baking

Rich Tea Biscuits – proven the best dunker

3rd March 2015 by Regula 4 Comments

The question is… are you a Digestive or Rich Tea kind of person.

Anyone who loves to dunk a biscuit in their hot drink will have an answer for you straight away. Tea and biscuits are as essential to Britain’s cultural history as the Queen, the moody skies of Turner, pudding and queuing.

FOOD52 asked me to investigate the Rich Tea biscuit, and to provide you with the recipe to enjoy this quintessentially biscuit at home.

Britain is a tea drinking nation and has been since tea was introduced in the 17th century during the reign of Charles II. Naturally biscuits would soon be dunked in the delicate porcelain teacups which were produced for those who could afford this absolute luxury.

Rich Tea’s have a plain flavour which makes them ideal for dunking and getting the flavour of your hot drink soaked into the biscuit. Scientists also proved in may last year that Rich Tea biscuits are in fact the superior dunker. This because of its close texture and lower fat and sugar content. The Digestive crumbles whilst the Rich Tea snaps, and it is that snap a lot of people enjoy as part of their dunking ritual. Research showed that while the Digestive takes five second until it starts to wobble, the Rich Tea can stay in shape for a whopping 20 seconds.

Both these biscuits have a long history. The Digestive is said to have been developed by Scottish doctors in 1839 and a patent was granted in 1890, while the Rich Tea is believed to date back to 17th century Yorkshire. What they have in common is its use, not just as dunkers, they were both served in the afternoon as a sweet, yet slightly savoury biscuit to get through the last few hours until dinner.

Another pointer for the Rich Tea team came when Prince William requested a Rick Tea biscuit cake for his grooms cake at the royal wedding. 1,700 biscuits and 40 pounds of chocolate were used to create this fridge cake which is reported to be a favourite tea-time treat of the Queen herself too.

With the royals and nearly half of the British population approving them we need to give home made Rich Tea biscuits a go. They are definitely more rustic than the smooth Rich Tea’s by the favoured iconic British biscuit brands, but all the same they dunk just as well. My advise is to dunk long and enjoy the soaked biscuit to the full.

What do you need

makes 22-24 6cm wide biscuits

280 g plain white flour

1tbsp – 20 gr of baking powder

0,5 tsp – 5gr seasalt

3 tsp – 30 gr cane sugar

65 g butter

150 ml cold milk

Method

To prepare, preheat your oven to 200°C and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Cut the butter into small cubes, transfer it to the bowl, and start rubbing the butter into the flour until you get a mixture that resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Pour in the milk and use your fingers to mix it together until it becomes a dough. Press and knead briefly.

Turn out the dough onto a floured surface, divide it in half to make it easier to work with, and roll out half of it as thinly as possible. (Keep in mind that the biscuits will rise and be twice the height!) Using a biscuit or cookie cutter, cut the dough into individual 6cm circles. Repeat with the other half of the dough.

Prick the biscuits all over with a fork and transfer to your lined baking sheet. Bake the biscuits until lightly golden but not brown. This should take around 10 minutes. Remove them from the oven and let them cool on a baking rack.

In the meantime…

Boil fresh water, place tea bag in your cup, pour hot water over it. Wait. Now break a Rich Tea biscuit in two, enjoy the snap, and dunk.

Enjoy.

What is your favourite tea biscuit?

The white loaf that will make you proud

21st September 2014 by Regula 6 Comments

The power of an image.
I posted a picture on Instagram and Facebook of two loaves of bread I baked on wednesday. I was proud of them, they were beautiful, they were utterly perfect to me.
I had scored the bread this time with little hesitation and fear it would ruin my loaf, and while it was baking in the oven, I watched trough the oven window in true British Bake Off style how my score cracked open and baked into my most proud bake in my life.
Slightly embarrassed by my pride and joy I mentioned that to you the bread might seem plain, but to me they were special. The answer came in the form of that image becoming the most ever likes picture on my facebook and my instagram feed. You loved it too.
So much that you emailed me for the recipe, to go home and bake these loaves yourself, to see it rise, and bake and fill the house with the smell only bread is capable to induce…
Utter joy.

