Bake off!

I'm home for the break, and we're having a whole roast suckling pig! The only trouble is, we don't have any nice fresh bread. So my brother, my mum and I had a bread bakeoff - I made up double quantities of the standard bread mixture and which we split three ways and each kneaded our own dough. We'll see who makes the best loaf!

Here are (from left to right) Andrew's loaf, mum's loaf and my loaf, ready for the oven.And now, straight from the oven (Left to right: Mine, Andrew's, mum's).They all look rather good, but that doesn't answer the big question: Who bakes the best loaf? Well, mum's was a bit denser and heavier than the other two, so that was eliminated from the running fairly quickly, but mine and Andrew's were pretty much neck and neck. I think my loaf won by a whisker - it had a slightly better, chewy texture in the middle, and the crusts were virtually indistinguishable - but it won only by the narrowest of margins. But most importantly, all three loaves were much, much better than any mass-produced loaf of bread!

Just another batch of cookies

I met up with Helen for dinner earlier and we decided that we weren't overwhelmed by the dessert options. So instead, I baked a batch of cookies. Same recipe as ever.

Verdict: Lebkuchen

It's really tricky baking with the crappy college ovens. There's no real indication of the actual oven temperature and the fact that everything's half-baked and half-grilled really makes things difficult. That's my excuse anyway - the Lebkuchen were really overcooked. They should be soft, but mine mostly came out crunchy. Not bad, but not quite what I was hoping for. The taste is actually pretty good - I initially thought that the spice balance wasn't quite right, but actually the more I eat, the more I think that it's actually pretty close to the real thing. And the few which did end up soft and chewy really do taste a lot like Lebkuchen are supposed to taste. I'm undecided as to whether I prefer the iced ones or the plain ones; it does work well either way. I'm pretty pleased with this really - they're really good especially when you consider how easy they are - I'll have to try baking it again sometime when I have a better oven available!

Lebkuchen

It's getting near Christmas, and what would Christmas be without Lebkuchen? Time to get baking! This recipe is largely based on this one, but with a few minor tweaks here and there (chiefly, I've replaced the cardamom with nutmeg and also made a few other changes to make the ingredients easier to obtain in the UK).

Lebkuchen
Ingredients

• 4 Eggs
• 200g Sugar
• 1tsp Vanilla extract
• 1tsp Lemon juice
  
• 1 1/2tsp Cinnamon
• 1tsp Cloves
• 1tsp Allspice
• 1/2 tsp Nutmeg
• 200g Ground almonds
• 125g Mixed peel
• 250g Plain flour
• 2tsp Baking powder

Method

1. Beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla extract together.
2. Add all the remaining ingredients, combining to form a dough.
3. Shape into portions roughly 10mm thick and bake at ~180C for 15-20 mins.
4. Allow to cool. Cover with melted chocolate, icing or icing sugar if desired.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? Well, as it turns out, it is mostly - the hardest part is shaping the dough into biscuits for baking, as it's so sticky. Here's the dough.
After a bit of struggling with the stickiness, eventually it looks like this when ready for the oven. I was expecting them to merge into one giant Lebkuchen.And straight from the oven. They didn't spread out very much in the end!I iced some of them with a plain icing. I think they look pretty good overall!