Doughnuts

Last month I joined an online cooking group known as The Daring Kitchen, as a challenge to myself to be more creative in the kitchen for both sweet and savoury dishes. Basically every month a chosen member will reveal a recipe (sweet for the Daring Bakers and savoury for the Daring Cooks) which you then have a month to make and then on a specified date you are allowed to blog about your recipe and experiences.

This month the Daring Bakers challenge was for Doughnuts. I was slightly hesitant for a couple of reasons, a) I have never successfully deep fried anything before and make a huge mess with shallow frying (and our kitchen has no extractor fan making previous attempts slightly smelly and smoky) and b) I do like to try and eat healthily and doughnuts are certainly not that! But, I joined this to push to myself so I chose my recipe and gave it a go. The October 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lori of Food Blog Butter Me Up. Lori chose to challenge DBers to make doughnuts. She used several sources for her recipes including Alton Brown, Nancy Silverton, Kate Neumann and Epicurious, and the recipe I chose to follow was Alton Brown’s Yeast Doughnuts.

The process was actually really easy, despite not having a kitchen aid or similar dough mixing machine, and the resulting doughnuts were possibly the best I have ever tasted. Crisp on the outside and soft and airy on the inside. Members on the forum kept remarking at how good the recipe was but I didn’t believe them until I tasted the first fresh warm sugar covered doughnut, absolutely delicious! And unfortunately very moreish, it was a good job I halved the recipe and put half of the cooked doughnuts in the freezer, they could easily have all gone in one go. The only negative about the recipe…it was too good and too tasty.

 

Originally I intended to replicate Michelle Roux Jr’s Boules de Berlin as last month on Masterchef The Professionals he made these (the day after the challenge came out), which are small doughnuts, rolled in caster sugar and filled. His fillings were caramelised banana (brown sugar melted with butter in a pan, adding sliced ripe banana, caramelising it and then pureeing it to enable piping into the boules), and a fresh raspberry and redcurrant jelly filling. Finally he made a chocolate sauce (chocolate and cream melted together) for dipping, divine. But when it came to it after I tasted one which I had rolled in sugar, it was so nice as it was I didn’t feel like it needed the extra fiddly fillings and dipping sauce. And oh the calories!

 

Doughnut Recipe

 

Adjusted from Alton Brown’s yeast doughnut recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/yeast-doughnuts-recipe/index.html

 

Preparation time:

 

Hands on prep time – 25 minutes

Rising time – 2 hours total

Cooking time – 12 minutes

 

Yield: 20 to 25 doughnuts. I used half the recipe below and made approximately 40 small doughnuts without holes, using a 2″ pastry cutter turned upside down.

 

Ingredients

 

• Milk 360 ml
• Butter 70 grams
• Hovis Fast Action Bread Yeast 2 x sachets (14g)
  • OR Active Dry Yeast 4.5 teaspoon (2 pkgs.) 14 grams and Warm Water 80 ml. I used fresh yeast – not the dried yeast in the photo as this had gone out of date) which did not need activation, thus needed no warm water as well
• Eggs, Large, beaten 2
• White Granulated Sugar 55 grams
• Table Salt 1.5 tsp
• Nutmeg, grated 1 tsp
• Strong White Bread Flour 650 gm + extra for dusting surface.
• Vegetable Oil DEPENDS on size of vessel you are frying in – you want THREE (3) inches of oil (can substitute any flavorless oil used for frying)

Method:

 

1. Heat the milk in the microwave for 1 minute or until hot
2. Cube the butter and add it to the milk to melt it (the heat should melt the butter). Set aside.
3. Add the dry ingredients: flour, yeast, sugar, salt, nutmeg to a large bowl and mix.
   1. OR If using Active Dry Yeast…In a small bowl, sprinkle the yeast over the warm water and let dissolve for 5 minutes. It should get foamy. After 5 minutes, pour the yeast mixture into the large bowl and add the milk and butter mixture, first making sure the milk and butter mixture has cooled to lukewarm.
4. Add the wet ingredients: beaten eggs, milk and butter mixture to the dry ingredients, and with a rigid spatula or metal spoon, mix and beat well until well combined. The dough will be really sticky and ‘wet’ don’t put your hands in it as the mixture will just stick to them. Mix and beat the dough thouroughly for 5 minutes.
5. Transfer the dough (you will be able to pour it basically) into a clean and well oiled fresh large bowl, which is big enough to allow the dough to at least double in size. Cover with a tea towel or cling film and leave in a warm place to rise for one hour and a half.

