Spring onion and red chilli cornbread muffins

Posted: May 7, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Baking, Bread Baking | Tags: , | 4 Comments »

I vividly remember the first time I ate cornbread, in a restaurant attached to a Best Western somewhere along the west coast of America. It was amazing – light, fluffy, tender crumbed, sweet and savoury all at once and melting with butter and sweetcorn. I think I liked it so much because it tasted a lot like cake but it was a legitamate part of dinner.

This cornbread recipe is definitely a savoury one, but its equally delicious as the first one that got me hooked. If you’re a bread maker – may I suggest adding cornbread to your reportoire?

A note on cornmeal – I typically buy coarse cornmeal from my local health food shop but your local supermarket will usually also stock at least fine cornmeal such as these ones

Makes 12 large muffins -Recipe adapted from Home Cooking Made Easy by Lorraine Pascal

First, preheat your oven to gas mark 3/370F/170C

  • 220g fine or coarse cornmeal
  • 90g plain flour
  • 1 tsp light brown sugar
  • 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 1 egg
  • 200g natural yoghurt
  • 300ml milk
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 200g tinned sweetcorn (drained)
  • 30g olive oil
  • dried chilli flakes (quantity up to how spicy you like your muffins!)
  • 1 bunch of spring onions, trimmed and sliced
  • plenty of salt and black pepper

Mix the chopped spring onions, chilli flakes, sweetcorn, yoghurt, milk and egg in a bowl and then add in the dry ingredients

Mix it all up! It does not look or taste remotely good at this stage but it will soon!

Bake for around 30 minutes until firm and browned

Enjoy! They’re particularly good with chilli or soup!

x Kerry

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Focaccia bread recipe from The Great British Bake Off

Posted: September 12, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Bread Baking, Homemade | Tags: , , , , , , , | 13 Comments »

Yes, this is it! That troublesome focaccia from The Great British Bake Off that caused so many problems for some of the bakers. I’m happy to report, with slightly more than a smidgen of smugness, that my focaccia turned out perfectly! However I definitely had an edge thanks to having watched the contestants struggling with it first – I followed Paul’s recipe to a T and made sure to add ALL of the water!

Here’s what you need to make the bread – good news – its probably all stuff you already have in your cupboard/garden! Just a note on the quantities – I halved Paul’s original recipe as it made two loaves – the resulting focaccia was exactly perfect for two people for dinner. If you want to feed more

  • 250g strong white flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 sachet dried easy blend yeast
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 200ml cold water
  • olive oil, for drizzling
  • fine sea salt
  • 2 tablespoons chopped rosemary (about one sprig – if you don’t have a rosemary plant you can buy it in the supermarket)

First, measure out the flour, olive oil, salt and yeast into a large bowl. Put the yeast and salt on opposite sides of the bowl as the salt will kill the yeast if it gets a chance.

Now, add 150ml of the water, leaving roughly 50ml to be added. Stir the mix into a dough with a wooden spoon. Gradually add the remaining water.

Important – at this point, all your bread making instincts will be telling you that the dough is too watery. But FIGHT the urge to add more flour (like that poor bloke on the bake off!).

Coat your hands with olive oil and start kneading the dough in the bowl for around 5 minutes. It will be annoyingly sticky, but the focaccia will taste amazing. PERSEVERE! Be prepared to add more olive oil and wash your hands often!

After kneading it in the bowl for 5 minutes, I turned it out onto an oiled chopping board and kneaded for another 5 or so minutes. Suffice to say there are no pictures of this because my hands were both completely covered in white goo.

I have to say, it was a very strange experience compared with the type of breads that I more typically make, and I can completely see why the bake-off contestants went awry. You have to just accept that the dough will completely stick to your hands and get on with it the best you can.

Once you think you’ve kneaded it enough, put the dough into an oiled bowl to prove. The first proving should be for around an hour, or until its doubled in size. I couldn’t detect a massive size difference in my dough post-proving and thought that the recipe had gone disastrously wrong at this stage. But I carried on regardless, and after about an hour I transferred the dough into a rectangular tin lined with parchment paper. Push the dough to the corners of the tin, and push your fingers into the dough to give it the dimpled focaccia appearance.

