Hey Blondie!

I don't think blondes have more fun.

I don't know where that myth came from. I would kill for lovely dark hair as well as the dark eye lashes and brows that accompany it.

You see being a fair lass myself, I am cursed with equally fair brows and lashes, making it look like I have neither unless they are coloured in and lacquered with mascara. On the rare occasion I go to the gym without either painted onto my face I find that no one recognises me. Awkward!

Anyway that is all somewhat irrelevant since I joined the strawberry sisters.

I have been on a real baking drive lately. I want to make as many things as possible these holidays. I have a nice long list if things I want to make.

I had a flick through my Hummingbird baker cookbook and found this blondie recipe. It looked simple and didn't require copious amounts of chocolate which all their other brownies need.

The process is kind of strange. You melt the chocolate and butter together in a double boiler then add the sugar. This causes the mixture to split and look crazy wrong but trust me and persevere! Once the eggs are added the lecithin in the yolks emulsifies the butter and the water in the mixture. Win! I love science!

This is a nice sickly sweet alternative to its brown cuzzie. The addition of pecans is delicious but walnuts or even macadamias would be equally amazing. I added extra chopped white chocolate because what is a brownie or a blondie without extra chocolate!

So shall we then?

White Chocolate Blondie
Adapted from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook

150g white cooking chocolate
125g butter
150g castor sugar
2 eggs
200g plain flour
120g pecans, chopped
100g white chocolate chopped
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees bake and line a small slice tin (20x30cm) with baking paper.
In a heat proof bowl over a saucepan of boiling water (make sure the water doesn't touch the bottom of the bowl - I used a cookie cutter to prop it up) melt together the butter and white chocolate. Remove from the heat.

Once melted, whisk in the sugar and vanilla and stir until dissolved. It is here where the mixture looks like it has split but don't worry about it. Quickly mix in the two eggs making sure they don't scramble.

Sift in the flour, mix until just combined. Do not over mix. Add in the pecans and extra chocolate and very quickly mix to spread them out.

Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 25 minutes. It should be nice and gooey.

Leave to cool completely before slicing.

Enjoy!! :)

Russian Fudge

Hello!

I hate sugar.

Yes I am writing this after I have just made a chocolate biscuit slice and a tray of russian fudge. 

I never want to see it again.

Ever.

When I find myself bored and alone during the holidays I have a habit of sending sweet treats to a few lucky individuals. This year my lucky recipient is Jamal. Jamal and I have an excellent relationship. I like baking and he likes to eat baking. Perfect. 

So I found myself making the one thing I know takes the impact of the NZ post system; Russian fudge. 

Now most people make fudge on a stove with a candy thermometer and all that other fuss. Making candy that way does not usually end very well with me. However many years ago my mother came to acquire a brilliant microwave russian fudge recipe from her friend Sue. So in our family cookbooks this fudge recipe is known as Sue's Russian fudge. 

Why is this fudge called Russian fudge?

I have no idea.

Anyway it is a really simple recipe however you do need a very VERY large microwave safe bowl. If your bowl is not sufficiently large then the molten fudge (which is hotter than hell) will spill over the edges and create a burning, messy fudge up. 

Also it is important to use castor sugar in this recipe. Normal white sugar granules will not dissolve in the time in the microwave and you will end up with grainy fudge.

Sometimes you can overcook the fudge. If you do there is no saving it unfortunately, the Maillard reaction has gone too far. All you can do is chop it up into tiny pieces once it has set and throw it on top of your next bowl of ice cream. The consequences of failure could be worse.

As all microwaves are different, if this recipe fails you the first time that you do this then I encourage you to try again. Make note of what went wrong (if it became overcooked and grainy then reduce the time in the microwave by a few minutes) and do something to correct it. Our old microwave required 5 x 3minute cooking lots. Our new microwave (after an unfortunate overcooking incident) we found only needs 4 x 3 minute cooking lots. So if you have a new microwave, err on the side of caution and only do four blasts. If you have an old crappy thing (like our old 20 year old microwave) then try out five. 

Also, do not try and lick the spatula straight away. You will get burnt. Big time. It will hurt. A lot. And the roof of your mouth will blister. Then those blisters will pop and leave you with a ragged and raw top palate. Don't do it. 

