The remains of dinner...

Oh my what a habit this is becoming in that I've made so many posts but I am trying to be better - if just a bit!

Dinner was cannelloni with ricotta and spinach. The pasta was of course home made but the ricotta was reduced and the rest was in the house. It is such an easy meal to prepare and also economical too!

I keep finding things at the stores bizarre to say the least. While out the other day we noticed all the stores pushing their own brands and how great their are - both in taste and on the pocket book. I recently went to this site which ranks the supermarkets own brand items against the 'real' brands. I found it interesting and will at some point try to have a better look but the few items I tried to look at were not things that we buy so it is pretty much useless for us. Perhaps someone else will find it useful.

In any event, I'm off to bed now that J and I both had a meal that cost us about £3.00 and we'll get another meal or two from it we feel quite swish with ourselves!

Time for a change...

Well two posts in such a short space of time you all will be spoilt! But I have been having some time off and thought I'd change the colours of the blog. I really should figure out how to change the whole thing to my liking but alas I'm just too busy to fuss around with it (perhaps a bit lazy too!).

Have been thinking about Easter and what to make J for the day. Well finally had a clear out of all those magazine cuttings one does and thinks - yeah, I'll make that but then they go into the cupboard or drawer and promptly are forgotten. Well finally put them into one of my notebooks and it is now full! But at least it is in some sort of order rather than the chaos I had before.

So flipping though that I found this recipe for double-chocolate hot cross buns. Well I don't do the normal hot cross buns as I don't do the dried fruit bit. I am very picky about what dried fruit I eat (mostly raisins and such but only in certain things) and more importantly what they are in! But I digress...in any event the recipe seems quite good in that you replace the fruit for chocolate. How bad can that be?

I'll post something on how they turn out but I expect they will disappear just like everything else in this house! Do you have a favourite thing you like to make on Easter? If so let me know.

Beauty of Spring....

Sometimes the best things in life are those you never expect. Like the following picture of a poinsettia plant that I got which wasn't bigger than 3 inches when I got it but now it is a towering plant and this is the second year it has turned red and the first year I got the actual flowers. What a joy - albeit later than Christmas but still a joy to view! My other poinsettia plant is much bigger than this one and when I got it - it was pitiful - just three leaves and looked so tired! But it too is now turning red on the very tips. When it's got something more to post I'll add a snap.

Now this is a picture of some freesias I got from a friend. One day the postie came and I thought 'Who could these be from?' as I wasn't expecting them and J was there with me so I knew they weren't from him. I had never heard of freesias before but what a lovely scent they give off! And they just keep on giving and opening their petals to exude more lovely scent.

Spring is in the air....I can smell it!

Even longer but now we're onto CHOCOLATE!

Well again a long time between posts but what can I say? Life has to be lived and while it's great to have an archive of what you do at varying times in your life I don't want to be in front of a keyboard and monitor all the time!

So what have I been doing? Well, I went back home in March/April to visit my niece for the first time since she was born. That was really great to do and I have many movies and pictures of our time together. I don't like posting pictures of her - suffice to say we look strangely and eerily alike! I will post one picture - this is of a telephone mast in Tampa - yes, it's meant to look like a tree - weird or what? I guess a mast would have been too daring for that part of town and well a fake tree that's a mast well that would be just so much better to look at! Um, OK....

I then of course returned home and to work (what a dirty word!) and it has been non-stop since. I have been off the last week but have been feeling poorly due to a bad back but today has been the first day I've actually been able to sit for any period of time so thought I'd put the sitting to good use!

I recently baked a cake for J which was a 'Death by Chocolate' cake - yes, I keep going back to that book. When you see the recipes and you try a few you will see why. In any event, here is my cake which I must admit looks home made but who cares?!

It's the tasting that counts and well with chocolate - how far can you go wrong? Not far in my book. In any event, it was very good and is sadly nearly gone too! Oh dear....will have to just make something else...check back soon!

Long time but a promising return - Polish Poppy Seed Bread (or Makowiec in Polish!)

Well it has been ages since my last post! Have you missed me? I have been super busy with my work at the library. But I have also had problems with my computer that meant getting a new one.