Leave to prove in its tin for another hour, covered in a tea towel. Near the end of the second proving time, preheat your oven to gas mark 7. Just before you’re ready to pop it in the oven, sprinkle the focaccia generously with sea salt (I use Saxa), chopped rosemary and a couple of tablespoons of olive oil.

Once its out of the oven, I garnished with more fresh rosemary.

This focaccia bread knocked my socks off when, after the seeming failure of it to rise or behave, it produced amazing bread which Lee declared the best ever! Hurrah!

Look – my focaccia has the dimpled air holes that Paul said was the trademark of successful focaccia! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!

I think we can all agree that the lesson here is never question Paul Hollywood! (And never question Mary Berry going without saying!).

Yum – make this soon – its amazing! What’s your favourite kind of bread? Focaccia is definitely up there for me – I love the rosemary/salt/olive oil combo!

The Great British Bake-Off episode 3!

Posted: August 31, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Baking | Tags: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »
Photo of focaccia bread, made and taken by Dvo...

Image via Wikipedia

What did you think of last nights episode? I loved it as I love bread. I love rosemary bread. I love honey wholewheat bread.  I could eat freshly baked bread at every meal and never, ever get sick of it. In case you missed the episode, Yasmin was the star baker (her bread basket was amazing) and Ian and Avashi went home.

Things we learned

  1. FLOUR. CAN. EXPLODE. Be vigilant bakers!
  2. Focaccia is amazing – I’ll be trying Paul’s recipe for myself in the next couple of weeks and sharing the results with you!
  3. Mel and Paul banter is hilarious

Next week – yummy looking biscuits, brandy snaps, macaroons and more tears over the mixing bowl!

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The Great British Bake Off episode 2

Posted: August 24, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Baking, Just for fun | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »
The Great British Bake Off Scone Palace Scotland

Image by Tour Scotland Photographs via Flickr

What did you think of The Great British Bake Off last night? I really enjoyed it but it wasn’t my favourite as I’m not really pastry’s number one fan (thats not to say I wouldn’t eat a slice of homemade tarte au citron if it were offered but its just not my favourite thing). I was quite surprised that ‘the handsome one’ stayed in despite his pastry disaster, but at the same time I’m sure cooking under those conditions is incredibly stressful and even the best of us would probably mess up our most tried and tested recipe!

I am very excited about next weeks episode though – I love bread! Especially foccacia bread – in fact I’ve been meaning to make some for a while, so I think I’ll make some using the same recipe the contestants use and see how it turns out.

Fun bake off fact – Mary Berry is 76 years old – I hope I look that good in 50 years time!

Some Bake-off links for you!

The recipes from the series so far! They also have some great videos on how to ice cupcakes too!

The Great British Bake-off recipe book (which I’m hearing great things about) – is just £10 on amazon.

Maison cupcake did a great post on the contestants for this year so now you can follow them on twitter and read their blogs!

Holly’s blog Recipes from a normal mum

Edd’s (last years winner) blog The Boy who Bakes. He also has a cookbook coming out in a couple of weeks

Ruth’s (last years runner up) blog The Pink Whisk - I’ve been reading this for a while – its a great blog

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Sunflower seed soda bread

Posted: July 25, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Bread Baking, Homemade | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Soda bread is definitely the easiest bread to make – there’s (virtually) no kneading, no yeast involved and no letting the dough rise. Unlike yeasted breads, you can decide to make soda bread 30 minutes before dinner -  its the ultimate convenience bread!

Here’s what you need to make it (these quantities make a ‘baby’ loaf perfect for accompanying 2 people for dinner – if you want a larger loaf, just double the quantities.

  • 250g wholemeal bread flour (you can also use plain flour, it isn’t necessary to use bread flour)
  • 5g salt
  • 2tsp baking powder
  • 150ml buttermilk, yoghurt, milk or water. If you’re making this bread on the fly, you likely won’t have buttermilk on hand so your best bet is to mix up about 100ml milk with some natural yoghurt
  • Sunflower seeds
  • honey

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees/gas mark 6. Combine the dry ingredients together in a bowl

Dry stuff

Wet stuff

Mix the dry ingredients and the yoghurt/milk/buttermilk together and it will quickly form a dough. Don’t bother kneading it past the point where its holding together – you don’t need to – yay!

Next I added a couple of teaspoons of honey and about the same of sunflower seeds and kneaded those in.