One of the steps is to leave it to cool for five minutes before beating. I think that is too long, I waited for five and my fudge didn't pour smoothly. Try only waiting for three minutes. It also originally said to beat for five minutes. I think this is too long as well. Beat for one and see how you go. 

Have I scared you off yet?

No? Good. Lets do this! :)

Sue's Russian Fudge

Makes a small slice tin's worth

3 cups castor sugar

1/2 cup condensed milk

1/2 cup cream

1 tablespoon golden syrup

100g chopped butter

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Place all the ingredients into a very large microwave safe bowl (like a good large Mason and Cash bowl). Microwave at 100% power for 3 minutes. Remove from the microwave and give it a good stir making sure the edges are well scraped down. Stirring helps to dissolve the sugar.

Return to the microwave for another three minutes then stir. Repeat this a total of four (so a total cooking time of 12 minutes) or five (total cooking time of 15 minutes) depending on the power of your microwave. Make sure you stir really well between each blast.

After taking the bowl out for the last time, give it a quick stir then leave to sit for 3 minutes. Then beat the fudge with electric beaters for one minute. Stop as soon as the fudge appears to be hardening into small peaks. 

Pour the fudge into a small slice tin lined with baking paper. Leave to cool on the bench before placing in the fridge to fully set. Once almost set, slice into pieces. Return to the fridge until fully set. 

Unstirred after three minutes

Stirred after three minutes

Unstirred after six minutes

Stirred after six minutes

Unstirred after nine minutes

Stirred after nine minutes

Colour after nine minutes (nearly there!)

Unstirred after twelve minutes

Stirred after twelve minutes

The fudge will keep bubbling even though is has been taken out of the microwave. In the next three minutes of cooling the colour will significantly darken.

oop! Don't forget to line this!

See how it is starting to become grainy at the edges? You want to stop beating now.

Enjoy!

Fudge travels really well and so makes a great edible gift to give people.

Sophie :)

Cara's Wicked Chocolate Brownies

Good Monday Afternoon!

Remember that baking ban I was on? Yeah well that sorta went down the loo this weekend. On Friday After making custard squares and a vanilla three layer birthday cake my dear brother asked me to make him a chocolate brownie to take to his mates house for their boys (pronounced boyce by the boys) night . Since I obviously hadn't spend enough time strapped to the hand beater already I agreed and whipped up the trusty, delicious and positively wicked Cara's wicked chocolate brownie.

I got this recipe off one of my best friends, Cara, quite a few years ago now. This is the best brownie recipe I have ever found and I have stayed true to it all this time and have never made a different recipe. I made it so frequently that it was permanently engrained into my brain and so whenever someone asked me for a good brownie recipe I could recite this one off to them instantly. 

The trick with brownie is to undercook them. That way they are guaranteed to be gooey in the centre. Originally this recipe said an hour at 150, then I shortened that to 50 minutes and then this time I shortened it again to 45 minutes to achieve optimum gooeyness. To make these even more decadent I decided for the first time to try out icing the brownie once it had completely cooled. I used a simple chocolate buttercream that had plenty of cocoa to balance out the sweetness. The best type of brownie is one that you only need to have a single piece of before being totally chocolated out!

Considering the box that I sent it away came out completely empty I am assuming the brownie went down rather well. 

This recipe is really easy to make, just make sure you cream the butter and sugar really well as well as beating the eggs enough so that the volume about doubles. 

Cara's Wicked Chocolate Brownie

Fills a 17x28cm tin rather nicely

200g butter, softened

1 1/2 cups white sugar 

3 eggs

1 cup cocoa

1/2 cup plain flour

1 teaspoon vanilla

150g chocolate chunks (Dark chocolate works the best - you can put more chocolate in if you like - I recommend it). 

Preheat the oven to 150 degrees on bake.

Cream the butter and sugar until light in colour. 

Beat in the vanilla and eggs one at a time. After the last egg has been added keep beating for another few minutes to make sure that the maximum volume has been achieved. 

Mix in the cocoa and beat until evenly mixed.

Add in the flour, beat until evenly mixed.

Stir in the chocolate melts or chunks.

Line a baking tray with baking paper and spoon in the mixture. Spread the mixture out so that all four corners are filled.