Bread has been a staple since the beginning of time, it evolved from a flat, dense gritty loaf to the small bun sized wheat loaves of the Saxon monks. Wheat and bread was so valuable that often food rents consisted partly of loaves or grain. Wheat and barley would be planted together so if one harvest failed, the barley which was a hardier grain would survive and save the people from the starvation that was luring behind every tree and every sheaf of corn. But harvest failed plenty of times and so bread was made from dried peas and beans. This must have been an very heavy and unpleasant bread but it would provide plenty of nutrition during shortages. Windmills and communal bread ovens can be found in the Domesday book but as they were owned by the manor or monastery, they were not free to use. A portion of the grain or bread dough had to be payed for the use of the mill and oven, therefore the peasants continued to mill the grain themselves using a hand quern that must have taken many long hours of hard labour to end up with a small portion of flour.
People must have suffered from acute toothache with the amount of grit in the bread. Even the upper classes preferred to soak their bread in their all important sauce and have their meat so succulent that it fell of the bone. Chewing would have been difficult if you would have lost most your teeth in your early adulthood.

Bread remains a staple food in the centuries following the Norman conquest and the Middle Ages, but recipes for breadmaking remain unknown from that period except for a mention of the process of bread making in a poem.

Although today bread still remains the most popular base of our diet, it has also become a source of worry with gluten and wheat intolerances becoming nearly as frequent as famine was in ancient times. Although bread has been a staple food for centuries, in the early years it was labour intensive to mill the grain by hand so bread would not have been the thing to fill up the bellies of the poor. They would have had a modest piece of bread, with their pottage, or a piece of cheese but not as plenty as we often have it today.
Wheat has also been modified to an extent that it is easier to harvest, but the quality is less. The need to have everything fast and plenty changed the way we create bread, with added chemicals to make is rise in a fraction of the time if would actually need to break down the enzymes in the grain which make it harder to digest. There is talk of a modern day ‘bread belly’ with people suffering from the effects from fast factory made bread which has little resemblance to the real bread of our ancestors. In my opinion the modern everlasting, spongy bread, sometimes dyed with malts or molasses to make it appear as a wholewheat loaf while it is not, is a new kind of poverty, the poverty of quality of the most basic of foods. Our daily bread.

So
here is my recipe, which I just in true honesty came up with by winging
it. It’s quite the recipe for a plain white loaf, but strangely enough
it came out differently than before. I added a spoon of my precious 1
year old organic wholemeal spelt sourdough starter, and a drizzle of
good English rapeseed oil. Other than that of course, (I always use)
Cornish sea salt, organic strong white bread flour and water which I
first boiled and let cool to tepid before adding organic dried yeast.

To make two 700-800 g loaves

What do you need

1 kg of organic strong bread flour, stone ground if you can obtain it, is the best
700 ml of tepid water
2 heaped tsp of dried yeast
20 g of seasalt flakes, not the over processed, white powder kind please
1 generous tablespoon of sourdough starter if you have some
1 teaspoon of rapeseed oil, or olive oil

Method
Turn on your oven on the lowest setting to just make it nice and warm, then turn off.
Boil water and let it cool until blood heat (tepid is fine) before adding the yeast
In a large bowl or soup pot add the flour and make a well.
Drizzle in your oil, salt and sourdough on the edges without letting them touch eachother.
When you have mixed your yeast with your water start adding it to the well and make a turning movement with a couple of fingers or the back of a wooden spoon to gradually mix the flour with the water and yeast.

Keep on doing this until you get a well mixed dough, now either turn out the dough on a floured surface to knead or do as I do, leave in the bowl and use one hand to pull and twist and push your dough for about 15-20 minutes, constantly turning the dough so you have kneaded it well and the dough is nice and springy. It really is very important to work the dough well.
Now put a shower cap over the bowl to keep the dough from drying out.

