Panettone in a Bundt

Ah, Lent, that joyous time of year when we willingly go without. My son has given up marshmallows, my husband has given up lunch, and I have given up all processed sugar. You can imagine how cheerful our household is these days.

Oh, and my daughter has given up eating raw tomatoes. Yup, she really knows how to make a sacrifice for Lent.

So it is with somewhat dampened enthusiasm that I find myself baking for work this week. We are having our own little bake off, and the category is "Continental Cakes". While at first I had thought of making a fraisier, I realised that this would be quite a bit of effort for a cake that wouldn't slice well and would need refrigeration. Instead I decided to make a more pannetone type affair, using a bundt tin to give it a pretty shape. Bundt tins are useful like that.

Now if you ask any Italian for their Panettone recipe, they'll laugh and direct you to the nearest reputable bakery. But in my Joy of Cooking, next to the recipe I use as the base dough for my hot cross buns, is a recipe for Panettone, which I followed loosely until the last step where I put it into a bundt tin rather than a tube tin.

I didn't get my camera out until I'd made the sponge starter. Here it is, in all its clingfilmed glory, sitting in the morning sun.

Er, yeah...moving on...

Then while that rose for a while I covered some sultanas with water, brought them to the boil, and drained them. This prevents them from being super dry and stops them from burning...mostly.

While Joy asked for separate additions of chopped candied citron peel and orange peel, all I had at my disposal was chopped mixed peel. So be it. Here you can see my weathered Joy peeking through.

In it went with the soaked sultanas...with the addition of a couple Tablespoons of rum.

And hour or so later, my sponge starter looked like this, al bubbly and happy.

So in a separate bowl I put an egg, some yolks (eek - egg separation anxiety!), sugar, vanilla, lemon zest, and clementine zest (I had no oranges).

And some plain flour...which was supposed to be bread flour but I didnae have any in my hoose. Oh, and the sponge starter went in too.

It was gloopy. This is supposed to be kneaded/mixed until smooth.

This was as smooth as I got it before I lost patience and threw in the butter.

Again, this was as smooth as I got it before I lost patience. More would be better and would result in an airier cake.

In went my fruit mixture after I'd drained off most of the booze.

And I mixed it until it looked like so.

I then put it in a buttered bowl. It's supposed to be a smooth ball, but oh well.

Here is one purchase I did manage to remember: cooking spray. These bundt pans are great for pretty cakes, but they are a real pain to grease before use.

Once the dough had risen, I punched it down (or rather, gave it a rough stir with a wooden spoon) then spooned it into the pan to rise

At this point I was running out of time. This was enough rising for me.

But you know what makes everything better?

Yes, that's right: BUTTER. Just a little bit over the top before it went in.

And then a little bit when it came out.

Pretty, ain't she? But not as tall as I'd hoped, so more decoration was required.

A simple glaze from icing sugar and lemon juice squirted out of a ziplock bag and a few sliced almonds later...

Er...um...how about more sugar?

That's better! Good enough for me to bring in. Although the official bake off is tomorrow, it looks as if turnout will be low. I thought it best that people dig in now while the cake is fresh, and simply report back as judges tomorrow. When I made this suggestion, it was happily received.

But how does it taste, you ask? 

I DON'T KNOW BECAUSE I CAN'T HAVE ANY SUGAR, YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD!

But here's the recipe which I am too lazy to type up:

Quick Dinner Rolls

"Do you still do that cooking blog?" asked someone recently.

"Er...no...but I will," I feebly replied. But when? I guess it has been a while. I've still been cooking, and trying new things, but you know, there's three little people living with me, two of which are running around naked as I write this, and they somewhat get in the way of things.

But I had a good weekend and am ready to attempt this bloggy thing once more. Good because we weren't rushing everywhere trying to do lots of things, we just stayed in for the most part and yesterday Robert skipped his nap and went to bed before seven and ohmygoditwasamazingIhadaneveningtoactuallyjustsitandread!!!!

To celebrate this good fortune, we decided to make burgers today. My husband is usually in charge of the burgers themselves, and he volunteered to make them today, so my job was just to make a side dish of taboulleh and to make the rolls for the burgers. I googled the internet for a quick roll recipe that I could make before picking the kids up from school and came up with these.

If I had been paying attention I would have cut out the sugar, but I wasn't, so I didn't. So instead here's what I did.

Some water, yeast, oil, sugar, and water went into a bowl. Just easy blend yeast, because it takes the pressure off. It's a whole lotta yeast, enough to raise the dead. I've never seen fresh yeast for sale here, but hopefully will find it one day.

This cute guy was there to watch.

After ten minutes, the mixture was officially alive in a freaky Frankenstein's monster kind of way.

So in went 2/3 of the flour, salt, and an egg. I think the egg and oil helps it be more bun like rather than crusty.

It was an unappetizing gloopy mess.

So I put in more flour. That would hopefully make it less gloopy.

