Panettone

I love panettone - but didn't want to spend over a tenner on one - it seemed pretty straightforward to make, so surely worth a go. Last year I tried a recipe I found on the web, but it wasn't great: bit too dry, not the right balance of fruit and sugar. So when I saw a recipe in the River Cafe's Classic Italian Cookbook - bingo. If Mrs' Rogers and Gray have approved it - I'm in.
They didn't disappoint - it was sensible and delightful all at the same time. Plenty of proving time, plenty of eggs, plenty of fruit, not too much sugar.
I like it best (almost) when its proving - it looks glossy, light and rich.
When baked - my slightly-too-hot-oven nearly got the better of it - but i rescued it in time, and it was really good when cooled.
Being a bread it needs to settle and cool before eating - unlike cake :)
I'll stick with this recipe from now on.

Bagels

Another Bertinet recipe - and a winner.
I made these bagels almost a year ago (! ) and was more successful this time round (see previous bagel attempt).
Instead of dipping the bagels into seeds when they just came out of the boiling water, i scattered the seeds on top of the bagels - this gave better coverage.
Also my oven seemed to be hotter this time round and the bagels came out lovely and golden.
I struggled to keep the hole in the middle - despite feeding a rolling pin through the dough balls as instructed - so that when cut some looked like rolls :) not very bagel-like. But the texture was good and chewy, with a nice crispness on the outside. Good result.

Ciabatta

This is a bread I've been wanting to try for a long time but hadn't had time to schedule in making the ferment (or 'biga') before making the bread, and I wanted to do it using bricks in the oven, to give good lift on such a wet dough.

But I had a couple of days where this was going to  be possible, and so set off for homebase and bagged some paving bricks (flat on top) for 79p each, and then lined the oven floor with them.

Unfortunately they were millimetres out from being able to cover the oven floor - which then led to some interesting mis-shapings as I tried to get the bread in to a small area. And some bread slightly fell over the edges of the bricks, giving some interesting 'hooks' :)
So comedy ciabatta. Which tasted great :)

Lemon drizzle: iced

I watched Raymond Blanc's Kitchen Secrets and he did this lovely thing with Lemon Drizzle loaf: brushed it with apricot glaze and water icing once cooked and cooled.

So we have a delicious light light 3 egg sponge with zest of three lemons, baked in the oven at 180C for about 50 minutes. Then make sugar and lemon juice glaze, and pour it over the cake whilst hot. Allow to cool. Make apricot glaze (heat apricot jam, let down with a little water. Strain, ready to use). Brush cake with apricot. Make water icing - add a little lemon juice to icing sugar. Brush cake with icing - all over.
The apricot glaze keeps the cake very moist and allows the icing to set softly. Its beautiful!!

Brown bread

Not to be outdone by the other day's dense brown bread, I set about trying again.
I mixed 300g wholemeal with 200g white flour. Left it to prove twice before shaping for baking. Then let it double in size on the baking tray, sprinkled with rye flour. Then slashed the top, and baked at 230C (realistically the hottest my oven can ever get) for 10 minutes then turned down the heat to 200C for another 30 mins.
I'm not getting the oven spring I'm after. Really want to get some stones for the oven to see if this helps. I sprayed the oven well as it went in, and after the 10 mins at a higher temperature. Haven't cut into it yet, so not sure of inside texture! Pretty sure its quite open crumb - will update.

Lamb stew, brown bread, cabbage

The lamb stew was made from this lamb stew recipe in the Guardian.
I tried to make it with veal stock. Which is a stupid thing to do on several fronts: a) this is LAMB stew b) I've never made veal stock.
I roasted the veal bones, before adding them to a pan with vegetables (celery, carrot, onion) and herbs (bay, thyme).
It smelled like hooves.
I refused to add tomato paste, or to roast the vegetables first before adding to the stock pot. This was all foolish.
I let it boil, then simmered for 3 hours.
It wasn't long enough. It still tasted of hooves.

So next time I will add tomato paste, roast vegetables, and simmer for at least 8 hours.

Also the lamb cut wasn't good (Sainsbury's not Waitrose). I won't stray again for meat - its just not worth the lower quality.

I also made the brown bread. From 100% wholemeal flour. That wasn't a brilliant idea either. It was very dense. Admittedly it is tasty - but the texture is too dense. A good experiment, but several things to learn: don't use 100% wholemeal flour, let it prove twice before shaping.

Orange shortbread

I've done them before - but they're so good :) we need more.

