Verdict: Tiger bread

Well, it's not exactly what I'd call tiger bread. The fact that the crust isn't speckled is testament to that fact. But, having said that, it is rather a good loaf. The crust is, I believe, the best crust I have ever had on a loaf of bread; an almost perfect example of that elusive balance between hard and crunchy, soft and chewy, flavoursome and not burnt. The body of the bread is a little dense, but in a good way - with that lovely texture and satisfying chewiness. It's a failure insofar as it's not really tiger bread, but it's very much a success in that it's a bloody good loaf!

Tiger tiger tiger!

In most supermarkets that have an in-store bakery, you can buy a type of bread called tiger bread. It's, in my opinion, probably the best shop-bought, mass-produced bread available - as far as bread that's come from the Chorleywood Bread Process, it's a definite winner. So I thought it would be nice to try making it myself... the only problem is, that there's a lot of debate as to what actually goes into tiger bread. But, going with the (admittedly dangerous) assumption that the internet will get things right when averaged across sufficient users, I've taken what I view as prevailing view (as there is clearly no consensus) from this forum thread. The base bread is a standard plain white loaf and is baked in the normal way except for being brushed with the tiger paste before going into the oven.

Tiger Bread

Ingredients

For the bread

• 500g Strong bread flour
• 300g Water
• 10g Salt
• 3/4 sachet Fast-acting dried yeast
• 10g Light olive oil

For the tiger paste

• 1/4 sachet Dried yeast
• 5tbsp Water
• 1 1/2 tsp Caster sugar
• 1 tsp Light olive oil
• 60g Rice flour

Method

1. Mix all the bread ingredients into a rough dough.
2. Tip out onto a large, clean work surface and knead until smooth and elastic.
3. Shape into a round and return to the mixing bowl. Cover and leave to rise until itroughly doubles in size.
4. Uncover and tip onto the lightly-floured work surface and squash all over using your fingertips to deflate the dough.
5. Knead for 5 minutes, divide and shape as required - I baked it as a loaf (mainly because I wanted to use the loaf tin David bought me for my birthday).
6. Cover and leave to prove for ~1hr-1hr30 until roughly doubled in size again.
7. Mix all of the ingredients for the tiger paste in a bowl and cover. Leave in a warm place for 25 minutes.
8. Spread the tiger paste over the loaf.
9. Place into an oven preheated to the maximum temperature, with a roasting tray of boiling water in the bottom.
10. After 10 minutes, turn the oven down to ~200C/Gas Mark 6 and continue to bake until done - about 40 minutes.
11. Remove from the tin and allow to cool on a wire rack before slicing.

Here's the dough just after shaping and ready for proving (end of step 5).After proving (end of step 6).

The tiger paste.The loaf ready for the oven (end of step 8).
Here's the finished loaf. The top didn't crackle - I wonder if I spread too thick a layer of the tiger paste on the top. Oh well. Bet it still tastes good though!

Verdict: Chocolate and cherry brandy bundt cake

Oh. My. Word. This cake was absolutely amazing! I don't know if it's the best cake I've ever baked, but it's certainly a contender! As you can see, it came out of the tin mostly intact, after some serious coercion with a spatula. It lost all of its pretty fluting around the edge, but at least now I know for next time that the Bundt tin needs a lot more greasing and a lot more flour. Anyway, I think it's still fairly pretty personally, but then beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that. But much more importantly, it tasted absolutely wonderful. Beautifully moist, and surprisingly for me, not heavy. It was wonderfully chocolatey, perfectly balanced and the cherry & almond flavour came through really nicely. Genuinely, I can't think of any way in which this cake could be improved - the sweetness was perfect, the texture was brilliant and the flavours blended together fantastically. Apparently, the people at the Magnolia Bakery really know what they're doing!

Cherries ≅ Almonds?