Magically it began to look more bread dough like.

So onto the counter top it went for a bit of kneading.

 I lost patience after about five minutes and left it. It did look smoother and felt a bit tougher, but I had a fractious toddler on my hip who wasn't down with me kneading.

I was ready to let it rise as a huge ball but then I checked the recipe and it said to cut into 12 pieces, so I done did that there then like so.

I'm not verra good at making them into perfect spheres. Here they are after 10 minutes of rising, ready to be buns in my oven.

And after a few minutes, voila! Dinner rolls for da burgers! I think they could have done with a couple minutes more, but Paul Hollywood wasn't there to tell me off and we ate them anyway.

Here they are in all their sliced glory.

And here they are with the other schtuff...except for the burgers, as they were cooking behind me when I took the photo.

And if you want to make "30 minute dinner rolls", just do as KitchenMeetsGirl suggests below:

Ingredients

• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons warm water
• 1/3 cup oil
• 2 tablespoons active dry yeast
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 3 1/2 cups bread flour

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Combine the warm water, oil, yeast, and sugar. Allow the mixture to rest for 10 minutes, until it is frothy and freaky
3. Mix 2 cups of the flour, the salt, and the egg into the yeast mixture. Add the remaining 1 1/2 cups flour 1/2 cup at a time, kneading it in until you get a workable dough
4. Shape dough into 12 balls and place on a baking tray. Let dough rise for 10 minutes.
5. Bake for 10 minutes or until tops are just golden brown.

Lamb Kofta, Pitta Bread, Tabbouleh and Raita.

So a while ago I said I would post savoury stuff soon, but I haven't really managed. I have been cooking plenty, and usually trying something different once a week or so, but I just haven't managed to do step by step photos. Especially since by the time I make a meal like the one I had on Tuesday night, I'm not really up for writing up full descriptors afterwards. As you can see, there were lots of different elements to the meal:

From upper left going clockwise: pitta bread, lamb kofta, tabbouleh, hoummus, raita, butter, and gem lettuce.

And I just couldn't manage to take photos along the way, look after children, and create this meal.

But I snapped a photo at the end, as it did all look so pretty together. I had leftovers for my lunch at work today and felt quite proud bringing it in. Then my colleague said her boyfriend had made paella the night before and I felt somewhat less smug about my cooking.

The only thing I didn't even attempt myself was the hoummus/hummus. Every time I make it myself it just ends up too pasty, too lemony, too oily...too pointless to make myself since supermarkets do such a great job of making tubs of it available everywhere. If you think you could convert me with your own recipe for it, please offer it here.

But if you want any of the other recipes, just click below on the links or read below for Joy of Cooking's Tabbouleh.

Lamb Koftas - I omitted mint (I already had it in the raita and the tabbouleh) and added paprika
Pitta bread - the recipe buried at the bottom of my falafel post
Raita

Tabbouleh

Combine in a large bowl:
160g bulgar wheat
500ml boiling water

Cover and let stand for 30 minutes, then drain any excess water using a sieve, pressing down with a wooden spoon if necessary. Return to the bowl.

In a small food processor pulse until a rough puree is formed:
1 medium onion
1 packet parsley
1 packet mint

Stir this into the bulgar wheat. Add

1 small pack cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 a cucumber, chopped
1/2 tsp salt
a good grinding of black pepper

Whisk together
juice of 2 lemons
80ml olive oil

Add to the bulgar and toss to coat. Serve alongside leaves of gem lettuce.

Orange Cinnamon Buns

It has finally happened: the last day of the school holidays is here!!!

This has been a low budget week for us (goodbye, maternity pay, you were fun while you lasted) but we've managed to survive without too many casualties.  

However, not all is well...

Now, I don't want to worry anyone TOO much, but I think things are going a bit rough with Will and Kate right now.  How do I know?  This:


Yes, a crack has appeared in my one of my 50p charity shop Will and Kate wedding mugs.  It's cause for concern, folks.  The new baby has obviously upset things a bit; it's not easy becoming parents, particularly when you are in the public eye.   You know what she needs right now?  Cinnamon buns.

Shut up, it's true.

My guess is she won't eat them, though, so we should have some for her.  It's the right thing to do.

Now let's gather up some ingredients.





I've not tried this recipe before, so anything could have happened.  ANYTHING.

I pinned it off of the Williams Sonoma page, and then my friend pinned it and then she did something crazy.  She MADE the recipe!  Within a day!  So of course I had to as well.

First, I warmed some milk and added some yeast.

Then I added eggs, sugar, salt...

and flour.  It had said to wait until the yeast was bubbling, but WHO HAS TIME FOR THAT?

So I ignored them and stirred it all together.

Then in went the magic ingredient: butter.

