Helen Goh’s Perfect Hot Cross Buns

 I couldn’t resist trying out Helen Goh’s recipe for hot cross buns on @goodfoodau - and they are just as fluffy and delicious as promised. 

This is my first time baking buns using a tangzhong and I was impressed with the results. 

I didn’t have citrus peel, so I just replaced it with more fruit.

These buns are so good, especially served warm with butter.

TWD - Breakfast-In-Rome Lemon Cake

 This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Breakfast-In-Rome Lemon Cake. Dorie developed this recipe to produce a cake which mimicked a cake she ate daily as a treat in Rome.

The cake is a lemon sponge made with oil instead of butter. Dorie’s beloved version was completely plain, but she suggests adding berries in summer. I added blackberries to my cake.

Dorie suggests that this cake be served with just a dusting of icing sugar. However, as it is nearly Easter, I adorned my cake with a lemon glaze and mini Easter eggs.

To see what everyone else made this month and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

Bunny Cupcakes for Easter

 Happy Easter readers!  I hope that you are having a great day.

To celebrate, I made Bunny Cupcakes (down the rabbit hole).  The recipe comes from this week's Woolworths supermarket catalogue.

Instead of making marzipan bunny feet, I used white marshmallows, cut in half, and painted them with red food colouring.  These are really nice cupcakes.  There is no coconut in the cakes - the coconut is used strictly for decoration. 

To make your own Bunny Cupcakes, you will need:

Cakes

125g butter, softened

1 cup self-raising flour

1/2 cup wheaten cornflour

2/3 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 egg

2 egg whites

2/3 cup sugar

Icing and decorations

1 1/4 cup icing sugar

75g butter, softened

1 tablespoon milk

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup shredded coconut

12 white marshmallows

red or pink food colouring

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius and line a 12 hole muffin tin with cupcake papers.  

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter and sugar together until pale and creamy.  Add the whole egg and the vanilla and beat until combined.  Add a third of the sifted flours, and beat until just combined.  Add half the milk and beat until just combined.  Repeat with the remaining flour and milk, ending with flour.  

In a separate bowl, beat together the two egg whites until they form soft peaks.  Fold the egg whites gently into the batter with a rubber spatula.

Using an icecream scoop, divide the batter evenly between the 12 cupcake papers.  Bake the cupcakes in the preheated oven for 25 minutes or until golden on top and cooked through when tested with a skewer.

Remove the cupcakes from the oven and unmould them from the muffin tin onto a wire rack.  Allow them to cool completely.

Once the cupcakes are cool, make the icing - Beat the butter in the bowl of a stand mixer until pale and creamy.  Gradually beat in the icing sugar, then beat in the milk and vanilla.

Spread the buttercream over the top of the cupcakes, leaving a small hump of icing in the middle of each one to form the bunny tails.  Sprinkle the shredded coconut over the top of each cupcake.  Cut each marshmallow in half, and arrange the two halves of of a marshmallow on the top of a cupcake near the tail to form "feet".  Using a small paintbrush dipped in food colouring, paint on the bunny's paws, as shown.  

I also made Easter marshmallow rabbits again this year:

You can find the recipe here.  The recipe makes one large rabbit or 6 junior rabbits. 

Happy Easter to all!

Carrot, Toasted Hazelnut and Cheesecake Layer Cake

In the dark times

Will there also be singing?

Yes, there will also be singing.

About the dark times.

                                 Bertolt Brecht

I hope that you have been enjoying your Easter weekend so far.  It may be difficult for many of us (including me!) being separated physically from our loved ones, but it is worth it to save health and lives.

Difficult times are a part of life.  I cannot complain as my life has been easy compared to the lives of my immediate forebears.

This is my great grandma:    

I love this photo because she is holding a cake.   Great Granny went through a lot in her life - she immigrated to Australia in the late 1800s on a ship at age 3 from what was then part of Germany, she lived on a farm in a slab house, had numerous children, and survived a snake bite and the loss of a child. Apparently she was famed for her recipes for homemade sausages and bruise ointment, which sadly no-one thought to write down, so they are lost to history.  I don't know much more about her life, but it seems that, like many pioneers, Great Granny was made of stern stuff.   I am inspired by the courage and determination of women like her.