Before shaping into a round and cutting a deep cross through the dough to give it that classic soda bread look

Roughly 25 minutes later (or when it sounds hollow when you tap the base) the soda bread is done! Cool it on a wire rack and then apply butter.

Now apply to face.

Bliss.

Food : What do you pay more for?

Posted: July 23, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Random | Tags: , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Inspired by this post at one of my fellow wordpressers blogs, I started thinking about what products I’m totally willing to spend more money on, and the things where I buy the cheapest version I can get my hands on.

I’ve often entertained the idling thought that my kitchen cupboards are somewhat confused. Tins of tesco value tuna and sweetcorn sit happily alongside fresh waitrose bread and luxury muesli. Basically, a mix of waitrose and tesco value! Theoretically, you could live off supermarket own brand value foods and home products forever, but would you want to? Here’s my take!


Things I will happily pay a little, or a lot, more for -

  • Bread – I can’t remember the last time I ate any of the Chorleywood type of bread – I keep a stash of wholegrain rolls in the freezer and will gladly shell out £2+ on a nice loaf of bread from Waitrose – I know its SO worth it – making your own is a great way to get artisan, great quality bread for less £££
  • Free range eggs – as I pointed out before – you can’t skimp here as if you do, chickadees suffer as a result – so buy Happy Eggs
  • Biscuits – tesco value is no good, you have to pay at least £1 a pack to get biscuits worthy of a good cup of tea. Of course, homemade are the very best, but time+£ of ingredients means that they will be more expensive than most you could buy. Worth it though.
  • Milk – Cravendale is just better. Its more expensive but it lasts SO LONG!
  • Yoghurt – Yeo valley just tastes the best to me (plus I know its organic, good quality and from a company who are environmentally friendly). Its twice the price of the value supermarket natural yoghurts but its a price I’m willing to pay.
  • Butter (that I’m going to eat on bread – if I’m using it to make cakes I’ll buy whatevers on offer) – Lurpack, president, anchor or yeo valley only.
  • Tomato pasta sauce – The good tasting, good quality ones are all around £2 a jar. I would still buy a £2 jar of Bertolli vs a £1 tesco value jar which tastes gross. In the future though, I will be experimenting with making homemade pasta sauce!
  • Orange juice – I would never buy the concentrate stuff (it just tastes so awful) so I always go for either the tesco version of tropicana or tropicana itself depending on whats on offer.
  • Muesli. The really cheap stuff tastes like dust. Avoid.

Things where anything will do -

  • Fruit and veg wise, I don’t see the point in buying organic. Maybe I’m wrong.
  • I can’t see any difference in the taste of tinned value  sweetcorn, tuna,
  • Cat food – our cats LOVE the tesco own brand tinned cat food
  • Cheese – I buy the tesco value yellow cheese. Love it.
  • Chocolate for baking – once its inside your cookies, brownies or cake, tesco value bournville or 70% dark chocolate will taste just as good as green and blacks – and is a whole lot cheaper too!
  • Toilet paper and kitchen towel – £2 for 9 rolls and £1 for 3 rolls respectively, at Home & Bargains (the best shop ever for bargains!)
  • Teabags. Tesco value teabags work for me.
  • Vodka – it all tastes the same.
  • Supermarket version of coke/lemonade etc. So much cheaper. Tastes the same.

Non food-wise, I’ve also found that the things you can’t skimp on are -

  • Shoes – £4 pairs from Primark are great but definitely a false economy! Leather is best
  • Bags – again leather lasts, pleather/polyeurothene disintegrates before your eyes
  • Jewellery – god bless them, I love accessorize and their cheap necklaces but those things will tarnish and become unwearable pretty soon. Again, false economy.
  • Furniture – most especially, sofa’s and beds. Don’t be a cheapskate on these things. You’ll thank yourself every day for a long long time. Also, although I love love love Ikea with its cheap and cheerful veneer covered furniture, its just not built to last.
  • Hair straighteners – GHDs only, thank you very much. Plus if you factor in the fact that you use them every day for two+years, they’re actually dirt cheap.
  • Conditioner – Aussie 3 minute miracle is so worth it. But I only buy it when its on a 2 for £6 or cheap in the boots staff shop.
  • Soap – only Dove for me thanks! Its actually pretty cheap – I usually get it when its on offer at about 30p a bar.

