Plaited Porter Bread – a loaf of plain is your only man !

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I felt sorry for the poor chefs each wrestling to turn four obstinate strands of dough into a neatly-plaited loaf, under the watchful eyes of (the acerbic) Monica Galetti and (the wincing) Michel Roux Jnr., in a recent episode of Masterchef - the Professionals.

Herding mice at the crossroads is the expression that came to mind as I watched those seemingly-inanimate strands doggedly resist all attempts to arrange them into neat, braided order.

Although it might seem like it, you don’t need four hands, a degree in juggling, and a black belt in macramé to end up with a rather impressive bread. You just need a little know-how, and to be able to count to 4. (Although, a little practice doesn’t go astray either.)

For a bread with a slightly bitter edge that's perfect with cheese, I used the best part of "a pint of plain", but you could use water instead.

For 1 plaited loaf, you will need...

Bread dough

500g strong white flour

1 x 7g sachet of fast action bread yeast

2 teaspoons salt

2 tablespoons olive oil

½ teaspoon caster sugar

330mls porter (Guinness, Murphy’s, or Beamish)

Egg wash

1 small egg, beaten, mixed with a pinch of salt

(optional) a few oats, or seeds for sprinkling over the top of the loaf (poppy, sunflower, pumpkin or sesame all work for me)

Method

Place the first 5 ingredients in a mixing bowl or stand mixer and mix to combine. Warm the porter to between 27°C–35°C. (If you don’t have a thermometer, this is when a finger dipped in the beer will feel neither hot nor cold. Too hot, it will kill the yeast. Too cold, it will just take longer to activate.)

Add the warm porter to the dry ingredients and mix until combined. If you are using a stand mixer with a dough hook, mix for about 8 minutes. If kneading by hand, knead until the dough is smooth and elastic (about 10 minutes).

Place the dough back in the bowl. Cover with some oiled cling film and leave in a warm place to rise for about an hour or until doubled in size.

Next, turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and knead for a minute or so. The dough will collapse alarmingly but don’t worry, the yeast is still working.

Divide the dough into four even pieces and roll each into a sausage shape approximately 30cm long and tapered slightly at each end.

Join the four dough ‘sausages’ at one end, with the other ends fanning out. Number the positions of the fanned ends: 1, 2, 3, 4. The number of the position doesn’t change. Every time you move a strand it takes the number of its new position.

Ok, here goes...

Cross strand 4 over strand 2. Cross 1 over 3. Cross 2 over 3.

From Top Right to Bottom Right (strands shown in their new position) :
 Fan out the dough strands; cross 4 over 2; cross 1 over 3, cross 2 over 3

Repeat the above sequence until you have a tidy plait. Tuck both ends under to neaten the loaf. Place on a lightly floured baking sheet. Cover and leave to rise once more in a warm place for about 30 minutes or until doubled in size. (To check if the dough has proved sufficiently, poke it with a finger. The indent should remain. If it bounces back quickly, let it rise for a little longer before checking again.)

When you are ready to bake, pre-heat the oven to 200°C.  While the oven is heating, brush the dough with the beaten egg. Lightly sprinkle with oats or seeds if using. Transfer to the pre-heated over and bake for 10 minutes, then turn the oven down to 180°C and continue baking for a further 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and tap the base of the bread. It should sound hollow. If not, return it to the oven for a further 5 minutes. Cool on a rack.

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Sweet Vanilla Scones – Worth getting out of bed for!

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A big jug of coffee had just been set in the hearth, the seed-cakes were gone, and the dwarves were starting on a round of buttered scones, when there came- a loud knock. 

The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien

In my house the loud knock came before the scones, and it wasn't a rat-tat on a Hobbit door, but my bedtime reading (Neil Jordan’s ‘Mistaken’) falling off the bed and crash-landing on the floor, which startled me out of dreamland. There was no going back to sleep and 2 doses of BBC drama and the news headlines later, I gave up and decided to have an early, early, early breakfast that was worth getting up for on a dark frosty morning.

I had Sweet Vanilla Scones mixed and in the oven in the time it took to brew a proper pot of Rosie Lee under a tea cosy. I poured out the first mug of the day and curled up on the sofa to devour another chapter until my nose (and my digital timer) told me it was time to take the scones out of the oven and make another brew.

