The essence of vanilla

Today is World Baking Day.  I came across World Baking Day on Twitter and thought that I would participate

Unfortunately I am out of baking stuffs so I thought I would do something baking related.

Last December I saw a picture on Tania‘s blog of her home made vanilla essence.  A few weeks ago I came across a post on Pinterest about making home made vanilla essence/extract and voila an idea was born.

I decided to make some home made vanilla essence that I can give as gifts.

Ingredients

• Vanilla pods
• Vodka
• Glass containers

I found the sweetest little glass bottles at the Consol store in Woodmead, 20 bottles cost me R25!

Method

• Wash your bottles in warm soapy water and rinse well.
• Slice your vanilla pods length wise and then slice each half length wise again.  The vanilla ‘caviar’ or seeds may come out of the pods when you cut them, just scrape them up with your knife and pop them in the bottles.

• If your bottles are short then cut the pieces in half.
• Place 2-3 pieces (depending on bottle size) of vanilla pod in each bottle.

• Pour vodka into each bottle.  It would be ideal to use a funnel* but if, like me you dont have one then just pour really carefully and slowly.
• Place the lid on the bottle and store the bottles at the back of a cupboard for 3-4 months before using them.

See how the colour has changed, thats after an hour or so, just imagine how rich it will be after a few months!

So, Im going to leave these in my pantry for a few months and then I will tie a pretty ribbon around the neck of the bottle and maybe a home made card and give them as gifts

*Ruby gave me the great idea of turning a piece of tin foil into a make shift funnel, great thing about this idea is that you can make the funnel as small or as large as you need

Note: All the photos in this post were taken by my amazing husband!

Vanilla Sponge Cake

I have never ever made a proper ‘from scratch’ sponge cake but I decided that for mothers day that is what I would be making.

I scoured the web and found this recipe from the Clover site.

I adapted it ever so slightly.

Ingredients

• 4 eggs
• 300ml (250g) castor sugar
• 500ml (280g) cake flour
• 15ml baking powder
• 250ml milk
• 100g margerine
• 5ml vanilla essence

Note: I measured everything out precisely using my kitchen scale, something I have never really done before.  It must have worked because the cake was delicious!

Method

• Preheat your oven to 180°C.
• Beat eggs and caster sugar together (I used a hand held electric beater for about 3 minutes).
• Sift flour and baking powder and fold into egg mixture.
• On the stove, melt the marge in the milk on a medium heat, do not let the mixture boil.
• Add the vanilla essence to the flour and egg mixture and mix well.
• Pour the mixture into a pre-greased springform tin and bake for 30 minutes.

This was the only photo I had, it was gone before I could get a photo of the whole cake!

 

I covered my cake in a Pick n Pay Finest chocolate ganache.  Let me stop here and  just say O.M.G!  You have to get your hands on this stuff, its divine!

Who needs eggs?

Aaron loves baking, he loves biscuits, we had no eggs…

I turned to Google and found a few recipes that looked easy enough so I kind of threw them all together and made up my own recipe

They turned out well, so well that they were all gone before I got a picture of them.  Guess I will have to make them again, just so I can show you what they look like!

Ingredients

• 1 ½ cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 cup melted marge or butter
• 1 cup icing sugar
• cinnamon or other flavouring (smarties, cocoa, ginger, choc chips etc…)

Method

• Preheat your oven to 180°C.
• Mix all ingredients in a medium bowl until they form a dough.
• Form small balls of dough and place on a greased baking sheet.
• These biscuits spread quite a bit so leave a lot of space between biscuits.
• Bake for between 7 and 10 min (depends on your oven) or until golden brown.
• Once cooled place on paper towels to absorb excess butter.

Enjoy with tea or a glass of cold milk!

Hamantaschen

Its Purim!

My favourite part of Purim is eating hamantaschen with mon (poppy seeds) but since not everyone likes poppy seeds I decided to try my hand at making a Nutella hamantaschen.

Ingredients

• 3 cups flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• ½ cup sugar
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup butter or margerine
• Your choice of filling (you can use a poppy seed mixture, chocolate spread, jam or nuts)

 

Method

• Sift together flour, baking powder, sugar and salt.
• Mix in eggs and butter (I melted the butter slightly in the microwave).
• Mix until a dough forms.
• Roll out the dough and cut out large rounds.
• Transfer the rounds to a greased baking tray and place a teaspoon of your filling in the middle.
• Fold  your circle on three ‘sides’ and pinch together to create a triangular parcel, leaving the  middle open so you can see the filling.
• Bake for 15 – 20min or until golden brown in a 180°C oven.

 

Enjoy!

