baking challenge #1: the croissant, part 2

Well, they look a bit like croissants!!

Nah. They turned out pretty well considering.

Croissants are funny things. You launch into making them, thinking ‘oh my god, this is going to be SO hard’, but in fact it’s not what you think. It actually doesn’t take much energy to make them, moreso just time. The perfect time to make them would be when you’re home for the day, doing something like.. cleaning the house, and/or cooking a roast. Because after the initial process of mixing the ingredients together, it’s really just a repeated and very simple process of rolling, folding and refrigerating.

When I make them again - which will be soon, because I halved the ingredients in the recipe (to save on waste if I stuffed them up) and at any rate the ingredients cost barely anything - I will probably make a few changes to how I went about making them.

For one, I tended to use a bit too much flour on the bench when I was rolling them. I think this made the outside a bit dry and floury when they were cooked. Next time I think I’ll just use a tiny bit of flour, if any. The mixture wasn’t hugely sticky anyway - it was a bit of overkill on my part.

Secondly, they didn’t rise as much as I wanted them to. I think this is probably mostly because of the weather - it is pretty cold right now - and also I used dried yeast rather than fresh (which the recipe asked for). I think next time I’ll try activating my dry stuff first by putting it in some tepid water with some honey. I reckon this should do the trick.

Thirdly, I don’t think I’ll roll the pastry as thinly in the final step - the step before cutting it into triangles and folding into the croissant shape. I think if it had been a touch thicker they would have kept their shape better when I rolled them, and wouldn’t have been fatter and shorter, rather than long and skinny.

And lastly, I think I’ll slice my final rolled peice of pastry into many more triangles than I did. I cut it into 8. I reckon that I could have cut those peices in half again. If they rose properly, they would be the ideal size I think.

Anyway, with those points aside, I think they turned out pretty well for my first shot. The boy ’schwein reckons they’re the best he’s had - which is in some ways true - they do taste really good homemade, fresh from the oven and spread with butter and apricot jam - but they do need to be tweaked. Not the recipe, just my baking habits & knowledge. They were edible though, and not burnt, so that’s an achievement in itself I think, for now!

Here’s the recipe I used, and recommend. Once you read through it and get a grasp of the general method, you’ll see too that it’s actually quite straightforward.

As I think I said in my previous post, it’s taken from the book: “Patisserie” by Aaron Maree (1994).

CROISSANT

Ingredients

1 & 3/4 cups cold milk
1 egg
3 teaspoons sugar
30g fresh compressed yeast
6 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
500g unsalted butter
1 & 1/4 cups plain flour

Method

1. In a bowl, mix cold milk with egg, sugar and yeast and stir until well combined.
2. Add flour and salt to the liquid and mix until a dough is formed.
3. Knead the yeast dough for 5 minutes on a lightly floured surface and then allow to rest, covered, for 10 minutes.
4. Mix butter and extra flour together lightly and quickly until both are combined. Do not cream butter, simply mix lightly until a dough is formed. Refrigerate for 10 minutes.
5. Roll dough into a large square. Press the chilled butter mixture into the centre of the dough square. Pull each of the four corners up and over the butter mixture so that it is totally enclosed within the dough.
6. Refrigerate the dough for a further 30 minutes.
7. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out to triple its original length, then mark and fold into thirds.
8. Rest dough in refrigerator for 20 minutes, then once again roll out to triple its original length and fold into thirds.
9. Rest dough another 20 minutes in the refrigerator, then form a further threefold and place back in refrigerator.
10. Roll dough out to 5mm (1/4 inch) in thickness and form a long oblong shape.
11. Cut straight down the centre of the dough and then cut each half into individual triangles.
12. Roll the crossaints, starting at the large end and rolling towards the pointed end, curving the croissants so that they are crescent-shaped.
13. Place on a baking sheet.
14. Place the sheets of croissants in a warm place for 30-40 minutes or until double in size.
15. Bake at 200C (400F) for 35-40 minutes, or until golden brown.
16. Allow croissants to cool slightly before serving.

Good luck and enjoy!

baking challenge #1: the croissant

Welcome to the first installment of my personal weekly baking challenge!

