Iced buns - a Tea Time Treat this weekend?

I don't normally hold with reposting, but Karen from Lavender and Lovage mentioned the Tea Time Treats challenge on Twitter, and although I'm going to make some eccles cakes tomorrow I think of these iced buns as the ultimate tea time treat - in a real regresssion to my childhood. They're also ideal as a weekend project if you want to stay in the warm, and busy yourself in this post Christmas lull.

Making the buns was straightforward, as regular readers know, I like breadmaking - I find the kneading and proving a soothing, restful process (I never said I was normal) and despite these being a fairly vigourous knead, I spent a happy afternoon pottering in the kitchen.

I love that the icing is water icing (I think the adults amongst you call it glace icing, but I call it water icing with the Brownies and so that's what we're calling it here) as it just reinforces, what a lovely, family bake these are. Kids could easily help with kneading, shaping the dough and icing the buns. It's only when you start to want to pipe the cream and jam that this becomes properly technical.

As I may have mentioned on twitter I was blown away by the evenness of my bake, and how lovely the buns looked when they came out of the oven. It was quite a pull to leave them to cool.

I used home made jam from earlier in the summer, and because I like things jammy, refrained from piping this on, instead spreading the cut inside of the bun with the warmed, fruity jam.

Because 12 buns is simply too many to have in my house at any one time, I gave 8 of these away as a Random Bake of Kindness, to my upstairs neighbours. I've saved 4 for Mark and I though. 

The recipe I used was adapted from Paul Hollywood's Iced buns - please see my updated post for my own full method. 

Great British Bake Off - Technical Challenge: Iced Buns

For the record, these are NOT Iced Fingers. They don't have cream and jam in. These are iced buns. So there Great British bake off. I know this as I was never allowed the ones with cream and jam, as 'they weren't for children' so this was a natural place to start my investigation into the Great British Bake Off technical challenges. I will be ignoring the macarons. Macarons terrify me. If you start talking macarons I WILL hide behind the sofa.

Inspired by Utterly Scrummy and the post show masterclasses, I thought I'd have a go at some of the technical challenges from the Great British Bake Off. No I'm not practicing for next year before you ask, and yes there is more than a passing resemblance between me and Jo, and yes we're both from Essex, I'm just blonder.

Making the buns was straightforward, as regular readers know, I like breadmaking - I find the kneading and proving a soothing, restful process (I never said I was normal) and despite these being a fairly vigourous knead, I spent a happy afternoon pottering in the kitchen.

I love that the icing is water icing (I think the adults amongst you call it glace icing, but I call it water icing with the Brownies and so that's what we're calling it here) as it just reinforces, what a lovely, family bake these are. Kids could easily help with kneading, shaping the dough and icing the buns. It's only when you start to want to pipe the cream and jam that this becomes properly technical.

As I may have mentioned on twitter I was blown away by the evenness of my bake, and how lovely the buns looked when they came out of the oven. It was quite a pull to leave them to cool.

I used home made jam from earlier in the summer, and because I like things jammy, refrained from piping this on, instead spreading the cut inside of the bun with the warmed, fruity jam.

Because 12 buns is simply too many to have in my house at any one time, I've given 8 of these away as a Random Bake of Kindness, to my upstairs neighbours. I've saved 4 for Mark and I though.  

Ingredients

Dough

500g/1lb 2oz strong white flour
50g/1¾oz caster sugar
40g/1½oz unsalted butter, softened
2 free-range eggs
2 x 7g/¼oz sachets instant yeast

2tsp salt

150ml/5fl oz warm milk

140ml/4½fl oz water

Icing

200g/7oz icing sugar
5 tsp cold water

Filling

200ml/7fl oz whipping cream
100g/4oz strawberry jam
icing sugar for dusting

Method

Preheat the oven to 220C/425F/Gas 7.

To make the dough, place all the ingredients into a large bowl, holding back a quarter of the water. Stir the mixture with your hands, then slowly add the remaining water to form a dough and knead in the bowl for four minutes.

Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead well for 10 minutes or until the dough is smooth and elastic.

