white, or all brown, so it's up to you!]</li>
<li>150g Eggs - i.e. 3 Eggs</li>
<li>1tsp Cinnamon</li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">½</span>tsp Nutmeg</li>
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The method is the same as the basic sponge cake method. Beat the eggs and sugar together for a few minutes, then add in the other ingredients. For a 'pure' cake without baking powder, you have to try and carefully fold in all your ingredients so you don't lose the air bubbles from the eggs, but in this case that's not so important. I think I added the oil first, then the flour and other dry ingredients, and then the grated courgette last. As I said I used some kind of middle-sized cake pan, I'd probably guess 8 inches or so - and it took somewhere around 40 minutes to cook (at - you guessed it - 180C!), but would depend on the oven. The toothpick test is fine for deciding when it's done.</div>
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I also made a topping for my cake - a ganache. As you may remember from <a href="http://cookingrationally.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/essence-of-chocolate-ganache.html">this</a> post, ganache is made from a mixture of melted chocolate and cream. In that post, I used equal weights of chocolate and cream to make soft truffles, but in this case I used more chocolate than cream - twice as much, in fact. But after making it, I'd definitely recommend you stick with equal weights. Because the topping had cream in it, I had to keep the cake in the fridge. But then because of the chocolate in the topping, it went rock-hard and was really difficult to cut. I used 100g of chocolate and 50g of cream, but I'd suggest upping that to 100g as well.<br />
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That's all there is to it. Good luck, and don't be too daunted by the courgette thing if you've never tried it before - I promise it's good.<br />
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And I served mine with more double cream, which I think goes with it perfectly.<br />
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<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-36550148701912293072012-03-31T17:25:00.001-07:002012-04-02T17:28:26.216-07:00Almond and Chocolate CupcakesIt was another friend's birthday last week. I kid you not.<br />
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That picture is really starting to get on my nerves.<br />
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But, true to my word I decided to bake her something, so I subtly researched her dessert tastes (by asking her what she wanted me to make for her), and settled on these almond and chocolate cupcakes.<br />
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They're just simple sponge cake (as per <a href="http://cookingrationally.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/essence-of-cake-part-1.html">this</a> explanation), made using an equal weight of ground almonds in the place of flour - just like for the sponge in a Bakewell tart. I added dark chocolate chips to the batter too.<br />
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And then I iced them! I was so pleased with myself. It may not be very complicated decorating, but it's definitely more than I've ever bothered with before, so I was pretty proud.<br />
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The chocolate icing is just icing sugar, cocoa and water (I believe they call that glace icing?), and then a blob of marzipan on top and some slices of almond. It took me a few tries to decide how exactly to do the topping, but luckily my batch made about twice as many as I needed to give her, so my friend got all of the successes and none of the deformed failures.<br />
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I was really pleasantly surprised by how good they were. The dark chocolate chips were quite bitter, but the super-sweet icing and marzipan made up for it - without the topping they probably wouldn't have been so nice. And the cake was deliciously almondy without being overpowering... all in all, a great venture.<br />
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I do apologise for my lack of original baking this week, but I hope these will at least inspire you to make something up for yourself instead!<br />
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Or even make these, if you must be so <i>unoriginal</i>! I used chocolate chips equivalent to half the weight of the other ingredients, and my batch with 200g of ground almond, butter, sugar and eggs made about twenty-four cupcakes. I made the icing as I went along, topping up with random spoonfuls of cocoa, sugar and water when I needed more, and the marzipan was just a small chunk in total, nowhere near a whole block.<br />
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This almond cake batter would be nice with different toppings too, or in different forms. You could made it as a full-size round or loaf cake, or as a two-layered sandwich, maybe filling it with Nutella or whipped cream. Bakewell tarts are of course evidence that almond sponge is perfect with raspberry, so you could top it with whole raspberries, or fill it with jam. The possibilities are, of course, endless.<br />