Why a baking challenge, you ask? Well, simply put, I currently suck at baking. I don’t often have the patience, tend to improvise too much, look for too many shortcuts, and generally just burn everything I put in the oven (my recent blueberry muffin attempt being one source of inspiration to change my ways! :P)

At 22 I think it’s time I put in some real effort and learned to bake properly. It’s affordable, yummy (if done right), and fun (if done right), not to mention a good way of spending a Sunday arvo. Plus if you’re good at it, you can potentially bribe people with your awesome baked stuff.

So here goes.

Right this minute I’m in the middle of my first ever attempt at making croissants.

I got the recipe from a book off our shelf - ‘Patisserie’ by Aaron Maree.

I was just about to say ‘looks simple enough’, but I don’t want to jinx my attempt.

I’m determined to find success in making these - a good one seems to cost way too much from our local bakery considering the very basic ingredients involved. And making them in bulk means freezing leftovers - always handy for sleepy weekend brekkies & brunches.

I’ll update this post later tonight with the outcome!

Wish me luck!

cheesy three-bean bake

I felt like something cheesy today, but also something on the reasonably-healthy side. If you like simple dishes, this is the one for you. This served both of us well and was a filling early dinner. You can’t beat baked beans!

All you need is a few ingredients:

1 regular sized can of baked beans in tomato sauce
1 regular sized can of three-bean mix (usually contains chickpeas, butter beans, and some other kind of bean)
granulated parmesan cheese
grated cheddar cheese
1 sliced tomato
salt & pepper

To assemble, you tip the 3bean mix into a sieve and rinse under the tap until all the syrupy bean goo is gone. Then tip it into a smallish baking dish. Add your can of baked beans. Stir together until evenly mixed. Sprinkle with parmesan. Sprinkle with a generous amount of grated cheese. Top with tomato slices. Sprinkle tomato with a bit of salt and pepper. And then bake until the cheese is golden.

I actually baked this in my Tiffany Snack Master, which is like a mini oven that you usually make cheesies or small pizzas in, or to heat pies or toasted sandwiches, etc. I find it actually does a pretty good job of these kinds of quick-baked dishes too. The serving per person was about the equivalent of one whole can of baked beans, so the dish fit in the mini-oven very nicely. You get a good crispy cheesy top, too, and it did a great job of condensing the flavour of the tomatoes too.

All up a pretty tasty dish! I think I’ll do this again next time I feel like beans

blueberry muffins for mum and me

I received a Mother’s Day -themed newsletter from recipezaar today, which featured a fantastic looking picture for “Melt in Your Mouth Blueberry Muffins”. I followed the link trail to find the recipe, and was stoked to see that it was really really simple. I generally suck at baking, and my oven burns pretty much everything that goes in it, so my baking mantra is ‘the simpler the better!’

I haven’t ever made blueberry muffins before, but I’ve eaten them now and again at cafe’s and the like. They are always a bit sticky and gooey for me, and as such a bit on the heavy side. For this reason I have to admit I’ve never found them that appetizing. They’re often also either too sweet or too bland. These are all reasons why I’ve probably never made them.

This recipe is amazing though. It goes to show that the best things in life are often the most simple. I am so impressed. I made this batch tonight to test them out, with the plan to make some more on Saturday to give to our Mums on Sunday. I’m glad I decided on doing that now, because it turns out that in an attempt to brown the tops a little bit more, I left the grill on too long and they got a bit tooo brown. I was sitting right in front of the damn oven, too, but our oven doesn’t have a glass window on the door, so it’s hard to monitor what you’re baking without letting the heat out.

Anyway, although I was sure they were burnt, they actually aren’t. They’re just well coloured!

The consistency is absolutely beautiful, you take a bite and its all melty and perfect, and the blueberries are sooo good. It doesn’ stick to your teeth like most blueberry muffins do; but its not too dry or bready either. It’s hard to explain - it’s just perfect. I will definitely make these again - and perhaps alternate what berries I put in now and then, for some variety.

So do try the recipe out - you won’t be disappointed! Great served with a cuppa

on del.icio.us, and linuxy linkages

The awesome Amy introduced me to del.icio.us a little while ago and I have to say, it’s one of the most awesomest, most funnest inventions around. Sorry, I’m not feeling particularly articulate right now. But trust me, it really does rock. A lot.