Return the dough to the bowl, cover with a damp tea towel and leave to rise in a warm place for one hour.
Divide the dough into 12 pieces, each about 70g/2½oz, then roll into balls and shape into fingers about 13cm/5in long.
 Place the dough fingers onto a greased baking tray, leaving space for them to double in size, then set aside in a warm place for 40 minutes. They should just touch each other when they’ve risen.

Bake in the oven for 10 minutes then set them aside to cool.

 

 

 

For the icing, sift the icing sugar in a wide bowl and gradually stir in the cold water to form a thick paste. I needed far less than 5tbsp of water to get the thickness needed to coat the top of the buns. Well, actually a lot more than 200g icing sugar as I blithely trusted Paul Hollywood and added all the water.

Dip the top of the cooled fingers into the icing, smoothing it with your finger, then leave to set on a wire rack

Lightly whip the cream and spoon it into a piping bag fitted with a small nozzle.

Sliced the iced fingers horizontally, leaving one long edge intact.

Warm 1tsp of jam per bun and spread one side of the iced buns with the warmed jam

Pipe in a generous line of whipped cream into the middle of each finger, Dust the iced fingers with icing sugar and serve (or give away)

 

 

Good Morning, Good Morning to you! Scottish Morning Rolls

Welcome to part three of my series of recipes from Bread Matters by Andrew Whitely. If you haven't seen the other insallments, then look here, and here for Wholemeal Bread and Milk bread, which introduce you to my somewhat wittery prose, and also two different ways of making bread. This post looks at using a sponge and dough method.

Well I have to say I could get used to not working, it's only day four, and I've been so busy. Naturally I've injured myself, but that aside, I've been swimming each day, run errands, done lots of walking and have got myself closer to up to date on life, the universe and everything. It's surprising how much there is to do and being poorly has naturally got in the way of late.

Anyway, as Monday dawned, bright and beautiful, I was already ahead of the game, the sponge for my Scottish morning rolls was merrily doing it's thing on the window ledge. I'd made it Sunday afternoon, in pretty much minutes, covered it with a carrier bag, and left it be until the morning. Like sourdough, a sponge appeals to me because a lot of the work is done by the dponge itself, my intervention is practically nil. Not that I'm completely lazy or anything. Well not much.

Anyway, Andrew says in the book that this recipe can be applied to all kinds of bread - and I think I'll try it with a loaf next week sometime. What you'll notice, in comparison to both the wholemeal and milk breads is the reduction in the amount of yeast and the extension of the initial prove. This for me is brilliant, and for people like myself who avoid eating bread because of that bloated feeling commercial bread can give you, this doesn't. At all (for me, anyway) because the yeast has fed upon the sugar available. The recipe makes a dozen rolls (although if you made slightly more even sized ones than I did you could easily get a baker's dozen)

The overnight sponge

1tsp fresh yeast
130ml tepid water
50g stoneground strong wholemeal flour
100g strong white flour

Dissolve the yeast in the water, and add it to the flours
Mix until all the ingredients are thoroughly combined (I do this with my hands) You don't need to knead the sponge, since the gluten develops over time.
Put this into a big mixing bowl
Cover with a lid or poythene bag, and leave at room temperature for 12-18 hours. As it was so hot last weekend, I left it on the window ledge so that it was slightly cooler.

Off to bed for me, only to wake up in the morning (very geekily) super excited about my sponge and dough. Yes I know I need to get a life. What can I say!

The final dough

Overnight sponge
350g Strong white flour
100g Stoneground strong wholemeal flour
1 tsp salt
270g water
1 tablespoon olive oil

So Andrew says (I'm calling him Andrew now, I figure three recipes and repeated bedtime reading, we're past Mr Whitely these days) to have a good sniff of the "fruity, beery, slightly vinegary aroma" Don't do this too early in the morning. Certainly not before your first cup of tea. The reason it's collapsed down (that's what's supposed to happen) is because the yeast has run out of food, and the gluten collapses because the enzymes have stretched it beyond where it wants to be during fermentation. The enzymes working like this, so slowly really soften the gluten.

