Chocolate babka

I've seen so many pictures of people baking these gorgeous-looking chocolate breads that I finally decided that I had to get to it and try baking one for myself. I'm using this recipe, but they all seem pretty similar; the major difference being quite how much butter, chocolate and sugar goes in. Also, we inherited an old Kenwood Chef recently(ish), so it was a good opportunity to try it out!

Chocolate Babka
Ingredients
For the dough

• 530g Plain flour
• 100g Caster sugar
• 1 sachet Fast-action dried yeast
• Zest of 1 small lemon
• 3 Eggs
• 120ml Water
• 3/4tsp Table salt
• 140g Butter
• 2tbsp Vegetable oil

For the filling

• 130g Dark chocolate
• 120g Butter
• 50g Caster sugar
• 30g Cocoa powder
• 1/4 tsp Cinnamon

For the syrup

• 80ml Water
• 75g Caster sugar

Method

1. Mix the flour, sugar (for the dough), yeast, lemon zest, eggs and water in a food mixer using the dough hook to form a rather dry dough.
2. Add the salt and butter (for the dough), spoon by spoon.
3. Mix on a low speed for ~10 minutes until smooth.
4. Turn into an oiled mixing bowl, cover and leave to prove in the fridge overnight.
5. Melt the chocolate and butter (for the filling) together.
6. Stir in the sugar, cocoa powder and cinnamon.
7. Divide the dough into two portions and roll out into a rectangle ~25cm x 30cm.
8. Spread the chocolate mixture onto the rolled out dough, leaving a 1cm edge at the end uncovered.
9. Roll the dough up, dampening the end to seal.
10. Chill in fridge for ~10-15 mins.
11. Cut in half lengthways, then plait/twist the two halves together, trying to keep the cut faces outwards, and pinch the top and bottom together.
12. Place into a greased loaf tin.
13. Cover and prove for 1-1/2 hours.
14. Bake at 190C for 25-30mins.
15. Place the water and sugar (for the syrup) in a pan and heat until the sugar dissolves.
16. Brush the syrup over the babkas as soon as they are removed from the oven.

I remembered a bit too late that I only had one loaf tin, so put both babkas into a brownie tin instead. This proved to be a bit of a mistake; they're already prone to being underbaked, and baking it in a single tin only exacerbates the matter. In the end, I baked them for around 50 minutes, and they were still pretty under done. But they still look amazing, don't they?

Aside from the fact that they were rather doughy (and possibly still raw in places...), they're pretty good. I think they definitely look better than they taste, which is always unfortunate, but that's mostly because they look gorgeous. The lemon zest really comes through, and is intially a bit startling, but is nice once you get used to it - I do think that orange would probably work better though. With a food mixer, this was surprisingly little effort, so I might give it another go next time I need to bring a dessert to a party or something. Without a mixer though, this would have been quite a lot of work - lots of kneading!

Pulla

Scandinavia gets a heck of a lot of stuff right. Its constituent countries consistently top indices of population well-being and happiness, and the general demeanour and approach to life sits rather well with me. There is one thing in particular that Scandinavian countries do extraordinarily well on the whole that I think is not as widely reported as should be - they do marvellous breakfast breads. I've had them in Denmark, Norway and Finland, and they've always been wonderful. Now I think it's no real secret that I'm a big fan of sweet breads - I absolutely love them  (my admittedly not entirely successful experiments with pineapple buns illustrate this). But I came across this recipe for pulla/nisu recently, a Finnish cardamom-spiced bread, and I thought I'd have to try making it (plus, if it's successful, there are some pretty interesting other variants I'd quite like to try too!). I needed to procure a pestle and mortar and figure out where to buy pearl sugar nibs (Waitrose is the answer - although Google does suggest that they're pretty easy to make yourself too) before I could give it a go, but I'm finally ready!

Pulla
Ingredients

• 250ml Milk
• 1 sachet (7g) Dried fast-action yeast
• 90g Caster sugar
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 2 Eggs
• 2 heaped tsp Cardamom pods
• 500g Strong white flour
• 85g Butter
• Pearl sugar nibs to sprinkle

Method

1. Mix the milk, yeast, sugar, salt and one egg in a large mixing bowl.
2. Shell the cardamom pods and grind the seeds with a pestle and mortar, then add to the mixing bowl.
3. Add the flour and butter and combine.
4. Knead until not-entirely-smooth-but-not-very-sticky, then wrap and leave to rise for ~1hr or until roughly doubled in size.
5. Divide the dough into 8 evenly sized portions and shape into balls.
6. Place dough balls widely spaced on greased/lined baking sheets, cover and leave to rise for ~30 mins.
7. Beat the remaining egg with 1tbsp water and brush over the risen dough balls.
8. Sprinkle generously with pearl sugar nibs.
9. Bake at ~220C for 10-15mins.