Bake for 45 minutes, a skewer should come out still gooey.

Leave to cool completely before dusting with icing sugar or icing with chocolate.

To make the chocolate icing, cream together 50g softened butter with around 2 cups of icing sugar and 1/2 cup of cocoa, a splash of vanilla and a few drops of milk (if it is too thick). I didn't actually weigh anything out when I made the icing, so this is just an estimate of what I put in. I like my chocolate icings to be really rich and chocolatey which is why so much cocoa was put in. 

Using a nice big knife, slice the brownie into pieces and brace yourself for all the friends you are about to make :)

Have a great day!

I know I am!

Sophie 

Custard Squares

I am entering the Goodman Fielder Kiwi Faves competition. Deciding what I was going to submit took me all of about 2.3 milli seconds.

Why custard squares? Well for starters you can find them at any good old bakery no matter where you are in New Zealand. They are one of the greatest bakery risk foods and tend to have a higher than usual  presence of delicious bacteria in them, therefore appealing to Kiwi's sense of adventure and risk taking. They remind me of my friend Phil who also shares a undying love for the custardy treats. In our first year at Carrington they made the most amazing custard squares in the kitchen for dessert. The icing was so thick and good. In our friend group there were a few individuals who didn't appreciate the mighty custard square and so from about 5pm on custard square nights the battle for the unwanted custard squares between Phil and I began. In the 8 weeks between each custard square rotation, our custard square addiction was maintained with frequent visits to New World (mainly on Wednesday mornings) where they also had adequate (not quite homemade but still nommy) custard squares. If the other was feeling a little down in the dumps or was stressed over something, a quick trip was made to New World and all problems were rectified with a delicious serving of custardy goodness.

Ahhh first year. Ahhh the fresher five. Yes I believe my fresher five can be blamed on custard squares and rice pudding alone.

At the end of my first year I decided to learn how to make my own. Boy are they absolutely amazing when you make them yourself! Sure its a messy job and they might not turn out the prettiest but you just cannot beat the homemade custard in between the flaky puff pastry layers!

You should probably vote for me :)

http://www.kiwifaves.co.nz/recipe/custard-squares

Please :)

Let's stop this chit chat that is keeping us from this delicious nom!


Custard Squares
Adapted from Ladies, a plate (I think)

3 Sheets of ready to use flaky puff pastry
450 ml full fat milk
2 whole eggs
2 egg yolks
130g castor sugar
55g flour
1 teaspoon vanilla essence (oh think how great the custard would be if you used an actual vanilla bean!)

Icing:
50g softened butter
2 cups icing sugar
whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

A medium sized slice tin (20x30cm)
baking paper


Pre heat the oven to 215 degrees Celsius.

Firstly lets deal with the pastry. Cut the pastry sheets to be around 25% larger than the tine you plan to use. I found that when I cut my pastry exactly to size it shrunk a whole heap which is not ideal. You might need to stick two sheets together to get the right length.

Place the pastry (still half frozen) on a dampened baking tray lined with baking paper (sprinkle a bit of water on with your fingers).

Prick all over the sheets with a fork.

Bake for 10 minutes, take out of the oven, flip the sheets over, return to the oven and bake for another 5 minutes, or until both sides are nice and golden. Leave the sheets to cool.

To make the custard:
In a medium sized sauce pan over a medium heat, warm the milk until it just starts to bubble at the edges, do not boil.

In a large bowl, beat together the castor sugar, eggs (both whole and yolk) and vanilla until the mixture is very thick and pale. Sift in the flour and beat until evenly incorporated.

Pour the warm milk into a jug and gradually pour the milk into the egg and sugar mixture whilst continuously beating on low. Beat until everything is evenly mixed.

Return this mixture to the sauce pan.

Heat the custard on a medium to low heat, stirring continuously and making sure the bottom and corners of the pan are well scraped with each stir. Stir until the custard becomes nice and thick. I found this to be somewhere around four and seven minutes. It should be quite pasty and gloopy when it is ready. When you scrap the bottom of the pan you should be able to see the bottom of the pan for a second before the custard runs back over it. Take the custard off the heat.

The egg and sugar mix should be thick enough to form drip patterns.

