After the recent experience with croissants, instead of picking a recipe for a traditional English scones from a Brit, Mary Berry or maybe Hollywood boy, I didn’t. 🙂 I went to Dorotka’s again and followed her recipe. The result? Nearly perfect scones. I’d have them a touch sweeter maybe, but they’re soft, slightly crunchy on top, delicious and will be enjoyed with coffee tomorrow morning.

I used 400 g of plain flour, 100 g of cold butter, 3 tsps of baking powder, half a tsp of salt, 50 g of sugar and let Kitchen Aid mix it all nicely. 70 g of raisins, 30 g of dried cranberries, 2 eggs beaten and topped up with milk to make 250 ml of liquid. Once added the liquid to the mix, I went to combine the dough by hand, as lots of wise people say that once the scone dough is overmixed, they get tough. Quickly rolled to 1,5 cm, I cut out the scones, brushed them with a bit of egg and sprinkled a touch of cinnamon on. They baked in 220 degrees for 10 minutes.

Had to restrain my child -who was due to have her tea- from scoffing down the whole scone at once. I guess that means she liked them.

Paul Hollywood has got a nice, new series on Food Network, where he travels cities and tastes/makes all sorts of good bakes. Since he visited a place in Paris, where croissants are made daily, I got excited. I thought I must try, it’s not like I have no time for  16 hour bake, right?

Obviously, I chose Hollywood’s recipe. This one:

http://paulhollywood.com/recipes/croissants/

I started yesterday, followed all the instructions, did as I was told. This lunch time there were going to be fresh croissants. I realized they might  not be as spectacular as I’d have hoped when they failed to rise, when the recipe said they’d double in size within 2 hours. After 3 I still placed them in hot oven. They then rose alright, but nowhere near doubled. Lots of butter melted out, the smell was great.  In the end they tasted ok, but they were not light and puffy, like they should have been. Crispy on top, buttery, but not the real deal. I immediately thought- the yeast. Hollywood boy always maintains in his recipes, that dry yeast is BETTER, more convenient, easily. Sorry, Paul,  in my view it’s not better.  Fresh yeast makes doughnuts like clouds, fab pizza dough and probably awesome croissants. I was still chewing on mine, while immediately checking what did Dorota from mojewypieki.com had to say. A lot, she did, she tried 3 recipes and then settled on one from some posh French boy, who recommended FRESH yeast. Which is exactly what I’ll be doing next time I’ll make croissants. Thumbs down Hollywood!

More macaroons. Red food colouring this time and inside a mixture of mixed berry coulis mixed with a touch of cornstarch, cooled and combined with mascarpone and a slosh of cassis.  The shells turned out so good, that I saved and froze 10 and decided to decorate Izzie’s birthday cake with them next weekend. Is the plan. 🙂

An only and obvious choice for Florek’s birthday. We’ve just tasted it, as the recipe said best the next day, but I must say it didn’t benefit from a night in the fridge. We’ll leave it outside in the room temperature till the evening and I’m sure the texture will improve big time.

Small round cake was made out of 100 g of dark chocolate and butter, melted together plus a single espresso and a splash of water( that’s my replacement for a tsp of instant coffee, which I don’t use, so didn’t have any), half a tall glass of plain flour mixed in a bowl together with a touch of soda, 0,5 tsp of baking powder,  2 tsps of cocoa,3/4 glass of muscovado. 2 whole eggs beaten with 35 ml of buttermilk.  All this stirred in together with a spatula, plus a tbps of hazelnut vodka- replacement for rum, either way couldn’t taste any.  Finally about 60 g of raspberries.

It baked in a lined tin for about 50 minutes, 140 degrees.

When baked, glazed with a double cream/milk chocolate mixture, plus extra fresh raspberries.

Happy birthday Florek! 🙂

I think it’s fair to say that I now enjoy baking more than I enjoy eating what I bake.  But time comes during the day, when I’m craving something sweet and then I head straingt to mojewypieki.com, have a look through the page and I always find something I want and something I have all the ingredients for. This one was with  hazelnuts, still one of my top ingredients and although I had no dark chocolate, I decided to chop up an Easter bunny from Ewa, made of milk chocolate.  It all worked, I made half a portion and we’re half way through it and Masterchef hasn’t even started yet. 🙂

50 g of butter, melted and cooled. 2 eggs, separated, whites whipped with a pinch of salt and 50 g of sugar.  Yolks added.  In a separate bowl 50 g of ground hazelnuts, 0,5 tsp of baking powder, 4 tbsps of plain flour and 50 g of grated( or, in my case, taken care of by food processor) chocolate, 0,5 tsp of cocoa- all this mixed and added into the egg mixture, folded gently with spatula. Baked in 180 degrees for about 30 minutes. Finished with a simple glaze, double cream and milk chocolate. Very moreish. 🙂

I liked the look of it on Dorota’s blog (where else), chocolate and matcha is always a winning combo, what do people pay for chocolate bento box in Nobu? That reminds me I haven’t made matcha ice cream in a long time, time to do something about it.

My cake this afternoon is made of half a portion, so that it was enjoyed and not wasted, good decision, there is now half left. Florian seems to be starved of chocolate cake, as he destroyed a large chunk of that half. 🙂 But that’s what makes baking so rewarding, we’ll see if Iz likes it tomorrow.

I used 110 g of butter, creamed with half of my tall glass of sugar, 2 egg added one at a time. A glass of plain flour with 1 tbsp of potato flour, less than 1 tsp of baking powder, a touch of vanilla paste- needn’t have bothered, can’t taste it-and about 1/4 a glass of milk. This mix I then divided in two, added 2 tbsps of cocoa to one and 3 tsps of matcha to the other.