To celebrate this Easter weekend, I wanted to make a carrot cake, as it fits in well with the Easter themes of spring (although we are going into autumn in the Southern hemisphere) and bunnies (new life).

I chose the recipe for Carrot, Toasted Hazelnut and Cheesecake Layer Cake from Beatrix Bakes by Natalie Paull (divided by 4, to minify it).   I love the fact that if you can't decide between cake and cheesecake, this recipe allows you to have both.

The cake component is a delicate, light sponge-like carrot cake containing ground toasted hazelnuts.  It is so delicate that my bottom layer fell apart when I tried to flip the cheesecake layer out onto it.  Luckily, the stickiness of the cheesecake allowed me to glue the base cake layer back together respectably.

The cheesecake is a part of recipe of the filling from "The cheesecake (that you will love the most)" recipe in Beatrix Bakes.     You can also find the recipe online here.  For my mini version, I made a quarter of the filling recipe.  I substituted natural Greek yoghurt for the sour cream, which worked fine.

The frosting required marscapone, but I did not have any, so I just increased the cream cheese component.  I think I would have liked the frosting better without the white chocolate, which made it a bit too claggy and sweet for me, so I think I'd just make normal cream cheese icing if making this cake again.  

To make this cake (mini version), you will need:

1/4 batch of cheesecake filling (recipe at the link above)

Cake

30g toasted hazelnuts, skins removed
55g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of bicarbonate of soda
a pinch of ground cinnamon
a pinch of salt
1 egg
50g sugar
35ml oil (I used grapeseed oil)
3/4 carrot, peeled and grated

Frosting (I made a half batch as 1/4 batch was not enough)

80g cream cheese, softened
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
15g butter, softened
25g melted white chocolate

For the cheesecake:

Preheat your oven to 120 degrees Celsius.  Grease and line a 6" round shallow cake pan.  Pour the cheesecake filling mixture into the pan, and place the pan in a roasting tray (I used a 9" cake tin).  Pour hot water into the roasting tin to come one third of the way up the sides of the cheesecake pan, being careful not to get water into the cheesecake itself.   Bake the cheesecake in the oven for ~20 minutes or until it has set firmly.

Remove the cheesecake from the oven and the roasting tin, and put it into the fridge to chill for at least 2 hours.

For the cakes: 

Turn up the oven to 150 degrees Celsius.  

Put 20g of the toasted hazelnuts into food processor and blitz until they form fine crumbs (but do not overblitz or you will get a paste).  Chop the other 10g of toasted hazelnuts coarsely with a knife and set aside. 

Spray two x 6"inch cake tins with cooking oil spray and line the base and sides of the tins with baking paper.  

Sift the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon and salt in a small bowl.

Put the egg and sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer and beat for 10 minutes on high speed, then reduce the speed of the mixer to medium and beat for a further 2 minutes.   Increase the mixer speed slightly and stream in the oil.

Put the grated carrots and hazelnut crumbs into a large bowl.  Pour the egg mixture over the carrots and hazelnuts, then fold together gently with a rubber spatula.  Add the dry ingredients and fold in gently.

Divide the batter evenly between the two prepared cake tins, and smooth the tops with a metal spatula.  Bake the cakes in the oven for ~20 minutes or until cooked through.

Remove the cakes from the oven and allow them to cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes before running a knife around the edges of the tins and turning the cakes out onto a wire rack to cool.

For the frosting:

Put all of the ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment fitted and beat on high speed  until light and fluffy.

Assembly:

Put one of the cakes onto a cake board which has a dab of frosting in the centre to secure the cake.  Put half a tablespoon of frosting on the top of each cake and spread out to the edges of the cakes.  As Natalie says, do this carefully, as the cakes are quite fragile - I tore my bottom layer a little at this stage. 

Invert the chilled cheesecake directly onto the bottom layer of cake.  Again, be careful - my cheesecake layer did not pop straight out of the tin, and when I tried to get it out, I ended up mangling the bottom layer of cake - thank goodness the sticky cheesecake allowed me to glue the cake layer onto the cheesecake layer itself to stabilise the cake.

