Apple Kuchen (D-F)

"Oh my goodness, this is delicious Charlotte!" is always a promising response to get from your mother when you try and bake something new, I told you about the brownies H made for us when we went round, in my post before last, but I didn't tell you as much as I should have about the second pudding, kuchen.

It's sort of a extra special, extra large hot cross bun.
Heavenly soft dough, dotted with raisins, topped with crunchy sugar encrusted apples.
It's amazing, and you'll love it.

Use any hot cross bun dough, I used this dairy free one:

180ml soy milk

5 1/2 tablespoons honey

2 tablespoons caster sugar

2x 7g sachets yeast

80g raisins

2 large eggs, beaten

1 egg white

405g strong white bread flour

Topping, taken from Nigella:

1 large egg, beaten

a grating of nutmeg, I added about 1cm grated nutmeg

2 granny smith apples, peeled and chopped into 2cm chunks

1 tablespoon demerera sugar

1 tablespoon caster sugar

1/4 teaspoon allspice

Icing:

75g icing sugar

1 tablespoon hot water

Oven: 180C

Combine the soy milk, honey and sugar in a saucepan over low heat so that it's just warmed and has combined completely.

Pour it into a bowl, add the yeast and allow it to rest for 5 mins or until bubbles form on the surface.

Mix in the eggs and add the flour and raisins slowly, a bit at a time.

Knead the dough until it becomes elastic.

Let the dough rise in a warm place for 30 mins, knead again (knock it back), transfer it to the tin you want to bake it in, I suggest a roasting tin, and allow it to rise for another half an hour, if you want to do it overnight, clingfilm it, then put it in the fridge overnight and take it out an hour before you want to use it.

To make the all important topping, beat a large egg mixed with the nutmeg and brush the dough with it.

Scatter the chopped apples, sprinkle the sugars and allspice.

Bake for 15 mins at 200C then at 180C for another 15.

When it comes out, drizzle with the icing for extra deliciousness!

I made this for when my Godmother, mum and Josh took me up to uni as a road trip snack, Josh and I positioned ourselves well so that we had it in the middle of us.

It turned out that everyone goes the same way to Canterbury Christchurch, on the same day, so this meant traffic, which meant bored kuchen photos...

Then we battled it out on candy crush.

Tiddly Banoffee Pies

The other night J and I had a date night, just a trip to the cinema to see "The Big Wedding", which was pretty good, but seeing as he's in the middle of exams right now we can't see each other as often as we'd normally/like to.
Anyway, one of his favourite puddings is Banoffee Pie. It would be risky for the inside of my bag if I had tried to sneak a whole pie into the cinema so I made a small batch of my trusty short crust pastry that made just over 7 pie crusts that I laid over cupcake tins.

3 oz plain flour
1.5 oz butter
About 4 tsps. water

1 can of boiled condensed milk (or dulche de leche)
1 banana
Whipped cream (optional)
Grated chocolate

After making your pastry roll it out and use a cutter to cut out circles that cover the cupcake tin holes like you would if you were making mince pies.
With the point of a sharp knife gently prick the pastry so that it doesn't rise and pop in the oven (200 celcius) for about 15 mins.

You can use a can of condensed milk that you've boiled yourself (keep the tin sealed) or you can use a precooked one like the one below!

 




















Grab a teaspoon and dollop the caramel in the cases, depending on how caramelly you like it (J likes caramel so I went overboard slightly).

Mmm don't they look good??

Then eat the rest of the tin with a spoon by yourself whilst watching a movie. I won't judge you.

 

 Slice up your banana and plonk/arrange artistically on top.

You could go for several half slices, for more bananary tastiness but I was in a rush.

 

Add a good amount of whipped cream if you have some and sprinkle with chocolate (or chocolate powder in my case).

I don't think they are exactly the same as a normal banoffee pie base, because that's with golden syrup, butter and biscuits, but they're really easy for you to eat, and perfect for cinema sneakin'.
I did actually catch J fit one whole into his mouth so they went down a treat!

 

Alternatively you could leave the banana out and eat them as a caramel jam tart!

 

Lottie's Cookies

 Revision has given me a serious craving for Millie's Cookies, after scouring the internet and recipe books I've found what I think is the closest yet..

 

These are the easiest, chewiest, yummiest cookies with a good amount of chocolate. There are two things that can ruin a cookie for me, it being too crunchy, and it having a poor dough : chocolate chip ratio, so to me these are perfect.

125g softened butter
100g light brown sugar
125g caster sugar
1 beaten egg
1 tsp. vanilla extract
225g self raising flour
A pinch of salt
250g chocolate (or more if you'd like!)

Makes 10 large cookies.

Start by creaming the sugars and the butter together so that it's nice and smooth,

Then add your egg and the vanilla.
Chop up your chocolate, you could use chocolate chips, in fact the cookies would be great with a mix of all three chocolates in, but I'm using a 200g bar of milk chocolate and then 50g of dark chocolate. I've chopped mine rather loosely to get nice big hunks o'chocolate.

Sift in your flour and only half mix it in, then sprinkle in the chocolate chunks, this is to avoid over mixing.

Grab a fistful of the mixture, roll it into a ball, then squash it down, but leave good sized spaces between the cookies as they will get bigger!

Bung these in the oven for about 10 mins at about 200 Celsius if you want them really chewy or 15 mins if you want a balance between crunchy and chewy.

 

 

 

 

They'd also be really, really good sandwiched together with some Ben and Jerry's, sorry if I've ruined any diets!

Bank Holiday Bread

For my birthday one of my friends got me How to Avoid a Soggy Bottom by Gerard Baker which is filled with all the GBBO baking tips and secrets.

 

Not only did she give me that but she also made me an enormous cornflake tart (one of my favourites) so this morning I cut myself a hunk of tart and started flicking through.

It's divided into cake & biscuits, pastry, desserts and flavours & fillings, but it was the bread section that particularly grabbed me. We have a bread machine but I thought I'd try and make the "Simple White Loaves" all by myself.



To make 2 large loaves:

800g strong white flour
2 tsp. salt
1 sachet or 7g yeast
550 ml tepid water

Oven: 220 C

Put all of the flour in a bowl and if, like me, you are using dried yeast, mix the salt in with the flour thoroughly.

In a separate bowl mix the yeast with a little water until it forms a paste not unlike, for lack of a better description, sorry, the consistency of a face mask.

Then add this to the rest of your tepid water and pour into the bowl of flour.

 

 

After mixing all the ingredients well together, turn out the dough onto a clean surface and get kneading. Resolve any anger management issues by pummelling that dough. You'll have to knead for 10-15 minutes so not only are you making a pair of yummy loaves, you're also getting a workout.
Then pop it into a bowl, cover it in a damp tea towel and leave in a warm place until it doubles in size.

Once its doubled, give it another quick knead to make it nice and smooth, then divide into two.

Roll it with your hands to make a fat sausage and bring the long edges in to make a crease down the centre.

 

Pop it into a greased bread tin with the crease side at the bottom.

Then put it back into the warm place for another hour or until it has doubled.

Then sprinkle your loaf with flour,

 

And score a line about 1/2 deep along the centre of the loaf. 

 Bung your loaves into the oven at 220 C/425 F then after 20 minutes, turn them around so they bake evenly and reduce the temperature to 180 C/350 F and leave for another 20-25 minutes.

Test to see if they are done by turning them out and knocking on the bottom, if they sound hollow, you're done!

 The recipe says to allow them to cool, but I think that warm bread is the best bread.

 

Especially with lashings of butter...