For 12 plain and simple sweet vanilla scones you will need...
... to preheat the oven to 180°C

350g plain flour

12g baking powder

a pinch of fine table salt

100g butter, from the fridge, cut into small cubes

2 tablespoons of caster sugar

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

120mls fresh milk 

To glaze

1 egg, beaten (or a little milk for a less glossy finish)

A little icing sugar to dust over the finished scones (optional)

Method

Place the flour, baking powder, and salt in a mixing bowl. Add the butter and rub it into the flour mixture, lifting and crumbling the mixture between your index and middle fingers and your thumbs, until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Stir in the sugar and add the vanilla extract to the bowl, followed by as much of the milk as is necessary to form the ingredients into a soft dough with no dry flour remaining, mixing gently all the while until you reach that point. You may not need all the milk.

(If you have a stand mixer or food processor, it is even easier: place the first six ingredients in the bowl and mix or pulse until they resemble fine breadcrumbs, then add the milk a little at a time - mixing or pulsing between additions - until the mixture comes together in a soft dough – add just enough of the milk until there is no dry flour left in the bowl/processor)

Turn the mixture onto a lightly floured work surface. With lightly floured hands, knead gently to form a ball. The less you mix and handle the dough, the lighter the scone. Pat the dough out into a round approximately 2cm thick – you could use a rolling pin for a more even finish.

Using a 6cm (2.5”) cutter, stamp out scone shapes from the dough, re-forming any scraps into a ball and once again flattening to 2cm before cutting. This mixture yields 12 x 6cm scones. (You could make them larger or smaller if you like, adjusting the cooking time up or down accordingly).

Place the prepared scones on a non-stick baking sheet and brush the tops with beaten egg or a little milk. Bake in the preheated oven for 12 – 15 minutes until risen and golden brown.

When baked through, remove from the oven and place on a cooling rack for about 5 minutes before serving with butter and jam. Scones are best eaten the day they are made but generally there are no leftovers so this won’t be a cause for concern. They also freeze well.

TIP: Try to stamp out as many scones as possible from the dough on the first pass as scones formed out of the scraps of dough can turn out a bit misshapen. Also, cut the scones out by pressing straight down with the cutter, avoiding the temptation to twist (unless you want scones with individual character).

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Orange, Cardamom & Coriander Madeleines – It's not what you've got, it's how you use it!

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For Café Europe - a cultural initiative held as part of Austria’s EU presidency in 2006 - Ireland offered scones, and France offered the Madeleine. While very different products, scones and Madeleines have some things in common – flour, sugar, butter, and social ambition. While both had relatively humble beginnings, they were adopted by high society – the scone becoming an essential part of ‘Afternoon Tea’, made fashionable by a rather peckish Anna Duchess of Bedford in the mid-nineteenth Century. The Madeleine (according to one account) was already a favourite at Versailles, adopted by the Court of Louis XV a century earlier. Both got a little lift from the invention of baking powder. There the similarity ends. Perhaps it's a lesson in "It's not what you've got, it's how you use it!"

In Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust’s narrator famously has a foodgasm brought on by the Madeleine. He doesn’t mention scones.

For 24 foodgasm-inducing Madeleines you will need…

… 2 x 12-hole Madeleine tins (you’ll get away with 1, just let it cool between bakes)

150g butter

3 eggs

130g caster sugar

a teaspoon of finely grated orange zest

1 teaspoon coriander seed, finely ground

the seeds from 2 fat green cardamom pods, finely ground

¼ tsp salt

130g plain flour

¾ tsp baking powder

a little extra flour for dusting the cake tins

Icing sugar for dusting over the finished cakes

Method

In a medium saucepan, melt the butter over a medium to high heat (use a light-coloured saucepan such as stainless steel if possible as it allows you to see the colour change in the butter that indicates it has reached the right point). Once melted, let it continue to foam and splutter, swirling occasionally to make sure it is heating evenly. As the foaming and spluttering dies down, the butter will continue to darken from yellow, to golden, to toasty brown. The butter will also begin to smell a little nutty. The milk solids in the butter will separate out and sink to the bottom. Remove the pan from the hob and pour into a heatproof bowl or jug to cool to room temperature, leaving as much of the milk solid residue behind as possible (If you leave the melted butter in the pan, it will continue to cook in the residual heat and may burn).