   

    

6. On a well-floured surface, roll out dough to 3/8-inch (9 mm)thick. (Make sure the surface really is well-floured otherwise your doughnuts will stick to the counter).
7. Cut out dough using a 2 inch pastry ring. Set on floured baking sheet, cover lightly with a tea towel, and let rise for 30 minutes.

   

    

8. Preheat the oil in a deep fryer or Dutch oven to 365 °F/185°C. I used a wok, this worked well
9. Gently place the doughnuts into the oil, 3 to 4 at a time. Cook for 1 minute per side or until golden brown and puffed up

   

    

10. Transfer to a cooling rack placed in baking pan. After cooled enough to handle, roll in a dish filled with caster sugar and a few dashes of cinnamon.

    

     

 

Colourful Macaroons

I have been tempted to make macaroons ever since they became the new fashionable sweet, and as I now have a bit more time on my hands I thought I would experiment. As I wil be strapped for cash this Christmas (again) homemade goodies will probably be on the cards so I need to find some slightly posh looking gifts. If Selfridges can sell them for £2 a pop then they should look pretty good as a little present.

I chose to make almond macaroons flavoured with strawberry (an impossible flavouring to find, in the end by complete luck I found it in my local Indian-run newsagents!), chocolate and almond, filled with corresponding buttercream frosting.

Despite the pretty outcomes macaroons were really very easy to make. The fiddly bit is piping them onto the baking sheets, just because it is time consuming, but the final perfectly circular macaroon with those ‘feet’ are worth it. The only trouble I had was that I think my mixture may have been slightly too thick (probably because I split it into three bowls and didn’t divide it very evenly), because as the pictures show the tops still had the little peak after piping, when they should be smooth.

The chocolate flavour macaroons were my favourite because they actually tasted like little pieces of gooey chocolate brownie. The macaroons also kept very well for 3 days (beyond this they had all gone!) in an airtight container in a slightly chilled area due to the buttercream filling. Because they have a slightly crisp outside and a chewy consistency in the middle they lent themselves quite well to storing for a little while, if anything I think the texture improved. These were delicious pieces of heaven, perfect for impressing people for a posh high tea.

Multicoloured Macaroon Recipe

Source: Delicious Magazine, accessed from http://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/recipes/multicoloured-macaroons

Ingredients

• 175g icing sugar
• 125g ground almonds
• 3 large free-range egg whites
• 75g caster sugar
• Flavourings / colourings (I used almond extract and yellow food colouring, strawberry extract and red food colouring and cocoa powder)

For the filling

• 150g butter, softened
• 75g icing sugar
• Flavourings / colourings (I used almond extract, strawberry extract and red food colouring, and a few chunks of plain chocolate melted)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 160°C/fan140°C/gas 3. Whizz the icing sugar and ground almonds in a food processor to a very fine mixture, then sift into a bowl. (I treid sifting but it took forever so I gave up in the end, if I had a slightly larger mesh sieve I would try this again though because the macaroons were definitely not as smooth as they should be).
2. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt to soft peaks, then gradually whisk in the caster sugar until thick and glossy. (At this point you can stir in flavour extract, such as peppermint or lemon, and corresponding colouring such as blue or yellow, to your meringue mixture, depending on what kind of macaroons you want – see chef’s tip. Or divide the meringue among different bowls if you want to make more than one colour.)
3. Fold half the almond and icing sugar mixture into the meringue and mix well. Add the remaining half, making sure you use a spatula to cut and fold the mixture until it is shiny and has a thick, ribbon-like consistency as it falls from the spatula. Spoon into a piping bag fitted with a 1cm plain nozzle.
4. Line 2 baking sheets with baking paper. Pipe small rounds of the macaroon mixture, about 3cm across, onto the baking sheets. Give the baking sheets a sharp tap on the work surface to ensure a good ‘foot’. Leave to stand at room temperature for 10-15 minutes to form a slight skin. This is important – you should be able to touch them lightly without any mixture sticking to your finger. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool.

1. Meanwhile, make the filling/s (unless making chocolate macaroons – see chef’s tip). In a bowl, beat the butter until light and fluffy, then beat in the icing sugar. (You can now add flavouring or nuts, and colour – see chef’s tip.) Use to sandwich pairs of macaroons together.