Treacle tart

My god this was good. Absolutely had to be served with creme fraiche - so the sour note hit through the treacle - then the combination was heavenly.
This was another recipe from college, and a really really good one. I used excellent sourdough bread for the breadcrumbs, 3 lemons zested, and just a regular sweet paste. It was light, airy, sweet, slightly zingy, and with the creme fraiche - unbelievably good. Matt and I agreed it was in the favourites list.

Municipal buns

These hot cross buns were made from a recipe from college. They are very nice, but the fruit portion is tiny! There was something 'municipal' feeling about them.

Pizza, Focaccia, Salad

I really do like making homemade pizza. Favourite topping is definitely roasted pepper, chorizo, mozz, tomato sauce, rocket.
I made the tomato sauce this time - nice and garlicky. Sauted some red onion, garlic. Added tinned tomatoes. Seasoned. Blitzed.
The pizza dough was very wet today, and it was harder to get it crispy (at my oven's temperatures). Last time I remember making it drier on purpose and it worked a lot better. River Cafe recommend making it wet, so that it makes it crispier when baked - but maybe that only works with really hot pizza ovens?
Anyway - it was still tasty.
And I made some focaccia - just because its nice. As it turned out, we ate it for a few days following. Very gratefully received.

Financiers

These were beautiful cakes, but I misread the kind of tin they should be cooked in, and as a result, had problems getting them out in one piece! Hence the cracked tops.
Financiers are made with beurre noisette, almonds and egg whites. A good way to use up egg whites. They are delicious. Very very moreish.
One surprise was that you leave the mixture for 24 hours in the fridge before cooking!
I used the Gordon Ramsay recipe - but only half these quantities:

Makes 18 - 24:
125g lightly salted butter
175g caster sugar
125g ground almonds
25g plain flour
3 medium egg whites, lightly beaten

Make beurre noisette.
Mix the sugar, ground almonds, and flour together in a bowl.
Beat in melted and cooled butter and the egg whites.
Rest in the fridge for 24 hours.
Preheat oven at 200C.
Grease and flour mini-muffin trays.
Spoon into mini-muffin trays.
Bake for 8 - 10 mins.
Serve warm.

YUM.

Baked apples, blueberry frozen yoghurt, lavender shortbread

Now this is the start of things to come. I have the ice-cream maker, so can make gelati, and I have Gordon Ramsey's Desserts book, so I can work through the repertoire of great classic desserts.
He has a recipe for Cumin shortbread, but I wanted to try it with lavender - just the smallest amount so it was fragrant but not soapy - lavender is really strong.

The shortbread was simply lovely. So light. I made 20 biscuits, and we just ate the lot. They were irresistable. I will try some with orange.

The apples were not as successful as I'd hoped. I chose braeburns and they were still quite firm after the cooking time. The one great thing was the peppercorns with the apple. The taste is phenomenal. Its subtle, but magically adds depth and warmth to the apple.
The recipe calls for brushing the apples with soft (but not melted butter) then rolling the apples in demerara sugar. I think I needed to embed the sugar better onto the apple, or use less butter, so that when they go in to bake,  the butter doesn't just slide off the apple. You want it to caramelise. I basted the apples in apple juice, with a touch of vin santo, and the taste is great, but I didn't get the golden caramelly surface I wanted. And at the end of the cooking time, the apples were too hard still. Some tweaks needed for next time.
I love the peppercorn idea tho' and loved getting the accompaniments together - the blueberry frozen yoghurt, and the divine shortbread. If I plan better which flavours go well together, this approach of dessert + gelati + biscuit is really fun.

Foccacia, Bagels, cheeses and hams

After the taste jumble disaster, this was at the opposite end of the repast scale. The foccacia was light, not cakey, not doughy or heavy, and really fragrant with rosemary and sea salt. I was careful with the olive oil too, as too often this is too greasy and heavy. I was delighted with the result. Great thanks to The River Cottage bread book I got from the library.

The bagels were also a surprise success! Chewy and delicious - again not too heavy, and very tasty. And fun to make. I used Richard Bertinet's recipe from Crust and it was brilliant.

Then Matt got lovely cheeses and hams, and a special treat of some Sauternes confit :) We had Roquefort, Davidstow cheddar, Serrano ham from Spain, Italian roast pork loin with herbs. It all went very well together - perfectly delicious. And the bread was still warm and gorgeous. A feast!

Chocolate muffins

Thanks to Ottolenghi for this recipe for Chocolate cupcakes. Its perfect.
I knew I wanted a recipe which had depth and gooey-ness, probably with oil and treacle. This one was exactly it.
I then experimented a bit with the frosting, before just going with what is in the recipe, which suits the muffins perfectly: a rich ganache - chocolate, cream, butter, and a little vin santo (which threatened to make the chocolate seize, but was rescued with more cream. The recipe stated Amaretto, which with its higher alcohol content wouldn't have seized the chocolate).

