Hot Cross Bun Recipe

Easter weekend was an incredibly chilled affair. Frosty and I didn't have too many plans and we were able to spend a lot of time at home just chilling and enjoying being on holiday. 

One evening, we decided to get into the Easter spirit and bake some hot cross buns. Frosty searched a recipe, we popped into the shops to get the ingredients and then we began to bake. The only problem was, Frosty we didn't read the recipe the whole way through. After mixing together the basic dough mixture, we had to let the dough rise for an hour. Not too bad, it was still light outside. Then, after adding in the yummy bits and pieces like raisins, we read that we then had to let the dough rise for another hour. Hmm, at least that way it gave us time to make supper before we started to bake the buns. However, after reading that once we had broken all the pieces up, we would have to let the dough sit for another hour, by this time it was bed time and we decided to call it a day, put the dough in the fridge and go to sleep. 

Eventually, we got around to making our hot cross buns the next morning. By this time, we were extra excited for hot cross buns and I must say, they were worth the wait! 

I have slightly changed the recipe that we originally used from the BBC Good Food website. To access their recipe, click here.

Ingredients:

300 ml full cream milk
50g butter
500g bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
75g castor sugar
1 tablespoon sunflower oil
7g instant yeast
1 egg, beaten
sultanas and raisins (a handful or two, we added more than the recommended amount)
zest of one orange
1 apple (peel it, core it and chop it finely)
1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp nutmeg (again, we used a bit more than what was originally recommended)
75g normal flour (for the cross)
3 tablespoons of fruit jam (apricot is recommended, we used fig, which worked just as well)

Method:

1. Bring milk to the boil, then remove from heat and add butter. Leave to cool for a few minutes.
2. Sieve the flour into a bowl and then add in the salt, yeast and sugar. Make a well in the middle of the mixture.
3. Pour in the milk and butter mixture as well as the beaten egg.
4. Mix well until you have a doughy mixture.
5. Remove the dough from the bowl and place it on a lightly floured surface. Knead the dough until smooth and elastic (+- 5 minutes).
6. Put the dough into a lightly oiled bowl, cover it and leave it in a warm place to rise for an hour.
7. Take the cover off the dough and add in the fruit (apple, orange zest, spices, raisins and sultanas). 
8. Knead the fruit into the dough, cover and leave in a warm place to rise for another hour.
9. Divide the dough into 15 or 16 pieces and set out on an baking tray, lined with tin foil. Don't forget to leave space for the dough to expand.
10. Leave the buns to rest for another hour. 
11. Turn your oven on and heat to 220 degrees C.
12. To make the cross, mix the normal flour with water. You can add some cinnamon and sugar to the cross paste, just for fun. Add the water one teaspoon at a time until you have a thick paste. Put this into a piping bag and pipe crosses onto each of the buns.
13. Bake for +- 20 minutes on the middle shelf of the oven, until golden brown.
14. After removing the buns from the oven, gently heat the jam, sieve out the juice (you can put the solid pieces back into your jam jar if you like) and brush this jam-juice over the buns while they're still warm, then leave the buns to cool.

Once they've cooled, we always cut the buns in half and toast our hot cross buns in the oven. Serve them with butter and cinnamon sugar and enjoy!

Waatlemoen Konfyt (Watermelon Jam)

It's been a while since I posted a good recipe and I recently made some Waatlemoen Konfyt, so I figured that it would be a good thing to share. This recipe requires quite a bit of waiting around - so plan to make this over a day or two, when you've got other things on the go (but not too much).

Last year some time (or maybe it was even the year before that) I had a watermelon and once I'd finished eating the yummy inside goodness, I remembered about a jam I'd heard about - Waatelmoen Konfyt (Watermelon Jam). This jam/preserve recycles watermelon rinds and turns them into something tasty. I found a recipe on the internet ages ago and can't remember where it was from, but I've modified it a bit and will be sharing my modified version with you.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups peeled and diced watermelon rind
• 2 spoons bicarb
• 4 litres of water (separate into 1 litre and 3 litres)
• 3 cups sugar
• 3 tsp powdered ginger (or a finely diced ginger root)
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 20ml lemon juice

Method:

• Add your diced rind to 3 litres of water and add in the bicarb. Leave the rind to soak for 12-18 hours.
• After soaking, remove the rind, rinse it and then soak it in fresh water for another 1-2 hours.
• Rinse the rind and put it in a pot of hot water and bring this to boil. 
• Boil the rinds, uncovered, until just tender.
• In a separate pot, prepare the syrup.
• Add the remaining litre of water, spices, sugar and lemon juice.
• Put this on a low heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved.
• Bring the syrup mixture to the boil.
• Drain the rind and add it to the syrup mixture.
• Boil rapidly until the pieces are tender and translucent and the syrup is thick. (This can take quite a while).
• Pack the peel into hot, dry, sterilised bottles, fill with syrup and seal immediately.