Place the frosted side of the other cake on top of the cheesecake layer, and gently push all three layers into alignment.

Using a metal spatula, spread the remaining frosting over the top of the cake, and sprinkle with the coarsely chopped toasted hazelnuts.

Enjoy!

Vanilla Glazed Choc Chunk Hot Cross Buns - QBC

It is Good Friday today, heralding the start of the holy Easter season.  For Queen Baking Club this fortnight, the recipe was fittingly Vanilla Glazed Choc Chunk Hot Cross Buns.

These hot cross buns contain a traditional blend of spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves) and raisins, together with the less traditional addition of chocolate chunks.  The finished buns are glazed with a syrup that is flavoured with vanilla.

Here are my buns just before going into the oven:

I found that I needed twice the amount of flour paste suggested in the recipe to make crosses for all of my buns, 20 in all.

Here is a yummy hot cross bun, fresh from the oven and spread with butter:

The smell of hot cross buns is amazing!  Loved these buns, and my colleagues seemed to like them too.

Queen's recipe is quite straight forward, should you wish to try making your own hot cross buns for today.

Wishing you a blessed Easter.

Chocolate, Caramel & Malt Cheesecake

Happy Friday all!  Today, I thought I'd put a smile on your dial with a gorgeous Chocolate, Caramel and Malt Cheesecake that graces the cover of this month's Delicious magazine.

This cheesecake, by Phoebe Wood, is as decedent and delicious as it looks. The crushed malt biscuit crust is filled with a layer of caramel cheesecake, then a layer of chocolate cheesecake, and finished off with dark chocolate ganache.  Ooh la la.

I halved the recipe because the quantities of ingredients in the original were a little OTT for my tastes - but you can knock yourself out by making it the original way if your motto is "go big or go home".

This cheesecake was, unsurprisingly, very popular at work.  The only complaint I received was that there was not enough of it.

To make this cheesecake my way (half recipe), you will need:

250g packet malt biscuits (I used Malt O'Milk)
100g butter, melted and cooled
400g cream cheese at room temperature, cubed
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tablespoon cornflour
1 1/2 eggs (for the half, break one egg into a cup, whisk with a fork and only use half) 
125g dulce de leche (I used Nestle Top 'N' Fill)
100g dark chocolate, melted and cooled
1/4 cup malted milk powder (I used Ovaltine)
1/2 cup pouring cream

For the ganache topping:

100g dark chocolate, chopped finely
1/3 cup thickened cream

Preheat your oven to 150 degrees Celsius.  Grease and line the base of a 22cm springform pan.

Put the malt biscuits into a food processor and blitz into fine crumbs.  Add the butter and blitz until combined.  Press the biscuit mixture evenly over the base and up the sides of the springform pan, and chill in the fridge until needed.

Put the cream cheese into the bowl of a food processor and blitz until smooth.  Add the sugar, cornflour and eggs, and blitz until well combined. Transfer half of the cheese mixture into a separate bowl.       

To the cheese mixture left in the food processor, add the dulce de leche, and blitz to combine.  Pour the caramel mixture over the biscuit base, and bake in the preheated oven for 35-40 minutes (50 minutes if making the whole recipe) or until just set.

Combine the reserved cheese mixture with the melted chocolate, malted milk powder and cream, stirring well.  

Remove the cheesecake from the oven, pour the chocolate mixture carefully over the top of it, and return the cheesecake to the oven to bake for an hour or until the cheesecake is just set.  Turn off the oven, but leave the cheesecake inside with the door ajar to cool for roughly 3 hours.

Once the cheesecake is cool, chill it in the fridge for at least 4 hours or overnight.

Once the cheesecake is thoroughly chilled, make the ganache topping by placing the ingredients into a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water, and stir from time to time until the chocolate has melted and the mixture is smooth.   Cool the ganache to room temperature before pouring over the top of the cheesecake, and allow the topped cheesecake to set in the fridge for another 30 minutes before serving.

