GBBO: kugelhopf

I bought chris a kugelhopf mould at the Lille Christmas market about 8 years ago, and we tried it out at the time but sadly the recipe we’d chosen was rubbish and it wasn’t worth the effort. Decided to try it again for European baking week and used a Lorraine pascale recipe from baking made easy. This was totally delicious, especially when you toasted it. My kugelhopf mould is quite small but even so I think the proportions are a bit big. This made a whole kugelhopf plus a full loaf tin. The loaf tin made it much easier to cut and use, particularly for toasting, so I’d definitely do at least one loaf tin if not both next time. I will definitely be making this again, it’d be great for a weekend lunch/ brunch if you had guests, or maybe at Christmas.

450g strong white bread flour
110g dried apricots, finely chopped
250ml tea (or orange liqueur if you’re rich!)
100g ground almonds
10g yeast
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp salt
2 tbsp soft light brown sugar
Zest of 2 oranges
180ml warm milk
3 eggs, beaten
160g melted butter
2 tbsp honey

You could use some almonds for topping (put in mould at very start) but I didn’t bother

Oil the mould, dust with flour and set aside
Soak the apricots in the tea for 30 mins
Put flour, ground almonds, yeast, cinnamon, salt and sugar in a bowl
In another bowl mix together milk, eggs, butter and honey
Add enough of the wet mixture to the dry to make a soft dough. It is softer than most doughs but shouldn’t be too sticky
Knead for 5 mins in electric mixer with dough hook (I wouldn’t fancy doing this by hand as dough is quite soft, but if doing it by hand, 10 mins)
Drain apricots and add to the dough, fold the dough a few times so they are evenly dispersed
Put the dough into the mould, cover loosely with oiled cling film and leave in a warm place until doubled in size. Mine took ages, ended up putting it by the heating oven to try to speed it up
Bake for about 35 mins at 200, until golden brown and comes out easily
Put on baking tray to brown bottom for 5-10 mins
Sprinkle with icing sugar and serve

GBBO: cinnamon buns

Made these for last week’s bake off bake along as it was advanced dough week which, given my lack of success in actual bread week, didn’t massively suit my skills (I need more practice!) In Ikea last week I tried a cinnamon bun and loved it, and now I’ve tried making my own they’re on the permanent collection. So tasty and mega easy. I used my new stand mixer to knead them though, I have a feeling they’d be much harder by hand.
The recipe comes from a guardian blog on the perfect cinnamon buns, but to be fair, they were pretty perfect so fair play! You can read the article here

300ml milk
1 tsp ground cardamom (made from about 25 pods, and I didn’t actually bother crushing them)
50g butter
425g plain flour (I ran out so used a mix with a lot of strong white bread flour, which I’d repeat as they worked well)
7g fast action yeast
60g castor sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg

filling
75g butter
50g Demerara sugar (recipe said dark brown, but we liked the crunch from the Demerara)
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt

Heat the milk and cardamom until nearly boiled
Stir the butter into the hot milk until it melts, then leave to infuse
Put the dry ingredients into the bowl of your stand mixer
Make a well and put in the egg (beat it first)
Add the milk and knead in the stand mixer for 5 mins (it is quite a soft sticky dough
Leave to prove with tea towel over for 30 mins
Mix the ingredients for the filling
Roll out the dough into a large rectangle (recipe said 35 x25) The dough is quite dry and pliable, a bit like pizza dough at this stage
Spread the filling over the rectangle and roll up like a Swiss roll
Use a sharp knife to cut into separate rolls. Recipe said 7 but mine made 12 (so we ate two each!)
Grease a lasagne dish and place the rolls into it
Prove for 30 mins
Bake for 25 mins
Eat. I think they are probably nicest warm! Good excuse to yomp them all!

GBBO: butternut squash and onion quiche

I made this for pie week. It was totally delicious and gave you less calories for a bigger portion than most quiche recipes. It comes from Lorraine pascal’s book, a lighter way to bake.

low fat spread wholemeal pastry
225g wholemeal flour (oddly, morrisons didn’t stock this)
100g light spread (mine was can’t believe)
Salt
2tbsp water

Blitz all ingredients in food processor until clumps start to form
Add a little more water if very dry
Take out of processor and squid he until it comes together in a ball
Knead a little then wrap and chill for 20 mins

tart
2 large red onions
1/2 butternut squash
1 garlic clove
2 eggs
1 egg white
100g extra low fat creme fraiche
100g semi skimmed milk
Seasoning