Once the flour is added the mixture should be even thicker.

You should be able to make beater tracks.

Make sure the bottom of the pan is scraped to prevent lots of lumps forming.

You can sorta see the bottom of the pan here. When that happens you are good to go!

Line your slice tin with baking paper.

Place one of the pastry sheets on the bottom. Pour over the custard and spread over evenly. Place the second sheet over the top. If the sheets don't end up fitting the tin because they are too bit just use a nice big knife to slice them down to size.

Haha buffering the slab with  bit of kiwi ingenuity!

Place the tin in the fridge for an hour or so to set the custard.

Cream together the icing ingredients adding enough milk so that it beats together nicely and makes a smooth and fluffy icing.

Spread the icing over the top sheet of pastry, don't worry about it being super smooth and flat, imperfect is the new perfect!

Return to the fridge for another 20 minutes to set the icing a little more.

Carefully transfer the custard slab onto a chopping board. Using the largest cooks knife you have, slice the slab into squares. Serve with a smile and prepare to receive many pats on the back and high fives!

This is best enjoyed with friends!

Have fun!

Lemon, Poppy Seed and Yoghurt Syrup Loaf

Around three months ago Mum bought some plain Collective Dairy Co yoghurt. Two months ago it expired. As disturbing as it may sound, we are still eating this yoghurt. I thought it was a different container of yoghurt, not the same one that I had opened when I was last up on holiday. When I tasted it and smelt it, it was fine. It wasn't until I checked the label did I realise our poor ability to eat plain yoghurt. We have been putting blobs of it here and there on our dinners and things and none of us have died so far.

As I mentioned in my last post, I am on a baking ban. The Edmonds family household apparently does not need baked goods of any kind. Apparently it makes them fat. I think my parents current lack of gym memberships are what is causing that. My brother Jack and I sweat it out every morning without fail. 

Yoghurt always goes nicely with lemon to make delicious, moist lemon yoghurt cakes drowned in a sweet sweet lemony syrup. 

I found a recipe in my Cake Days book for a lemon poppy seed loaf. Only thing was that this loaf used ricotta instead of yoghurt. I substituted this for the yoghurt I needed to use up. Yoghurt helps to keep the cake nice and moist. It turned out wonderfully.

The thing that really makes this loaf delish is the syrup you pour over the top of it as soon as it comes out of the oven. I doubled the syrup quantity to ensure a yummy moist loaf. Mmmm so moist. 

Have I made you feel uncomfortable with the word moist yet?

Right, anyway. This recipe is super simple. It follows a standard cake making method. Make sure the butter and sugar is creamed nice and well as when you add the egg in. The more volume you create here the lighter the sponge will be. Light sponge = good sponge = soft, delicate sponge.

I enjoy cake maths.

Sooo lets get on with the show eh?

Lemon, Poppy Seed and Yoghurt Syrup Loaf

Very adapted from the Hummingbird Bakery's Cake Days

For the loaf:

190g softened butter

190g castor sugar

190g plain flour

3 large eggs

1 teaspoon baking powder

4 tablespoon poppy seeds

2 large lemons worth of zest

25ml milk

100g plain yoghurt

For the soaking syrup:

Juice of two large lemons

100g castor sugar

100ml water

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees, bake. 

Cream together the butter and sugar until almost white in colour and fluffy in texture. Add the eggs, beating well after each addition. Keep beating until the volume increases substantially and the texture is even fluffier than before. Beat in the lemon zest.

In a separate bowl, sift together the baking powder and flour. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter, sugar and egg mixture, beating after each addition. 

Once all the flour has been added, add the milk and the yoghurt and poppy seeds. Beat until smooth. 

Line the bottom side of a loaf tin with baking paper. Grease the sides with butter and dust with flour. 

Pour the batter into the tin and spread with a spoon so that it evenly fills the tin.

Bake for 50-60 minutes (check after 50 minutes by inserting a clean skewer into the middle, if it comes out with batter still stuck to it, pop it back in the oven for another wee while but make sure you cook it for no longer than  65 minutes). 

While the loaf is baking, make the syrup. Put the lemon juice, sugar and water in a sauce pan and bring to the boil. Making sure it doesn't spill over, reduce the syrup until it reaches around half its original volume or at least until it has a consistency slightly runnier than that of maple syrup. 