If you don’t know what I’m on about, here’s a blurb that summarises what del.icio.us is and does:

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website — the primary use of del.icio.us is to store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too. On del.icio.us, you can use tags to organize and remember your bookmarks, which is a much more flexible system than folders.

You can also use del.icio.us to see the interesting links that your friends and other people bookmark, and share links with them in return. You can even browse and search del.icio.us to discover the cool and useful bookmarks that everyone else has saved — which is made easy with tags.

All you need is a browser and an internet connection. Sound good? Here’s how to get started.

(from ‘What is del.icio.us?’)

So yeah, it’s essentially a really neat way to bookmark things, that allows you to organise as you go so that you don’t end up with a giant bookmark folder in your browser that you store stuff away in but never really venture into.

The sharing capability seems a bit weird at first, but once you get the hang of it it’s actually pretty awesome. For instance, Amy has a fantastic linux section on her del.icio.us which contains a load of stuff that I’ve never even seen before. It’s a total resource in itself, and saves you a lot of time because you get access to the cream of the crop without having to do any of the hard work yourself! The more I think about it actually, the more it resembles a kind of giant, diverse, web-based bibliography. Which is a pretty smart idea when you think about how often you find something cool on the net, only to lose track of how you found it. In this sense it’s a good way of having some extra control over your web browsing - less things seem to disappear into the nether.

Another cool feature I like is that you can directly recommend certain links to your friends that you think they might enjoy or benefit from. The above cat video is one example.

Here are some more, which are all awesome links for linux-y types:

Linux Shootout: 7 Desktop Distros Compared (ad-free)

UbuntuOpenWeek - Ubuntu Wiki

SANS Institute - Free Computer Security Resources

love cats

Thanks Amy!! I loved it!

food/eating tune(s) of the week #6

Welcome to the 6th installment of food/eating tune of the week.

One of my first memories of food in music was watching Peter Combe’s music videos on the ABC. My parents then bought us an ABC for Kids VHS with a few of his songs on it, and we must have watched it quite a lot, because my sister and I revisited it recently for nostalgia’s sake and we still somehow know all the songs by heart.

When Peter Combe visited my primary school and sung us some songs I think I experienced my first bout of pop-idol worship. It still hasn’t passed, really - I still reckon he’s a legend! (Though I’m sure my eldest sister - whose nearly 30 - sung ‘Toffee Apple’ too, and the boy ’schwein seems to remember Combe teaching at his school, or at least also remembers the songs.. so I do sometimes wonder just how long the guy has been around for!!)

Here are a few of his classics…

22 years of good food

After the turbulence of the weekend, my birthday didn’t really turn out as I had planned, but overall it proved to be one of the most memorable, albeit very laid back. The boy ’schwein woke at 5.15am for work, and before leaving made me a breakfast of the best homemade granola with a small jug of milk and a bowl of King Island Dairy yoghurt. I was so impressed - his granola is good! If he wants to make me that every day, I won’t complain!! Then he brought me a warm plate, fresh from the oven, with two croissants from the local bakery which he filled with honey ham, Swiss cheese, and Dijon mustard. Although I was initially a bit grumpy because I had to wake up at 6, everything tasted fantastic and I felt very spoilt.

The house was in dire need of a clean, so seeing I was up early I decided to tidy up, which eventually got extended to a full-blown dust, vacuum & mop. Then I gave the cat a bath, gave the bathroom a scrub, and then a shower for myself. Because I started so early it was all done by 10am!

We had initially planned to go out for lunch, so he came home from work early. But after the huge breakfast I wasn’t really hungry enough. So instead we stayed home. We bought some organic potatoes and 2 leeks from the supermarket the other day, and it was a chilly enough for something warm, so I decided on a dinner of potato and leek soup. It turned out really really well, and tasted pretty luxurious once topped with a slice of bread and cheese, and toasted under the grill.