Place in your warm oven – please make sure it is not too hot, just like a nice warm summers day – and leave your dough there for an hour or until doubled in size.
I feel my dough rises much better when I do this, I live in a very cool house which is never warm enough to give your dough that cosy feel it needs to feel happy and rise.

After your dough has risen for 30 min to 1 hour, take it out of the oven gently and turn it on to full heat. Mine is 250° C. Also place a baking tray in the oven to heat.

When your oven has preheated knock the dough back by simply removing it from the bowl onto the floured work surface where you can divide and shape it in two for two loaves, or in four long stretches to get a ciabatta style bread, by that I mean one that is perfect for dunking in soup, to serve with cured meats and cheese and so on.

Dust the tops of your loaves with flour and just before you place them on the heated baking tray, score the bread with a very, very sharp knife about 1 cm deep. A stanley style knife works best, other knives are often not sharp enough, and not thin enough to make that all important score.

Place in the middle of your oven, on the heated tray, and chuck a bit of cold water on the bottom of the oven to create steam
Bake for 10 min on full blast
After 10 min turn down to 220°C and leave for 20-25 minutes.

These loaves freeze perfectly, when you need them, defrost in a kitchen towel the evening before and preheat your oven to full blast, place a ramekin with water into the oven with the bread and bake for 5-10 minutes.
Fresh home made bread in 5-10 minutes, epic. Just think ahead and always make two loaves instead of one. 1 kg of flour is also easier to work with that 500 g of flour.

Enjoy and if you bake this bread, show me a pic! I love it when you send me your pictures of your creations!

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Soda bread, a loaf in 45 minutes

What’s your favourite bread recipe?
Don’t forget to leave a comment!

Cardamom and yoghurt spelt cake and the number 13

11th February 2014 by Regula 21 Comments

My grandmother always wore a number 13 on a golden chain around her neck. She had a tough life, raising 4 children on her own after grandfather didn’t come home from sea. She worked from dawn till dusk. Nanna died from old age many years ago because her body was just completely worn down. I remember her stern nature and I’m sure my father didn’t have an easy childhood. I know he wanted to go to school to become a carpenter, dreaming to work with wood and create his own furniture, but he had to work instead.

My father is a man with ambition, a fighter, a daredevil and a great teacher in life. He worked hard to become a paramedic when I was born, and got the degrees needed to save lives. His precious weekends off he spent them as a volunteer with the Red Cross and the Flemish Cross, aiding people in need of care on events, disasters and accompanying disabled children and adults on trips.

I used to joke that the reason he always went to be on the Flemish Cross care unit on big Raves was that he knew I was safe at home but that other parents didn’t have that luxury fearing their children were somewhere possibly doing drugs or drinking way to much. He had many teenagers on his gurney and I know he was secretly happy about me being a New Waver and a romantic rather than a raver wearing neon trainers.

My dad taught me – not by telling me this but by example that when I wanted something, I should just go out there and do it.

2013 has been anything but unlucky and it reminds me of my grandmothers golden number 13 which I inherited after her death and is one of the only things I have to remind her by. For her, and as for many other cultures, number 13 was a lucky number.
I got to do fantastic stuff last year but most importantly, I found a way to live with an autoimmune condition. When I got diagnosed in the summer of 2012 I found myself on a roller coaster of emotions. I got worse before I got better in 2013. I know found that living a balanced life, especially with your food is the best way to stay stable and healthy. I am fortunate to be at a stage with my condition that it can stay stable if I rest enough and stay healthy. For someone who is used to running through life rather than walking, it hasn’t been easy to slow down. But I did it.

Enjoy my round-up of favourite happenings of last year.

I went on a pig keeping course and it was one of the most splendid days of my life, I have a -not so- secret dream of having a little pig farm one day. You can read the full story here.

You see, I ain’t afraid of getting down in the mud with a pig!

In april I visited a watercress farm in Hampshire and met Steve from Steve’s leaves. Not only is this pretty green leaf my favourite salad, it is also super healthy. You can read about my visit here and more here.

In may I organised a Food Revolution Day event cooking ‘last night’s leftover’s’ lunches for those who ordered one. The idea was to focus not only on what we eat for lunch but also on food wastage. Leftover dinners make the best lunches!

