DB: Gingerbread mini Houses

I simply knew that this month challenge would be baking a gingerbread house! I used Y's recipe 'cause I didn't plan on eating the houses anyway and I had all the ingredients. My idea was making mini gingerbread houses as tree ornaments for our Christmas tree. Oh boy what have I let myself into. It was a serious pain measuring out the dough (I was literally measuring it with a yardstick and a spirit level!). Decorating on the other hand was sooo fun! I really enjoyed it and the finished houses were loved by everyone, they were a prefect fit to the best Christmas ever.

I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves, Oh and my mom took some paparazzi pictures of me so my well covered identity is revealed! Ok not really, but at least you know now how the back of my head looks :P - Hope everybody had a super Christmas!

The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

Chocolate Tree Deco!

I'll make this a short one. I decided to make some cookie tree decorations, but not the ordinary gingerbread cookies- chocolate cookies. I can't help it, I just like chocolate much better than spiced gingerbread ones.

The recipe is super easy and the dough was surprisingly easy to use, it's soft and chocolaty and makes some awesome cut out cookies!

To decorate I used sprinkles in different sizes and mini Smarties.

*This is a butter cookie recipe, for chocolate cookie, substitute 20g of the flour with cocoa powder.

Chocolate cut out cookies:

(makes 60 small cookies, I got 40 in various sizes)

250 gr flour

75 gr sugar

pinch of salt

2 tbsp vanilla sugar

1 egg

125 gr butter

Beat the butter and sugars, add egg followed by flour and salt.

Wrap and refrigerate dough 1 hour (it was perfect for rolling out).

Roll out on floured surface and cut out cookies in desired shapes.

If you're planning on making these to hang, make little holes with a straw before baking.

Bake for 10-12 minutes in 180C preheated oven.

Royal icing:

2 tbsp meringue powder

4 cups powdered sugar, sifted

6 tbsp water

food coloring

Place all ingredients in bowl of electric mixer with paddle attachment and mix on low speed for 7 minutes until thick and ready to use. Add color.

Thin with water if needed, or thicken with sugar.

For recipe source and detailed instructions on working with royal icing go here.

I'm away for Christmas but will be back on the 27th posting the daring baker's challenge.

I wish everybody a wonderful Christmas!

Fluffy Pancakes

I will admit that I'm not a pancake recipe hunter, searching for the perfect batter. No. I'm more the throw in some flour, eggs and milk and pour'em in the pan kind of type - And somehow it works out. What I'm trying to get to here is that I never really made pancakes by recipe but more by... feeling. So I stumbled upon this recipe, it caught my eye, I tried it out and was hooked. I made this recipe three times last week. Oh yeah.

I got the recipe from evan's kitchen ramblings, gorgeous blog btw.

The secret to these amazingly fluffy pancakes is that the egg white is whipped separately and then folded in the batter.

Super fluffy!

The sauce above is frozen blackberries I cooked with 1 tbsp vanilla sugar until they burst and released their juices, so this was a very tangy topping. Oh and some maple on top!

Fluffy Pancakes:

(makes 7, can be easily doubled)

1 cup flour

1 tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

1 cup milk

1 egg, separated

2 tsp sugar

1 tbsp oil (or melted butter)

Combine flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl and mix well.

In another bowl , whisk together egg yolk, sugar and milk followed by oil. Mix well and add it to the flour mixture. Whisk egg white until soft peaks, then fold into the batter.

Best is to refrigerate over night, but I found that even 30 minutes do the job. This step is basically meant to thicken the batter and prevent it from spreading to much when cooking.

Heat non stick pan on medium heat, then scoop batter onto the pan (I got about two at a time), cook until bubbles appear evenly on the surface, flip psncakes over and cook until golden.

No extra oil or butter needed for frying!

Original from: Evan's kitchen ramblings

Sugar Yeast Buns

Yuuum I got another yeast recipe under my belt (or in my belly).

This is pretty simple in components but very satisfying in flavor. It's a simple yest dough that is shaped into little buns that are dipped in melted butter and rolled in a sugar mixture. They were supposed to come out round but because I didn't pack them tightly in a pan they oozed a little out of shape, but I didn't mind that. You could place them in one layer or on top of each other in a smaller pan.

