French Almond Cake

I've had a bag of almond flour sitting in my cupboard waiting for the right recipe...

It was time.  

French Almond Cake

• 110g unsalted butter, melted
• 120g caster sugar 
• 3 large eggs, beaten
• 90g ground almonds (almond powder/almond flour/almond meal)
• 40g all purpose flour
• 2/3 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 tablespoon milk (any type)
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract 
• Optional: 1 tablespoon flaked almonds for sprinkling
• Icing sugar for dusting

Recipe inspiration: here.

Almond Buttercream Icing

• 25g unsalted butter
• 3 tablespoons milk (any type)
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 150g powdered/icing sugar

Makes an 8" cake.

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Pre-heat your oven to 180C.

Begin by melting the butter (about 50 seconds in the microwave), then add the milk and eggs.  Mix well.  Add the vanilla extract and baking powder.  Add the almond flour, stir well, then add in the all purpose flour.

Grease your cake tin, and pour in the mixture.  

Lick the spoon.

Bake for 15min, then cover the top with foil.  Bake for another 20 - 25minutes.  

It's done when you insert a fork into the middle and it comes out clean.  Let it cool, then either dust with icing sugar or ice with almond buttercream icing!

Optional, but recommended: let giant rowers devour entire cake.

Bagels!

If there's one thing I miss from the states, it's the bagels.

Bagels are meant to have a chewy crust, doughy inside and be pleasantly plump.  Here, I find them lacking a bit in the chewy crust, and they're often more bread-like than bagel-like on the inside.  I decided to have a whack at attempting the fabled bagel...

They turned out a wee bit small and the holes shrunk, but taste-wise, spot-on.

Bagels

• 4g dried, active yeast + 50ml warm water
• 225g self-raising flour
• 150ml warm water
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt

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Dissolve your yeast and 1 tablespoon of sugar in the 50ml of warm water.  Stir and wait until it's frothy.

In the same bowl, add the 150ml of warm water, followed by the flour, in 50g increments.  Work together with a fork, then use your hands to mold it into a ball.  This is going to be a very soft dough, compared to the other bread doughs you've seen on this blog, so you might have to create your own new 'kneading' technique.  For this one, I oiled my hands, picked up the ball and simply threw it down into the bowl, over and over again.  It both stretched it and prevented the soft dough from sticking to my fingers.

Plus, it gave me an excuse to throw things.  Awesome.

Form into a ball, oil the sides of your bowl, and cover in clingfilm.

Let it rise for about an hour, or until it's at least doubled in size.  

Stare out the window while you wait.  Admire this strange 'sun' object.

Begin boiling a large pot of water.  Add the remaining 1 tablespoon of sugar to the water.  Re-oil your hands, and divide the mixture into 5 roughly equal sized balls (I totally failed at this).  To create the hole, I "spun" the dough around the handle of a spoon.  You definitely want the hole to be a bit bigger than you think, as it'll shrink massively during cooking.  Massively.

Also, click that oven on to 220C.

The key to getting chewy bagels is to boil them before baking them!  When your pot of water comes to a low boil, add one or two formed bagels to the water.  They'll rise to the top of the pot pretty quickly.  Give them about 1 minute on each side, flipping with a slotted spoon or spatula.

Drain them on the spoon/spatula, then place on your oiled baking sheet.  I used foil because my baking sheet ran away.

Repeat the boiling process with all of your dough balls/bagels-to-be.  

Make sure to add any toppings at this stage.  You can sea that I put sea salt on two, and drizzled honey on one.  The other two I left plain.

Such a weird texture pre-baking.  But it makes for the chewiness, so we'll deal with it.

Chuck 'em in the 220C oven for about 15 minutes, then turn down the oven to 200C for another 15-20min. I accidentally left them on 220C for a wee bit too long... 

They still taste nice!

The one on the right seems to have grown a horn... interesting...

Mmmmmmmmm butter.