This is delish on toast or with some cheese and crackers - enjoy!

Peanut Butter Cookies with Chocolate Bits

A few weeks ago, on a fine Sunday afternoon, I suddenly got this incredible craving for cookies - something warm and hard-soft-gooey. I quickly browsed through some recipes for peanut butter cookies and then found one that mentioned peanut butter choc chip cookies. I was sold on that idea. I decided to use this classic peanut butter cookie recipe as my base and then added my own twist to it.

Here's my version of the recipe above.

Ingredients:
1 cup butter
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 bar of chocolate (optional)
a handful of some real peanuts and raisins (optional)

Peanut butter cookies ingredients

Peanut butter cookie mixture

Method:

1. Cream the butter, peanut butter, white sugar and brown sugar.

2. Add the eggs and beat until everything is mixed.

3. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt in a separate bowl. Then add the dry ingredients, chocolate pieces and peanuts and raisins to the batter and mix.

4. You can cool the batter in the fridge or deep freeze if you don't want your cookies to "ooze" too much while baking.

5. Take pieces of the batter and roll into balls, put them on a greased baking tray and bake at about 180 degrees C for 10-15 minutes (or until the bottom of the cookie edges start to get brown). I chose to make small cookies, but you can choose to make bigger ones too!

Peanut butter cookies ready to go in the oven.

Recipe for Pineapple Chicken

Do you ever have leftover tinned pineapple (you know, from making epic pizzas) and for the hundredth time in a row you find yourself eating the leftover pineapple straight from the tin and slurping surreptitiously from the can when no one is looking...

The other day I was searching for a recipe that I could use in conjunction with chicken pieces, and I came across this one. The only problem was that I didn't have any soy sauce and I wanted to make it a bit creamy. So I improvised and this is my take on the recipe I found.

Ingredients:
8 chicken pieces (I used thighs and drumsticks)
1/2 cup flour
1 teaspoon butter/marge
1 x 400g tin of pineapple in juice
2 tablespoons grape vinegar (instead of the soy sauce)
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon crushed garlic
3 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 tablespoon Mrs Balls Chutney
Salt and pepper

Method:

1. Put you oven on to about 160 degrees C.
2. Cover your chicken pieces in flour (you can add some nutmeg to the flour as well).
3. Heat up the pan to hot and brown your chicken pieces (especially if you're keeping the skin on!).
4. If you have got pineapple rings, chop them into pieces.
5. Mix your pineapple (and pineapple juice) with the vinegar/soy sauce, sugar, nutmeg, garlic, mayo and chutney.
6. Put your sauce in a casserole dish, then add the browned chicken.
7. Cover you dish (either with a lid or you can use tin foil).
8. Leave to cook for about 1.5 hours.
9. At the very end, take the cover off and put the grill on to brown the top of your dish a bit more.

I served this dish with rice and peas, but you can do whatever floats your boat! Enjoy!

Pancakes without Eggs

Last night for about 5 minutes I stood in my kitchen feeling extremely sad.

I had decided to make pancakes as a snack for the evening as well as snack for work for the next 2 days. However, I didn't have any eggs and I was waaaaay to lazy to go to the shops to actually get some eggs. So I decided to do the next best thing and Google "eggless crepes" (not pancakes, because pancakes mean crumpets to most of the rest of the world).

Anyway, I found a delicious recipe for Egg-less Pancakes, here it is:

Ingredients

1 Cup Flour

0.5 cups water

1 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 T sunflower oil

5 ml baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

Method

1. Sift flour, add baking powder and cinnamon.

2. Mix the liquid ingredients together and pour into the flour mix.

3. Whisk the mixture until there are no lumps in it and it's a smooth, quite runny, consistency.

4. Set your stove to hot and put a frying pan on top. Use teeny-tiny bit of oil to lubricate it.

5. Use a ladle and spoon 1 ladle-ful of mixture into the frying pan. Tilt the frying pan around so that the mixture is even across the base. Put the pan back on the stove.