Before and after rising

Here you can see the major oozing that occurred during the second rise.

Sugar Yeast Buns:

Dough:

2 cups flour

1 tbsp sugar

2 tsp (7 gr) dry yeast

¾ cup milk

½ tsp salt

Topping:

50 gr melted butter

¼ cup sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

¼ chopped topping (nuts, raisins)

Dough-

Sift flour into mixing bowl. Add sugar and yeast, mix and make a hollow in the middle of the flour mixture. Into it pour the milk and (with dough hook attachment) knead slowly at first then upper the speed to medium, add salt and knead for about 4 minutes.

Take dough out of bowl, shape into smooth ball and place in buttered bowl to rise about an hour (until double in size).

Topping:

Pour melted butter in a deep bowl. In a deep plate place sugar, cinnamon and topping.

Knead dough gently to bring it back to its original size, pinch of same sized pieces (recipe said 14, I did 9) and roll each into a smooth ball, dip in melted butter and roll in sugar mixture, place in baking pan, either next to each other or on top of each other, whatever you prefer or kind of pan you have. Pour over the buns the remaining butter and sugar. Let rise for another hour.

Bake buns in 200C preheated oven for 40 minutes until golden brown.

Tomato Pesto, Herb Bread

This bread has given me some trouble but at the end I really enjoyed it. The reason for the trouble could have appeared because I halved the recipe, though usually not a problem this time it was, another option is that the recipe wasn't right in the first place.

Anyway if you experience the same problem (very dry crumbly dough), just add water slowly while kneading until the dough feels/looks 'right' (unfortunately I did not keep an eye on how much exactly I added).

The kinds of herbs you add is completely up to you, I also used a sun dried tomato pesto which can be substituted with basil pesto or chopped dried tomatoes. The herbs I used were oregano and what I though was thyme but apparently was my moms herbal tea (oops!).

Before and after first rise

Here's the baked loaf, for some reason the second rise didn't really happen...

At least the loaf got some nice air in it!

Tomato Pesto Bread:

(This is the original recipe which makes two loaves, I halved it)

4 cups flour

1 tsp sugar

11 gr dry yeast

½ tsp oregano

½ tsp thyme

3 tbsp tomato pesto

1 tbsp olive oil

1 ¼ (300 ml) cups warm water (more if needed)

1 tsp salt

additional olive oil

Sift 3 ½ cups of the flour into the mixing bowl. Add sugar, yeast, herbs and mix, make a hollow in the middle and add into it the oil, pesto and warm water start kneading with dough hook on low speed add the salt and rest of the flour, knead for 4 minutes on medium speed. (Add more water if needed)

Knead dough with your hands, form a ball, coat it in olive oil and let it rise until doubled (about an hour). Deflate the dough and divide it into two, shape each piece into a long loaf, place them on a baking pan next to each other and let rise again until double in size (again, about an hour)

Preheat oven to 190C.

Bake the loaves for 30-35 minutes, until slightly golden at the top.

Chocolate Whatever Cookies

I promised you chocolate cookies, so here they are!

I found this great recipe on this great blog. She was actually a little disappointed in them, I on the other hand loved them! They did exactly what I wanted and are my new favorite quick chocolate cookie recipe that I can throw in any mix in I feel like!

I had a bag of Smarties lying around (Smarties are the European version of M&M's manufactured by Nestle) and I have never baked with them, so I made some Smarties chocolate cookies! I absolutely love the way this dough acted and feel it's very versatile.

You'll have to experiment with the first batch on how long you need to bake it and decide if you want chewy or crunchy (you know, the ones that 'Snap!'), for me it was 10 minutes for a firm but chewy cookie and after 10 minutes they got seriously crunchy.

I actually made this dough half crunchy half chewy. For the chewy version I mixed in some Smarties and for the crispy ones some hazelnut krokant (originally from French: Croquant, meaning 'crunchy'- No way!) which is crushed candied nuts, kinda like crushed nut brittle.

Both of the versions were delicious!

