Hot. Cross. BUNS! !!!!!

I'm so happy.  After the great yeast revelation of last week, I was completely confused.  I thought I heard the one thing on Hottest Home Baker (the husband would argue that I never listen properly. He's right, but because he never remembers anything he'll forget to read this blog and won't come across the admission, so I'm safe), but then reading through all the notes at the start of Baked it says that active dried yeast doesn't need to be added to water before use.  It can be simply added to the flour and mixed through.  I have no idea.  So I followed my nose.  So far, I've clocked 100% failure with dough and each time I've added yeast to flour as a dry ingredient so I decided to try sponging it first (putting it in a little warm water, adding a bit of sugar and leaving it to bubble - activating it) and see where that'd get me (it could hardly go any worse).

It got me hot cross buns!!  Edible hot cross buns!!  (I've also now eaten too many hot cross buns, so the rest are in the freezer.  We'll see how they survive the freeze test when I can bring myself to look at them again)

You have to look at step by step pictures because I am so relieved.  I barely breathed for about 4 hours making these.  The photos also came in handy as I went - I was able to compulsively and weirdly keep comparing the photo taken of the beginning of any given stage against what the dough was doing at any given minute (pretty much every given minute) while I had many anxiety attacks trying to work out it if was actually increasing in size.

This one is just me being all bakery and making my own spice mix.  I can highly recommend pounding cloves into dust as excellent stress relief, if nothing else.  Everything did taste a bit like cloves for a while after though.

Dough, the beginning.

Dough, the rising.

Dough, the buns.

Dough, the buns again after another rise.

Buns!!

More buns !!!

 

Soup for the soul

The husband is starting to laugh at me and my food obsession.  He likes food too (a lot) but he thinks it's funny that I've started taking photos of mine.  Not that I'm taking photos of all my food (unless you particularly want to see a fuzzy shot of marmite on vogels tomorrow? No, I thought not), just the stuff that really makes me drool, or is something new and worth talking about (in my opinion).  Also, he's mocking the actual photos since I couldn't (can't?) take a decent picture to save my life.  I have a goal to get a decent camera and take excellent photos of food and I've warned him that at some stage he'll be doing overtime to fund my weirdness (he seemed fairly accepting of this, although I have a suspicion it's because he's planning to use it to justify a new coffee grinder).

Anyway, a couple of nights ago, I had the most delicious Thai soup*.  Usually (by which I mean always) I order a red curry with chicken, but I'm getting into the swing of this and I really love soup, so I took a leap of faith and ordered a Gaeng Jued Woon Sen - a clear vegetable soup with chicken and vermicelli.  Amaze.  I've never had Thai soup before, and I have no idea why.  You'll probably never talk me back into a curry to be honest.

And I'm going to show you my picture even though the husband, full of support for my endeavours saw my photo and laughed "It looks like spew! Look! There're the carrots!" and snorted away into his Phad Thai.  (I really don't think you can talk about food without including pictures of food.  It's all wrong.  Even bad pictures are better than no pictures, and it totally doesn't look like spew.  Much.)

(Also, I'm trying not to show you that I was super classy and ate it straight out of the container.  Mostly I was just starving, but we don't really have any soup bowls.  Obviously, I've added deep soup bowls on my list of current wants.  These actually in a large size.  There are a few different designs, but I think this is my favourite.  We have a dwindling selection of Crown Lynn bowls, but they're really shallow and soups get cold quickly in them.  Yuck.  Unless soup is supposed to be cold, soup is not supposed to be cold.)

You have no idea how much I want to go and have this again for dinner as soon as possible, except order a double portion.  Next time I will (it's mostly water and veges anyway so I consider it possibly weird, but technically not excessive).  The other night I ordered a roti to go with, but that was a big mistake and I really, really wished I'd paid a couple of extra dollars, skipped the roti and had a double portion of soup.  It was such a beautiful, fresh soup, the roti was heavy to have with and follow it and wiped out a lot of the happiness.  Bad roti!

Back to the soup though because we're not finishing with a roti again ... Yuuum.