Slice and enjoy!!

Hot Cross Buns - Gewurzhaus recipe

Easter is fast approaching, and Good Friday is the first of the Easter holidays.  It wouldn't be Good Friday in our family unless you eat fish for every meal, and you have hot cross buns.

I am enjoying trying the various flavours of hot cross buns that are available now, with my favourite being Apple and Cinnamon Hot Cross Buns from Bakers Delight.

On the weekend, I visited one of my favourite stores, Gewurzhaus, in Hawksburn Village.  Every year they stock beautiful traditional wooden ornaments sourced from Germany.  They also stock a Hot Cross Bun Spice Mix.  Although I couldn't justify purchasing a wooden ornament, I did buy some of the hot cross bun spice mix.  The spice mix came with a recipe for traditional style hot cross buns, so what better excuse would I get to make my  own hot cross buns.    

The Gewurzhaus hot cross bun recipe makes 16 buns.  I was a little overwhelmed by the thought of having so many buns around, so I halved the recipe to make eight buns.

I was a little concerned about how my buns would turn out, but I needn't have been concerned.  Home-made buns are never as fluffy as the store bought variety, but then you have to wonder what they put in the store bought ones to make them that fluffy.  The taste was spot on and they were not too heavy.

The recipe for the Gewurzhaus hot cross buns is as follows:

Dough

500g bread flour or plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
75g sugar
1 sachet dry yeast (7g)
2-3 tablespoons Gewurzhaus hot cross bun spice mix (cinnamon, ginger, cloves, coriander, citrus)
300ml milk
65g butter
1 large egg, beaten
150g currants or mixed fruit

Crosses

4 tablespoons self raising flour
4 tablespoons cold water

Glaze

2 tablespoons sugar
75ml boiling water
1/4 teaspoon hot cross bun spice mix

Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl. Add the spice, salt, sugar and yeast and mix through.

In a small saucepan, heat the milk over a low heat, add the butter. Once the butter has melted, take off heat and allow to cool to room temperature.

Make a well in the dry ingredients and add the milk mixture. Add the beaten egg and mix well, working from the inside out, slowly incorporating the dry ingredients to form a dough. Add in the dried fruit, and knead through the dough.

Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until the dough becomes smooth and not sticky anymore. You may need to slightly adjust the mixture if it is too dry/wet with milk/flour. 

Place the dough into a lightly oiled bowl and cover with a tea towel.  Place in a warm spot to rise for an hour or until the dough has doubled in size.

Turn the dough out and punch down to remove any air.  Cut the dough into 16 equal sized pieces. Place buns close together onto a baking tray, lined with baking paper. Cover with a tea towel and let rise for a further hour.

In the meantime, make the mixture for the crosses. Mix flour and water into a smooth, thick paste. Preheat the oven to 220°C. Place the mixture for your crosses into a zip lock bag, cut a small hole out of a corner and pipe onto the buns. Bake for 15-20 minutes.

While the buns are baking, make the glaze by adding the glaze ingredients to a small saucepan. Bring to the boil, and continue to simmer until the sugar dissolves and the syrup thickens a little.  Brush the glaze over the buns as soon as they are removed from the oven to give them sheen.

Serve the buns hot with a little butter.

Sugar Free Marshmallow Rabbits

As I mentioned earlier in the week, I have a colleague who has dietary restrictions for health reasons.  To try and make sure that he didn't miss out on the fun, I researched some "better for you" Easter treats that I could make for colleagues.

My second treat in this vein was Sugar Free Marshmallows, made from this recipe on Purely Twins.  The process of making them is pretty much the same as for regular marshmallows, except that liquid artificial sweetener is used instead of sugar.

You can see from the photo at the top of this post that the sugar free rabbits look pretty much the same as the regular ones that I also made below:

Yes, this year all of my rabbits have green eyes, and I toasted the coconut that I rolled them in, which I like because it looks like fur.

The sugar free ones are slightly different in texture, and they definitely are not as sweet as the regular marshmallows.  They reminded me a little in flavour of the jet-puffed marshmallows that you buy in the US. 