But I’ve found you can skimp on pretty much everything else! Including

  • Household appliances – my cheapo washing machine, kettle, toaster, blender and second hand wii work just fine, thank you. So does my Henry. He has his flaws but I love him anyway!
  • Beauty products – generally I pay up to £10 for makeup stuff (the most expensive being foundation) but usually I stick to £2-£3 for most nail polish, eyeshadow, eyeliner purchases. I haven’t found a difference in quality between 17 nail polish and Chanel nail polish, so why pay the extra £12?
  • Shampoo – it foams up and you rinse it off. I see no possible reason to spend more money than I have to on it.
  • Toothpaste – Boots own brand is minty and seems to do the job at 75p (factoring in permanent 3 for 2 offer) – less for me as I get staff discount!

What about you – what foods do you save money on, and what do you think is worth spending a few more of your hard earned pennies on? Let me know in the comments!

Homemade bagels!

Posted: July 12, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Baking, Beauty, Homemade | Tags: , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

I made bagels! *does a little dance*

Okay so they weren’t really your typical pretty supermarket bagels.

For one thing, they are more baby bagels than adult bagels.

They’re pretty small. But delicious – did I mention how delicious?

So much better than any bagels you’re likely to get out of a plastic bag.

Here’s the recipe I used – from my new bread book – The River Cottage Bread Handbook – however I was a little disappointed as I *thought* I’d followed the recipe exactly but my bagels turned out much smaller than a normal bagel. If I make them again, I’ll try to make them bigger. They also needed at least 15 minutes longer cooking time (in my oven) than the recipe indicated.

Anyway, here’s what went into them!

  • 500g strong bread flour (I used white)
  • 5g yeast (a little odd as the little sachets of yeast are 7g, so I put most of one sachet in and chucked the rest away)
  • 10g salt
  • 250ml tepid water (hand hot – be sure to mix cold with boiling water rather than run the hot tap as hot water is full of BUGS)
  • 20g caster sugar
  • 50ml vegetable oil (I used sunflower)
  • 1 egg
  • Assorted seeds and a drizzle of honey

First I combined all the ingredients bar the egg and seeds to form a dough. I found it needed slightly more water than the recipe called for so I added a little more.

Then I got to work kneading. The book doesn’t give a specific amount of time to knead for so I kneaded for about 6 minutes until the dough seemed smooth and elastic, and my arms were pretty tired!

I put into an oiled bowl to rise, covered in a tea towel. Again the book doesn’t give a specific time, but the dough should be ready when its about doubled in size. Here’s the puffed up beauty! I think I left it for around an hour.

Then I cut the dough into 12 equal pieces. This is probably so obvious to anyone but me, but rather than look at one lump of dough and try to divide it into 12 even lumps, I cut it into 2 and then the 2 into 2 and then those into 3!

I then took the individual pieces and rolled them with my two hands into a long sausage of dough. They were supposed to be 15cm so I used a ruler to make sure they were right – told you I was following the directions exactly! Then you pinch the ends of the dough together to make a circle (you can see the joins in my picture and some of the joins came apart. How do the new york bagel company bake their bagels have no joins in them? I don’t know, but I’d guess there’s chicanery involved!).

Next, I popped them onto a baking sheet (oiled so they don’t stick!) to prove. Again the needed to double in size. It took about an hour. At this point I also preheated to gas mark 6 which is 200 degrees (or 180 if you have a fan oven).

Here are the proved bagels! Much bigger than before.

Next up – a very weird step! The bagels are poached in water – this is what gives them their chewy crust and thick crumb. I brought a pan of water to the boil and then reduced to a simmer and popped each bagel in the water for a minute on each side. Some of the bagels did come undone but you can just stick them back together.  The book said specifically to drain the bagels on a tea towel (not kitchen towel or they will stick) but I found them sticking to my tea towel – you can see in the picture below that the bagel on the left has lost some of its dough to the tea towel!

If you make these, I’d recommend using a tea towel but then quickly transferring the bagels onto the oiled baking sheet.

I’d also recommend using a lot of oil as mine had some issues with sticking to the baking sheet :(

I coated them with

  • salt and black pepper
  • sunflower seeds
  • sunflower seeds and honey
  • 7 Seed mix (tesco)

Here’s a picture of the cooling bagels – yum! You can see the sunflower and honey ones at the back – those were definitely the most delicious!

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