Hot Cross Buns

So back in 2010 I posted about Hot Cross Buns and you probably thought it was a one-time occurance. Well, I've made them again (though I don't think I made them any times between then and now). And today I want to tell you a little more about their history. These buns are a traditional Good Friday food, and so naturally that's when I made them. It seems that the cross represents the crucifixion but Wikipedia (aren't my sources great? and I call myself a librarian) doesn't seem to say anything about how it came to be a tradition, so I guess we will just have to remain unenlightened for a while longer (maybe next year when I make them I'll be inclined to doing more proper research).

When I went to make these this time I looked for the recipe I used ages ago, but I really have no idea where it came from and the one I ended up using was significantly easier, though I didn't actually love it. (I also have no recollection to what my last attempt tasted like for a comparison.) I think that next time I'll try another recipe yet again because these ones were kind of dry and I didn't love that. One thing I did like though was that I used cherry juice-infused craisins instead of raisins and that was pretty tasty. Though I was just reading about a variation that uses chocolate chips instead and that would probably be even better. I was prompted to try these fancy craisins to see how the might work to solve the great tea-ring debate. I have another package of craisins and I want to try them in the tea-ring in concert with a recipe for glace cherries I found to see if that will solve the issue--I'm not sure that it will really be an adequate substitute.

Cherry Tea Ring

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is the cherry tea ring that my mom makes for breakfast on Christmas morning. She always makes it the night before and then it rises in the fridge overnight (in theory it least). By now you're probably wondering tea ring? What's that? Does it really have tea in it? To which I answer no. It has no tea in it (think coffee cake). But a tea ring is similar to cinnamon rolls only a different shape. Basically you make cinnamon rolls but instead of slicing them completely apart you only cut them partway and it makes this lovely ring. And we put chopped up candied cherry pieces inside and on top.

Before I cooked it.

The candied cherries always cause a bit of consternation in our household. If you have ever gone on the hunt for candied fruit in this country you know the trouble it is to find it. Granted at Christmas time it is a little bit easier, but it's still hard to find small packages of just cherries. Mixed fruit is much easier. And no matter what you find they're incredibly expensive. So a couple summers ago when I was in England I stumbled upon small pots of just candied cherries for 79p. You can't beat that price. Even if the exchange rate is 2:1 $1.60 is about a third of what you'd pay for candied cherries in the States. So I quickly snapped up two packages. I still had one left at Christmas this year but completely forgot to take them home and so I decided that it was time for me to use them up. Mine didn't rise as well as I'd like, but I blame that on my poorly heated house. But it tasted fantastic.

Check out that gooey deliciousness.

Cinnamon Banana Bread

Last time I made banana bread I forgot to add the baking soda (or maybe the baking powder, or maybe both, I can't remember) and the result as you can imagine was a loaf of bread that was extremely dense and about 3/4 of an inch tall (you wish I was exaggerating). Recently I found a recipe for Cinnamon Banana Bread on this blog and I decided that it sounded quite delicious. At length this week I found myself with two rather blackened bananas and really there are only a small handful of things to be done with blackened bananas--hence the time to try this recipe.

I made sure to add all of the leavening agents.

And you know. It turned out great. Light, and spongy, and moist, and banana-y.

Zupfa

I has been months since I have posted anything, and it has been a while since I have cooked anything particularly exciting too, but I have cooked a few good things in the last while. Last year sometime I made a Lemon Posset, I think I posted about it. This time I used cream that had been frozen and then thawed. That doesn't work. It changes consistency and just doesn't set up in custards. So the lemon posset never really set and it had a weird consistency. So I now know that cream doesn't freeze. But at the same time I made Scottish Shortbread cookies. Those did turn out pretty well. They didn't taste exactly like Walkers, but pretty close.

I also made Zupfa, which is a sort of Swiss bread. It is delicious. I have a friend who has a good recipe and I used hers and it was delicious. I've decided that it is much cheaper to make your own bread than to buy it at the store and so that is what I've been doing. I made this recipe for between $5 and 6 dollars. And it made approximately 9 loaves. So it was 60 or 70 cents a loaf. So much cheaper than store bought bread, and it has no preservatives! The recipe was huge--I think the hardest part was finding a bowl bigg enough to mix it in, and then enough pans to bake it in. I had regular loaves, and more french bread shaped loaves, and round loaves, the works. I also tried to make cinnamon rolls out of some of it, but that didn't work too well. It's definitely not good for sweet breads.

Sometime after my Zupfa adventure I tried my hand at a chocolate rice pudding. I had all sorts of leftover rice one and I thought that that would be a good way to use it up. Yeah, no. I've never really had good rice pudding, but this definitely wasn't it. It tasted a lot like warm, mushy, cocoa krispies. Definitely not exciting. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Maybe other kinds of rice pudding are good, but this one wasn't.