I would be lying to say that I liked the sugar free marshmallows as much as the regular ones.  However, if you are looking to cut down on sugar but like yourself some marshmallow, then this is a great recipe to use. 

EwE - Cherry Almond Chocolate Clusters - Easter Eats

For Eating with Ellie this week, Kayte chose the seasonal theme of Easter Eats.  For that reason, I decided that chocolate was the go.  (Sorry Kayte!)

I chose to make Ellie's Cherry Almond Chocolate Clusters from So Easy.  And so easy they were.  Pour melted chocolate over chopped roasted almonds and dried cherries, spoon into mounds and set in the fridge. Voila!

These were delicious - you can't really go wrong.  It's a bit like making mendiants - ridiculously simple but so good nonetheless.

My Valentines Sonny Angel also happens to be a rabbit, so to get value for money, he is modelling my Cherry Almond Chocolate Clusters too.

To see what everyone else made for Easter Eats this week, visit the LYL section of the EwE website.

"Healthier" Chocolate Easter Eggs

One of my colleagues is under dietary restrictions for health reasons, but I was still keen to make my annual Easter treats.  I did some research, and found this recipe for "chocolate" Easter eggs on I Quit Sugar which cuts out the sugar in regular Easter eggs.

The shell of the eggs is made from cacao powder, coconut oil, cacao butter and rice malt syrup.  For my filling, I used a quarter of a cup of cashew nut butter with a teaspoon of COCO2 sugar free hazelnut spread. 

This is what the filled shells look like before freezing:

While these "chocolate" eggs do not taste exactly like real chocolate, they make a pretty good substitute, and the filling is pretty good too.  It's a little like eating a peanut butter cup.

I am not sure what the recipients thought of these, but I was pleased with them - they worked better for me than the actual chocolates I tried to make last year!

Apple and Cinnamon Hot Cross Buns

On Friday night, Tim and I went to see Daniel Kitson and Gavin Osborn in Stories For The Starlit Sky at The Playhouse as part of the Melbourne Comedy Festival. I was introduced to Daniel Kitson's work about 12 years ago by my then boss, who had seen him perform in London.  I have previously been to two of Daniel's shows, both in Brisbane, and liked his whimsical brand of story telling.

 Stories For The Starlit Sky is a trilogy in three parts, which goes for three hours and 40 minutes.  Daniel's story-telling is accompanied and intertwined with songs from Gavin.  I was glad that I stayed for the whole show, because all three of the stories were part of a single whole told from three different angles.  Quite a few people left either at the first or second break (we lost our neighbours on both sides), but you would have missed some crucial parts of the story/stories if you left before the end.  To stay to the end was to be rewarded; I think that the last story was the most bitter-sweet of all, and it tied together a few loose ends from the earlier stories.

This week sees Easter upon us, and I am looking forward to seeing my family over the break.  In the lead-up, I spent a cold, wet miserable Sunday making some Easter treats for my friends and colleagues.

First up, I made Apple and Cinnamon Hot Cross Buns.  Lorraine from Not Quite Nigella made these last week, and pronounced them to be the "softest ever" hot cross buns.  I was intrigued, because homemade bread is usually nothing like the fluffy store-bought versions.  Lorraine's secret  weapon is a mixture called a "tangzhong" to make the buns soft and fluffy.  You can find the recipe here.

I was very pleased with the end result:

You can see that they were indeed soft and fluffy inside, and the mild apple and cinnamon flavours made a nice change from the more traditional spiced dried fruit versions.  (Although I have to say I had an awesome chocolate and cherry hot cross bun from Zumbo on Saturday.)

 

I loved this bun recipe - it didn't have the slightly weird taste and texture of most homemade bread recipes, and the buns were beautifully soft and fluffy.

 

If you are keen to try your hand at hot cross bun making, I strongly recommend giving these buns a try. 

Marshmallow Rabbits for Easter

Here is this year's crop of marshmallow bunnies:

This year they are all pink and are flavoured with raspberry flavouring.  I also made some little "eggs" in my silicone egg mould.

If you want to make your own bunnies for Easter, the recipe is here.