After my Food Revolution Day event I went to Torino in Italy where I was invited to visit the Food Rev events going on in the city. You can read about both of my Food Revolution Day adventures on the Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution website here

Betta from L’Aula Magna, Torino.

Also that week I was in Aosta, only a short drive from the Mont Blanc I was invited to come and stay at the Village Hotel and Swedish brasserie Bjork who are inspired by Scandinavian design. I learned to make Gravad lax, smoke meats, bake Swedish cookies and enjoyed their wonderful beers. The hotel is something completely different, you sleep in log cabins on the domain and the food is sublime. The Swedish brasserie menu is a celebration of Scandinavian culinary delights and you will always have some Knäckebröd at hand for a nibble. During dinner we had a loaf of bread in a wooden box and a glass cover so we could see the bread rise as the evening went on.

We also had the chance to visit an apple orchard that produces a very special Italian cider, the Maley Mont Blanc. As wine has always been the national drink of Italy, this village struggled to bring back this cider which nearly completely died out during fascism. The ancient trees grow in the valley on a very idyllic spot between the mountains.

Another
highlight was the honor of being a judge in the Great Taste Awards.
Every year thousands of food products are judged, from rapeseed oils to
cookies and from beef pies to delicate chocolate treats. The awards was
set up by Bob Farrand of the Guild of Fine Foods in 1994 in an effort to
celebrate and award the quality of Britain’s best small and artisan
producers.
For
weeks judges are gathered in Dorset judging every product with the utmost care, when not
sure, another bite is taken, no decision is taken lightly. The judges
range from food buyers for Harrods and Fortnum & Mason to small
speciality Deli owners, seasoned food writers, critiques and then me. I
must say, this years winner Marybelle Greek style yoghurt is an absolute
delight, look out for it!

Then summer finally came and I got to spend some time with lovely people at Jamie’s Food Tube and Jamie’s Feastival.

I made my first ever food video with the charming Loyd Grossman and ate some fabulous puddings with Heston Blumenthal for his new TV series.

Oh gosh, so many things! I think I better stop here in fear of boring you!
Let’s go back to this cake shall we? I’m having a piece right now!

Cardamom and yoghurt spelt cake

What do you need

250 g spelt flour
3 large free-range eggs – separated
250 g unsalted butter, soft not melted
220 g raw cane sugar
3 tbsp of greek style yoghurt
1 tsp of freshly crushed cardamom seeds
1 tsp of organic lemon extract (if you have decent lemons, use fresh juice)
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

icing
220 g icing sugar
1tsp lemon extract
30 ml greek style yoghurt

decoration (optional)
dried cranberries
candied orange peel

Method

Prepare a 18 cm – 20 cm round cake tin with greaseproof paper and set aside
Preheat your oven to 180° C
Cream the soft butter and sugar together in a mixing bowl and use an electric mixer to beat the mixture until light and fluffy
Add the egg yolks one by one, beating well
Add the cardamom, lemon extract and the yoghurt and stir well
Sift the flour and the bicarb
Whisk your egg whites until stiff
Gently fold the ingredients together and combine well
Transfer the dough into the prepared cake tin and put in the preheated oven for 45 minutes to 1 hour
Combine all the ingredients for the icing and transfer into a piping bag or use a spoon later.
Decorate with the icing, dried cranberries and candied orange peel

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Madeira cake to get through the busy days
Vegan chocolate and beetroot cake

Madeira cake to get you through the busy days

9th May 2013 by Regula 14 Comments

For years I thought Madeira cake was made with the fortified wine Madeira, I thought it was the English equivalent to an Italian Vin Santo cake, which is in fact made adding the Vin Santo.
Madeira cake is a closed textured cake that was designed in the 19th century to accompany a glass of Madeira and other sweet wines. It was a cake for the upper class, people who could afford to bake a dry crumbly cake that doesn’t keep well and had to be enjoyed with a drink of some kind and best within two days before it would get too dry.
Precision and plenty of beating is required to achieve that close crumbly texture. You have to be a patient cook and the ingredients used must be of the best possible quality.