Roll pastry out to thickness of £1 coin and drape over greased lined tart tin so it goes over the edges
Put baking parchment over it and put baking beads in
Chill for 20 mins before cooking
Bake for 20 mins
Remove beans and paper and cook for 5 more mins to dry out bottom
Make filling while pastry is cooking
Fry onions for 6-8 mins
Chop butternut squash (no need to peel) into 1cm cubes
Add and cook for 6-8 mins
Add garlic for 1 more minute
Leave to cool for a few minutes
Mix eggs, creme fraiche and milk in a jug and season
Add the cooled veg mixture and mix
Pour into pastry case
Bake for 30-35 mins until set

We served this for lunch with a big salad

GBBO: Florentines

I’m getting behind with my cookalong! Still need to make my rye bread from last week but also my pudding from this week, aargh! These were trickier than recipes if normally choose, but to be fair I’d make them again. They weren’t that bad! I used a recipe from nigella’s domestic goddess cookbook, which chris and I felt was nicer than his recipe… But at his work where they’re actually judging it they preferred his 😦 they were wrong!

100g whole blanched almonds (they sell them like this, I was worried I’d have to blanch them myself!)
90g mixed candied peel (nigella says to buy it in whole chunks and cut it, but this is pointless and nowhere normal sells it like this)
40g glacé cherries, chopped
25g butter
90g caster sugar
15g plain flour
150ml double cream
100g dark chocolate
50g white chocolate (nigella says 200g total but I found 150g was plenty. Use whatever ,mix you like)

Start by chopping the almonds. This is tricky and takes ages. I tried with the processor which worked quite well!
Chop the cherries and peel if you haven’t already
Melt butter and sugar without letting it catch
Add the flour, as if you’re making a roux for a white sauce. It should form a thick paste
Remove from heat and whisk in cream. I expected this to be tricky but it was easy. I used a hand whisk even.
Put back on heat to beat out any lumps, them remove again and stir the almonds, cherries and peel in
Drop spoonfuls on a tray to make little blobs. Space well as they spread out
Bake at 190 for 10-12 mins. I undercooked mine which is how I lost, make sure they’re browned a little
Give them 2-3 mins to firm up
When they can be easily lifted use a thin spatula to remove them from tray.
Melt your chocolates, separately. Use a brush to brush each one into the back of a few Florentines. Use a fork to create the traditional patterns on this
Nigella reckons this makes 30 but I only got about 20 from it

GBBO: Swiss roll

Yay, a new series of great British bake off! We LOVE this programme! And now we get to enjoy it for most of the week… It’s on tv properly on Wednesday and there’s a spin off on Friday, but we are also going to bake one item from the show each week, whichever we most fancy. Week one was cake week, so we are doing the signature bake, a Swiss roll. I proved I definitely shouldn’t go on the show with my effort, but I think I did a pretty good job considering I haven’t made one since year 7. Although to be fair, back then my Swiss roll was so good I made quite a few for family teas. I decided to do a fancy peach Melba one, which as an added bonus was really low calorie (you know, for a cake). Actually Swiss roll is generally not the worst thing in the world as it doesn’t have butter in.

My flavour was pretty good, but sadly my actual Swiss roll didn’t really work at all. I used a recipe from good food magazine, which very rarely fails me, but it didn’t really rise. I used my lovely new gadget, a stand mixer (which perhaps means I can go on the programme as they use them all the time), which was really handy for this. However, in my recipe you whisked the eggs and sugar together then folded in the flour. I think I should have used a higher setting when whisking (I didn’t see quite how many there were) as I don’t think I did it enough, but the main problem was when folding in the flour. I didn’t want to do too much as it would knock the air out. But I couldn’t then get all the lumps out. So it really didn’t rise very much (or at all!) It rolled well though so not all bad. Anyway, I am going to try another Swiss roll, to a different recipe (probably Chris’s if he ever blogs it) but probably a really basic jam and cream one. But not going to blog my actual roll recipe as it wasn’t great. Here are the tips I’ve picked up for next time though!

-whisk the eggs more!
-sift the flour. Although you generally don’t need to I think for is it really does need to be a bit finer.
-grease the paper with butter not spray oil as it does tend to stick
-this is one from the programme… Don’t bother with cuts to help it roll… It doesn’t help!
-but do pre-roll in extra baking paper, that worked well

And here is what I put in the filling, as this was nice and easy. Very loosely based on a good food one:
Fromage frais (to keep it low fat)
Custard powder
Icing sugar (not much needed)
Frozen raspberries
Peaches (I used 2) I chopped these and put them in raw, but the feedback seemed to be that I should have cooked them a little

I basically whipped the fromage frais, custard and icing sugar in the new stand mixer, stirred in the fruit, and rolled it all up. The flavour was great, if I do say so myself! This week… Florentines. I love Florentines, whoop whoop! Fancied making a bar, like they sell at the cafe at carsington, but can’t find a recipe so going to start with the normal ones. Watch this space…