Nutritional info

Per macaroon: 160kcals, 9.7g fat (4.2g saturated), 1.8g protein, 17.5g carbs, 16.4g sugar, 0.2g salt

Chef’s tip

To flavour and colour your macaroons, in step 2, add around ½ tsp flavour extract, then add the appropriate colouring, a drop at a time, until you reach the desired intensity. Flavour and colour the buttercream in the same way. For chocolate macaroons, replace a quarter of the icing sugar with cocoa powder and use Nutella as the filling. I don’t like Nutella personally, so I added a few squares of melted plain chocolate to the buttercream instead which was delicious.

For pistachio macaroons, replace half the ground almonds with ground pistachios (whizz in a blender or finely chop by hand), and use green food colouring to achieve a pastel green. Fold chopped pistachios through the filling, if you like.

Banana and Vanilla Fudge Muffins

Yesterday I noticed some bananas that I had forgotten about in the fruit bowl which had ripened rather a lot. I don’t really like overly ripe bananas so I tried to think of a way to use them up (I hate waste!) and thought about something along the lines of banana bread.

I came across this recipe by Nigella Lawson in her book Nigella Express for Banana Butterscotch Muffins. As I’m at my boyfriends Grans who doesn’t have a big supply of cooking equipment I thought muffins would be easier to make than a loaf or cake as I knew I could get a fairly cheap muffin tin from good old Tescos. I fancied trying my hand at some pretty icing a la the cupcake craze which is still going on, so I found a recipe for cream cheese frosting from this months BBC Good Food magazine.

When it came to shopping I couldn’t find any butterscotch pieces as the recipe called for, but I found some Vanilla fudge which I thought would go quite well with banana. I originally fancied caramel flavoured frosting but could only find vanilla flavouring….at least this will complement the vanilla fudge pieces that I will be using now.

Recipe adapted from Nigella Lawson: Nigella Express.

Banana and Vanilla Fudge Muffins with Vanilla Frosting

Muffins:

 

• 3 very ripe bananas
• 125ml vegetable oil
• 2 eggs
• 250g flour
• 100g caster sugar
• ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 150g vanilla fudge cut into small chunks (you could use chocolate chips instead)
• 12 bun muffin tin and paper cases

Frosting:

 

• 200g icing sugar
• 200g full fat cream cheese
• 100g butter, softened
• 1 tsp vanilla flavouring (I used supercook)
• Topping: vanilla fudge small chunks

 

Method:

 

1 Preheat the oven to 200oC / gas mark 6 and line a 12 bun muffin tin with muffin papers

2 Mash the bananas and add to a food processor

3 Measure the oil in a jug and add to it the 2 eggs and beat, add to the food processor

4 Add the flour, caster sugar, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder to the food processor and mix al the ingredients into a smooth mixture. (the original recipe only required use of a mixing bowl for all of the ingredients if you don’t have a food processor).

5 Fold in the fudge pieces (don’t food process, you want chunks)

6 Spoon into the muffin cases – don’t fill too high, they rise quite a lot – I filled them too much as you can see by the mess on the pan when I took them out of the oven!

7 Bake in the oven for 20 minutes

8 Take out of the tin onto a wire rack to cool

9 Mix the frosting ingredients (except the fudge) with an electric whisk until smooth. (I used the food processor again as had no electric balloon whisk, I’m not sure if I over-whipped or if the recipe was not quite right for cake toppings but it was quite a loose mixture, not solid enough for pretty piping).

10 Add the frosting ingredients into a piping bag if you have one. When the muffins are cool pipe the frosting on. If you don’t have a piping bag just smooth it on with a spoon.

11 Add a few chunks of vanilla fudge to the top of each frosted muffin.

I think next time for better piping I would use just a butter cream frosting which is more solid, also a muffin tin because as you can see they came out some odd shapes! It’s a shame that the fudge melted in the muffins, but it still added a nice taste.

Hidden gems

My boyfriend is currently house sitting for his Gran in an old farmhouse, and we were having a little nose around in the annexe kitchen and found a huge supply of craft materials, everything you could want to make cards: stamps, inks, paper cutters, paper stamps, all the colours of card and paper under the sun including patterned and textured papers, sequins and jewels galore, glitter and embossing powder and even some ‘congratulations’ sound gadgets that you can put inside cards. My sort of heaven, I love making cards or anything arty, I’ve thought before about making some to sell, but it’s so time consuming and doesn’t seem like a very profitable idea….I’ll stick to making cards for birthdays and Christmas I think!