I searched all over for some more history facts behind this iconic cake, unfortunately there was little more information to be found. The cake only starts to appear in my cookery books from the 50s or 60s onwards.

I baked this Madeira cake on a sunday knowing the week ahead would be a busy one. For some reason I find it more pleasant to deal with hectic weekdays when I know I have a home made piece of cake to look forward too. B will have it for breakfast with his coffee, I will have one half at 11 and the other half at 4 with my Ear Grey tea. At moments when time is of an essence, all too often it is easier to go and get yourself an unhealthy processed snack. Although you shouldn’t eat cake all day every day, I believe a home made bake is much healthier than a store bought. At least now you know the quality of the flour and eggs used, and you have the choice in choosing the best farmhouse butter instead of tasteless margarine that is too often used in store-bought cakes.

Although Madeira cake is made with wheat flour, I opted to use the more nutritious Spelt instead. I started from the oldest recipes I could find in my collection of vintage cookery books from Jane Grigson. This recipe appeared to me as the more traditional version as often lots of extra things are added to the cake like almond flour or candied mixed fruits. I think it very possible that in the 19th century each household would have had their own recipe for Madeira cake depending on the cooks choice.

Madeira Cake
Adapted from a recipe by Jane Grigson’s ‘English Food’

What do you need

175 g good quality unsalted butter, soft not runny
175 g caster sugar
275 g spelt flour
2 heaped teaspoons of baking powder (use only one when using wheat four)
4 large free range eggs
grated zest of half an organic lemon
thin peels of zest of half an organic lemon for decoration

Method

Prepare a 18 cm – 20 cm round cake tin with greaseproof paper and set aside
Preheat your oven to 180° C
Cream the soft butter and sugar together in a mixing bowl and use an electric mixer to beat the mixture until light and fluffy
Add the eggs one by one, beating well
Add the lemon zest, stir well
Sift the flour and the baking powder so the baking powder is divided nicely
Gently fold the ingredients together and combine well
Transfer the dough into the prepared cake tin and put in the preheated oven for 45 minutes
After 45 minutes ass the lemon peel to the top of the cake, bake for a further 15 minutes
Decorate with a soft dusting of icing sugar

This cake keeps for 3-4 days in an airtight container.

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Britannia Sandwich cake

Kentish Cobnut cake
Chocolate beetroot and walnut cake

Cornish Splits, some very exciting news and a thank-you

16th April 2013 by Regula 35 Comments

In Cornwall, a cream tea was traditionally served with ‘Cornish Splits’ rather than scones. Cornish splits are little yeast-leavened bread rolls, they are split when still warm and first buttered, then spread with jam before topping it with a generous dollop of clotted cream. Sometimes Treacle would be used instead of jam, this combination goes by the name of a ‘Thunder and lightning’ and although I’m not a big fan of treacle straight from the tin, it tasted -and the name sounded- rather good!
The splits are only baked for a short while and when removed from the hot oven, the little warm splits are then piled up in a tea towel, rubbed with a little butter before being covered by another tea towel so they don’t develop a crust.
I haven’t found any earlier reference to a Cornish split than the receipt in on of my favourite books ‘Good things in England‘ published in 1932 by Florence White, a delightful collection of 853 regional English recipes dating back as far as the 14th century.

With findings of evidence at Tavistock Abbey in Devon it is believed that the tradition of eating bread with cream and jam existed in the 11th century. In Devon a similar bun is served with cream and jam, going traditionally by the name of a Devon Chudleigh as noted by Florence White and Elisabeth David Chudleighs are made the same manner as the Cornish split, only smaller. Devonians however tell me that the ‘Devon split’ -as it is called now- is in fact a lighter and more luxurious white bun rather than heavy scone-like bread as the Cornish version.
The Cornish split is a rare treat these days but as they are best eaten while still a little warm from the oven, you get the best split by baking them at home.