*  We've had a reasonably significant work-related curve-ball thrown into our routine in the last couple of weeks, so there was a bit of takeaway consumption in our house.  I really should've taken pictures of the pizzas a couple of nights before - Armenian Street Bread (Lebanese bread, lamb mince, cottage cheese, fresh flat-leaf parsley and chopped chilli) and a pork belly pizza (all you really need to focus on is the pork belly.  All the goodness!).

Cookie Saturday

Some days are just made for cookies, and today is one of them.  Cold, wet, windy ... a properly miserable Wintery day! 

So, Al Brown's classic chocolate chip cookies it was.  They're meant to be a cookie sandwich with chocolate ganache in the middle, but I love them just as they are. 

Click, and a lightbulb comes on

I was watching Hottest Home Baker last night, because ... Well, it's a bit obvious really, isn't it?

They were doing brioche and pastry (dough, people - dough!) and "Ah HA!" says I, paying attention with great interest (and praying that our power would hold out against the storm raging outside), "This could be helpful ...".  And helpful it most certainly was.

Someone's dough doesn't rise (welcome to my world, Hottest Home Baker contestant.  Welcome to my world), Dean tells them why it didn't rise, and do you know what?  I literally tore out a bit of hair.  There were actual strands in my hands.

I've been using dried active yeast (not an error in itself).  It could well be that this is one of those things that everyone knows (except me), but is probably the biggest lesson I've learned so far and may well (it'd better) change the course of my Global Baker experience (much less likely to slit my wrists now I think).  Active yeast is encapsulated and needs to be broken down to activate it.  Insert four-letter word here.  ('Argh' - and yes, that is actually what I said.  At something of a reasonable volume, while grabbing a fist full of hair and nearly rolling off the couch in hysterics.  Not to be over-dramatic or anything in this moment of knowledge gaining).

I haven't been activating my yeast. 

Sooo ... bugger.

It bodes well for my hot cross buns though.  And kind of makes me wonder how I managed a half-decent brioche. 

Skills.  Must be.

On a totally different topic, the day after the massive storm hit Wellington (and pretty much while it was still doing its thing), I thought it would be a genius idea to take the dog down to the beach for his walk.  He looks like he's holding onto the sand because I'm pretty sure he is.  Walking up the beach was brilliant - all his sticks threw themselves.  Win!  Walking back was a little more challenging (nearly impossible) and done mostly in the dunes (don't tell Council) for a level of shelter from flying sand and insane winds. 

It goes down as one of my favourite dog walks ever - so crazy and freezing and it's not often that there is no one around.  No cars, no boats, no people, zip (good reason for that, mind).  Lucky I've had all that baking to weigh me down.  Heh.  The poor dog though spent a fair amount of time running sideways into the dunes.

Collateral damage

So, for all the do-over pile from the project is growing, it seems that enough of what I'm making is still plenty edible that this was necessary at the weekend.

Oops.

It's possibly a bit of a stretch to sneak these into the budget as baking equipment, but I'm going to give it a try anyway. 

Mooncakes

Of all the recipes I've done so far, I think I've been most excited about these - even when they went horribly, horribly wrong, I was still really excited.  They're a fairly simple thing to make as it turns out (she says before showing you pictures of what she did to them) but it's the principle of the thing - dough, filling, mould, getting them out of the mould, baking, end result.  There's something about actually braving and using the traditional wooden mould that really added to this recipe for me, as well as being another new recipe.

I think I did confess the other day that I bought the fruit mince filling for these though, which made it even simpler (the recipe said I could, and I wasn't going to look a fruit mince gift horse in the mouth with both small people turning the house inside out around me).  If I didn't, then I did.  I was fairly well petrified of them (excited petrified, so kind of a hold-your-breath-(petrified)-mop-your-brow-(also petrified)-hop-around-the-kitchen-(excited) sort of scenario) so opted to concentrate on the dough and the forming of them and just make sure I re-made them at a later date, making the fruit mince as well on the second run.

Turns out I'm going to have to re-make them for more reasons than just the fruit mince, damn it all.  I really could've picked an easier recipe book for this, especially when part of the reason for doing it is to distract my stress levels.  I underestimated how techinical a baker the Global Baker is, and how finely tuned his recipes are.  But, as the husband reminds me, an easier project would be fine but I wouldn't be learning anything.  Yaaaaay learning ...  (I jest)  I think it's just that I bake fine day to day from most books I pick up for bicky tin filling purposes, and yet every time I pick up Global Baker I can pretty much guarantee I'll be either sobbing into my flour bag, or kicking it, at some point soon thereafter.  Frustration.  Mind you, the recipes I really love I do-over and generally get right the second time, so I should stop whinging (pistachio and white chocolate chunk cookies ... oh my).