As soon as the loaf comes out of the oven, pour over the syrup. Leave to cool before turning out onto a cake rack. Leave to cool fully before slicing (or else it crumbles!).

Slice into nice thick slices and enjoy this in the hot summer sun with a nice cool and refreshing lemony drink. 

Enjoy!!

Birdseed Slice

Mum told me I wasn't allowed to bake when I got home.

I had been home 6 hours before she asked me if I wanted to make a birdseed slice from the Ripe Deli cookbook. So much for not baking. Apparently this is Mum's substitute for buying muesli bars. They have seeds in them. That is her justification.

I had never tried this slice before. It is full of seeds and oats and raisins so you could almost convince oneself that it is a healthy snack (provided you ignore the peanut butter, butter and sugar that goes into it).

If you have braces, don't eat this slice haha. The seeds get stuck in even my braceless teeth!

I recommend visiting the bulk bins for this slice, it will be cheaper and easier than buying individual packs of seeds. You need 450g of seeds! Yes that seems like a lot so I recommend making this at home when the parents are paying haha.

This recipe came from the Ripe Recipes book, it is filled with all sorts of wonderful delicious things. I have put the book on my Christmas list! There is this brioche recipe that I am keen to try in it. I digress, where were we? Ah slice.

This recipe follows a similar method to ANZAC biscuits so no creaming of the butter and sugar is required and it is really quick.


Birdseed Slice
Adapted from Ripe Recipes
Makes around 30 small bars

150g raisins, soaked for 20 minutes in boiling water
90g butter
1/2 cup golden syrup
1/4 cup brown sugar
90g peanut butter
150g rolled oats
150g pumpkin seeds
150g sunflower seeds
150g sesame seeds
(you could even add some dark chocolate chips if you wanted)

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees.

In a medium sized bowl, mix together the oats, seeds and raisins.

In a small sauce pan on a medium heat, melt together the butter, peanut butter, brown sugar and golden syrup. Heat and stir until the mixture is combined and smooth.

Pour the liquid into the bowl of seeds. Mix to combine evenly.

Press the mixture into a 20x30cm slice tin that has been lined with baking paper.

Cover the baking tin with tin foil and bake for 15 minutes. After the 15 minutes is up, remove the tin foil and bake for a further 15 minutes.

Leave to cool and place in the fridge and leave to get really cold before slicing, or else it falls apart (as you can probably see when we all became impatient only an hour after it was made).

If you slice it too soon after baking it falls to bits!

These make a great morning or afternoon tea snack! Have with a nice big cup of tea and try to resist eating the whole container!

Sophie x

Marvellous Melting Moments

So I am sitting at the Dunedin airport as I write this. I am on my way home after my third year of university study. Flip, what happened to all that time? I remember thinking in first year that I had tonnes of time until I have to enter the real world, now one measly year separates me from the world of polyester suit pants (dear lord I hope not) and limited holiday time. I should spend these holidays wisely. I have a list of things I want to do and people to visit. I guess in three months time I will tell you if I got up and did them.

My good friends Gil and Brad are also leaving Dunedin today. They are driving however. So to prepare them for the 10 hour drive to Picton I made up some sweet little noms for them to munch on along the way.

There is a bakery in Auckland that Instagrams pictures of all their beautiful baked goods. Some of those little treats included some gorgeous looking pink and yellow melting moments. I was inspired! I love melting moments but if they were coloured it would make them infinitely better!

Melting moments are so great. They are a lovely butter delicate short bread like biscuit with soft and luscious buttercream icing in between.

The Edmonds Cookbook is the reliable source for such creations. This mixture is a funny one though, it is quite sticky. It contains a lot of butter but not that much in the sugar, flour or corn flour department so it is quite unnerving when you are rolling out balls of what looks like half finished cookie dough.

Also, I feel like melting moments should be of either a mini mini size of a good handful. Average size is so mainstream haha.

Melting moments

Adapted from the Edmonds Cookery Book

Makes 12

200g softened butter

75g icing sugar

125g cornflour

125g flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees bake.

