Be honest! How many recipe books do you have lurking in your cupboards? And how many recipes have you actually cooked from them? I have an addiction to recipe books, cue groan from Mr mak' Bread. I love to look at the pictures, read the ingredients and dream of serving this that and the other to an appreciative audience. But of course I only dream because the key ingredient can only be found in some metropolis far from here or the advance preparation takes six hours and the appreciative audience would much prefer pie, beans and chips anyway. Jamie Oliver seems to be quite fortunate that his family eats everything he serves up with gusto. But I digress. Last Christmas, that is the one a year ago, Mr m in a fit of 'what can I get her this year? panic bought me a Nigel Slater recipe book with all sorts of interesting ideas in it. It was good read and I marked all the potential dishes with little sticky papers. It looked very busy and I looked forward to beginning to work through them all. This would be one book which I could honestly say I earned its space on the shelf. I started well with Nigel's passion fruit and pistachio meringues (easy and tasty) and there it stopped, I'm afraid to say. The volume still sports its sticky paper index of untried recipes. I've decided to address that this year and make at least one recipe a month out of the book. Succeeded in January, fell off the rails in February and now back on track in March with these easy poppy seed flatbreads. I'd love to give you the recipe but it is Nigel's. You'll just have to get the book to add to your own collection! It has been sometime since I gave you a Top Tip from the mak'Bread kitchen. Now this is good news from my viewpoint because it means that I haven't had any major culinary disasters which would be of any educational value for you, dear reader. Not good from your point of view of course since you now believe that perfection reigns. In an attempt to assure that all does not always go well I offer you Top Tip #7. Check the flour before you chuck it in. Rather too quickly I grabbed the self raising flour container and mixed in my 250g. into my date and walnut muffin mix. After they went in the oven I discovered I'd picked up the plain flour (has mr m been reorganising my cupboards again?) so no light and fluffy muffins for breakfast this time round. Still they were edible if hard work and solid enough to lie in your stomach till after lunchtime so a bit of time saving at the end of the day. . And PS, an extra tip: I won't be using these cardboard cases to bake in again. They look cute but come out with greasy spots and burned top edges and everything smells of hot cardboard instead of cake.. They should tell you that on the tin!
Well done, Mr mak'Bread. Project completed and only two minor disasters. Piece of cake. Piece of cake? Caramel Shortbread Ingredients For the base 110 g butter 50g sugar 150g plain flour For the topping 150g butter 200g condensed milk 30g caster sugar 3 tbsp. golden syrup 150gr dark chocolate Method Line a rectangular tin (18x26cm) with foil or baking parchment and heat oven to 150C. Put base ingredients into a food processor and zap until it becomes fine crumbs. Press crumbs firmly into tin and bake for 25-30 minutes until pale brown. You can reduce the heat to 130 if you feel the base is browning too quickly. Set aside to cool. Melt the butter for the toping in a medium sized pan over a low heat. Add the other ingredients except the chocolate and whisk until the sugar has melted then increase the heat to medium and keep whisking until the mixture becomes caramel coloured and thickened. You can add a pinch of salt at this point if you want to be trendy, or any other flavouring that takes your fancy. Pour over the base and leave to cool, Mind your fingers this is hot! When it's all set melt the chocolate in whatever manner suits you and pour over the cooled caramel . Leave to set then cut into one inch squares. Be aware, this product contains calories! Blinking boilers! This time it's leaking water all over the place so everything's had to be turned off. Since yesterday no heating, no hot water and no chance to go and 'borrow' heat from the local shops because we await the arrival of the engineer who I hope will fix it. According to the lady who arranged the appointment the boiler is just looking for some attention since it was the wireless unit that got it all last time. Hmm, it's an interesting theory. Still I find it comforting that those on the end of helplines, with a fair number of whom I've had to deal this last few days but that's for another time when my fingers work better, are quite human and slightly daft. Just makes your day that. You will remember, those of you who have been reading along for a while, that I am an enthusiastic bus pass user and as you can imagine was as excited as the next man about getting the new all singing dancing add any service you like pass to replace the old worn out one. Well! My parents got their replacement pass, Mr mak'Bread got his replacement pass, my friends and colleagues got their replacement pass but did I? No of course not. 'You better get that sorted' said a friendly bus driver six weeks ago. So I took his advice and phoned up. I was assured all was in hand and the new pass would be delivered long before the old one ran out on 31st December. Was it? No of course not, why else would I be telling you all this? By this time of course we were into the festive season and nobody was answering the phone. So at midnight on 31st when the world celebrated the new year, I mourned the passing into invalidity of my trusty pass. Eventually three days later I got someone who said that she'd reorder for me but it would take five to ten working days. Now do you not think a wee explanation of what had gone wrong might have been a polite thing to provide? Apparently not. However, the bus pass has arrived and only two working days after it was reordered so I made Mr mak'Bread some of his favourite scones to thank him for listening to me moaning on about the inefficiences of admin land! My handsome son says I should be grateful I get a pass at all and I suppose he's right but then again you have to be old to get it so there is a downside! Probably not, resolutions with their inbuilt failure chip do little for me and if I indulged more than was good for me over the festive season I will let the garden fix that in due course. I have a number of projects for 2017 worked out thanks to my pal Ellen who likes to keep me challenged in a project sort of way but nothing overly taxing or worryingly self-improving. I must admit 'though to counting my steps over the last few days but that's nothing to do with healthy living, it's just because I found this really cool pedometer app thing for my phone and I'm still playing with it. The novelty will wear off, no doubt, long before the festive excess. Also getting back into the rhythm of baking after abandoning bread in favour of various Christmas goodies. So here to start the new year are Kaiser-style Rolls, just right for a turkey burger or whatever takes your fancy. Wishing you and yours a very happy 2017 Kaiser(ish) Rolls Ingredients: 500g white bread flour 5g fast action yeast 3g salt (or more to your taste) 15g sugar 350 liquid made with one egg, 30g melted butter and water Method: Mix everything together and work to a smooth dough. You can do this by hand for 10 minutes but you may find it easier to use a mixer with a dough hook. because the dough is quite sticky to start with. Cover and leave to rise for about an hour. To shape the rolls press each on with a Kaiser ROll stamp or use the tutorial given here Cover the rolls and leave to double in size, brush with egg wash and sprinkle on sesame seeds. Bake at 220C for 15 minutes until golden brown then leave to cool. You should eat these or freeze them quickly because they're only worth toasting on day 2. ... although you'd hardly be blamed for thinking it what with it being a month since I last spoke to you. In that space of time I've taught 64 primary school children to bake bread rolls (great fun but I'm so glad I don't work in school for a living any more), been to Hamburg, had a sick parent, helped my lovely daughter knit two pairs of cosy socks for Christmas presents for her grandparents (she couldn't knit a stitch when she started so I'm particularly proud of her on this) and looked after the Bran boy who came to stay for Christmas after a long absence from our living room. Oh, and there was Christmas itself which, after all the shopping and wrapping and decorating, turned out to be really quiet what with the sick parent and offspring scattered across the globe (well Stirling and England). Still Mr mak'Bread and I and the rabbit enjoyed the tranquillity of each other's company. We dined on chicken tikka masala (best I could do out of the freezer following last minute cancellation of planned celebrations and Bran munched happily on a carrot. And now I'm enjoying the peace of the days between Christmas and New Year and lunching on my handsome son's Boxing Day leftovers (the bread's not left over, I made it specially to fit his ham!) |
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Hello, I'm Marianne. I live in Central Scotland with my husband, Jim, and an occasional rabbit. Glad you could join me :) Archives
November 2017
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