Here's the dough at step 4, just before the first rise.

Ready for the oven!

They baked a bit unevenly, but no harm done

 They look good, don't they?

 Ever so slightly under-baked, but not horrendously so.

They were a little under-done, and under-proofed, so they were a bit denser than I had hoped for. But they were also wonderfully soft and buttery, which was just what I had hoped for. They were right on the limit of having too much cardamom though, so in future, I think I'll reduce how much I use a bit - the original recipe called for 2tsp of ground cardamom and I was guessing how that translated to - I think it turned out to be about 2 1/2tsp once ground. I also think that the dough could have done with quite a bit more sugar to sweeten it up - as it was, almost all of the sweetness came from the pearl sugar on the top. Overall though, it was a definite success, but with room for improvement still!

Next loaf

It's time for the next attempt in my bread making odyssey! Because I like really sour sourdoughs, I'm going to use much less of Aage in this loaf to try extend the fermentation period which is supposed to help increase the sourness. I'm keeping the rest of the recipe pretty much the same as the last loaf though (with minor changes in timings to fit in with a weekday schedule), so hopefully they'll be similar enough to be a reasonably fair comparison.

Reduced Aage loaf
Ingredients

• 100g Strong white flour
• 200g Strong brown flour
• 200g Water
• 10g Olive oil
• 6g Salt
• 75g Aage

Method

1. Mix together all of the ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
2. Wrap the bowl tightly in a black bin bag and leave for ~20hrs.
3. Knead until no longer sticky.
4. Place on a sheet of baking parchment and rewrap in bag.
5. Leave to rise for ~4 hours.
6. Preheat oven to its maximum setting with Dutch oven inside.
7. Transfer dough still on its baking parchment to hot Dutch oven and bake for 25mins, then remove lid and bake for further 5-10 mins.

A bread making revival

Yesterday, I made some sourdough pizzas from scratch*, and it reminded me of how magical baking bread is. I'm going to try to bake smaller loaves more often, so hopefully there'll be more bread to be seen here soon. I've also realised that I don't actually know all that much about baking bread, and I think that I need to spend a bit more time just playing around and experimenting. Also, I just got a Lodge Combo Cooker which apparently makes a great Dutch oven. So with that in mind, it's time to get started!

A Breadmaking Revival Loaf
Ingredients

• 120g Strong white flour
• 180g Strong brown flour
• 210g Water
• 10g Olive oil
• 6g Salt
• 250g Aage

Method

1. Mix together all of the ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
2. Wrap the bowl tightly in a black bin bag and leave overnight.
3. Knead until no longer sticky.
4. Place on a sheet of baking parchment and rewrap in bag.
5. Leave to rise for ~4 hours.
6. Preheat oven to its maximum setting with Dutch oven inside.
7. Transfer dough still on its baking parchment to hot Dutch oven and bake for 25mins, then remove lid and bake for further 5-10 mins.

Straight to the result - I genuinely think that this might be the prettiest loaf I've ever baked. It's a little flatter than I had originally wanted, but that's at least in part because the dough was so moist. I can't wait for this guy to cool so we can crack it open!

I had been a little worried that the underside might either burn or not be done, but just look at it! I needn't have worried - it's absolutely perfect!

*For anyone wondering, it has been a long-established convention that pizza isn't close enough to baking to make it to this blog! I did throw half the dough into the oven to make a sort-of-loaf for lunch, which probably should have counted, but oh well. For the record, the pizzas were basically made to the Serious Eats foolproof pan pizza recipe, which is genuinely brilliant.

Salted caramel chocolate tart

A while ago, I found this recipe for a salted caramel chocolate tart, and thought it looked amazing. Time to give it a try! The recipe is pretty much untouched, except I went with my own sweetened shortcrust pastry recipe for the case.

