Sunday 20 May 2012

Chelsea Buns



Sift 500g Strong Plain Flour with a teaspoon of salt (I warm the flour in the microwave for 30 seconds. Tip a sachet of dried yeast (7g) into the middle of the flour. Warm 300ml of milk and add to the flour with the egg. Mix together to form a dough, knead for 10-15 minutes until soft and springy.

Put the dough into greased bowl and cover with clingfilm. Leave for an hour to rise.

Knock back and roll out into a rectangle. Brush with 25g of melted butter and sprinkle with 75g of soft brown sugar, a generous amount of cinnamon and 150g of sultanas or mixed fruit. Roll up into along sausage and cut into slices - about 3cm.

Place slices onto a lined baking tray and cover with a damp tea towel and leave for about 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 190 degrees C or Gas Mark 5. Bake buns for 20-25 minutes.

Saturday 12 May 2012

Mushroom Fakecake



Every Saturday, once G has gone to work and I am alone, I make myself a cheese and mushroom pancake. It's definitely one of my favourite snacks and takes me back twenty years when I was pregnant with my daughter R and would visit Beaus creperie on shopping trips to Canterbury. This restaurant was run by the nicest people and the crepes were gorgeous, although cheese and mushroom was the best and I would always have two.

Disaster! Today I went to the fridge and there weren't any eggs! I had cheese and I had mushrooms....but no eggs. I did have some tortilla wraps in the freezer and, after frying off the 'shrooms I warmed the wrap up in the pan with grated cheese, threw on the fungi and the mandatory (ode to Beaus) dried herbs, salt and loads of pepper. It was crispier and I had to fold it to eat it, but it was good.

Sunday 6 May 2012

Accidental Cake



    A few months ago, rather than stretch the pennies and buy the posh vanilla in the brown bottle, I bought a smaller cheaper bottle...well that's what I thought until, whilst mixing brownie batter, a waft of Almond alerted me to my mistake - a smaller cheaper bottle of almond flavouring. I am quite generous with vanilla and so there was no hiding the almond impostor. Ah well, more cocoa helped a little.

Yesterday I decided to make vanilla cakes (I'm not using the C- word prefix anymore!) as I has promised G I would. Yes, you've guessed it, in went a gallon of Almond Flavouring! I was so cross with myself, I thought I had thrown the bottle away weeks ago and replaced it with Vanilla? No, it was still in the cupboard waiting to unleash it's unwelcome taint on the next bake. Now don't get me wrong, I do like almond and can easily chomp my way through the marzipan off cuts from the Christmas cake, but almond flavouring has it's place and the fakeness of the stuff I bought left your mouth in shock and can ruin anything just like an un-rinsed soapy cup which can ruin a perfect cup of tea and leave your mouth tasting like a super-clean toilet.

I was going to throw the batter out and start again, but I had made a lot of it and so the only option was carry on. With blueberries and some lemons lurking around the kitchen I added lemon juice to the batter and half filled a loaf tin, then a layer of the fruit and a generous swathe of Lemon Curd then topped off with the remaining batter. Baked off, cooled and then drizzled with hot lemon syrup. Not bad.