I have another thing to share with you today, my beloved blog has been nominated for the Saveur Magazine 2013 Best Food Blog Award in the ‘Best Regional Cuisine Blog‘ category.
I am still pinching myself, to be a finalist and especially to be selected by the judges in this respected international competition is a great honor. The other four blogs that are nominated have all been blogging quite a while longer than I have and are all gorgeous.

This blog means the world to me, each post comes from a place deep in my heart. I know it sounds terribly cheesy but it is the truth. The moment I hit the publish button is still as exciting as if it was the first time – even more. In the beginning of writing my blog I was wondering ‘helloooow is anybody out there?’ now I know you are there.
A blog post doesn’t feel quite complete without the first comment from one of you and usually that first comment is from a lovely girl named Rosa.
Each comment brightens my day a little more, even if the comment is just to say ‘hi there’, it matters to me.
To know that you are out there, reading, listening and sharing my stories and yours with me is one of the greatest gifts on this earth. Your support, your time and your kindness mean more to me than I can say.
Thank you …

Oh yes… one more thing if you like to vote for me or one of the other fabulous blogs nominated, you can do so by following this link here -> Voting ends this friday the 19th.
You have to register to vote, this makes it just a fair competition but takes a minute longer. I thank you if you take that minute for me.

Lots of love
x Regula
Although
Elisabeth David doesn’t use lard in her recipe from her book English Bread and Yeast Cookery, Florence White does and I think it ads to the
taste. This recipe is somewhere in between the recipe of David and White using all milk instead of a mixture between milk and water. I also added an extra spoon of sugar to feed the yeast.

What do you need

14 g dried yeast (2 packs)
2 teaspoons of fine caster sugar
355 ml tepid full fat milk
115 g unsalted, good quality butter
30 g lard
750 g strong white flour
1 heaped teaspoon seasalt

Method

Cream the yeast and the sugar in a little of the tepid milk.
Melt the butter and the lard, when most of the butter and lard have melted take of the fire and stir until all the lumps are gone. Be careful not to let the butter and lard get too hot so it burns.
In a large bowl combine the butter and lard with the flour, the salt and half the milk.
Add the yeast and combine.
Add the rest of the milk to create a dough, take it out of the bowl and onto a clean surface and knead for 10 minutes – it is important you do it for exact 10 minutes.
Place the dough back in the bowl, cover with a clean tea towel and leave it to rise for 45 minutes – 1 hour or until the dough has doubled in size.
Line a baking tray with baking paper or if you don’t have baking paper just grease with butter
When the dough has doubled in size, knead it again to turn it into a long sausage.
Divide into 40-50 g pieces so all buns have the same size
Roll into balls and place evenly spaced on the baking tray that you have prepared
Leave the buns to prove until they have nearly doubled in size
Preheat your oven to 220° C and bake the buns for 20 minutes

When you remove them from the oven Florence White recommends you rub them over with some butter and then wrap them in a tea towel to cool so they don’t develop a crust.
You can keep these little buns for 4 days in an airtight container. Before use, place in a hot oven with a small container of water for 6 minutes. Then wrap in a tea towel as before.

Enjoy with clotted cream and jam, treacle, or why not go for savoury with the old school favourite egg and cress.

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A bread in 45 minutes: Soda bread >
Hot Cross buns, tis still the season >

Hot Cross Bun and Butter Pudding – Happy birthday to me …

28th March 2013 by Regula 29 Comments

Here we are again, the day I look forward to the most during the year … my birthday.
It’s the day when I am queen, when I am allowed to wear a crown of flowers and walk around in my widest petticoat no matter where I’m going even if it is a farm or going on a clifftop walk on my favourite Sussex coastal path.
Today – I bloom – like fiery red flower in a colorless world.

It’s a big birthday this year -29- for the second time. Some part of me wanted to do a big party, another part just wanted it to blow over. I decided on a last minute posh afternoon tea at Kensington palace with my friends Sassy and Jo when we were gathered in London for Bruno‘s exhibition.
I had a special dress, made by my friend Jo, you might remember her from her Hotpot recipe a few months ago. Jo designs and produces beautiful bespoke wedding and special occasion gowns and after months of working on the design together it was ready to flaunt when we went for our Afternoon tea.