Salted Caramel Chocolate Tart
Ingredients
For the pastry

• 170g Plain flour
• 100g Butter
• 20g Caster sugar
• ~3tbsp Cold water

For the chocolate filling

• 180ml Double cream
• 120ml Milk
• 340g Dark chocolate
• 2 Eggs

For the salted caramel

• 190g Caster sugar
• 85g Butter
• 120ml Double cream
• 1 1/2 tsp Salt

Method

1. Rub the flour, butter and sugar together until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs.
2. Add the cold water and form into a dough.
3. Seal in a freezer bag and refrigerate for ~30 mins.
4. Roll out to ~4mm thick and line a pie tin.
5. Prick the base with a fork and weigh down with baking beans.
6. Bake at ~180C for 10 minutes, remove the baking beans and bake for a further ~20 mins.
7. Remove to cool.
8. Scald the cream and milk in a pan, then pour into the dark chocolate. Stir until glossy and smooth.
9. Beat the eggs in a bowl.
10. Slowly pour a quarter of the chocolate mixture into the eggs, beating rapidly to prevent them from scrambling. Once fully incorporated, pour the chocolate/egg mixture back into the chocolate/cream/milk mixture and mix.
11. Pour into the pastry shell and bake at 160C for ~30 mins until set.
12. Heat the sugar in a pan until it melts and turns brown.
13. Add the butter and stir until the butter is melted.
14. Add the cream and boil for ~1 minute, beating rapidly.
15. Stir in the salt and allow to cool for ~15 mins.
16. Pour the caramel mixture over the tart.
17. Refrigerate for ~2 hours.

So the first thing to note is that the original recipe said that it made a single 10" tart... but my pie dish is closer to 6" in diameter. I didn't notice this until I was making the chocolate filling, and thinking "that looks like a lot of mixture". Whoops. If I'd halved the quantities for the filling and the caramel, it would have been about right. In the end, I decided to pour the leftover filling into a bowl and cooked it in the oven in a bain-marie; so there's effectively a second pastry-less tart!

Here's how much filling I had left over! This is after cooking, which is why it doesn't look all that smooth.

About to pour the caramel on!

Looks lovely, doesn't it?

After about an hour in the fridge, I was brave enough to remove the tart from the pan. It almost stayed intact!

 Not quite set, but we got impatient. Garnished with a little coarse salt, I think it looks fabulous!

Okay, we should have waited until it was fully set, so the caramel has at least partially run off where it's been cut. But don't tell me that it doesn't look good!

So how was it? Gorgeous. Decadent. Oh-so-unhealthy. Essentially everything a dessert like this should be. It was definitely better once it had cooled fully and set properly, but even while still a bit warm it was absolutely delicious. The chocolate is so intense and decadent - it's essentially one giant chocolate truffle - and the caramel is wonderfully rich. This is not a dessert that you'd want more than a thin slice of, but definitely one that's worth the effort of making!

Mk2 Pineapple

Way back in 2010, I tried making pineapple buns. For those of you who aren't familar with pineapple buns, it's a soft, sweet bread from Hong Kong with a distinctive crunchy crust. It was also officially declared a part of the cultural heritage by the Hong Kong government in 2014. Not that I care about that at all - I just like the taste of the things! Well, my first attempt was a partial success. My Hong Konger (yes, as weird as it sounds, I am led to believe that that is the correct term) friend, Pok, said that the topping tasted completely authentic, but we both agreed that the bread was far too firm and not nearly soft enough. I think a second attempt is well overdue now, so I'm keeping the recipe for the topping, but throwing the bread recipe out of the window. In its place, I'm adapting one from an old Chinese cookbook that I happen to have on the shelf - "Chopsticks Recipes More Dim Sum" by Cecilia J. Au-Yang.

Pineapple Buns Mk 2

Ingredients

For the bread yeast paste

• 1 Sachet dried yeast
• 1/2 tsp Sugar
• 60ml Warm water
• 3 tbsp Strong bread flour

For the bread dough

• 280g Strong bread flour
• 60g Sugar
• 1 Egg
• 1 tbsp Condensed milk
• 80ml Warm water
• 50g Melted butter

For the topping

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

Method

1. Mix the ingredients for the yeast paste together into a paste and leave to prove for ~half an hour.
2. Form a dough from the yeast paste and all of the bread dough ingredients except the melted butter and knead until smooth.
3. Knead in the melted butter and cover and leave to rise for ~1 1/2 hours.
4. Cream the butter with the sugar and then beat in the rest of the rest of the ingredients for the topping except the whole egg.
5. Refridgerate the topping for an hour.
6. Knead once the bread dough again, divide into small bun-sized portions, shape and leave to prove for ~1 1/2 hours on a lined baking tray.
7. Divide the topping into even portions. Roll each portion out into a disc and cover each bun with one.
8. Beat the egg and brush over the buns.
9. Bake at 190C for ~15 minutes until the top is light golden.