In the end - the muffins have chunks of chocolate, are soft and gooey, and the slight flavour 'hole' made by the oil and treacle is filled entirely by the ganache on top. It all works out brilliantly - and cake and topping together make each aspect entirely better.

Burnt pain au raisin

There are some days when you trip at the last hurdle. This is one of those days.
I made the croissant dough last night (recipe from Richard Bertinet's Crust ) and proved overnight in the fridge.
Then rolled and rested it.
Made creme patissiere (also from Bertinet's book, not Michel Roux's recipe that I've used before. I wanted to try a different one and see the difference. Bertinet's is thicker and less sweet, better for pastries?)
Rolled out and assembled the pain au raisin.
Proved for 2 hours.
Then put into a hot oven (220C). And then they burnt.  15 minutes was way too long. And the recipe states 18 - 20 mins. I must have had the oven too hot. At that temp our oven loses some definition I think - making the difference between 220 and 240 hard to tell. Must be careful with this in future.
Or perhaps something else in the process? Don't know.
They'll still taste ok - but disappointing. Will make more ;) you know, to test.

Jewel cake, stollen

My aunt made me the most wonderful present - a Jewel Cake.
It has whole brazil nuts, dates, cherries, stem ginger, crystallised fruits - including pineapple, surrounded by very little cake :) It looks spectacular, and called jewel because when you slice it, the light comes through the fruits like jewels. Divine.
Oh - and some stollen ;) that we had stashed in the freezer. It survives freezing exceptionally well!

Sausage rolls

It was definitely time to try puff pastry.
I'd saved the Lescure butter (low water content, unsalted french butter) for this purpose.
The process was really enjoyable, because the pastry becomes so beautiful: smooth pale delicate but robust. Great. Folding, resting, laminating the fat through the pastry was a lovely process.
I bought some 'premium' sausagemeat - slowly cooked some onions with thyme and added to the meat.
Then put together the pastry and meat, and glazed with egg wash.
I found cutting the sausage rolls quite tricky - there is a lot of fat (necessarily) in sausage meat which makes slicing through a bit difficult, so they got a little misshapen where I'd pressed to tightly.
The taste was delicious - really really deeply savoury. The meat juices that come out and cook on the bottom (little black bits) are packed with flavour, and it was all well seasoned.
As a dish they're pretty dirty :) but definitely tasty and fun.

Oh! and the pastry was very fine. Light, flaky, nicely puffy. And half of it is now in the freezer. More on the way...

Croissants - ham and cheese

Matt makes the best cheese/ham/toast concoctions. Perfect balance of cheese, ham, seasoning. He made up these little leftover croissants. Just look at them :) superb!
The ham was the christmas gammon (still going). Croissants homemade the other day. Genius.

Croissants - almond

This was the real point behind making the croissants - they were a vehicle for the creme d'amande I had leftover from the stollen. It was so good that i couldn't face throwing it away - so decided to make some croissants for it.
I made these at the end of a long cooking day - preparing food for 9 people at the weekend, and mainly being preoccupied with these - and they are just lovely.
I'm a happy girl.

(to be very honest, the creme d'amande was very slightly old tasting, but really, it still couldn't knock the joy). Will make properly again.

Croissants

At last! They're here! I've been prepping these for two days now. And they are a vision :) despite being cut a little small, and a smidge overdone, I am very pleased with these - the flavour is delicate, not overpowering or too rich.

I proved the dough in the fridge for 2 days. It was supposed to only be overnight, but events kept me away from the dough. And today - college was closed as their water pipes have burst :S and flooded, so I had some time to devote to these.

The dough looked on the boundary of being overproved, but turned out good.
I found it difficult to get the dough thin enough, it was very springy and kept springing back into itself. Need to find a way of managing it better. Must make it do what I want, not what it wants.

The process is really fun. You make a dough, and leave it to prove very slowly, so the flavour is good.
Then laminate the dough with cold butter - basically making a flaky pastry with dough as the base. I never realised this was what croissants were before :)
Handling the dough was a joy - it felt light and smelled great. Then i cut it and shaped it, went for a run while it proved, then baked it off. Bit of a trial in my very onesided oven, and slightly overdone because i made them a bit small but kept the cooking time the same.
All in all - it was a full time job:
 - first prove for the dough - overnight
 - laminating - rolling, resting (30 mins), x3
 - cutting shaping
 - proving - 2 hours
 - bake - 18 mins :)
But worth it.