I found a butterfly paper stamp, some lace effect paper and glitter, so I got stamping and sort of made it up as I went along, was quite chuffed at the result, I might keep it as a piece of artwork for my bedroom wall instead.

Hot Apple and Chilli Jelly

We have an abundance of apples from our orchard at home, and as we don’t like anything to go to waste (and the dog’s stomachs do not appreciate the fallen apples!) we’ve been thinking of different ways to use up the various apples.  

  

I found the recipe for hot apple and chilli jelly from an amazing website The Cottage Smallholder, in which home grown, wild food and sustainable living recipes and techniques are provided. We’re into preserving at the moment using up all the fruit and veg left over from the summer, as well as making flavoured gins and vodkas for Christmas. Sloe gin is always a favourite but this year we’re trying Raspberry vodka, Damson gin and Blackcurrant gin as well. Recipes for the Raspberry vodka and Blackcurrant gin are again from The Cottage Smallholder, although most flavoured spirit recipes use approximately 1/3 fruit, 1/3 sugar (we use cubes because granulated sugar will fill the gaps between the fruit, and you will end up using more than a visual third) and 1/3 alcohol.  

Anyway back to the jelly. I adjusted the recipe slightly because I couldn’t easily get my hands on dried birds eye chillies, so I used dried chilli flakes instead. It is a very pretty jelly with flecks of chilli in a pale orange jelly. My parents find the heat of the jelly quite strong, but I think personally I would add slightly more…if you’re going to have something with chilli in it you may as well be able to taste it properly! It is a different taste to fresh chilli though, you get more of an after heat in the back of your mouth.  

  

Ingredients

   

• 600g of cooking apples washed and chopped (no need to remove core or skin)
• 35g of medium red chilli peppers, washed and chopped with seeds in
• 1 litre of water
• White granulated sugar 500g to each 500ml of juice
• 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
• 5 dried birds eye chillies chopped (or 2 Tbsp dried chilli flakes). Add more or less to taste, this produces roughly a medium heat.
• Sterilised jam jars and lids (wash well in very hot soapy water, then dry out the jars in a medium hot oven for 5 to 10 mins or until they are ready to be used)

   

Method

• Put the chopped apples and chillies in a large heavy bottomed saucepan.
  
• Add 1 litre of water (they should just be floating). Bring to the boil and simmer until the apples soften and become pulpy (lid on). This took about 45 minutes.
  
• Strain through a muslin square or jelly bag overnight. (Retain the pulp to make hot apple and chilli cheese)
  
• Add the juice to a large heavy bottomed pan and add the sugar and the lemon juice. Bring slowly to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. When the juice and sugar has come to the boil remove from the heat and skim well. Return to the heat and bring to a rolling boil until setting point is reached. This took 15 minutes…put a plate into the freezer, dollop a small amount of jelly onto the plate and leave for a minute. Push the jelly with your finger and if the jelly wrinkles on the surface setting point has been reached.
  
• Add dried chilli and pour into warm sterilised jars immediately. I found that because the chilli flakes float and stick a lot to the sides of the pan, it is actually best to sprinkle a teaspoon or smaller amount into the bottom of each jar and then pour the jelly on top. That way the flakes disperse slightly more.
  

  

I have eaten the jelly so far with chicken, and in a grilled cheese sandwich, it was delicious in both. I think it would go well with most meats really, hot or cold, it definitely goes with cheese, we had it with oven heated camembert in a box last night with crusty tiger rolls which was very tasty. Also it is the sort of jelly that could be used in cooking, for example adding to a sauce, casserole or curry from some sweetness and heat. I will definitely be making another batch, the recipe made 6 small (250g) jars which will be gone in no time.

The English Bee

Welcome to my blog.

A quick explanation behind my blog title…my name is Rebecca, a name which tends to get shortened within family and friends to Becca, Becks, Rebektor gadget (hmmm), but also as B.

Secondly I’m English, and thirdly I have a passion for, and hopefully soon a career in sustainability. It should be quite a well known fact by now that the English Honey Bee is under threat, and that their loss will be detrimental to not only the honey industry, but also to less obviously linked industries such as UK agriculture which rely on the Bee’s pollinating abilities.

I’m starting this blog as a way of pushing myself to become more involved with local seasonal sustainable food sourcing for my home cooking, and to see if I can become involved in my local community by promoting self-sustainable living.

I’m in the final week of finishing my Masters thesis in Corporate Environmental Management so really should be concentrating on that, so I will post more and get back to cooking when it is finally finished!

B x