Baked in 150 degrees for about 45 minutes, till the skewer came out clean.

Glazed with a simple chocolate ganache, 50 of dark chocolate melted in 20 g of butter. My own personal touch were a few chopped hazelnuts on top. It is going. Quickly.

Nigella’s.

I came across the recipe when looking for muffins that would be similar to those from M&S I used to buy, the lemon and white chocolate ones.  This recipe appealed to me a lot, the addition of raspberries unplanned, but I had some frozen, so why not indeed.

60 g of melted butter, 200 g of plain flour, 2 tsps of baking powder, 0,5 tsp of baking soda, 130 g of sugar, a pinch of salt.  Nigella’s recipe called for a zest and juice of 1 lemon, I used the zest as asked, but instead of the juice I used 3 tbps of yuzu.  Then about 120 ml of milk, 1 beaten egg. A good handful of chopped white chocolate chips.Dry ingredients mixed with all wet ingredients, only just mixed till combined, I actually used a KA bowl and a spatula.  150 g of frozen raspberries thrown at the end.

Filled the muffin cases, 11 of them, baked in 200 degrees for about 20-22 minutes.  Finished with a little smear of melted white chocolate and yuzu juice. Florian just had 4 and that’s having had pizza for dinner. Therefore good! 🙂

We were supposed to have guests this weekend, but the guests cancelled, so I changed my Ocado shopping list, got rid of some items, added some other and decided to make these, recent from Dorota’s mojewypieki.com.  When it comes to macaroons I do prefer the fruity ones, the lemon, blackcurrant flavours of the filling against sweet meringue, but one has to try things.

I had a little help with preparing the nuts-

The macaroons are made the same way as always, only not with ground almonds, but with finely ground peanuts.  They smelled great in the oven and I was also extra careful not to overmix the Italian meringue with the nuts. Experience now shows that makes them spill and crack in the oven- very frustrating to watch.

There are 2 fillings; chocolate ganache, made of 150 ml of double cream, hot, 150 g of dark chocolate melted in it, excellent, I must say. Not too bitter and once cooled, nice and easy to pipe onto the macaroons.

Then the caramel one. I used the Bonne Maman Caramel spread, 130g  of it mixed with 250 g packet of mascarpone. This one didn’t make me sing. It took quite some time to cool it, but it still spilled out. And when tasting the ready macaroons I decided I’m not getting much of the caramel, so I nuked a bit of the caramel spread in the microwave and drizzled some over the top.

They are lovely. Decadent. Nutty. Sweet, but not sickly. Happy me. 🙂

There’s got to be something sweet baked for the weekend, so I dug deep into mojewypieki.com again and picked this little gem. Good apple pie is never bad, as written before, provided it’s a real deal. The apples here are covered under a sweet duvet of budyn, only made with a bit less milk than the packet suggests.

Shortcrust pastry; 225 g of plain flour, 125 g of butter, 1 egg, 1 yolk, 4 tbsps of icing sugar, 0,5 tsp of baking powder and 1 tbsp of cream, all mixed into a dough, which divided into 2 went to the fridge and freezer respectively.  In the meantime I got my apples ready, not the most awesome apples on earth, just cheapish Co-Op stuff. Lots of sugar, lots of cinnamon, some raisins.

Budyn cooked with 375 ml of milk, not 0.5 litre, as the packet suggests, 2 tbsps of sugar and a touch of vanilla paste added.

The pastry from the fridge went on the bottom of my small, square tray, prebaked for a few minutes, a little sprinkle of breadcrumbs to get the moisture from the apples on the bottom. Apples in, budyn on top. The dough from the freezer onto the budyn, grated on the rough end of the grater. Also added a sprinkle of chopped hazelnuts and baked in 200 degrees for about 35 minutes.

If I were a posh Brit I’d say I rather liked it. 🙂

An intense discussion has been ongoing between friends recently about different approach to healthy eating/fitness/weight loss and stuff.  Most of us, good food lovers would benefit from losing a kilo or two, I, for one, have a stomach that is far from flat. Florek could shed a good 10 kg.

Jana, fitness queen among us, who’s always done some sort of sport for most of her life and now enjoys great body and feels great for it, has suggested somebody’s recipe for an apple tart made of millet, instead of flour.  The idea Jana found interesting I found revolting. I’m all for health, but I refuse to compromise on taste and flavour, so instead of using freaky ingredients, I make half a portion of cake, but a good cake it is. Full of flavour.  Made with butter and flour.

Yesterday Florek treated me to a few pieces of nice baking equipment in Lakeland, including 2 new baking trays. The small square one is perfect for a midweek cake for 3 of us, I tested it today with a lemon drizzle cake, Mary Berry’s. If someone knows how to bake, it’s Mary.

Easy- all the ingredients into the bowl of the Kitchen Aid, worked a couple of minutes- into the oven. The ingredients are; 112 g of butter and caster sugar, 137 ish g of self raising flour, 1 tsp of baking powder, 2 whole eggs, 2 tbsps of milk and a zest of one lemon. That’s all. Into the prepared, lined tin and into the oven for 35 minutes in 180 degrees.

Once baked and slightly cooled, I made lots of little holes with a skewer, so that the lemon syrup went all the way down. The syrup is simply a juice of 1 lemon and about 80 g of sugar- yes, sounds mental, but it tastes great. Citrusy, light, flavoursome.