I took a slightly silly number of pictures, sorry ... it was the excitement.  I got a bit button-happy.

First mooncake into the mould.

First mooncake (dough rolled a bit thin) out of the mould.

Second mooncake - much more successful, although you might have to just take my word for it if you can't see through the photo fuzziness.  (Heh.  I should've taken a shot of number three.  I went to bang the mould on the bench to get it out, except it fell out as I tipped the mould, and with my crap reflexes I ended up banging the mould onto the mooncake and flattening it all over the bench and mould.  Excellent work.  And of course I swore.  In the hearing of two small people.  Very excellent work)

The bit where things have obviously gone pear-shaped, and I start cataloguing my errors.  They lost their imprint I think because I rolled the dough too thin, and when I pressed it into the mould it got thinner.  And then I think I rushed them out of the chilling stage. 

Aw, they look ok, you say?  They've just their imprint, you think? 

Yeah, nah.  Not so much.  Oops.  That's the bit that really had me scratching my head.  I'm in two minds about the temperature in the recipe.  220 degrees C seems like a fairly whopping temperature (I did drop it to allow for my oven being fan-forced, so this happened at just over 200 degrees C).  Could be though that it was temperature combined with too-thin dough because as I was going back through the recipe I realised I'd made another mistake in the mould that I chose, forcing the dough a lot thinner than it should have been.

Aaaand here we go (scroll down - I tried to move the picture but it messed with my formatting, so I'm giving you directions to it instead).  I ran with the round mould, because my poor brain went 'Oh! The picture has round mooncakes, so we must use the round one' and didn't actually pay attention to how big the round mould that is pictured in Global Baker likely is (significantly smaller than my round mould, and fairly obvious about it too as it turns out). 

So, the plan for next time is:

1.  Make own fruit mince.
2.  Make square moon cake.
3.  Turn oven down a smidge.
4.  Don't screw them up again.

Simple .....

Hello, high energy fruit and nut bars

I took a detour into Baked because there was no way around it.  Had to be done.  Couldn't not.  I saw this recipe on my first flick through and it went straight to the top of my list (Ha!  Oh dear.  Since I made them, I've been wondering why the book won't close properly.  While most people would do something practical about that, such as look a bit closer and maybe check for something stuck between the pages, I went with looking at it and saying to myself 'Huh. That's not closing properly' and then squishing it down.  I just opened it to check the actual name on the recipe and it turns out there's nearly enough flour, oats and sunflower seeds loaded into the spine to bake another batch.  Oops).

I have a great loathing for muesli and nut bars in general.  Not because they're muesli or nut bars, but because it's so hard to find them not covered in chocolate or yoghurt, or super, super loaded with sugar.  Yuck.

So, obviously, with all the happiness of figs, apricots, seeds and nuts, honey (and a few other bits and bobs) ... morning tea was born.

By the time I realised the photo is as fuzzy as it is, I'd already drunk the tea and eaten half the bar, so sorry about that.  I could've re-taken a photo at that stage, but I don't think it would've looked as classy.  Ish.  Kind of.  You get the general idea though.  And surely you're used to my sorry excuses for photos by now anyway?

These taste amazing - I'm developing a love of figs since starting my Global Baker project, so I especially love the figgy bits in these.  I also used New Zealand dried apricots which are much sharper than the Turkish and by far my preference for everything.  Although, I did something the other day that I think I might have to try again with Turkish next time ...... Ah!  The brioche.  I wondered about the sharp (vs sweet) apricot taste in the brioche.  But I'll definitely make that again so I'll try Turkish next time for a comparison.