It's Lindsey's birthday tomorrow, so I'm baking her a cake. One of my recent purchases was a Bundt/Kugelhopf cake tin, which I'd quite like to try out. So having looked through my baking books, there was a standout recipe - the Chocolate Amaretto Bundt Cake from the Magnolia Bakery book that my friend Teia sent me for my birthday. The only snag was, I don't have any Amaretto. But looking at my drinks collection, I do have a bottle of cherry brandy that I think will substitute nicely, so hopefully it'll work well!

Chocolate and Cherry Brandy Bundt Cake

Ingredients

• 230g Butter
• 240g Caster sugar*
• 150g Soft brown sugar*
• 4 Eggs
• 170g Dark chocolate
• 235ml Milk
• 3tsp Almond extract
• 1tsp Vanilla extract
• 220g Plain flour
• 1tsp Bicarbonate of soda
• 4tbsp Cherry brandy

Method

1. Cream the butter and sugars together until fluffy.
2. Beat in the eggs, one at a time.
3. Melt the chocolate and mix in.
4. Stir in the milk, almond extract and vanilla extract.
5. Gradually sift in the flour and baking powder, beating the mixture smooth after each addition.
6. Stir in the cherry brandy.
7. Pour into a greased and floured Bundt cake tin and bake at 180C/Gas Mark 4 for ~45-50 minutes. Test with a skewer.
8. Allow to cool in the tin for ~20 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.

*The recipe actually calls for 190g caster sugar and 200g soft brown sugar, but I ran out of soft brown sugar. I don't think it'll make a massive difference, though it might be a little less flavoursome!

This cake batter is amazing! At the end of step 3, before the almond and vanilla extracts went in, it smelt like Ovaltine. Absolutely wonderful. But having never baked a cake like this before, I have no idea how much it'll rise... I've got a nasty feeling that this might overflow! Yup! It overflowed. Not horrendously though. I'm just really hoping it's cooked all the way through now. And that it'll come out of the tin...But no! Disaster! The cake was absolutely stuck fast. In desperation, I tried taking a turboflame lighter to the outside of the tin trying to heat it up in the hope that the expansion might help free the cake. And when that failed, I googled for ideas, trying one that suggested doing similar but using a tea towel in the kitchen sink soaked in boiling water to heat the tin up. On the plus side, I did find out that the cake is indeed cooked through. It's also rather moist and tastes excellent too, so a big thumbs up for the recipe. It's just a shame it didn't come out of the tin. And it would have been so pretty too. Oh well, I'll let the cake cool in the tin and then we can just hack it apart when we serve it tomorrow!You saw that coming though, right? I was definitely half-expecting it...

Verdict: Plain, boring fudge

Surprisingly, it's actually rather good! Surprising, for those who don't know, because I don't actually like fudge. It's definitely recognisably fudge - quite a solid, almost crunchy fudge, but definitely a fudge. It's ludicrously rich and still nauseatingly sweet like most fudges too, but unlike most fudges, I can eat more than one piece before feeling queasy - which is really quite a high standard for me with fudges. I'll bring it into the lab next week and get some more opinions...

And look! It came out of the tin in one piece! Actually, it just slid out; I'd been expecting to have to chip it out!

[Edit]It won quite a few compliments at the lab too. Maybe it really is pretty decent fudge after all...[/Edit]

The Fudge Factor

I bought a 397g tin of condensed milk (anyone know why it's sold in such a random quantity?) for the pineapple buns, but had no idea what to do with the remaining 300g of it. So naturally, I asked people on Facebook and the best suggestion I got back was to make fudge. Here goes...

Plain, Boring Fudge

Ingredients

• 300g Condensed milk
• 4tbsp Water
• 300g Sugar
• 45g Butter
• 1tsp Vanilla extract

Method

1. Place all the ingredients in a pan and heat gently, stirring constantly to a temperature of 116C.
2. Remove from the heat and beat until the fudge thickens (about 10 minutes).
3. Pour into a greased tin and allow to cool.