Plum Pie

A day or two ago I bought a box of plums from the fruit seller at the intersection down the road from me.

I never buy fruit from the side of the road but we chat every day and I always promise to buy.

Well the plums are delicious but there were too many of them for us to eat before they get over ripe.

At first I thought about making a plum jam but then I thought it was too complicated.  So I found a recipe for a plum pie instead…

First things first was the pastry, I usually keep some store bought stuff in my freezer but we were out, so I found this easy homemade recipe.

Next was putting the pie together…

Ingredients

Filling

• 4 cups sliced plums (I left the skins on)
• ½ cup sugar
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice (I didnt have any and it was too dark to go pick lemons off the tree so I left this out)
• Unbaked pie pastry to line a standard size pie dish

Topping

• ½ cup sugar
• ½ cup flour
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg (I didnt have so put a bit extra cinnamon)
• 3 tablespoons cold marge

Method

• Roll out pie pastry to desired size and line the pie dish.
• In a bowl combine the plums, sugar, flour, salt, cinnamon and lemon juice (first 6 ingredients).
• Mix thoroughly.
• Pour filling into the pastry lined dish.
• In a new bowl combine sugar, flour, cinnamon and nutmeg.
• Cut in the marge until course.
• Sprinkle the topping over the plums.
• Bake in a preheated oven at 180° for 60 minutes or until crust is golden brown.

 

Enjoy with ice cream or pouring cream!

Pie Pastry

I usually keep store bought pastry in my freezer but I didn’t have any so went searching for a simple pie pastry recipe, this is what I found…

Ingredients

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon white sugar (I only have brown so thats what I used)
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 cup lard (I only have milk free marge in my house…)
• 1/3 cup cold water
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon white vinegar

Method

• Mix together flour, salt, sugar and baking powder.
• Cut in the lard until the mixture looks like course meal.
• In a separate bowl whisk together water, egg yolk, vanilla and vinegar.
• Stir into flour and knead very briefly until just smooth.
• Allow to rest for 15 minutes before rolling out.
• Pastry is easier to work with when cold so I popped mine in the fridge for the 15 minutes.
• When rested, flour your work surface lightly and roll out to desired shape and size.

 

 

Challah

Any traditional Jewish meal begins with the breaking of bread. Challah or Kitkah is a special kind of bread used for Shabbat and holidays. It is a very sweet, golden, eggy bread. The loaf is usually braided, but on certain holidays it may be made in other shapes. For example, on Rosh Hashanah, it is traditional to serve round challah.

 

Yesterday I made an enormous batch of Challah. I had a great need to punch something and punching dough is also rewarding in the end.

 

I used this recipe from the Yeshiva College recipe book, well actually I doubled it but I won’t be repeating that again any time soon.

13-14 cups flour

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 tbs salt

2 eggs (beaten)

1 cup oil

4 packets dry yeast

4 cups of lukewarm water.

 

Mix half the flour and the rest of the dry ingredients together. Make a well in the centre and add in the liquid. Use a wooden spoon to mix and gradually add in the rest of the flour until you have soft, malleable dough. Knead it well and get that yeast working. Place the dough in an oiled bowl and leave to rise for about 3 hours. Cover the bowl with a towel and leave it in a warm area away from the breeze and curious cats.

 

The dough ready for punching

 

After a while, the dough has grown magically in size and is ready to start punching and braiding. Use a wooden board. Have some flour on hand so that the dough doesn’t get stuck to the board. Punch all the air out and have fun! Now you’re ready to shape and braid the challah.  Place on a baking tray and let the dough rise again.  After about 20 minutes it can go into the oven at 180⁰C for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Getting ready to braid the challahReady to go into the oven

                The result, freshly baked Challah

The final product

 

Hicken Pie

No, the title is not a mistake, just a nod to my awful spelling on Twitter when I asked Tanya to give us the recipe for this amazing chicken pie!

Below is Tanyas recipe.