Cream together the butter and the icing sugar. Once that has become a light fluffy mix, add in the vanilla, baking powder, flour and corn flour.

If you want to make two different colours, split the mix in half after all the other ingredients have been combined. If you just want to make them one colour then add in the colour in the butter and sugar mix.

Roll into small balls, try dusting your hands with flour to stop the mix from sticking. Place the ball on a tray lined with baking paper. Use a floured fork to lightly press them down.

Bake for 15-20 minutes. The amount of time depends on how big you make them. You want to make sure they don’t brown around the edges but also if they aren’t cooked through enough they just crumble in your hands. The ones here I baked for 20 minutes and they were about a 5cm diameter.

Leave for the biscuits to cool before filling with a normal buttercream icing (30g butter creamed with 2ish cups of icing sugar, a splash of milk and some vanilla essence). Sandwich the biscuits together and enjoy!

Have fun making these! You wont regret it!

Sophie x

Sweet Sweet Cinnamon Buns

Bread has always fascinated me.

I have been fascinated from afar though. It has always seemed like such a laborious activity. All that kneading and all. We never had a bread maker at home (probably a good thing) and so I was never able to at least cheat the first few phases of the process.

Yeast. Its a crazy little thing. This organism, dormant, is activated by the warmth and sugar you give it and then it goes on to expand your dough. Then to thank the yeast for all the hard work it has done, we kill it at 220 degrees in our ovens.

Anyway, I have always wanted to make cinnamon scrolls. They smell so good and with icing drizzled on top they are to die for! I got inspired by this post here. They looked amazing.

I chose not to use the recipe on that post. I didn't have enough oil. I found one on Annabel Langbein's website that looked just as tasty.

The only problem was when I was going to make these buns. I had exams and I was living in the library which I am pretty sure doesn't have an oven.

My last exam was yesterday. So as a treat to all those poor souls still stuck in the central library I made these buns with plenty of love and nurture and brought them around for morning tea time. The smell of hot buns wafted through the library air. I got a few curious looks as I walked past carrying my large baking tray. I probably made as many enemies as I made friends. But unfortunately I could only brighten the days of 20 souls with my 20 buns.

I recommend starting this the night before if you want to make them for morning tea. My yeast was coming to the end of its most active period so not only did I give it a bit of extra time to rise in our toasty warm hot water cupboard but I put a bit more yeast than the 3 teaspoons Annabel told me to. Just to make sure they rose.

If you have a bread maker, just prepare the dough in the bread maker using these ingredients just as you usually would but take it out once the dough has risen and then roll them out.

Lets make some magic shall we?


Sweet Sweet Cinnamon Buns
Adapted from Annabel Langbein's recipe
Makes 20 (generous buns)

For the dough:
2 cups milk
3/4 cup white sugar
3 teaspoons active dry yeast
125g butter, melted but not hot
6 cups high grade flour (you need to use high grade as it has a better gluten content which is essential for the structure of the dough)
1 teaspoon salt


For the filling:
50g butter, softened
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon

For the glaze:
1/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons sugar


In a small saucepan, warm the milk until tepid, ie only just warm to the touch. Take it off the heat and whisk in the sugar to dissolve. Sprinkle in the yeast and whisk that in too. Leave the yeast to activate for ten minutes or so. Leave it somewhere warm to help the process. You don't want to heat the milk too much or else you will kill the yeast. Remember they are living organisms, how would you like it if someone boiled you in a saucepan of milk? Then whisk in the room temperature melted butter.

In a large bowl, mix together the flour and salt. Make a well in the centre. Once the yeast has fully activated (it smells wonderfully yeasty, slightly alcoholic and it has gone foamy) pour the milk and butter mixture into the well. Using a wooden spoon (or whatever) stir the dough until it is a roughly mixed sticky blob.

Take all your rings and bangles off! haha unless you want to get bits of dough stuck in them. Or worse, the bacteria from underneath the rings in your dough! Gross!