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I hope to crack on with some serious cooking in the next couple of weeks because I'm on holiday from college, and so I have nothing better to do with my time. That is, apart from all the revision and exam preparation I should be doing, but I'm sure I don't need to spend long on <i>that</i>...<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380492458790863947.post-66604119451672537162012-03-25T10:13:00.000-07:002013-08-04T10:59:25.535-07:00The Essence of Danish Pastry<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The first thing I found when I started looking up recipes for Danish pastry was a load of articles saying "It's not as scary as you think!". Considering I actually didn't have an opinion on how scary it was before I started, that all actually made me feel worse about the whole thing.<br />
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I'm not going to tell you it's not as scary as you think. Instead I'll just tell you it's not scary. It's seriously not. It's not even difficult. It's just slightly longwinded and takes a bit of time planning. Apart from that, it's no more advanced than anything else I've made here so far.<br />
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So what <i>is</i> Danish pastry? Why do you keep on talking about it? Why do I suddenly feel afraid of it with no real reason to? Well! Three main things set it apart from the simple shortcrust pastry I've made before:<br />
<ul>
<li>The dough is <u>richer</u>. That means it's got more fat in it, and eggs too, and uses milk instead of water for the liquid.</li>
<li>The dough is <u>laminated</u>. That means it's made with lots of thin layers of fat all the way through it, so it puffs up when it cooks.</li>
<li>The dough has <u>yeast</u> in it. That means it rises when you leave it to stand before cooking, and rises even more in the oven too. It also changes the flavour subtly.</li>
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I think it's the laminating stage which some people are scared by (not that you should be scared - because it's not scary!), because it's the sort of technique that seems really precise and important, and like nothing you're likely to have tried before.<br />
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But really, it's simple. I find it quite reassuring to think about the science of it, in the same way as with yeast. There hasn't been a time when I've made yeast bread and I <u>haven't</u> convinced myself that it's not going to rise. Every single time. It always takes a while to get started, and I decide something must have gone wrong, and I don't really understand what's happening after all, and it's more than just the yeast that needs to work for it to rise and be bread.</div>
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But then every time, it is. So every time I feel a <i>little</i> bit more confident that, maybe it will work, even though it seems like it's not going to. The fact is, yeast really is all you need to make bread rise. Yes, the temperature might affect the speed, and the amount of yeast matters for how much it will rise and how quickly. But basically, if there is yeast, and flour and liquid, in the same place, then it will rise.</div>
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And the same thing applied to laminating the dough. All you do is roll out the dough, put loads of butter on top of it, fold it up and roll it out again. Then you fold and roll it several more times, which means the layers get thinner and thinner, and there are more and more of them. But it's not like they have to be precisely so many nanometres thick, or that if the butter from one layer breaks through slightly, the whole dough will be rock-solid. Unless you are mashing up and kneading the dough in between each roll out, then it WILL work, because it really has to. You can't make a dough that has little pockets of fat all the way through it without those pockets vaporising and puffing the dough when they get hot. It's science.<br />
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So you really don't need to be scared (if you were). And if you weren't, then congratulations - you're ahead of where I was when I started, so you'll do fine.<br />
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Fillings and shapes are really totally up to you. I'll tell you about my fillings a bit later, but I'd advise making up your own combinations because it's fun and makes it so much more impressive if you can tell people you came up with the idea from scratch too.<br />
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The ratio is a bit more complicated than some of the other ones I've used. But all the ingredients are pretty mainstream, there are just more of them in one recipe than there has been before.<br />
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<span style="color: red;"><b>10 Flour : 1 Sugar : 2 Egg : 3 Milk : 5 Butter</b></span></div>
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There seems to be loads of butter, but it's needed for the laminating stage. None of it is actually in the dough itself, it all goes into the layering. I had a bit of trouble deciding what order I should write the ingredients in, but I decided on this because it seemed the most memorable, and also matches roughly with the order of the method. The only other ingredient which you <u>have</u> to remember is the yeast. As usual I didn't include it because the amount is a bit more variable and it's such a small amount it will confuse the ratio. I'd recommend using roughly 1% of the weight of flour, the same as you would for ordinary yeast bread. (And don't forget that the eggs are measured by weight - it's not 2 eggs, it's 2 units of weight in eggs. An egg weighs about 50g). A batch made with 500g of flour (50g of sugar, 100g of eggs - 2 eggs, 150g of milk and 250g of butter) will make round about 20 pastries. But of course the number depends on what shape and size you actually make them.<br />