These are pretty small sized bagels, so if you wanted ginormous ones (maybe for sandwiches or the like), you could do only 2 or 3 bagels out of this recipe.  

Tastes like home.

Oatmeal Walnut Cake with Date Caramel

So.  I wanted to make some good ole fashioned oatmeal cookies.  But... my cookie sheet had gone missing. No surprises, there.  I only had a round tin available... cue the CAKE!

Or, well, cookie-esque, dense cake.  With delicious topping.

Oatmeal Walnut Cake with Date Caramel

The Cake

• 2/3 cup unsalted butter (~150g) - thinking you could also do half butter, half greek yogurt.. will need to try.
• 2/3 cup light soft brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1.5 teaspoons cinnamon
• 3 cups jumbo/large oats (ie, not the porridge kind)
• handful of crushed walnuts

Date Caramel

• 3 handfuls of dates, stoned (I used Whitworths)
• 1/2 cup milk (you may need more/less.  Will describe later)
• 2 tablespoons of light soft brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

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Preheat your oven to 190C/350F.  Melt your butter in the microwave, then add the flour, brown sugar, salt, cinnamon, baking soda and vanilla.  Stir in the eggs.  Add the oats and walnuts last, making sure to distribute them evenly into the mixture.

Grease your round cake tin before pouring in the mixture.  Place the cake in the oven for roughly 30 minutes.

Pre-icing...

As the cake cooks, make your date caramel!

I had never done this before, so it was mostly a shot in the dark... but it seemed to work well!  Heat a small saucepan on low-to-medium heat, adding 1/4 cup of the milk, the sugar, vanilla and all of the dates.  When it comes to the boil, lower the heat slightly and begin stirring every few seconds.  The dates will begin to soften, at which point you can begin 'smooshing' them with the back of your spoon, thus making the mixture much thicker and smoother.  The dates can't be entirely smooshed, so you will have a few date bits hanging around, but I personally think that's even better!  Continue adding the milk until you reach your desired consistency.  Remove from heat and let cool.

When the cake is semi-cooled, feel free to frost it with your caramel!

Oatmeal cake, pre-icing

As you can see, I also added a bit of desiccated coconut on top for flare...

This buddy should feed a small army.  Or, 8 ravenous individuals.

This cake was a true hit with my rowing comrades.  Three cheers for cake!

Honey Oat Bread

It's been awhile - here's a simple recipe to add to your bread repertoire!

I made a wee mistake with baking this baby and turned up the oven a bit too hot off the start, so it took longer to cook all the way through.  I'd suggest getting a good crust by baking at 200C/400F for 10 minutes, then letting it cook through at 180C/350F for another 30-45 minutes.  To see if it's done, turn it over and "knock" on the bottom.  If it sounds hollow, you're good to go!

Honey Oat Bread

• 1 1/4 cups water
• 2 tablespoons oil (vegetable is preferable, it has the mildest flavor)
• 3 cups bread/strong flour (you could easily use whole wheat or white)
• 1/2 cup jumbo oats (plus extra to sprinkle on top!)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons active dry yeast
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 2 tablespoons oatbran (optional)

My outdated oven, yay!

To get that nice golden-brown crust, I'd suggest rubbing milk or a beaten egg over the top of your bread before you bake it.  That also gives you a nice surface to sprinkle oats for some added crunch!

Enjoy!

See my other post for tips on bread-making!

CHOCOLATE

Thanks for the page view love, guys.  Means a lot that you care about my dry humour, delicious bread and heart-attack-inducing food.  Keep it coming.

So, Keir visited yesterday, and it was decided that we should make an epic chocolate concoction to celebrate this 2000+ page view mark.  First we thought of replicating a recipe that my best friend and I from the states made last year (slutty brownies), which consists of layers of fudge brownie, chocolate cookie dough and oreos.