Sprinkle the bench with a bit of flour and tip the dough onto the bench. Start kneading the dough. This will help the mixing of ingredients. The theory behind the kneading is that you help to work and develop the protein, gluten, in the flour. This helps the dough become more elastic and stretchy. This allows for the dough to form pockets of carbon dioxide (produced by the yeast) and stay that way until the dough is baked. The more you knead the more light and fluffy the final product will be. If you cant be bothered, find a nice boy to do it for you. Convince them that it is a good forearm work out (which it is!). If you don't know how to knead probably the easiest way is to either ask your mum or to just youtube it. You want to knead for around ten minutes, or until the dough is nice and soft and elastic (Annabel describes it as silky, which I think is perfect!). When you press your finger gently into the dough you want the indentation to stay there. That means it is kneaded enough.

Lightly grease a large bowl (not a cake tin like I did!) and place your dough inside. Leave your dough to rise in a nice warm place. The hot water cupboard works well so does making a nice warm hot water bath in the kitchen sink (just be sure that no one turns the tap on with your dough underneath). As I was a little uncertain about the integrity of my yeast, I left mine in the hot water cupboard overnight to rise. If your yeast is nice and fresh, try leaving it for just an hour, that should do the trick.

Once your dough has risen, knock it around a bit (remove some of the big air pockets). On a lightly floured bench, roll the dough out into a rectangle around 30x60cm in size.

Spread the softened butter for the filling all over the dough rectangle. Sprinkle over the sugar and cinnamon.

Next, tightly pinch one of the longer edges of the rectangle and start to tightly roll the dough until you have one long sausage. With a sharp, non serrated knife, slice the sausage into 3cm thick slices. Arrange the slices in a baking tray or large cake (lined with baking paper) with 1-2 cm spacing between each one. You may need another tray (I used my brownie tin and my large cake tin). Leave the scrolls somewhere warm to rise again. I left them for an hour but you will probably only need 20 minutes if you have super active yeast. While they are rising, preheat the oven to 220 degrees.

Before being left to rise again

After the second round of rising!

Once the scrolls have risen, pop them in the oven for 15 minutes. While they bake, make up the glaze by placing the water and sugar in a saucepan and boiling until a thick syrup forms. This takes around 5 minutes.

When the buns come out of the oven, brush them with plenty of glaze straight away.

I drizzled some very thin white vanilla buttercream icing over mine once they had cooled down. Icing them is a good idea if you are planning on serving them later in the day when they have cooled. If you ice them when they are too warm the icing melts and makes a mess.

Flip these were so good. Unfortunately they disappeared too quickly for me to take photos of them (plus awkward food photography is frowned upon in the library).

If you are too impatient to wait for them to cool, devour them straight away! You house will be filled by now with the sweet aroma of sweet baked bread. It is heavenly.

The holidays are coming up, if you have the time I highly recommend you give these a go. They will most certainly make you friends and amaze your family.

I got a wee bit nostalgic (the worlds worst emotion) after delivering these for my time here at Otago. I am here next year for my fourth year but quite a few of my friends are moving on, graduating, doing placements in other cities. It kind of feels like the beginning of the end. Soon we will be grown up and expected to know everything. To be honest I have no idea what I am doing and I am lucky that everything so far has sort of fallen into place.

So to all of you leaving dear Dunedin this year, I will miss you. I will miss you a lot. Good luck!

Sophie x

Flourless Peanut Butter Choc Chip Cookies

Uggh. I feel sick. I ate too much cookie mixture and it was too rich! 

I recently downloaded this really cool Martha Stewart cookie app for my iPhone. It has tonnes and tonnes of cookie recipes in it.

I get to the library early to study so I don't have to do so in the evenings. That leaves the evenings free for things like going to the gym and baking (they seem a little contradictory don't they?)

Anyway I found this recipe on the app for flourless cookies. My friend Gil the other day was telling me about how you can make cookies with only three ingredients. I found this hard to believe until I looked at this recipe. This recipe has four (once you take away the extra peanuts and the chocolate). It has an egg, 1 cup of peanut butter, sugar and some baking soda. 

So curious as to how these would turn out, I gave them a go. 

The mixture was really strange. Check out the photo, it doesn't look like cookie mix. It was also really oily and if you squeezed the balls, oil oozed out. Not very appealing. But regardless, I rolled them out and baked them. 

They came out looking amazing. They had flattened into these huge discs of chunky deliciousness. Once they had cooled down a wee bit I tried a bit. They are excellent. Although you can feel the fat moving south to your thighs and the sugar rising quickly to your head, the discomfort gained in your stomach is far outweighed by the taste sensation in your mouth. 