Mix the ingredients together into a soft dough
Knead until it is silky and slightly stretchy - I needed to flour my worktop more than usual as this was a sticky dough for me. I expect the heat didn't help.
Leave to rise for 1 hour - this gives the yeast an opportunity to use the fermentable sugar in the new flours.
Divide the dough into 12 equal pieces (if I could find my baker's friend, this would be ideal, but it seems to have got lost in the move so I used a sharp knife. Something tells me that tearing at the dough would knock too much of the air out of it).
Mould each one by rolling it on the work top. I rolled them into a round between my (floured) hands much as you would playdough. Then dip it into a bowl of flour - I used the malted flour I haven't used since the first wholemeal loaf.
Place the rolls about 2cm apart on a lined baking tray. Give each roll space to rise.
Cover the tray with a loose polythene bag, I left them to rise until doubled - this took about an hour in my very warm flat. You know they are ready when they are touching their neighbours.
Bake in a hot oven - 230 degrees - for 5 minutes, then turn the heat down to 210 degrees and finish off. Mine took about 20 minutes.
To check, tear one bap away from the others, and check it's top and bottom crust. I know Andrew says not to, but I tap the bottom and if it sounds hollow then that to me says it's done.

These have been great. Kept in the breadbin, they've lasted beautifully over the week. Mark has had them for lunch each day, and I had them yesterday, somewhat overfilled with pulled ham from the hock mixed in a mustardy mayonaisse. A slightly sweet, malty roll that's soft but not pappy, and has a tasty but not mouth killing crust. Definitely a winner.

A pizza hut... a (homemade) pizza hut

*doing actions* I'm going to get so much spam from that title aren't I? Still, what can you do. Sometimes you just have to use certain lyrics, and it's a camp song after all.

Apologies for the dodgy lighting on that picture, and for the decidedly freeform pizza, clearly I decided to forgo traditional shapes and be unshackled by convention. Or something.

This week has been quiet, another trip to hospital to contend with, because of another blinding migraine. Thank goodness for scheduled posts I suppose. Providing my head and vision stay put for the next week or so, I'm going to be doing some work to the blog, changing tags and whatnot so it's a bit more organised. Or that's the plan anyway.

Anyway, tonight I was home alone as M had gone to visit his parents and I wanted to make pizza. There is some sad news to pass on. Mabel has, well, passed on. Which is sad. I have no idea what happened, I fed her with gluten free flour last week and she kind of exploded, so we had to split her between two containers, and now she is not leavening at all. This has meant the emergency purchase of some yeast, and begging tweets to Doughblogs and my friend Matt for a new leaven.

Anyway, pizza. It isn't something I cook or eat with any regularity - it's a bit 'bready' for me, and with the weight watching and all that's going on at the mo, is probably something I should be avoiding. All of that said, another 3 days of vomitting and nausea this week mean I'm not overly fussed if I can eat at all and keep food down. And, as I'm a bit of a fragile little flower at the mo I thought home made would be best.

Pizza base

500g strong bread/ 00 flour
1.5tsp dried yeast (small palmful of fresh)
1.5 tsp sugar
2 tblsp Olive Oil (I used extra virgin as I'm sure I can taste it)
1 tablespoon sea salt, crushed up in pestle and mortar
325 ml warm water
Fresh Rosemary, and dried oregano

Put your yeast, sugar, water and olive oil in a jug and stir. Leave for 5 minutes to activate
Put the flour and salt in a pile on a clean worktop, make a hole in the middle.
Snip your rosemary (I used about 3 stalks) over the flour and add a palmful of dried oregano
Pour in the yeasty liquid slowly (I do it in about 3 batches) mixing in the flour from the outside to the middle so it doesn't leak all over the side.
This is a recipe that requires a pinny by the way
When you've added all the liquid, pick up any remaining flour by kneading your dough over it until your side is relatively free from loose flour.
Knead for a good 10 minutes. I count this as exercise.
Put somewhere warm to prove for an hour
Knock back, split into 4 portions and roll/ press out into a pizza shape. My pizza shape is dodecahedron. Ish.
Leave for a good 20 minutes to rest, while you're doing this preheat your oven (and pizza stone if you have one) to really hot
Put dough on pizza stone
Put sauce and toppings on
Cook for 20 minutes or so
Eat in front of Come Dine with Me with fingers.
Avoid spilling on new sofa and cushions
I only managed half of one of these portions, but someone with a bit more appetite (and who hadn't eaten quite a few chocolate fingers whilst doing the housework) could probably manage more.