I did screw up a fairly crucial step in making these (cringe!) which meant a bit of a scramble to save them, but I pretty much managed to get them back.  The only effect is that they are much sweeter than I think they would otherwise have been, so I'm looking forward to a do-over.  The dry ingredients are held together with a boiled honey/sugar/butter combo (pretty much like rice bubble biscuits actually) - except I had little ginger helping me this time so my sugar ended up in the dry ingredients as well, meaning that my boiled mixture didn't have enough liquid (didn't make enough liquid?) to hold the aforementioned dry ingredients and I had to quickly make more (just enough to hold it, since I was pouring extra liquid onto dry sugar. More cringing!) and ... it was a bit of a tense time overnight while I waited to make sure it held.  Much breath-holding.  Thankfully, I didn't need to cry and we have a full bicky tin.  Win!  And, to be honest, if they'd fallen completely to bits I probably would've just bagged the bits and eaten it as a scroggin mix of sorts anyway.

I may stay with Baked for my next tin-filler because I also saw a recipe for traditional hot cross buns.  My chocolate hot cross buns from Global Baker were a disaster (my fault - dough related) so they're on the do-over list.  And since I really do love traditional hot cross buns, and both recipes are by Dean so I don't think it's cheating.  Not really.  I'm still counting it as part of the project.

Apricot brioche breakfast plait. Boom.

I made dough and it rose, Amen.

Not only that, it rose with both rises (Ha! That's a horrible sentence to read, but it made me giggle so it gets to stay).  Having not experienced dough rising properly before (or at all really, if I'm going to be completely honest about it) it was such a nice feeling knocking it back the first time (I think my actual words were 'Oooh! That feels kinda sexy!' and the husband proceeded to bend double, wee himself a little and then choke half to death laughing). 

It took a while (the rising, if you're still stuck on the sexy dough and/or the husband's choking which also took a while).  Global Baker indicated it should take about an hour.  It took about four.  The husband took his supervisory role very serious though, swatting at me every time I stood there glaring at it in its state of it's-not-rising-ness (and maybe wailing a little bit) and ordered patience, of which I have none, especially with so many dough related failures under my belt to date.

But ...

The bit where it looks good, a stage after the first rise, but I'm still holding my breath because dough hates me.

The. Bit. Where. It. RISES !!!  (cue happy-dance)

The bit right before two-thirds of it disappears (where I'm still doing a happy dance, and I don't realise that I caught the arse of it slightly during baking.  I felt a bit stabby when I discovered that.  Honestly!  I put so much hope, prayer and muscle (relative to my lack of muscle) into working the dough, barely breathed through both rises, managed to get it to the place where all is well and people actually observed me doing a happy dance. Thankfully it was only little people who possibly just thought I'd stood on a lego or something, but still.  And then.  Then, I catch the arse of it.  Of course I could probably have kept that to myself and you'd be none the wiser, but why stop sharing now, hey?  We've been through worse)

And now, I feel as though, to celebrate my actually keeping up with the blogging and the project, we need a new, more baking-focussed look around here, so I'm off to play with my layout.

Oh, but!  Before I do ...

I couldn't help myself even a little bit and this arrived yesterday.  It had to be done.  I mean, hello.  Donuts!

P.S.

It was a bit quiet there for a few days as I was working on an update for Justin vs Cancer.  They've had good news to share and bad, so it was time to put a nice big update in their story out there.

Twice as nice

They're not Global Baker recipes, but I like to think they are part of the project in that as much as I'm screwing up most of the Global Baker recipes, I'm getting more confident baking and it's really exciting (for me.  And my tummy).

Orange and poppy seed cake from The Nordic Bakery Cookbook.

Yum.  Yum, yum, yum.  This is a stonking recipe, boasting 5 eggs among other things, but it is a beeeeautiful cake.  One thing I really love about this cookbook is that hardly anything is iced.  Almost everything stands on its own, and this cake is no exception.  The husband and I generally don't ice anything unless it's a recipe that really needs that icing, we're making it for someone, or the kids beg us to (and then they only eat the icing, little monsters).  It's not that we are too lazy to finish the product off (although that does happen), it's just that we really love recipes where something is special enough on its own.  This is definitely one of those recipes. 