So here we go  . .

Flourless Peanut and Chocolate Chip Cookies

adapted from Martha Stewart

makes 15

1 cup smooth peanut butter

2/3 cup sugar

1 large egg

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 cup chopped peanuts

3/4 cup chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

beat together the peanut butter, sugar, egg and the baking powder.

Mix in the chocolate chips and peanuts.

Roll into balls and place evenly on a baking tray lined with baking paper.

Bake for 20 minutes or until golden.

Easy as right?

Sorry this was such a short, sharp post. It is late and I really need to sleep :S

Enjoy!

Nighty night!

Chocolate Whoopie Pies with Maple and Pecan Filling

How's the study going.

As you can see mine is going excellently.

For the last two days I have found myself leaving the library at rather early times (1pm and 2pm) after feeling uncomfortably hot on the upper floors. I also found myself with epic hunger sickness (that point where your hunger turns to nausea) but then the heat caused my salad and my tuna to warm up and that grossed me out. So in order to fix the problem I had to go home. Yup. That was my justification.

Like Tuesday. It was so so hot. 6am Tuesday morning it was pouring down. I mean bucketing down so I dressed in stockings (for once!) and a woollen top as was appropriate for the miserable weather. By the time lunch came around I had my tights around my ankles and shoes thrown on the floor under my desk. Thank god I was in the celebrity squares or else I would have been given some odd looks at my lack of pants. I had to go home. I couldn't study like this. It was indecent.

So yesterday. Yesterday was Wednesday. Once again my salad heated up and my mind had become more fogged than a bathroom mirror. Time to go home. I was going to have a nap. But then I didn't.

I baked instead. My reasoning? It was fun, it was soul restoring and Alix and I needed study noms for the week.

Ahaha. yeah. Well it was soul restoring, it was fun. But for the weeks worth of study noms? uuh it was more like three episodes of cougar town worth of noms, no study in sight.

The last time I made whoopie pies they were super domed and rather dry. The method also almost broke my beater, it was too thick and dough like.

To overcome this I altered the recipe and method a bit. Rather than add the wet ingredients last, making a huge glutenous mess, I decided to mix all the moist ingredients together first then slowly add the flour. I also upped the amount of yoghurt and milk in the mixture. I found this helped and made them far less stodgy.

As for the filling? I just made a simple buttercream icing and threw in a few good squirts of maple syrup. I had a few pecans left over from my pecan pies so I chopped them up finely and sprinkled them in between. Walnuts would work too. They gave a nice wee crunch in between all the soft moist cakeyness.


Chocolate Whoopie Pies with Maple and Pecan filling

80g softened butter
150g castor sugar
1 large egg
140g plain yoghurt (I used vanilla)
50ml milk
I teaspoon vanilla
70g cocoa
200g flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Filling:
60g butter, softened
2 cups icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
A splash of milk to combine
A couple of squirts of maple syrup
chopped pecans or walnuts


Preheat the oven to 170 degrees

Attempt to cream the butter and sugar together. It won't work very well because there isn't enough butter but try to lighten the colour a wee bit. Add the egg. Beat until most of the sugar dissolves and the colour is a very pale yellow and the texture is fluffy. Add in the vanilla, yoghurt and milk. Beat until smooth.

Sift in the cocoa. Beat until the colour lightens from a dark brown to a lighter shade.

Sift in the four, baking soda and baking powder. Mix until combined. Try not to overmix.

Wet your hands and par dry them (so they are sill a little damp). Take small teaspoon sized blobs of dough and roll them into balls.

Next is the fun bit, throw the ball as hard as you can onto a baking tray lined with baking paper. This helps them to flatten out. Repeat and lets hope you don't have any collisions like I did. Flatten them a bit more with a wet spoon. I didn't do this. I wish I had, I think mine were far too round.

Bake for 10 minutes. You don't want to overcook them. It is better for them to be slightly undercooked than overcooked. That was they will be nice and fudgy.

Leave to cool because sandwiching together with the icing (which you creamed together earlier) and the chopped nuts.

Enjoy!

I advise you don't eat them all in one go right before dinner haha.