However, being lazy, we decided to opt for Rocky Road brownies.  Off to my neighborhood Tesco and Co-Operative we went... only to find that NEITHER HAD COCOA POWDER.  What is this treachery, small food stores?  I had to cave to my worst fear: a boxed mix.

But don't you worry, I doctored it up so it didn't taste like cardboard crap.

Rocky Road Brownies

The Brownies:

• 1 box of Betty Crocker's Fudge Brownie Mix
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tbsp light-colored oil (light olive oil, veg oil, etc)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp granulated sugar
• 8 squares of cooking chocolate, crumbled

The Toppings:

• 2 handfuls of small marshmallows
• 2 handfuls of crushed walnuts
• 2 handfuls of slivered almonds
• 1 crushed KitKat chunky peanut butter (... totally Keir's idea, guys)

Optional Drizzle:

• 1 tbsp smooth peanut butter
• 1 tbsp icing sugar
• 2 tbsp milk (or more - forgot to count... just until it gets drizzle consistency)

Preheat your oven to 180C/350F.

Mix the brownie ingredients together, adding the chopped/smooshed chocolate pieces last.  

Thanks for being such a good hand model, Keir.

Pour into either a greased round baking tin or a square/rectangle glass pan.  Add the toppings one by one, saving the marshmallows for last.  

Bake for roughly 30-35 minutes, or until the thing doesn't "wobble" when you shake the tray.  Sticking a fork into the middle to check if it's done won't work, seeing as these are extremely fudgy brownies... 

This brownie is NOT sponsored by Newton, the Power of Ideas.  It should be though.

Fudgy brownies = the best kind.  The only kind, really.

Stuffed Wholemeal Loaf

Let's feed an army!  An army of ex-lightweight rowers, that is.

This recipe was inspired by this good looking thang.

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The Loaf

• 600g wholemeal flour (+ extra for kneading)
• 2 cups water
• Dash salt
• 1 tablespoon runny honey
• 2 tablespoons good quality virgin olive oil

The Extras

• 400g new potatoes, boiled & peeled
• 250g lean bacon, chopped
• 175g extra mature cheddar, shredded
• 1 bunch of parsley, finely chopped
• 1 bunch spring onions, finely chopped
• 450ml creme fraiche (I used 50% fat)

Follow the usual dough preparation, which you can find in one of my original posts: here.  Since it's a wholemeal loaf, it will take longer for the yeast to do its job, so cover it with oiled cling wrap and let it rise for at least 2-3 hours in a warm place.  This thing will become massive.

Punch down the dough, just to get rid of the excess air bubbles.  Take a little less than half of the dough and roll it out to a nice circle, about as big as a 9" pie pan.  Again, I don't play the 'rolling pin' game - just use your hands to push/pull/punch the dough into your shape.  Gives it way better texture, anyway.

Place this circle in your oiled and lightly floured pie pan.  Let it rest while you bring a big pan of water to a boil.  Plop in your 500g of new potatoes and let 'em go for 10ish minutes or until they're tender enough to get pricked by a fork.  Drain and let them cool in a colander before you peel them.

While they're cooling, mix your creme fraiche, cheddar and chopped parsley in a large bowl.  Season well with salt & pepper.

NOW WE LAYER!

Leaving a 2" border around the bottom, layer the ingredients (in this order) onto your bread base:

• Diced, peeled potatoes
• 1/2 of the creme fraiche mixture
• Spring onions
• Chopped bacon
• Other 1/2 of creme fraiche mixture

Note: I didn't end up using all of the creme fraiche mixture.  

Roll/punch/shape out the rest of your dough.  Obviously it will need to be a bit bigger than your base, so you can crimp the edges and make sure nothing leaks out.  Brush the outside edges of this half with water, and lay that side face down on your pie.  Trim off the excess, pinch the edges and then crimp with a fork.  "Crimping with a fork" = shove the pointy bit of the fork down around the edge to seal the top and bottom together.

Bake for ~20 minutes on 220C, then another ~40 minutes on 180C.  If it starts to go wayyyy too dark, cover the top with foil.