Here they are before the prove. Pretty, no? 

But here they are again after the prove. As you can see, they've not risen at all really - clearly, it's not fermented properly. I have no idea what I've done wrong though - it's possible that the yeast was actually just too old and no longer alive, but I'm not 100% certain. Oh well, it's not going to stop me from baking it anyway!

And now with the topping added. I only actually used half of the topping in the end - I think the quantities of topping vs dough are pretty badly mismatched.

And here they are, ready for the oven.

Disaster! I was overly heavy handed with the egg wash, and you can see that the topping hasn't come out right. Plus, the top was soft, not crunchy.

The least-bad one of them...

So, it all seemed to go wrong at the end. But how did it taste anyway? Well, obviously, as the rise didn't work properly, it was very dense. I mean really, really dense. But also lovely and soft - so actually quite pleasant actually. The topping never went crunchy though, so a bit of a failure on that front. The flavour was nice though - the sweetness was about right in my opinion. All in all, it was definitely mostly a failure, but a tasty one nonetheless. I'll have to give them another go again soon!

A birthday cake

It was Fiona's birthday yesterday, so I said that I'd bake her a birthday cake this weekend. She likes Black Forest gateaux (as, incidentally, do I), but it's one of those faffy cakes that I don't tend to bake because it's so much effort. So what better excuse than her birthday! It's the same recipe as I used last time (waaaaay back in 2009!), with the only minor changes that I let the mixture down with a splash of milk before adding the egg whites because the batter looked really stiff, and I had to halve the quantities for the cherry gel because I only had one jar of morello cherries. But that's okay, as somewhere along the line, I lost my 20cm cake tin, so had to bake it in a larger, thinner one, which means that this one only has two layers - and I still ended up with leftover cherry gel. I guess having only two cake layers means it's not a proper Black Forest gateau, but then I guess none of my cakes are ever that accurate anyway!

Here it is straight from the oven. Less burnt than last time, but more cracked!

But as expected, once flipped over, it's looking lovely. I think it may have gone a bit dry, but we'll see how it is once it's actually finished.

My word, Black Forest gateau is a lot of work. The end result is really pretty though! The photos don't really do it justice; it turns out that my new phone really does have an appalling camera.

This is one seriously decadent cake. It's as delicious as you'd expect a cake with 800ml of cream to be!

New year's loaves

Happy new year! This new year's day, I'm baking some bread. Not because it's the new year, mind you; it's because we've got some leftover salad that looks a little ropey, and I think it'd be a fine addition to some bread (and because I've got time today!). It's not going to be anything particularly adventurous (fundamentally it's just an ordinary sourdough loaf), but it's still nice to get baking!

Leftover Salad Bread
Ingredients

• A generous dollop of Aage
• 500g Strong wholemeal flour
• 250ml Warm water
• 10g Salt
• A slug (~10g) of olive oil
• ~55g Leftover salad (lambs lettuce, olives, spring onions, mustard, olive oil and salt)

Method

1. Mix Aage, the flour, water, salt and olive oil together and form a dough.
2. Knead until not sticky.
3. Put in bag to rise for ~1 hour until doubled in size.
4. Deflate and knead.
5. Divide into two portions and knead the leftover salad into one.
6. Shape into loaves, return to the bag and prove for ~2 hours until doubled in size.
7. Bake at 220C for 10 minutes, then turn down to 190C for a further 30 minutes.

The salad turned out to have quite a lot of olive oil and moisture in it, which made the half of the dough with the salad rather sticky. I opted to shape the plain ball of dough into something approximating a bâtard, but the salad-infused one ended up as a generic boule shape because it was too sticky to shape! Here they are before the prove.

Ready for the oven. As you can see, slashing the plain loaf didn't exactly go to plan. It turns out that the kitchen knife I tried to use was not nearly sharp enough. I reverted to a bread knife for the salady one, which worked better. They are clearly underproved (which I'm pretty sure is due to insufficient sourdough starter activity - I really need to plan my bread baking further ahead so that I can get Aage out of the fridge and woken up properly beforehand!)

As ever, they look gorgeous coming out of the oven.

The salady one is slightly underbaked. I did think that that might happen, given the extra moisture and oil in it, but it's not bad really - the dough is cooked all the way through, it's just a little cakey in the middle. Lovely flavour though - the spring onion gives a really nice fragrance, and the chopped up olives provide the usual lovely bursts of salty punch. The lettuce cooked away to nothing, but that's exactly as expected. I'm definitely going to add spring onion to bread again in the future!