Today we continued the birthday celebrations with an extravagant afternoon tea with his Mum (who also had a birthday recently) & her partner. We made homemade scones with strawberry jam and whipped cream, and bought a coffee & walnut cake, and another cake that was kind of like a giant Swiss pastry filled with custard and walnuts. With a few plungers of good coffee, a few cruisy records on in the background, and some great conversation, it turned out to be a nice and relaxing arvo for all.

Ah, the power of food to make things seem brighter.

Potato & Leek Soup

1. 1 medium saucepan - fill 2/3 with potatoes, roughly cubed; cover with water; boil until softened.
2. Tip out 1/2 the water, and replace with approx 1 litre milk.
3. In a separate pan, saute finely sliced leeks in some butter until translucent. When ready add to potatoes.
4. Add 2 stock cubes.
5. Use a potato masher to break up the potatoes.
6. Cook and mash until soup is thickened - by this time the potatoes have broken up enough to no longer be lumpy.
7. Add salt and white pepper to taste.
8. Ladel into bowls. Top with a peice of crusty bread, sprinkled with a generous amount of grated cheese and a crackling of pepper.
9. Toast under grill.
10. Serve and enjoy!

it doesn’t rain, it pours

Our beloved Fritzybubby.

There was no ‘Sun’ in our day today. Yesterday we had 3 chooks and 1 cat. Today, we have 3 chooks buried in our vege patch, and 1 missing Fritz. We woke up this morning and something had got into our yard. We suspect it was a fox. The chooks were all headless; feathers scattered across the yard. Our chooks are were very friendly, and very very docile, so from what we can see there wasn’t much of a struggle. Going by the feather trail, they were probably woken sometime early this morning while roosting in their wire hutch. One was killed near the hutch, the other two at the other end of the backyard. It’s pretty common for chooks to die as a result of fox entry; they have wiped out our flocks before on two other occasions. We’re pretty sad though; they were really good chooks and like all chicken’s we’ve raised they were saved from a battery setup. So they had a good life for the 2 years they were with us, but it’s still really sad.

With the chooks buried, we went to go investigate whether Fritz was Ok. And sadly, we still have no idea. It’s currently 6pm and we haven’t seen Fritz all day. He has never stayed away for this long; he always comes in for a sleep in the afternoon, especially when it’s cold like today. We have a few theories.. the worst is that the fox got the cat too, and has taken the body away somewhere. The other also-bad theory is that the fox chased the cat away and Fritz is lost and/or injured somewhere far enough away that he’s not responding to our calls. My Mum’s more optimistic theory is that he’s gone off on an adventure somewhere in the neighbourhood and will probably come back.

I guess all we can do is wait and hope he’s Ok.

Update: Sunday, 11pm - 24hours since we last saw Fritz. Not looking hopeful; but fingers crossed he might show up in the morning. Not sure he’s anywhere near us though - one of his rival cats was eating the food we left out for him earlier. And with some coaxing, the cat even stuck around for a pat. Poor Fritzy If you’re still alive, I hope you get my message by human-to-cat telepathy that I hope you’re ok and please come back!!

The early days

“Are you my Mummy?”

On his favourite sunny windowsill

All grown up

Update #2: FRITZ IS ALIVE!!! and also now a permanently an indoors cat once again. He was picked up on our street by a ranger, with little details given to us about where or why. His tag is missing, which is weird, because the little metal ring that held it on is still on his collar, and crimped together well enough that it wouldn’t have allowed the thickness of the name-tag to squeeze through. Looks to me like its been removed by someone. And if so, I’m pretty sure who did it. Our neighbour hates cats. But no point theorizing now. The $50 that was going to pay for a nice tasty birthday lunch instead went towards getting the cat out from the pound. But what can I say - it’s the price you pay for love. And after going into the pound I’m glad we went to see if he was there - that place is truly sad and awful. Cement floors, no cushioning, cold, and all the pets in there are so lonely and sad. If the world was ideal, and I owned the pound, I’d employ someone just to go play with them all.

food/eating tune of the week #5

Ok, I admit. I’m finding it hard to keep up the momentum with this one. It’s surprisingly hard to find good songs about food. Or at least I’m having trouble with it anyway.

In the interrum between now and me finding more food themed songs, here’s a bit of mind-bending Hendrix - Voodoo Chile [A Slight Return], live at Woodstock.