I call it my England dress, it shows the story behind my love for this country and its ways in an illustration Bruno designed and Jo embroidered onto the dress. I felt tears coming to my eyes when she revealed the dress… Aren’t I a lucky lady …
Jo’s craft-wo-manship is exquisite, the detail is amazing. Her brodeuse captured Bruno’s every line, flower and every tiny apple. The dress is all kinds of perfect and if you know me -being a perfectionist- I hardly ever find things perfect…
It is a special feeling when a friend makes you a dress, it will never feel completely mine, it will always be hers as well.
Thank you darling Jo, for making me the most special dress in the world x Thank you my dear friend Sassy for taking these pictures as a keepsake to remember x

A few of you were eager to see my dress so if you aren’t interested
in a girl running around in a red dress feeding swans and getting
attacked by squirrels – scroll all the way down for a good pudding!

Earlier this week I posted my recipe for Hot Cross Buns, while testing the recipe I had mountains of buns leftover and I didn’t want to waste them so I froze them. Now I use the buns to make my Hot Cross Bun and Butter Pudding. I guaranty you that a Bread and Butter Pudding has never tasted better! As the Hot Cross Buns contains spices and currants already, there is no need to add more.
Enjoy lovely people x

Now for a sweet treat …

Hot Cross Bun and Butter Pudding

What do you need
2 enamel 20cm pie dishes
2-3 stale hot cross buns sliced in 1 cm wide slices
butter
350ml/12fl oz whole milk
50ml/2fl oz double cream
2 free-range eggs
2 teaspoons of light brown demerara sugar
2 teaspoons of raw cane sudar to sprinkle on top
Nutmeg, grated to taste

Method

Butter 1 side of the hot cross bun slices
Arrange a layer of bun slices, buttered-side up, in the bottom of the dish.
Gently warm the milk and cream in a pan over a low heat to scalding point, be careful not to let it boil.
Crack the eggs into a bowl, add three the sugar and lightly whisk until pale
Add the warm milk and cream mixture to the eggs and stir well
Pour the custard over the prepared hot cross bun layers and sprinkle with nutmeg and the remaining sugar
Preheat the oven to 180C
Place the dish into the oven and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until the custard has set and the top is nicely golden-brown

Enjoy while warm!

You might also like
Hot Cross Buns – paganism, christianity and superstition >
My vegan chocolate and beetroot birthday cake >

All pictures except for the ones with the Hot Cross Bun & Butter Pudding are copyright by the talented Sassy of Assassynation photography.
Gown handmade in Britain by The Couture Company in Birmingham.

Hot Cross Buns through Paganism, Christianity and Superstition.

25th March 2013 by Regula 22 Comments

The tradition of baking bread marked with a cross is linked to paganism as well as Christianity. The pagan Saxons would bake cross buns at the beginning of spring in honour of the goddess Eostre – most likely being the origin of the name Easter. The cross represented the rebirth of the world after winter and the four quarters of the moon, as well as the four seasons and the wheel of life.

The Christians saw the Crucifixion in the cross bun and, as with many other pre-Christian traditions, replaced their pagan meaning with a Christian one – the resurrection of Christ at Easter.

According to Elizabeth David, it wasn’t until Tudor times that it was permanently linked to Christian celebrations. During the reign of Elizabeth I, the London Clerk of Markets issued a decree forbidding the sale of spiced buns except at burials, at Christmas or on Good Friday.

The first recorded reference to ‘hot’ cross buns was in ‘Poor Robin’s Almanac’ in the early 1700s:
‘Good Friday come this month, the old woman runs. With one or two a penny hot cross buns.’

This satirical rhyme was also probably the inspiration of the commonly known street vendors cry:

‘Hot cross buns, hot cross buns!
One ha’penny, two ha’penny, hot cross buns!
If you have no daughters, give them to your sons,
One ha’penny, two ha’penny, hot cross buns!’