Ingredients I Used:

• 4 x chicken breasts – chopped/diced as you like them
• 1 x onion, chopped
• about 200g butternut – cubed into small blocks (about 1cm) – I have also added sliced baby marrows before
• 1 punnet mushrooms, roughly chopped
• 1 chicken stock cube in about 350ml water
• Spray & Cook
• spices, herbs to taste
• 1 roll puff pastry
• a little milk for brushing
• some flour

Method:

• Heat oven to 180
• Microwave the butternut cubes for about 4-5 minutes until they are soft
• In a pan, fry up the chicken breats, with whatever spices you usually use for chicken (i used regular “Chicken Spice”)
• In another big pot, brown the onions, then chuck in the mushrooms.
• Once the chicken is cooked, add it to the onion & mushroom mix
• Add the chicken stock and the microwaved butternut cubes.
• Add in other spices (i used fresh thyme, and some dried mixed herbs. and salt and pepper)
• reduce heat and simmer to thicken. I was a bit impatient and added about 2 tablespoons of flour to thicken the mixture.
• while that is simmering and thickening, you can prepare the pastry.
• I used a whole roll, and dived it into just over half for the base, and the other portion for the top
• Roll out on a floured surface until pastry is about half the thickness it was.
• Spray your pie dish with Spray & Cook.
• Line the pie dish with the pastry, and slice off any extra bits – a pizza cutter works fabulously!
• Once your filling mixture is thick enough, pour it into your prepared (uncooked) pastry base.
• Roll out the other bit of pastry for the top of your pie, and pop it ontop, squeezing it tight around the edge of your dish.
• I cut out stars and popped them on top.
• Brush with milk.
• pierce the top a few times with a sharp knife to let hot air escape when  baking
• Pop into the oven for about 30 minutes until golden brown on top.
• Eat and enjoy!

*special note* I like to keep aside a little extra mixture and freeze it… just enough to make two little pot pies in ramekins! Yum!

Yorkshire Pudding

First off I had to find out why its called a pudding.  I mean really, pudding is sweet and suger filled and served at the end of a meal right?

Take a quick look here to see some history about it and why its called a pudding then come back and see the recipe

Yorkshire pudding is meant to accompany the roast of a main meal. It should be light and airy on the inside and crispy on the outside and should have a dip in the top (not all of mine did), they are great for soaking up extra gravy!

You will need

• Oil or drippings from your roast
• A Yorkshire Pudding pan (I just used a muffin pan)

Ingredients

• 1 egg
• 75ml milk
• 55ml water (note: you can use 130ml water if you dont want to use milk)
• 75g flour (about 1/3 of a cup)

Method

You will need no less than 30 minutes to make these, so make sure you give yourself plenty of time.

• Set the oven to 180°C
• Place a small amount of oil (or drippings) into the bottom of each muffin cup.
• Place tray into the oven and allow the oil to heat up, it should start to smoke a little, about 10 minutes.
• While you are waiting mix together the egg, flour and liquid.  You should have a very thin batter.
• Once the oil is heated remove the tray from the oven and fill each cup about 2/3.
• Return the pan to the oven and allow to bake for about 20 – 25 minutes or until they have risen and are brown and crispy.
• Try not to open the oven door too much or they wont rise.

I used the above amounts for the ingredients and it made 8 smallish puddings.  You can increase the amounts as you need to.  Just remember that you should have (pretty much) equal amounts of eggs, flour and liquid.  I.e. 2 eggs, 260ml water/milk (2/3 cup) and 150g flour or 3 eggs, 390ml milk/water (1 cup) and 235g flour.

Baked Camembert in White Wine

I am a soft cheese lover of note!  I cannot get enough of Brie and Camembert cheese and will eat it until I make myself sick.

So when Tanya mailed me her recipe and pictures I let out the hugest ‘squeeeeeee’ ever.  Im off to the shops after work to get the ingredients

~~~

A simple recipe that is totally delicious if you love cheese!

Ingredients:

• 1 wheel of Camembert cheese
• Small amount of white wine of your choice
• Fresh Garlic (either a clove of garlic, or I used crushed garlic from woolies)
• Fresh Herbs – thyme or rosemary etc
• Ramekins of approximately the same size of your wheel of Camembert

Method:

• Preheat oven to 180
• Pop the wheel of cheese into the ramekin… I had to squash mine in quite a bit
• Poke cheese with a fork
• Push a clove of garlic into the cheese… since i used crushed garlic, i basically just wiped a teaspoon in the tub of garlic and then smeared it onto the cheese… just very little as I didn’t want to be stinky the next day!
• Stick the fresh herbs into the cheese
• Pour the white wine over the cheese. You need very very little. Probably only 2-5 tablespoons – depending on the size of your ramekin
• Pop the lids onto your ramekins (or cover with foil)
• Put on a baking tray (in case of leakage!) and bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes.
• In the mean time, slice up some crusty French loaf
• When the cheese is done, remove from oven, take out the stalks of herbs, and the clove of garlic if you used one…
• Use your fresh bread to stir it up and enjoy your own little cheese pot!
• Be careful of the hot ramekins though!

*note* one wheel of Camembert may be slightly too much for one person as it is quite rich , so I’d suggest sharing one portion between two people… or if you have hungry people, one portion per person could do!