Remove 2 tablespoons of the melted butter right away – you’ll need this to brush the cake tins later – cover and keep it at room temperature so that it remains liquid.

Put the eggs in a large bowl and add the sugar. Whisk until pale, pale yellow and has thickened to the ‘ribbon’ stage – the whisk will leave a trail as you move it through the mixture and when you lift the whisk, the batter will fall in a ribbon and stay on the surface for a couple of moments before slowly disappearing back into the mixture.

From top left to right, you can see the colour change as you whisk the batter

Add the salt, orange zest and ground spices.  Trickle in the cooled butter, whisking all the while until incorporated into the batter.

Add the baking powder to the flour and sift about one-third onto the surface of the batter. Using a metal spoon such as a dessertspoon, gently fold the flour into the batter. Repeat twice more until you have folded all the flour into the mixture.

Cover with cling film, pressing down lightly so that it is in contact with the surface of the batter.

Chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour or overnight if possible.

When ready to bake, pre-heat the oven to 180°C.

Brush the Madeleine tins lightly with the reserved melted butter and sprinkle lightly with flour, tapping off the excess. Divide the batter evenly between the tins filling no more than about three-quarters full (an ice cream scoop or piping bag is good for even portioning). Don’t bother to spread the batter out to the edges - gravity will do the work for you.

Don't bother spreading the batter to the edges - gravity will do the work for you!

Transfer to the pre-heated oven and bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until risen and golden and spring back under the touch of a finger. If the God of Madeleines has been kind, they should have formed a ‘dromedary’ hump (which I always thought was a defect, but turns out to be Madeleine perfection – who knew!). 

A ‘dromedary hump’ is desirable...

Remove from the oven and leave in the tin for a minute or so before tipping gently out of their shells onto a wire rack to cool. They freeze marvelously and are restored to oven-fresh magnificence after about 12 seconds in the microwave. If you are going to freeze them do so now, without their sugar dusting.

If they are to be eaten now, once cool, dust with icing sugar and consume with a decent cup of tea or a glass of sticky dessert wine.

You could also dip them in good dark chocolate or white chocolate.

A bit of quality control… baker's privilege ...

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Dark Chocolate, Orange and Almond Brownies – a foot in both camps !

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In exchange for his killer salsa recipe, I made a homesick Hawaiian short-order chef some chocolate brownies as he had talked about them with almost as much affection as his far-off home. They were deeply disappointing, all gooey and chewy. I handed them over with an apology and a promise to amend the recipe.

 “Chewy? Gooey? That’s what a brownie is supposed to be!” he exclaimed and pronounced them “Pretty! Damn! Good!”

I’ve since discovered that brownie aficionados fall into one of two camps: chewy, gooey; or cakey. My blondie recipe is somewhere in between so I have reworked it into a bitter chocolate brownie that manages to be light without being too cake-y with hits of orange peel and pockets of dark chocolate to satisfy the chewy, gooey camp too.

For approximately 16 foot-in-both-camps brownies you will need...... to base-line a 23cm square cake tin and to pre-heat your oven to 160°C

150g butter

100g muscovado sugar

100g bitter orange marmalade (with peel)

2 teaspoons grated orange zest

2 teaspoons of (good quality) instant coffee dissolved in 2 teaspoons boiling water

3 eggs, beaten

150g plain flour

50g good quality cocoa powder (I used a gorgeous Fair Trade cocoa)

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

100g good quality (70% cocoa solids) dark chocolate

50g toasted almonds, roughly chopped 

Icing sugar to dust 

1                    Place the butter and sugar in a bowl and using an electric mixer, cream together until light and fluffy. Add the marmalade and orange zest mix until combined with the butter mixture.

2                    Mix the coffee in with the beaten eggs and add this mixture to the bowl in three roughly equal amounts, beating until well combined with the butter mixture.

3                    Now, add the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda and mix until just combined.

4                    Stir in the chopped chocolate and almonds to distribute them evenly throughout the batter.

5                    Transfer the batter into the prepared cake tin and bake for 35-40 minutes until risen and a cocktail stick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

6                    Remove from the oven and leave to cool for about 5 minutes before removing from the tin. Serve warm with good ice cream or cool completely before dusting with icing sugar and cutting into squares.