Let's see, after my not so delicious rice pudding I made a dessert that I was a little more comfortable with. I needed a pie for something so I whipped up a cherry pie using cherries I bottled myself last summer. It turned out pretty well. I'm always glad when my pies turn out.

And the last dessert that I've made was a mango shortbread bar. It was pretty good. It had a shortbread base, and then mango slices on top of that and then more shortbread crumbled on top. it was a bit like a cobbler. Everyone seemed to like it well.

Banoffee Pie and more

I find that once again I am behind on my posting. A few weeks ago I was flipping through a dessert cookbook that I picked up at a sale for 50% (because the dust jack has a tear in it) and I found a recipe for banoffee pie. Now, this recipe looked quite a bit more sophisticated than the banoffee that I'm used to, but for lack of any other recipe I decided to give it a shot. And, it even used my new tart pan--what could be better? When I made it, it certainly was more formal looking, and it didn't have quite the same flavour, but it was still delicious, and it tasted like banoffee. I will most definitely make this one again.

I also tried my hand at making calzones. They're not too hard. Pizza crust, pizza toppings, folded in half... They took forever to make. I guess all that dough rolling just took a long time. And it made about a billion calzones. I'll be eating them for a few more weeks. But, at least I don't have to cook as much now. I filled my calzones with ham, bell pepper, mozarella, and ricotta cheese. They were pretty tasty.

Then today, I was eating my grilled cheese sandwich for lunch and trying to decide what to make for dinner. I thought to myself--Mac and Cheese sounds good. I wonder if I have a recipe for that. or the ingredients. Turns out that I did find a recipe. It seemed simple enough, and I even had the ingredients; how rare is that? So, I made mac and cheese for dinner and also traditional Irish soda bread. I've made the soda bread before, and it turned out alright this time too. I haven't had mac and cheese in a long time, and this was way better than any box one I could have made.

One a penny, two a penny

Everyone remembers that song they learned in third or fourth grade called "Hot cross buns," right? Did you ever stop to think that maybe that song was based on a real kind of food? Well, if that thought never occurred to you, then maybe it's time for it to. Today (well and yesterday) I made Hot Cross Buns. I had some raisins left over from my adventures in December, and since I had some extra time because of the holiday today I thought that I would make buns. These buns are rather time intensive so I actually had to make the dough last night so it could rise in the fridge overnight, but it was so worth it. They really are delicious. It was nice to take a moment and remember the good times in England. They still eat these there. In the old days one a penny buns were larger than two a penny buns, but if you get the two a penny buns then I think you still ended up with more bun at the end.

Spongecakes and Turnovers

Well allow me to say that contrary to popular belief I have been cooking this last month, but what with school and the internet at home being totally unreliable I haven't been able to post. But an exciting month it has been. I started off the school year by making "Blueberry Spongecake" though since I made it with raspberries I suppose it would be better called "Raspberry Spongecake." The spongecake turned out really well, I found a recipe online and I really liked it, and the raspberries were really nice. If I could change one thing I'd vote on the raspberries not having seeds, but somehow I don't think I can change that.

Then about two weeks ago I had a Sunday afternoon where all I did was cook. I made Lasagna, French Bread, and Peach Turnovers. Of course I wasn't thinking and so only took pictures of the turnovers. I had never made french bread before but it's not any more difficult than making any other kind of bread. Spreading the egg white on top was a little bit of a challenge, but only because I was using the back of a spoon and not a pastry brush. Some things are simple fixes. The lasagna turned out, but I had made it before so I'm not too surprised that it worked out well. The turnovers were delicious. The recipe was for apricot turnovers, but finding cheap apricot jam turned out to be harder than you'd expect so I used peach. We served them to some boys who live nearby and they seemed to think they were delicious. This recipe uses frozen puff pastry, and I am a complete fan. Puff pastry is so incredibly easy to use, and it makes for such delicious desserts, I can't wait to make something else with it.

I've also made several batches of Zucchini Brownies this week. Zucchini brownies taste pretty much exactly like zucchini bread, only chocolatey and brownies. They're absolutely delicious. The first time I made them I followed the recipe and made chocolate frosting to go on top and everything. They were good. The second time I made them I ended up with 2/3 of a cup too much grated zucchini, and about half as much cocoa powder as I needed. So I made do the best I could, and since I didn't have frosting ingredients left I just dusted them with confectioner's sugar at the end. They still turned out amazing. Whoever thought to put zucchini in baked goods was brilliant. Though I think that whoever thought that we should spell zucchini with two C's wasn't thinking too well. Courgette is much easier to spell, and just sounds cooler too.

