Yesterday after school I have succeeded in making the impossible happen- I convinced Florek to purchase 2 pairs of new shoes for himself. One of the baits was a promise of chocolate and cherry muffins. Florek hates clothes and shoe shopping, but we got through it. And now there is a tray of warm, delicious muffins on the kitchen top and they are delightful.

I used the recipe from mojewypieki.com, nice and simple, but I added some of the posh cherries we first tried when Molly brought over her cheesecake.

I used 450 g of ripe bananas, the wight before removing the skin, mashed them in the blender, plus 2 eggs. 225 g of plain flour, 3 tbsps of cocoa, 80g of brown sugar, 1 tsp of bicarb soda, 125ml of veg oil and also some chopped dark chocolate, because why not, indeed? Cherries, though quite small were chopped in halves. All nicely combined together, baked in 170 degrees for about 20 minutes.

They are light, moist and seriously delicious.

Recipe from moje wypieki.com, found while looking for something sweet to take to LauDe tomorrow. Something, that would look good next to the lovely bottle of Amarone that is waiting to go too.

They need to be started the day before, the almond dough rests in the fridge overnight for the flavour to develop.

2 egg whites get whipped stiff with a pinch of salt. To this I added 1 tsp of lemon juice, 1 tbsp of freshly grated orange rind and some of my candied orange too( not in the recipe). Some vanilla paste, 160 g of icing sugar – 200 g in the original recipe- and 200 g of ground almonds. I skipped almond extract, yuk! All this nicely combined waited until today.

More icing sugar was needed to roll out, generously dust and roll them out, like gnocchi,shaped roughly like diamonds, then placed on the baking paper and into the oven at 150 degrees. After 6 mins the temperature goes up to 170, then after 6 minutes again down to 150. Mine baked for 20 minutes in total, developed a nice skin, cracked nicely and did not brown up at all.

I like them, in spite of the huge amount of sugar, but I’d probably crank up orange flavour, maybe with Grand Marnier if I had it? Now must put some away for LauDe, before Florek sees them. 🙂

So, after my initial, not very impressive starter, I have wrapped my sourdough equipment and left it in the pantry for a few months. Having chatted with Steve Jaye lately, about food, what else, he suggested he’d send me some of his excellent, 8 month old starter and that I should try again. It took 2 weeks for Royal Mail and Poste Italiane to deliver the parcel, but it got here last week. Amazingly.

I have immediately fed Steve’s starter with 150 g of strong flour and 150 ml of water and left in room temperature for a day. The next day it has more than doubled, I had to take a break from painting the garderoba and get on with baking.

The following is Steve’s method, which has worked in my kitchen twice so far.

500g of strong flour, plus 2 tsps of salt and 2 tsps of brown sugar, combined, plus 300 g of the starter, which has been mixed prior to use, 250ml of warm water. All this into the bowl of kitchen aid and then mixed on very slow speed for 2 minutes, then left to autolyse for an hour, covered. After an hour it needs to be folded and beaten for about 5 minutes, kneaded in kitchen aid for a few more, until smooth with well developed gluten. Then bulk proved for 6-10 hours in room temperature, covered.

Once doubled in size, its formed into a nice ball, handled carefully, so as not to lose any of the rise, placed into a round banneton and it goes to the fridge overnight to develop a flavour.

In the morning the oven gets preheated to 230 degrees with a deep ceramic dish with a lid in my case, or a Dutch oven in Steve’s, or a posh cloche in Ken’s kitchen. I will be treating myself to expensive toys once I get a bit more confident in this field. The ball of dough from the fridge goes onto the floured ring of baking paper, into the preheated dish and into the oven, covered, for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes the lid comes off and a beautiful view like this happens

2 small details not to be forgotten: the loaf needs to be slashed before baking and it needs to be sprayed with water to help form the crust. Also, a tray with boiling water underneath the bread will help.

After 40 minutes there is a beautiful, homemade sourdough. What Florek called- the best homemade bread here yet. This loaf made Florek and Steve talk for the first time in weeks, after business differences kept them quiet recently.

The starter is back in the fridge, I have the taste for much, much more!

Last weekend Molly and Enrico came over for dinner, Molly brought a chocolate cake, which she advertised as ” almost gluten free”. The cake was a hit, we loved it, the kids loved it, I asked for the recipe, though I’m not massive on chocolate cake normally. What was left of the one Molly brought was devoured the next day and both Bankses urged me to get on with it and bake another one, pronto!

Some help from Molly was required, as the recipe was her mum’s and I had no idea how much ” 2 sticks of butter” were, but we got there in the end and yesterday I took out of the oven a well risen, moist, light, great cake. A keeper and not at all complicated.

While the oven was warming up to 160 degrees I got the cake tin ready with baking paper all around, 230 g of butter and 280 g of good quality dark chocolate melted together in bain marie. 5 eggs were beaten whole with 200g of sugar, I did half and half caster and brown. All treated with the whisks of kitchen aid until they were light and fluffy. To this 5 tbsps of plain flour went it, alongside 1, 1/2 tsp of baking powder ( Ewa has just sorted me out with good English baking powder and soda for baking!). Chocolate and butter combo went in, all nicely combined together.

The cake was in the oven for about 1 hour, I kept checking till the stick came out dry; about half way though I covered it with alu foil to make sure it bakes inside, but stays fairly moist on top.

A dusting of vanilla icing sugar completed the picture. Superb cake!