The masterpiece.

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There were also delicious things on our "picnic..."

Happy spring, folks!

Sugar Rush

I apologize if this recipe gives any of you early-onset diabetes or, in a slightly less serious case, a raging sugar high.

I'm really only half sorry though, cause these are worth it.

Cue American cinnamon rolls!  These babies don't really exist here.  Sure, there's Cinnabon (the ooey-gooey, heart attack bit of heaven), but in general, most Brits think of the "cinnamon roll" as being more danish-like.  I don't like those flat danishes.  Where's the doughy fun?  Okay, so I do have a dough obsession, but let's be honest - who doesn't?

Overnight Cinnamon Rolls

The Dough

• 1/2 cup milk of your choice (I used almond milk, actually)
• 1/6 cup unsalted butter
• 2 teaspoons dry active yeast
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2 3/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 medium eggs

The Filling

• 1/2 cup soft, light brown sugar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of cinnamon
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of flour
• 3 1/2 tablespoons of butter, room temperature

The Icing

• 3/4 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/8 cup butter, melted
• 1 tablespoon milk (add more to make it thinner)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• dash salt

This recipe made about 8 rolls, I think.  I used a 9" round pan.

You can also these babies with a cream cheese icing, if you have that on hand.  Equally delicious.

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In a small sauce-pan, melt the 1/6 cup butter and 1/2 cup milk over medium heat.  

Remove from heat right as it comes to a boil.  In the mean time, in a medium/large bowl, combine 1.5 cups flour and all of the sugar, salt and yeast.  Combine.  Crack in the two eggs; mix well.  

Pour the now lukewarm milk/butter mixture overtop and mix well.  It will be quite wet at this stage.  Start adding the remaining 1.5 cups of flour into the mixture, half a cup at a time.  When it came to add in the last half cup, I discarded the mixing spoon and dove in with my hands... knead away!  Knead until smooth - about 5 minutes.

Let that dough rest in the bowl for 10 minutes.  In the meantime, make your delightful filling.  Combine the filling ingredients in a small bowl, cutting the tablespoons of butter into small pieces.  

Flour your workspace.  Plop the dough onto the surface and begin to punch it into a large rectangle.  I don't do that rolling pin thing... why roll when you have a great excuse to punch things?  Not even a question.

Spread the filling mixture evenly, leaving about an inch of space around the outside of the doughy rectangle.  

Now comes the fun part.  ROLL BABY ROLL.  Make the first roll a very small one, to pinch in the end, and then gently tug/roll until you have one large log.  (I have just realized that "log" might be the most unappetizing word, ever...)

Be smarter than me and actually use a sharp knife to cut the log into segments (you could get 6 large rolls, or about 8 medium rolls).  I couldn't find one and had to opt for a butter knife, which made a lot of the filling go everywhereeeeeeeee.  But that's okay, I just smooshed all of that brown sugary goodness back onto the top of the rolls.  Like a boss.

Place the rolls into a greased 9" round pan, cut-side-up.  

Cover in cling film and place in the fridge overnight.  Now you have to wait.  Probably the longest night of your life.

Alarm goes off.  

Take the cinnamon rolls out of the fridge.  They should've risen a fair bit.  Remove the plastic wrap and place on the counter for about 30 minutes.  I know, I'm pretty much a villain for making you wait so much.

Preheat your oven to 190C/375F.  Bake 'em for about 20 minutes, or until golden brown.  While they're baking, mix up your diabetes-inducing icing.  Melt your butter, then stir in the rest of the ingredients, leaving the milk for last.  Keep adding milk until you have your desired consistency.

Remove cinnamon rolls and immediately douse in icing.  Mmmmmmmmm melty goodness.  Eat them now.  Don't wait.  Are you insane?!

You don't want the nutrition information on these.  

Trust me.  

Eat it, enjoy... then go workout.  A lot.

No phones were harmed in the making of this delicacy