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<ul>
<li>Start off by mixing the dry ingredients together. The flour, sugar and yeast. Then add in the milk and eggs, and mix it until the consistency is doughy (don't add any butter yet), and knead it just for a minute. You're not really trying to develop gluten here, just making sure everything is thoroughly mixed together.</li>
<li>Now it's rising time. Leave it until it's roughly doubled in size, could be an hour or two at room temperature, or overnight in the fridge.</li>
<li>When it's risen, it's time to start laminating. Roll out the dough until it's about a centimetre thick. Measure out the butter and then all you have to do is spread out chunks of the butter over the surface of the dough. Put the butter over two-thirds of the dough, and then fold it up into thirds (like a letter). It's easier to fold up when the first third doesn't have butter on it, which is why you leave it clear. Although I'm sure if you spread the butter over the whole surface the folding part wouldn't be impossible. I got too excited and forgot to take a picture of this stage, but I'm sure you can imagine what a piece of rolled-out pastry looks like with chunks of butter all over it.</li>
<li>Now put it in the fridge for about fifteen minutes, enough for the butter to firm up again. Then roll it out, to the same thickness as the first time, and fold it into thirds again. And then back in the fridge, for another fifteen minutes. Do the whole process three or four times through, so you'll be left with uncountably thin layers of butter and pastry, primed to puff up in the heat of the oven. And that's it - you've just made laminated pastry. It really <i>wasn't</i> that hard, was it?</li>
<li>The next part is just shaping and filling, so you can do pretty much what you like from here. You could even use the pastry to top a sweet pie or something like that.</li>
<li>To shape some average-looking Danish type pastries, roll the dough out until it's about half a centimetre thick. Use a sharp knife to cut it up into squares if you want to make folded-up shapes. If you want to make swirls then cut a longish rectangle instead.</li>
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<li>Decide what you want to fill them with. This is where you can do whatever you like - I mean it, anything would be delicious in these. You could even make savoury versions if you just took the sugar out of the original recipe - it's only a small amount anyway so probably wouldn't make much difference. To fill mine, I made three different types. The first were swirls filled with Nutella and almonds. I cut out a rectangle, spread the surface all over with Nutella and sprinkled with slices of almond. Then just roll it up, trying to avoid squidging <i>all</i> of the filling out of the end as you go, and then slice it up into individual flat pastries. For the pinwheel shapes, I filled them with raisins and cinnamon. I made a mixture of a bit of melted butter, some brown sugar, cinnamon and raisins and then spread that over the individual squares of pastry. To fold them up, cut a slit form each corner, halfway into the centre. Then take the flap and fold it back over itself into the middle. The last type where turnovers filled with apple and jam. I just spread the squares with some strawberry jam, and then laid on slices of apple. To fold them up, just take opposite corners and fold them into the middle, pressing one over the over to keep them in place.</li>
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<li>Those are just my filling ideas, you really could do anything. They'd be nice with pretty much any combination of different fruits, nuts and seasonings. Be imaginative! Once they're filled and shaped, and in the form they will be when they go in the oven, it's time to let them rise again. In the same was as with bread, where you let the dough rise once, then shape it into it's final form to rise a second time. They'll need somewhere around an hour or a bit less, until they've risen up nicely. The exact size doesn't really matter here - mine didn't rise as much as I'd hoped the second time, but when they went in the oven they still puffed up wonderfully.</li>
<li>Once they've risen well (or you're too impatient to wait any longer, like I was), then it's oven time. Put the oven on my favourite temperature, 180C, and put them in, on some kind of baking tray. They'll take around 15 minutes, possibly a little bit longer. If you want a really shiny, crispy surface on them, brush them with a bit of beaten egg or some milk, using a pastry brush, just before you put them in the oven.</li>
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And that's all it takes. It looks like a long and complicated process, but really the only time-consuming parts are all the periods of waiting in between stages - the bits where you don't need to be on hand anyway. It really <i>isn't</i> as scary as you may or may not think it is.</div>
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