6. When small bubbles appear across the pancake surface, and the edges start to come away from the frying pan, use an egg-flip to flip the pancake over and cook the other side.

7. When golden brown on both sides, remove the pancake and cook another one.

8. Fill your pancake with whatever yummy treats you would like to - classic ones include cinnamon and sugar or caramel treat and banana. 

My lunch time pudding today

Recipe for Awesome (Tiny) Chicken House

This last weekend, I went back to KZN for Frosty's birthday on the farm. We had an awesome dinner and get together with some of his family and friends and he got some awesome presents. But I think the present that will keep him busiest was a chicken called Cheesecake, so named by the lovely gift-giver, Shells. According to one of the guys with us, it's a Black Australorp chicken and Frosty is hoping that it turns out to be a girl so he can have eggs for breakfast every morning, maybe he'll even get a few more so he can invite friends over for breakfast!

Anyway, even though this little chick came in the most beautifully decorated gift box, we decided it needed a bit more room to grow and jump around and thus we decided to build an

Awesome (Tiny) Chicken House

Ingredients

1 x baby chicken (or a few more if you like)

1 x plastic box (with a lid)

1 x brick with hole in the middle for water

1 x plank of wood, similar in size to your brick

1 x small flower pot

1 x piece of large paper (newspaper works)

a few handfuls of paper cuttings, sawdust, wood shavings or grass

2 x small glass bowls

1 x pen

some water and baby chicked food (we used future life)

Tools

1 x jig saw

1 x hole saw (attaches to your drill)

1 x sander (with sandpaper, you could just use sandpaper as well, it just takes longer)

1 x boyfriend who is willing to show you how to use power tools :)

Method

1. Wash your box, box lid, flower pot, little glass bowls and brick (just a rinse to clean off any dirt that may have accumulated while they were sitting in the garden, gathering dust). Leave them to dry.
2. Put the wood plank over the brick and mark out where you'll be cutting it.
3. Take the jig-saw and cut where you marked out.
   
   
   
4. Take the hole saw and drill away two holes - make sure that your 2 glass bowls will fit into the holes you've drilled! (You can use the cores to make cool Christmas decorations!)
   
   
   
5. Use the sander to sand away all the splinters on your feed holder.
6. Put everything into the box as illustrated below and voila - your new Awesome (Tiny) Chicken House!

I've decided that I quite enjoy using power tools (even though I'm an engineer, most of the power tool stuff is done by my artisans) and so if anyone has any suggestions for other cool projects involving power tools, send them through!

* We weren't using any safety gear here - ideally you should wear goggles and ensure all your pieces you're working with are secured with clamps to minimise risk of injury!

Flourless Chocolate Lovers Treat

Chocolate. Yum. I was given a Woman&Home, Pick 'n Pay recipe booklet by a friend a few weeks ago. Last weekend I decided to test out this awesome recipe for a "chocolate soufflé" type dessert since Frosty was around and we were too busy to bake brownies to send back to Cape Town with him. 

Ingredients

60 g 70% dark chocolate

50 g butter or marge (guess which one I used)

2 large eggs, separated

50 g white sugar

Chocolate on top of egg yolk-sugar mix on top of whipped egg whites - ready for a final mix
before going in to the mugs.

Method

1. Pre-heat over to 200 degrees C and lightly grease your moulds.
   (I used my awesome striped coffee mugs without greasing them, and they were fine - I did put them in my baking tray though, to contain any spillage)
2. Melt the chocolate with the butter/marge and leave to cool. (I did this by putting a small pan on the stove, with some water in it that was on a medium heat. Then I got a glass bowl, put it over/into the pot and put my marge and chocolate in the glass bowl to melt it)
3. Mix the egg yolks with the sugar until light and creamy. Whip the egg whites until firm.
4. In another mixing bowl, combine and gently fold all the mixtures together, spoon them into your moulds (or coffee mugs) and bake them for 10 minutes.

The final product - the centre is soft and gooey and the outside is warm and cake-like!