Drop tablespoons for BIG cookies and teaspoons for small ones

Chocolate Cookies:

225 gr butter, softened

1 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar, packed

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup of whatever (nuts, c. chips)

Line baking sheets with parchment paper; set aside. Preheat oven to 350F.

In a medium bowl, sift flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt; set aside. In large bowl, beat butter and sugars with electric mixer on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Beat in vanilla.

Add flour mixture to butter mixture in two batches, mixing thoroughly after each. Stir in chocolate chips.

Use measuring spoon or mini ice cream scoop to drop one heaping tablespoonful on baking sheets, five cm apart. Bake in 18oC oven 10 to 15 minutes (by ten minutes you'll have chewy cookies, after that they're gonna be crunchy), until cookies lose their gloss and firm up, rotating pans halfway through cooking time. Cool on trays.

Original from: Milk + Honey Cafe

Reunited with my KitchenAid

Sorry no recipe for today! Have been completely busy because......My stuff has finally arrived from Israel!! WWWWOOOHOOO! It has been a long wait with some trouble along the way, but that is all forgotten and I'm just happy everything is here. Of course the thing I have been most awaiting is my KitchenAid and my cookbooks!

So let me clean up the mess and I'll be back posting about chocolate cookies!

Sticky Delicious

Beware everybody 'cause once you try that you never go back!

This is some serious sticky icky gooey chewy treat. I didn't expect it to be that evil while I was going through the recipe but it turned out the be one toffee concentrated dish.

Let me tell you what this is all about, the base is a toffee batter (which I improved by adding sea salt) topped with a sweet nutty meringue- so that makes a soft and sticky base with a light and crunchy top- I would say: enter angel music, but this deserves something more like smoke on the water. YYYeaaah!

Although they go in the oven for a total of three times, It didn't feel like a lot of work at all. For sure not more than making three batches of cookies.

This is the main component, melted butter and sugar....

And this is what brought the squares to another level

Batter in pan (as you can see I used a pan that was closest in size to the pan required in the recipe, and not the exact measurements)

I didn't feel like chopping nuts so I just crushed them in a kitchen cloth with a rolling pin. For these squares you could use really any kind of nuts you like or have, I bet salted macadamia nuts would be great, as well as pecans.

Whipped thick egg whites, with hazelnuts folded in.

Before and after baking

And this is how the squares look after they were baked for the third time, cooled down and were cut. Very oozy, just stick the pan in the fridge and let them firm up.

Sticky Toffee Meringue Squares:

base:

100 gr butter

1 cup brown sugar

½ cup sugar

1 egg

2 egg yolks

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup + 1 tbsp lour

pinch of salt

sea salt to sprinkle

topping:

2 egg whites

pinch of salt

½ cup sugar

2 tbsp maple syrup (I used honey)

100 gr nuts, chopped

Preheat oven to 170c°.

Toffee base-

Melt butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Add both sugars and stir well, cook until mixture starts to bubble, take off heat and set a side to cool down. (If your mixing bowl is made out of a heat resistant material you may pour the mixture straight in the bowl)

Lightly beat the egg and egg yolks with the vanilla extract. Add to the cooked sugar mixture in a bowl together with the flour and salt. Stir into a smooth thick batter and pour into a square 23X35 cm pan (greased and lined with parchment paper, this is sticky stuff so be sure not to skip this), or use any pan you have that is close to those measurements. Sprinkle over as much sea salt as you like, this is optional but I tell you it's worth it (didn't measure but I would say about 1 tsp).

Bake in the lower third of the oven for 20 minutes until the mixture is still soft in the center but not liquid.

About 5 minutes before the baking time is over, start making the:

Meringue topping-

Whip egg whites with a pinch of salt to soft peeks, slowly start adding the sugar and whip to a thick shiny meringue mixture, mix in maple syrup (or honey).

Fold in ¾ of the chopped nuts, spread the meringue over the hot baked batter, scatter over the rest of the nuts and bake for another 30 minutes until meringue is lightly brown.

Cool for 30 minutes after baking (in room temp).

Preheat oven to 130°c.

Cut into squares, let them in the pan and bake for 30-40 minutes to dry out.

After baking cool completely and keep in an airtight container, I actually enjoyed them more after a night in the fridge.