They’ll keep for up to a week (in someone else’s house maybe!) if sealed in an airtight container or cling wrap.

UPDATE: They get even more chocolatey and orange-y and luscious overnight. Alchemy at work...

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Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes with Chocolate Honey Truffle Frosting – get in touch with your dark side!

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I approach cooking from two very different angles:

The instinctive approach: Most of the time I am driven by a not-too-distant hunger/sugar craving and by what is currently available in the fridge/cupboard. In this instance, I think with my tastebuds - a la Accidental Paella – and it usually works out.

The theoretical approach: Sometimes, however, I think the flavours through consciously and carefully before going near the kitchen. I give consideration to the textures. I make sure I have all the ingredients before I start cooking. For example...

... In my head, almond sponge infused with sour cherry liqueur, topped with a swirl of boozy white chocolate ganache and a fat juicy cherry sounds rather good.

Here’s how that looked in my mind’s eye...

I have a vivid imagination... unfortunately the reality was "Meh!"

 My taste-tester’s verdict: “Meh!”

I had to agree. Can you imagine Sandra Dee swigging from a naggin of vodka? – This was the cupcake equivalent. It was trying to be naughty but didn’t quite succeed and certainly wasn’t WTC*.

I needed to get in touch with my dark (chocolate) side. I ditched the liqueur in favour of black cherry conserve in a chocolate sponge mixture. I went for the sharpness of crème fraîche in the truffle frosting, tempered just a hint of honey. They turned out light as a cloud, with sticky cherry bits and you’d sell your grandmother for the truffle frosting.

Taste-tester’s verdict: “Grrmmmwah!” which translates roughly as “Can’t speak. Eating.”

The frosting is best made the day before (so you don’t have to hang about waiting for it to cool)

*Worth The Calories

For 12 large cupcakes you will need...

... to pre-heat the oven to 160°C and line a 12-hole muffin tin with cupcake papers

For the chocolate cherry cake batter

150g butter, softened

100g caster sugar
50g dark Muscovado sugar (or any dark brown sugar)
3 eggs, beaten
125g plain flour
40g cocoa powder, sifted
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda (bicarbonate of soda), sifted to remove any lumps
100g good quality cherry conserve (you want chunky bits of fruit)

1                    In a mixing bowl, beat the butter together with the sugars until smoothly blended – 3 to 5 minutes with an electric mixer gets the right texture. Add in the beaten egg in about four lots, mixing well between additions so that the mixture doesn’t curdle. (Don’t fret if it does, it still tastes the same but won’t be quite as light in texture.)

2                    Sprinkle in the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and baking soda and continue beating just until these dry ingredients are incorporated into the mixture.

3                    Lightly fold in the cherry conserve. You don’t want to incorporate it; you just want it running through the mixture in rich veins of luscious cherry-ness.

4                    Divide the batter between the 12 cupcake papers and transfer to the preheated oven.

5                    Bake for 18 – 20 minutes or until risen and evenly golden.

6                    Remove from the oven and transfer to a cooling rack. Leave to cool completely before adding the frosting.

For the chocolate honey truffle frosting

200g good quality dark chocolate (70% coco solids), broken into pieces

1 tablespoon of honey (I used a honey with a floral note which sang through)

200g crème fraîche

1                    Put the chocolate in a heatproof bowl with the honey.

2                    Place the crème fraîche in a saucepan over a medium heat until it is just simmering at the edges.  Immediately pour over the chocolate and leave to sit for about 3 minutes. (This helps the chocolate meld with the cream more easily).  Then stir gently until the chocolate is incorporated into the cream in a smooth shiny mixture. Cover with clingfilm, letting it sit right on the surface of the ganache and refrigerate until needed.

Worth The Calories!

3                    To frost the cupcakes, remove the ganache mixture from the fridge and let it come to room temperature (I’m talking Irish room temperature - roughly 20°C) and whisk with an electric mixer for a minute or two until light and paler in colour. Spread over the surface of the cupcakes with a spatula or get fancy and pipe swirls of the mixture over the surface and top with a fat juicy cherry. Recommended dose: 1, taken with a cup of coffee (or 2, if you’re having a particularly bad day). 

Note: If the mixture looks grainy and oily it has ‘split’. Don’t panic! Simply whisk with an electric mixer and after a minute or two it should come together in a smooth silky mix.

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