Cool Cucumber Soup

I haven't posted a recipe for a while, and since the days are becoming longer and warmer, I thought that I should share with you a recipe for cucumber soup. This is a quick and easy recipe and is best eaten chilled from the fridge with a dash of cream on a warm summer's day/evening.

Although many people may wonder at cold soup, if you like cucumber and something that tastes fresh, this is definitely worth a try! And really easy to make as well.

Picture from http://www.marthastewart.com/315733/chilled-cucumber-mint-soup
Go to the link above to try Martha Stewart's version of cucumber soup!

Ingredients

butter/oil/marge for frying
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 english cucumber, sliced but not skinned
15 ml flour
600 ml milk
300 ml chicken stock
Salt and pepper
nutmeg 

Method

1. Heat butter/marge/oil. Add onions and cucumber and cook gently for 5 minutes.
   
2. Add flour and stir constantly.
   
3. Remove from stove and gradually add warm milk, then stock. Replace on stove plate and bring to boil.
   
4. Add seasoning and simmer gently for 20 minutes.
   
5. Puree soup in a blender, you can add more milk if needed.
   
6. Chill and serve with cream and freshly chopped mint.

Easy Cheese Muffins

One of my all time favourite recipes is these yummy cheese muffins. I remember waking up over the weekend when I was a kid, to the amazing smell of cheese muffins, usually baked by my dad, but sometimes by my mum as well. They also remind me of my gran on my dad's side (Goko or Goks as she is fondly called by all of her grandchildren). Whenever we went to tea with Goks, she would have cheese muffins and crumpets. She would then mix butter and syrup to make a paste/spread and we would eat muffins and crumpets with butter and syrup - there is nothing more delicious!

So, in memory of childhood and to honour Goks, who unfortunately is no longer able to bake, here's my take on yummy cheese muffins:

Ingredients:

150g grated cheese (or more, if you like cheese)
1.5 cups of self raising flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg

1 cup milk

Garlic salt and mixed herbs to taste

1 teaspoon English Mustard (the non-powdered variety)

Method:

1. Sieve the flour, then add the rest of the dry ingredients and mix lightly.

2. Mix all liquid ingredients together (the mustard counts as liquid).

3. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix together.

4. Use spray and cook, or some equivalent, on a muffin pan that makes 12 muffins.

5. Spoon the muffin mix into the muffin pan.

6. Bake at 180 deg C for +- 30 mins.

* You can sprinkle a bit of grated cheese on top of the muffins once they've been spooned into the pan to give them some extra cheesy yumminess.

Enjoy!

American Fudge Brownies - Recipe

So, the side-effect of leaving for Cape Town last week was that I got to visit my boyfriend and all I had to do was present at a GirlEng workshop (which, for a free flight, was completely worth it!)

And since I'm a good girlfriend and like to bake, I made him some DELISH chocolate brownies. And since I was in the creative mood, I took some pics so that you could see how to make chocolate brownies too (and this is probably the best chocolate brownie recipe in the whole WORLD!)

SO, the recipe for American Fudge Brownies (or just plain old Choc Brownies, if you prefer) goes something like this:

Ingredients:

250 g margarine (lucky for me it's free!)
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
8 T cocoa
1 cup flour
salt
*you can also add some chopped up nuts

Method:
1. Melt the marge so it's soft (it doesn't have to be completely runny, just soft)

2. Cream the marge and sugar

3. Add the eggs and vanilla to the creamed mix and mix it some more, until all the eggs and vanilla is mixed in

4. Sift the flour, cocoa and salt (see below, it looks really pretty when you sift them together like I did!)

5. Slowly add the sifted ingredients (otherwise you just make a mess of flour/cocoa everywhere) to the creamed ingredients so that you end up with a mixture looking kind of like the image below

7. Put the mixture into a roasting pan (think mine was about a 12x30 cm roasting pan)

8. Bake up 180 degrees C for about half an hour (this is very dependant on oven type!)

9. When you take the brownies out, don't worry if it seems a little bit liquid (but if it's a lot liquid, leave in the oven for a while longer).

10. Let the brownies cool. Once they've cooled, cut them up and sprinkle icing sugar over the top (if you have some lying around) for an extra bit of yum.

And there you have it. Easy, yummy chocolate brownies!