Easy peasy pizza.
Part 2 of this post, is for my friend Sarah and on pizza sauce. Hopefully, should be up in the next few days... (famous last words of course)

Our Time for Old Friends (and new)

Continuing on with my breadmaking/ baking/ general yeast obsession, I spent some of my sick leave trawling the internet for different recipes, things as a working woman I wouldn't usually have the time or the inclination to work with. I knew that I wanted to experiment a little with the idea of 'natural' yeasts and a little digging came up with 'Amish Friendship bread' which, oddly enough is neither Amish nor is it bread. No I'm not sure either.


The 90's equivalent of a chain letter (only minus any dire consequences for not passing it on), this recipe 'did the rounds' as it were with both the recipe and starter passed from friend to friend and a little online digging shows that even today it has its devotees. Basically the process is that you are given a starter (or in my case, make your own) and you spend ten days feeding and stirring this. Like any starter it smells very yeasty; of strong, slightly sour beer I found and it's important that it's kept in a warm place. This was harder than I imagined, as our house can be somewhat chilly at the best of times, and mid-January is not the best of times - it has worked however which is testament to the resilience of my starter *cough* or just blind luck! After the ten day process you then combine a portion of your starter into your loaf (or loaves), portion off 3 to pass on to friends, and are left with another final portion which enables you to start the process over again.


Today is my first day ten, so my first Friendship bread has been baked, well baked and grilled, but lets say no more of that shall we? Right, moving swiftly along... I followed the recipe I had to the letter, and ended up with a fairly dense cake, that most resembles a much lighter bread pudding (not bread and butter pudding, but the 70's favourite beloved in our house when we were children and my mum used her crock pot, a lot). However, from what I've read you can pretty much use your starter as a basis for any adaptation; bearing in mind that a lot of these recipes are American and rely on flavoured 'pudding mixes.' I think different spices, dried fruit and nuts, fruit purees and other additions like cocoa powder would all add different dimensions to the finished product.


What I really enjoyed about this recipe and process has been the time it has taken, as the famous poem says

"What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?"

So much in my life is done at speed, and one of the things I'm really learning to appreciate (well in truth, being forced to) whilst recuperating is that some things do take time, and actually there's something that takes you back to the basics of baking in working with a recipe that does take 10 days. I am really looking forward to passing my starter on to friends and family and working on variations of the recipe. It's actually something I could really see as being a fun project for children too and am thinking of ways to work it into our Guiding programme for Thinking Day - Guiding Friendship bread perhaps?


So there you have it, let's be retro and resurrect a 90's trend... Friendship bread.


Recipe


Stage One - Feeding your starter


Important things to note about this is not to use any metal implements at all, so you need ceramic, wood or plastic spoons and bowls. I stored my starter in a tupperware with a vent, and kept it in the kitchen. Measurements are American quantities - I have cups so it's not a problem but usual convert with 1 cup equalling 250g.




Day 1 - receive the starter (the recipe for the starter is below)
Day 2 - stir
Day 3 - stir
Day 4 - stir
Day 5 - Add 1 cup each flour, sugar and milk.
Day 6 - stir
Day 7 - stir
Day 8 - stir
Day 9 - stir
Day 10 - Add 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar and 1 cup milk.

Divide into 4 containers, with 1 cup each for three of your friends and 1 cup for your own loaves. As an aside here, I had enough starter for 3 cups for friends, 1 cup for my loaves and 1 cup to keep for my next batch.



Give friends the instructions for Day 1 through Day 10 and the following recipe for baking the bread.


Stage Two - making your bread

After removing the 3 cups of batter, combine the remaining cup of Amish Friendship Bread starter with the following ingredients in a large bowl:

2/3 cup oil
3 eggs
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
1 to 1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 cup sugar
2 cups plain flour
1 1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. bicarbonate of soda

Using a fork beat by hand until well blended (I used my hand mixer)
You can add 1 cup raisins and 1 cup nuts (optional - I added 1 cup of sultanas that had been soaked in tea)
Grease two loaf pans with butter, sprinkle with sugar instead of flour.
Bake at 325 for 1 hour (don't start it off under the grill).
Cool 10 minutes, remove from pans.
Makes two loaves (in 2lb loaf tins) of Amish Friendship Bread.