And then these ... these are from the Little Paris Kitchen cookbook.  I confess, I actually bought the cookbook pretty much solely for this recipe, after watching the TV series (the husband and I have a bit of a thing about watching food while we're eating food).  If any TV series or cookbook could convince me to (a) learn to cook and/or (b) get on a plane for an international destination (France), it'd be this one.  OK, I did have romantic notions about learning to cook from this book, because the recipes seemed to easy and wonderful, but ultimately it was really, probably all about the tarts.  We have busted out the carrot salad recipe too though!  Carrot salad is awesome.  And by 'we', I mean the husband.

These are not grapefruit and pepper meringue tartlets, although they will be at some stage when I have some grapefruit (actually, I do have grapefruit. On a big ol' grapefruit tree down the back. That's embarrassing.  For some reason every time I've thought of this receipe, or read it, I've heard and seen passionfruit.  I did think passionfruit meringue tartlets would be a bit unusual.  I really need to pay more attention to ... pretty much everything.  It's the rushing that does it.  I'm trying not to rush so much.  Wallace Chapman would be helping me with that (I bought his book Don't Just Do Something, Sit There.  Except I haven't had time to read it yet.  Ironic.  I think)  and I'm not so lazy that I bust out a jar (yes! a jar! I'll make my own next time, I promise) of lemon curd instead. 

I can tell you a few things about these.  Firstly, if you are lazier than a lazy thing on lazy day and buying lemon curd - Sabato stocks an excellent product.  Secondly, don't be afraid of the black pepper in the meringue.  It adds a dimension that I was very suspicious of, but definitely glad I took a run at.  Thirdly, I made meringue for the first time ever, and it was Italian meringue at that (you whisk the egg whites while pouring hot sugar syrup onto them).  V. proud of myself, regardless of how easy it was in the end (cheating with the curd likely helped a bit to be fair).  The point is, I felt confident to try this ensemble and that's thanks to the Global Baker project.

New cabinet love!

It took us nearly a year to find a cabinet for the lounge.  In the end, after hashing over just about every idea we could think of (both cabinety and not even remotely cabinety because we got annoyed with the cabinets, and including designing something ourselves and having it quoted on by a cabinet maker), it was a Facebook post from a page I follow that took us to Zinc+ in Wellington.  It's a big departure from the style of our old furniture but it suits the beach house and the beach house loves it right back so, excitement! (plus, it hides all of our crap, of which there is much)

I think you're going to just have to trust me that it's awesome and looks brilliant, because this pic is horrible.  To give you an idea of how far off the colour is - our carpet in reality is black (underneath all the dog hair and kid crumbs it is, anyway.  Five minutes after I vacuum on any given day, you'd be forgiven for not having a clue).  You also can't even begin to imagine how I twitched when I loaded this, the best of about 20 shots taken over a couple of days, but also the only one with a bright green plastic cup sitting behind the TV (yes, I am that person).  The industrial filing-cabinet-esque-ness of it reminds me that I'm a total geek, but I just don't care. 

For ages I was convinced I'd be able to talk the husband into a You2 entertainment unit (if I kept the price tag in a death grip and varied the budget consequences slightly (a lot) from reality) and I nearly, very nearly had him (after about 8 months of trying), when Zinc+ came to his rescue.  Seriously, so much love!  Extra love because we were able to have it custom made to our measurements and powder-coated any colour from a large range.  (and nevermind about the entertainment unit - I still have this floating desk up my sleeve!)

It was a weird moment moving in here and realising that none of our stuff worked. It was too wooden and way too dark and heavy. A year later, it's definitely starting to look like a rainbow threw up in the living area. Cheery! I do love mid-century design though, so we've generally just keep hunting around to find modern design with echoes of that period and so far we've come across the right thing eventually. Our kitchen table we spotted on The Block NZ. Heh.

And, because this is me we're talking about and because I seem to be perfectly incapable of leaving some stores without collecting extras, I may also have gone a wee bit weak at the knees over a Gerty Brown Trading cushion ... (I'm claiming an enchanted frog that put a spell on me.  Don't look him in the eyes, whatever you do)

Can't blog. Eating pudding.

Normal service will resume shortly.

Also, the husband (who is much more familiar with making dough) attempted to make dough with the yeast I've been using.  He said it's rubbish.  Yusss!  (This is good news, because there's a chance I can still bake, and a quick upgrade in yeast may do the trick for future success)

I thought there was something else, but I can't remember what it is, so I guess there isn't.