Love Hollywood?

Hello again! Nice to see you. Sit down and have a slice of this:

I don't know if you've been watching the Paul Hollywood bread making series on BBC recently, but I did. I watched the heck out of it. There's something about  that blue-eyed silver Scouser kneading floury mounds that gets me a little bit hot under the collar (sorry, my darling OH - it's the beard!).

I bought myself one of his books and had a good cyber-flick through the recipes from the TV series on the Beeb website. The image above shows the wholemeal soda bread that was whisked up from start to finish in 45 minutes. It is gorgeous, and begged to be smothered in jam. Or butter. Or any other thing that takes your fancy!

It's 500g half-and-half mix of strong white and wholemeal bread flours, 20g baking powder, 1 teaspoon of salt, 75g melted butter, 270ml milk and 30ml buttermilk. I didn't have buttermilk, but I just put a squeeze of lemon juice in the 30 ml milk, and left it for 5 minutes.

You bung it all in a bowl, mix and shape into a ball on a lined baking tin. slash the top and sprinkle with a little flour. Cook at 200deg C for 25 mins. Cool (if you can wait that long) on a wire rack.

It sort of reminds me of a massive scone mixture. I think I might try to handle it much less next time, as I know this makes my scones lighter. Or even substitute the buttermilk for 30ml plain yoghurt. Hmm...

I'll be sharing some more of my baking adventures in the near future - watch this space for pitta (out of this world) and pizza.

What's your favourite bread product? Or bread producer? Do tell ;)

With love from me to you

Good evening folks. It is a special day today, one which you will always look back upon with fondness. Today, I shall be sharing with you my most favourite recipe, for raspberry chocolate brownies. And for this, you will either love me or hate me, but either way you'll love the brownies! I didn't get a chance to photograph today's version, so here's one that I made earlier!


So, are you ready? Here goes...

(from Donna Hay "Chocolate")

160g plain flour, sifted
200g dark chocolate, chopped
250g butter
205g brown sugar
4 eggs (I usually use medium)
1/4 tspn baking powder
40g cocoa powder, sifted
1.5 cups raspberries fresh or frozen (I reckon frozen is better, not worth wasting the fresh on this, better to make cranachan...)
Oven preheated to 180C. Put choc and butter into a small pan over a low heat and stir until melted and smooth. Put in a bowl together with the sugar and eggs (I usually mix the latter two first). Sift over the flour, baking powder and cocoa and mix to combine. Pour into a 23cm/9 inch square, greased cake tin lined with greaseproof paper, top with the raspberries and bake for 45 mins/until set. No need to defrost the raspberries.
I make half this mixture, and use a loaf tin to bake it in. It takes a little less time to cook though. It also freezes very well, though may not get a chance depending on how many people are about!
And why am I sharing this with you? Well, it's my birthday, and it seems to be the tradition that on your birthday, people expect you to give them cake. I've almost managed it :) Enjoy x

More baked goods!

Today, I've been mostly eating cake. So, I'll post a couple of healthy breakfast muffin recipes that have been developed in an attempt to make me feel less guilty about needing said cakey things to fuel my baby bump (which, just in case you're wondering, is rather large and starting to be uncomfortable at 25 weeks/6 months). They both stemmed from the fact that I didn't have certain ingredients for a recipe that I'd found on-line, and I improvised with what I had in the cupboard/fridge. The basic recipe was this:

• 300g plain wholemeal flour
  
• 50g rolled porridge oats, plus extra for decoration
• 3 heaped tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp mixed spice
  
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon
  
• 100g raisins
  
• 50g pecans, chopped
  
• 50g caster sugar
  
• 100ml sunflower oil
  
• 150ml natural yogurt
  
• 150ml milk
  
• 1 medium egg, beaten
  
• 2 medium bananas, mashed
  
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
  
• 2 small apples, grated
  
• 1 medium carrot (100g peeled weight), coarsely grated

To Decorate
Sunflower and pumpkin seeds

Method

Preheat the oven to 190°C, gas mark 5. Lightly oil a non-stick muffin pan with 12 large cups (or two six-cup pans) (Or use muffin cases, like I did!)

Sprinkle with oats, sunflower and pumpkin seeds (or not), and bake for 20 minutes or till a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Leave in the tin for 5 minutes, then cool on a rack. Eat when still warm.

You can prepare the dry and wet ingredients the night before. Combine the two in the morning and you'll have a fresh-baked breakfast."

The ingredients are many, but I love the fact that you just sling them all together and give them a bit of a stir. The first time, I didn't have apples, so I put pears in, and substituted the raisins and apricots for dried dates and figs, chopped into tiny pieces. I didn't have pecans and didn't want the seeds on top, so I just put pine nuts into the mix. I also left a bit of the sugar out. Ta da!


These were really lovely, and inspired me to think of what else I could put in to up the "healthiness" factor. Have a guess. Go on....

Change the carrot for beetroot, and keep the apple. Swap the raisins and apricots for figs and dates again, and all the seeds and nuts for the pine nuts, and you get these:


Even more delish. I promise! If these are a bit too healthy for you, just wait two ticks, and read on...

August is a manic birthday month for me, with 10 all in the first two week, and four of those are in my direct family! As well as the birthday party for the first-born next weekend, Mr Love_Crafts has also requested various chocolatey treats in order to celebrate his birthday, which is this weekend. So, after my little cupcake adventure a couple of weeks ago, I found a buttercream recipe that fitted my concept of icing much better than the cream cheese abomination that curdled (see here if you have no idea what I am on about). I perked this and the cake base up with a bit of fairtrade cocoa, and le voila as they say.


I also made jams and rocky road, but seeing as those are neither baked nor as pretty, I shall leave them out!

So tell me, if you're still here... does the thought of beetroot muffins appeal to you?

Let them eat cake!

Well, cupcakes, to be precise. It's fast approaching the day where I sweat and toil to make my darling daughter's 3rd birthday most memorable. It's also the first birthday party I have ever organised. It may only be 6 toddlers and their respective parents (hopefully just one half of the full set), but I am a bit concerned.

So I've been practicing. DD has requested cupcakes. And I've never made them before. Plenty of muffins, pies, quiches, cakes, blah de blah, but never cupcakes. And seeing as the only bit she ever eats is the icing, then I need to get that right! So here is our joint effort:


I thought I'd get the guests to decorate their own cupcakes with sprinkles etc. This might give the 3 boys a chance to escape the pink-fest that the party shows signs of becoming. I swear I have been as non-girly, colour-neutral as I am myself with DD, but she still professes that pink is her favourite colour. I blame society. And Peppa Pig.


And the taste test?


Believe it or not, that's a happy grin. She just had a mouthful of the icing and didn't want to swallow it too quickly!

But my favourite one is this (perhaps because it looks most like pictures of other ones I've seen):


The close-up shows that the cheese/butter icing thing has curdled a little, not sure what I did wrong. It did taste lovely though. But I'd like to get it smoother, so any tips would be gratefully received.

What did you get up to today? Do tell ;)