Starter Recipe

7 g active dry yeast
60 ml warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
375 g all-purpose flour, divided
600 g white sugar, divided
710 ml milk

In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in water. Let stand 10 minutes.
In a 2 quart container glass, plastic or ceramic container, combine 1 cup flour and 1 cup sugar. Mix thoroughly or flour will lump when milk is added.
Slowly stir in 1 cup milk and dissolved yeast mixture.
Cover loosely and let stand until bubbly.
Consider this day 1 of the 10 day cycle. Leave loosely covered at room temperature.

Cake and Starter #2

Oh and today's song title is from Merrily We Roll Along, that I saw performed a few months back by Mountview Musical Theatre students. It is a beautiful performance piece, and Our Time is a stunning piece of music. I know I'm not normally at all obscure in my references, but as MT goes, Sondheim is pretty much god and this is no exception.

You've been Galindafied...

Elphaba: [downstage centre, practicing alone] Toss Toss [flicks hair] Toss Toss
Fiyero: [slightly upstage watching her. Moves downstage, grinning] You've been Galindafied! [...A beat... He mimics Galinda] Toss Toss! [Another beat. Sincerely] You really don't have to do that you know.

OK, so out of context it doesn't quite work - but if you know your musical theatre in general, and Wicked to be specific you'll know what I'm on about. If you don't. Go. Now. If you're in London to the Apollo Victoria, if you're elsewhere - investigate it! This weeked I did some Galindafying of my own. To pasta, not a person. And it didn't involve tossing. I'm not explaining this well am I? Galindafying, means to pretty something up, normally to make it popular, pink and sparkly. The end result being that one can hang with the right cohorts, be good at sports, and know all one needs to know to be popular a la Helen Dallimore or even Kristen Chenoweth (look them up if you don't know, you will be tested later)True story! Only I did it to pasta, just the prettying up however, I don't imagine that the ravioli is flirting with the fennel it's next to in the freezer.

Following the epic trip to Borough, we had decided that after a suitable rest and pot (or two) of tea, we would cook up a storm. One of us being somewhat cheffily disposed, the other more of a chuck it all in and hope for the best (that's me by the way, in case you were wondering) we figured that between the two of us we should be able to invent something without the aid of recipe books and merely with the ingredients we had purchased that very morning - there was method in some of the madness of our Borough shopping.

In actual fact, between us we managed to knock up a veritable feast, including the Galinda pink pasta! Which was actually, beetroot and goats cheese ravioli; sweet with enough of a bite from the goats cheese to not be overpowering. We also made pappardelle with a wild mushroom sauce, along with a fennel salad, and an amahzing dish of roasted figs with heather honey and creme fraiche (guess who was responsible for that one). I say we, seeing as the figs took around 45 seconds to prepare (my sort of dish!) I sort of hung around passing things helpfully, wiping mushroom and taking a highly overkeen interest in onions. I'm sensing a future as a Commis chef *sigh* At least I got an apron though!

Succeses of the day: Your author can now make pasta (see picture above), and chop onions like a real chef! I've even taken to making things with onions in just to demonstrate to the cats how good I am. Also figs can just be thrown in the oven and left for oooh hours before they spoil. Also Ratatouille is an epic film. Watch it. Anyone can cook. Never a truer word spoken.

This week the salty green sludge has been finished (thank the Lord, and don't mention the rest that's in the freezer, I'm going to try to deny it's existence until such time as I am so hungry to not care). Bread has not been made as the local supermarkets have taken to lying about their abilities to provide yeast. I am not happy about this at all. Note to supermarket bakery departments: You CAN give out fresh yeast to customers who request it. You CANNOT sell it to them however. For the love of God please read and inwardly digest before I completely lose my rag and start writing complaint letters. Lots of them. /endrant]

However, we can confirm that the seasons have definitely changed as the first batch of lifechanging soup was made tonight (although there has been a small, cream based hiccup with that; but I blame the meds, and being overtired). Speaking of which it's time for me to sign off. There are a few more piccies to add to this post, but they're on my phone as my camera was cleverly left at home at the weekend and I've not worked out how to move them from phone to computer. Yet. I'll add them as soon as I do just so you can see the Galinda pinkness of the ravioli.