Now here the recipe had I line that I HATE seeing in recipes: "Attach the dough hook and knead on low speed".  Not everyone has a stand mixer with a dough hook!  I do have a vintage stand mixer, but no dough hook, and I'm afraid to use the mixer at all right now as it gives off a funny metallic smell, so I knead things by hand.  With a recipe like this, it is a pain, as the dough is quite sticky and hard to work.  I added a significant amount of flour, but hopefully the 4 eggs and butter balanced that out.

I worked the dough till I got bored, and used my new fancy dough scraper for the first time.  I got it from my sister in law when I was going through her kitchen stuff and said "ooh, look, a dough scraper!" and she said "what's a dough scraper?"  She obviously didn't have any use for it, so she gave it to me.  Score!

I put the dough away to rise (yes, I snuck some wholegrain bread flour in there.  I don't know why, either) and got to work on the filling.

Oh, guess I don't have too many pecans.  Oh well.

Brown sugar, cinnamon, and orange zest.  Looks good to me.

An hour and a bit later, the dough looked like this.

So I rolled it out.  I kind of ignored the dimensions the recipe said as it said to roll out 2 rectangles and instead I just made one big rectangle.

I used my fingers to smear butter all over it.

It was actually thinner in places than I should have made it, but oh well.  Then I added the filling and threw some chopped apple on just for fun.  Oh, and a bit of flour to help stop it all from spilling out.

Then rolled it up.  Usually I like to use the rolling pin to press the filling into the butter and dough before rolling it up, but I forgot.  Oops.

I tried at first to cut it with floss, but ended up just using a sharp knife.  And at this point all three kids were making noise so I was kind of rushing...

So they ended up looking like this.  Oops.  Maybe rising will fix it.

Er...yeah...

Well, good icing fixes everything, right?  I put some butter, cream cheese, and vanilla in a bowl, whipped them up, then added icing sugar.

 When I make cream cheese icing in the UK it always ends up runnier than when I do it in the USA.  Why is that?  Still tastes good.

Time to check on the buns.  Whoa, mama.

Let's hide those beasts with some icing, eh?

Whoops, some must have disappeared somehow.

So yes, they were tasty, but not as good as this recipe (so long as you use butter instead of margarine): http://www.food.com/recipe/cinnabon-cinnamon-rolls-76864?soc=pinterest
I don't think the orange zest added much, and they weren't as gooey as I'd hoped they'd be.  The wholegrain flour messed up the smooth texture you should really have, and the apples didn't really cook through enough.  I think dried apple would work better, or just raisins instead.  I will not be tempted by another cinnamon roll recipe again...

Well not until someone else pins one, anyway.

Here is the original recipe anyway if you think you'd like it.

Orange Cinnamon Rolls

For the dough:

1 package active dry yeast

3/4 cup milk, warmed (110°F)

1/4 cup granulated sugar

4 eggs

4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more as needed

1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt

6 Tbs. (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut into chunks

For the filling:

4 Tbs. (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut into chunks

2/3 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

2 tsp. ground cinnamon

Finely grated zest of 1 large orange

1 egg, lightly beaten with 1 tsp. water

For the cream cheese frosting:

1/2 lb. cream cheese, at room temperature

4 Tbs. (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted

To make the dough, in the bowl of an electric stand mixer, dissolve the yeast in the warm milk and let stand until foamy, about 10 minutes. Add the granulated sugar, eggs, the 4 1/2 cups flour and the salt. Attach the dough hook and knead on low speed, adding a little more flour if needed, until the ingredients come together. Toss in the butter and continue to knead until the dough is smooth and springy, about 7 minutes. Lightly oil a large bowl. Form the dough into a ball, put it in the oiled bowl and cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Let the dough rise at room temperature until doubled in volume, 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

Butter a 9-by-13-inch baking dish. Punch down the dough and turn it out onto a lightly floured work surface. Cut the dough in half.

Roll out 1 dough half into a rectangle about 9 by 14 inches. Spread with half of the butter, then sprinkle evenly with half of the brown sugar, half of the cinnamon and half of the orange zest. Starting at the long side closest to you, roll the rectangle away from you, forming a log. Cut the log crosswise into 8 equal slices. Arrange the slices, cut side down, in half of the prepared pan. Repeat with the remaining dough and filling ingredients, and arrange the slices in the other half of the pan. Cover the pan loosely with plastic wrap and let stand in a warm, draft-free spot until puffy, about 1 hour, or refrigerate overnight, then let stand at room temperature for 30 to 60 minutes before baking.

Meanwhile, make the cream cheese frosting: In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the flat beater, combine the cream cheese, butter and vanilla and beat on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Gradually beat in the confectioners’ sugar and continue to beat until thoroughly combined, stopping the mixer to scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed. If the consistency is too soft, refrigerate the frosting until it is spreadable, about 15 minutes.

Transfer the pan with the rolls to a wire rack and let cool slightly, then spread the rolls with the frosting while they are still warm. Pull the rolls apart and serve warm. Makes 16 rolls.