So what have I been up to? Well a lot of baking and trying new things. I have recently been trying to perfect a bread that I had as a child at around Easter time. It was full of lovely poppy seeds and sweet but not sickly. So I found a recipe that sort of had what I wanted in it and made that. It came out good but wasn't quite what I had in mind nor remembered.

So back to the drawing board and trying to remember what it tasted like, etc. So new recipe thought of and devised and again another set of trials. I've made about 5 or 6 of them now and I think it is about as good as I'm going to get without getting the recipe from the source.

Polish Poppy Seed Bread

Bread
250 grams strong bread flour
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2 teaspoons caster sugar
50 grams unsalted butter
about 90 ml tepid milk
1 1/2 teaspoon easy-blend yeast
1 medium egg

Filling
150 grams poppy seeds
250 grams marzipan
1-2 teaspoons vanilla extract or half a vanilla pod (with seeds first removed and put in with poppy seeds) and then both blitzed in food processor with the poppy seeds

Glaze
1 egg, beaten
flaked almonds(optional)
pearl sugar (optional)

Mix flour, salt, sugar and yeast together. Cut the butter into the flour until the butter is of the size of small peas. Add tepid milk and egg and mix until a ball forms.
Knead for about 10 minutes and place into a bowl to rise for 1 1/2-2 hours or until doubled in size. Meanwhile, add poppy seeds to a bowl and cover with boiling water - let sit for 5-10 minutes (more is OK - they will just soften more). Drain in a fine sieve and put into food-processor and pulse for 2-3 minutes. Add marzipan and vanilla extract or pod, and blend until it is a smooth paste.

Roll dough into a rectangle, 1/2 inch thick and spread poppy seed paste to within 1/2 inch of border. Roll up jelly-roll style and seal edges by pinching them together. Roll ends under roll and seal. Place on a cookie sheet (seam side down) lined with parchment paper. Cover with cling film and let rise for 1-1 1/2 hours. Pre-heat oven to 190 C (375 F). Glaze outside of dough with beaten egg and sprinkle with flaked almonds or pearl sugar and place in oven. Bake until golden brown (about 35-45 minutes) and remove from oven. Cool on wire rack immediately.

Makes 1 medium loaf and will keep 4-5 days in a paper bag. Not suitable for freezing.

So there you have it - Polish Poppy Seed Bread and I hope it was worth the wait. I will try to be better about posting but I am going away for 3 weeks to America. I'm going to finally see my niece who is now 3 1/2 years old for the first time! What excitement.

When a door closes...

You know I've always had faith that when a door closes a window opens. Essentially that things were 'meant' to happen and that you needed to have faith in fate or whatever you want to call it. However, there comes a point when you wonder how can people live with themselves and be so unkind? I do often wonder how well they sleep but perhaps it is only me that is not sleeping because the other party obviously is! I know all of this sounds cryptic and it will to but only a few people who ever might read this posting or who will know what I'm referring to, but for now I won't commit it to print. At least not while the liable laws are/could be in their favour and not in mine. When they are in mine you can look forward to a song....

Until then, this isn't goodbye but so long. I have faith that things work out and when we look back on this date in a few months time we'll be able to laugh and see that after all it was how it was meant to be!

Muffins - English or otherwise...

The other day I wanted to have a what I call 'eggy muffin'. Very similar to that horrid thing those crappy golden arcs sell by what I imagine is a comfortable margin but everything to my own standards. Well of course - what else would you expect?

I've always just bought the muffin parts but since getting on the baking bandwagon I've now decided it is time to take the plunge and make my own. So armed with a recipe (Rose Levy Beranbaums's from the Bread Bible) away I went.

Her recipe was quite easy and although you can let the sit for longer (24 hours if you like) I didn't. I made it with the minimum hours needed and they still turned out great. My only thing since making them is that I would probably form them by hand (using my largest cutter yielded too small of a muffin) and I would finish them off in the oven to keep them warm while continuing the cooking on the cast iron griddle. Only because mine seems to make them blacker than even I like.

However, all I can say is how easy they are. I will no longer buy them and instead will just freeze the leftovers. Now...on to brioche! Wish me luck!