Custard Based Desserts are the Best

It seems that I can't manage to update my blog as often as I actually cook things. And in all reality I don't really cook that often. First off. I made flan. I found a recipe that looked pretty good and I am pleased to say that it turned out well. Next time I need to cook the sugar a little longer. It didn't turn quite the color flan caramel normally is. It was definitely a little anemic looking. But the custard tasted good. It had a nice eggy hint, but it wasn't nearly as overpowering as the creme brulee was. I've decided that heavy whipping cream is about my favourite ingredient to cook with.

On sunday I decided that I wanted breadsticks with my dinner. And I rediscovered a recipe that I had found, that looked really good, and decided that the "soft garlic breadsticks" would be my next adventure. They were a lot softer and more delicious than the last breadstick recipe that I made. I think one thing that made these ones so much better was that they had fresh grated parmesan cheese in them. They weren't stringy or anything but the cheese added a nice flavour and helped them to stay moist. The breadsticks were quite delicious, though I did manage to burn one batch of them.

My last adventure in cooking this week, was also a bread. Focaccia bread. Pretty much my favourite kind of bread. The recipe that I found didn't have any seasonings in it so I took the liberty of adding some (among other seasonings). I've decided that most things are better with a little minced garlic in it, and next time I think I'll even grate in some cheese. The bread was a little crispy on the bottom. I think though that it had a little more to do with the cookie sheet that I used as opposed to something that I did. I'll have to do some research and find out what sorts of pans other people use to make their Focaccia. I also think that next time I'll use a bit more olive oil. I was rather liberal with the olive oil and didn't follow the recipe but I think that a little more would be even better, and definitely more seasonings. The seasonings were good but not quite piquant enough for me. Overall though it turned out fairly well. I'm glad that all these yeast breads are working out. I remember a time when I would have shuddered and fled at the thought of cooking with yeast.

Croque-Monsieur and Lemon Posset

It has been quite a while since last I wrote. Never fear, I have been cooking even in my long absence. My first new adventure was to make Croque-Monsieur. Essentially it is a hot, ham and cheese sandwich, though since it utilizes Gruyere cheese it tastes immeasurably better. This recipe uses the broiler part of your oven, to toast the bread. I found though that if I left the sandwich under the broiler only long enough to toast the bread then the sandwich wasn't warm and melty. So after initially toasting the bread I turned off the broiler and just let the sandwich sit in the oven to warm, before toasting the last slice. This made the sandwich nice and warm. Which is the way that all hot, ham and cheese sandwiches should be.

The next thing I experimented with was a Japanese recipe--chicken teriyaki. The sugar mixed with the soy sauce made for a delicious glaze on chicken, and served over Jasmine rice it was quite delicious. This recipe has you simply marinate your whole chicken in the teriyaki sauce, and I think that next time I will go ahead and cut my chicken up into smaller pieces before marinating so that I get more surface area, and also so that it doesn't take as long to cook.

I completed off my day with a new dessert recipe. Lemon Posset. A posset is a 16th and 17th century drink. A sort of drink that consists mainly of curdled milk and ale. Fortunately my posset really had neither, and due to the wonderful invention of the refrigerator my posset also had a consistency more like a custard than like a drink. This lemon posset is more than merely a pudding, it has a bit of grated lemon rind in it and so that makes it have a sort of satisfying crunch. The posset definitely fulfills the requirements of being cool and creamy, but it is also quite rich so you can't have more than a few spoonfuls at a time. Which I suppose isn't really a problem.

A few days after I made all of these wonderful dishes I made pretzels for one of my meetings at work. Pretzels are both surprisingly easy to make and extremely time consuming. I most certainly under estimated the time that I would need to prepare them, but they really were quite delicious, and use just regular ingredients that I had around. The pretzels went stale surprisingly fast but I suppose that if I had eaten them faster that wouldn't have been such a problem.

It has been a busy couple of weeks cooking-wise, but I am excited that all the things I made turned out so well, hopefully the luck will hold.

Fruit and Gruyere

Tonight I tried my hand a a couple of new recipes. First I made Cantaloupe Melon with Grilled Strawberries. They turned out quite well. The warmth of the broiled strawberries was a nice contrast with the coolness of the cantaloupe.
You just broil some sliced strawberries with a little powdered sugar sprinkled on top for a few minutes and then serve them with sliced cantaloupe. It's quite delicious.

Next I made Golden Gruyere and Basil Tortillas. The Gruyere cheese has such a deliciously strong flavour and when it melts it mellows it out just perfectly. The fresh basil adds the perfect touch. Both of these recipes are ones that I look forward to making again.

Unfortunately the last recipe that I tried tonight didn't turn out nearly so well. I made a loaf of Chocolate Banana Bread. I managed to forget to put in the baking soda and so it didn't rise at all. my "bread" turned out about half an inch thick, and then it didn't even manage to cook all the way and so it doesn't look like bread in any way shape of form. It does taste pretty good but it looks pretty awful. Next time I imagine that I'll remember to include baking soda, and maybe even cook it all the way...