Here's the fudge just after pouring. I think I should have poured it a bit earlier - as you can see, parts of it have already mostly set! It's not going to win any awards for prettiness...

Verdict: Pineapple buns

Well, the verdict is definitely positive. It's not quite as I remember the ones that you can buy in Chinatown, but there's a distinct resemblance. The inside is very much like a slightly sweet bread - actually, as bread I would have been very pleased with it; it's delightfully chewy and has a lovely texture. As pineapple buns go though, I think it's a little too chewy. The coating is crunchy, which is also very pleasant, but not as the bought ones are. I think the coating is also a little too sweet and a little too rich - perhaps halving the amount of condensed milk or even just getting rid of it entirely would be the way to go. But overall, I'm pretty pleased with these - they rose beautifully and (as I hope you agree) they look absolutely gorgeous!

[Edit]My flatmate Kenny (who is from Hong Kong) says that the coating is actually pretty authentic. So that's quite a good bit of praise![/Edit]

Pineapple surprise

It's been a while since I last baked anything, I know. Real (i.e. non-baking) life has been a little bit hectic this past term and I've been busy, mostly with teaching. But it's the Easter weekend and I've got some free time, so I'm going to bake! Now, this is pineapple surprise in the classic joke sense - there's no pineapple involved anywhere in the recipe. Eh? Have I lost my mind? Very possibly, but as it happens, this is a sweet Chinese bread that's called pineapple bread because the appearance of the baked bun is reminiscent of the outside of a pineapple. More importantly though, I quite like it and I've got hold of a recipe. So enough waffle (ooh, that's an idea - I should try making waffles at some point), on to the baking!

Pineapple Buns
Ingredients
For the bread

• 380g Strong bread flour
• 1 Whole egg
• 1 Egg white
• 1 sachet Fast-action powdered yeast
• 90g Caster sugar
• 3tbsp Milk
• 100ml Warm water
• 40ml/35g Light olive oil
  

For the topping

• 100g Plain flour
• 60g Caster sugar
• 60g Butter
• 1tsp Bicarbonate of soda
• 2 tbsp Condensed milk
• 1 Egg yolk
• Few drops vanilla extract
• 1 Whole egg

Method

1. Sift the strong flour into a large mixing bowl.
2. Lightly beat the egg and egg white and add with the remaining bread ingredients into the bowl.
3. Combine the ingredients and knead until shiny and smooth.
4. Return to the bowl, cover and leave to rise until the dough has (roughly) doubled in size.
5. Knead for a further 10 minutes, divide into small bun-sized portions, shape and leave to prove for an hour on a lined baking tray.
6. Melt the butter and mix along with the rest of the ingredients for the topping except the whole egg.
7. Spread the topping over each bun.
8. Beat the egg and brush over the buns.
9. Bake at 190C for ~15 minutes until the top is light golden.

Incidentally, for anyone else who observes the Nestlé boycott, you might like to know that Carnation, the most famous brand of condensed milk in the UK, is owned by Nestlé. Luckily though, there are alternatives!

Here's the dough after kneading (end of step 3). The dough seemed much less smooth than a normal bread dough, and I struggled to develop the gluten - the dough was still slightly sticky at this point (when I gave up). I don't know if that's due to the recipe or the flour that I used though.

Here are the shaped buns ready for proving (partway through step 5). I know they're a bit close together, but I figure all that will happen is they might stick together a bit in the oven.

The buns with the topping applied (end of step 7). The topping is rather a lot more solid than I had initially expected.

After 10 minutes in the oven - they look perfect! Unfortunately, I cut one open and, unsurprisingly, it wasn't even remotely cooked, so back in the oven they go...

So back they went. In the end, it took 40 minutes in the oven in total, although I did have to turn the oven right down to make sure I didn't burn the crust. But here's the final result - I think they're pretty darned successful myself!