The Widows Son. Copyright Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archive – posted with permission

A century later the belief behind the hot cross bun starts to get a superstitious rather than a religious meaning.
In London’s East End you can find a pub called The Widows Son, named after a widow who lived in a cottage at the site in the 1820s. The widow baked hot cross buns for her sailor son who was supposed to come home from the sea on Good Friday. He must have died at sea as he never returned home, but the widow refused to give up hope for his return and continued to bake a hot cross bun for him every year, hanging it in her kitchen with the buns from previous years.

When the widow died, the buns were found hanging from a beam in the cottage and the story has been kept alive by the pub landlords ever since a pub was built on the site in 1848.

To this day, every Good Friday, the ceremony of the Widow’s Bun is celebrated and members of the Royal Navy come to The Widows Son pub to place a new hot cross bun into a net hung above the bar. Legend has it that the buns baked on Good Friday will not spoil.

For whatever reason or belief you choose to bake a batch of hot cross buns on this Good Friday, it will most likely be to enjoy them with your loved ones. May it be for Eostre, Easter, the beginning of a much awaited spring or as a superstitious amulet for when you set sail, bake them with love!

If you want to bake ahead, you can easily bake these buns in advance and freeze them. Slowly defrost in a teatowel and then place in a hot oven for 5-10 minutes with a small ramekin of water to give some moisture to the warm air in the oven.
And finally … you can also find my story about Hot Cross Buns in the latest edition of Pretty Nostalgic Magazine!
If you don’t know the magazine, it’s fairly new and all about British Nostalgia, love for all things Vintage and quirky.

Wheaten Soda Bread with Stout Beer, Oats and Molasses for St-Patrick’s day

15th March 2013 by Regula 10 Comments

A lucky shamrock scarf for your bread, to keep your hands flour-free. It’s been years since I crocheted!

I was asked by Honest Cooking online food magazine to share a St-Patrick’s day recipe with them. I’ve never been in Ireland so therefore St-Patrick’s day is something I only know from visiting the Irish pubs that used to be plenty in Antwerp. The day would be advertised on the pubs blackboards weeks in advance offering live music and a Paddy’s special menu. When the day finally came, the Irish folk living in Antwerp and the Irish sailors who were docked at Antwerp port with their ships would gather at the pubs to enjoy a pint and a meal, you would hear the traditional Irish folk music from behind the corner along with loud and often drunken sing-alongs. In Antwerp you most certainly knew when it was St-Patrick’s day … But as the Irish pubs started to disappear, the St-Patrick’s day celebrations and the taste of Irish food went with them.

Wheaten Stout Beer, Oats and Molasses

What do you need
•   500g/17oz. good quality – organic wholemeal wheat or spelt flour
•   1/2 cup / 4oz.rolled oats
•   2 teaspoons of baking soda
•   1 teaspoon of sea salt
•   3 teaspoons of molasses
•   200ml/6.7 oz stout beer and 200 ml/6.7 oz live yoghurt
•   some extra flour to dust

Method

Preheat your oven to 190C/375F
Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper
Combine the flour, baking soda and salt well in a bowl.
Add yoghurt and stout and mix with the dry ingredients.
Quickly form a wet dough – it is important to get the bread in the oven as quickly as possible and not to overwork it – if the dough is too wet dust with flour until you can shape it.
Dust it with flour and cut a cross in the dough half way down the dough.
Put on the baking tray in the middle of the oven for 40 minutes.
The bread is ready when it makes a hollow sound when you knock on the bottom.
Cool on a wire rack

I like to place a small container of water with the bread in the oven, the moisture will help the bread get a tender crumb.
Best eaten when still slightly warm, spread with butter and with a piece of bitter dark chocolate …

The Irish Times pub in Antwerp, is no longer. There had been an Irish pub on this site since the 40’s

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Soda bread – a loaf in 45 minutes

Soda bread, time to bake.

24th February 2013 by Regula 17 Comments

On saturday mornings I look forward to a wholesome slice of bread, spread with -when I have the time to make it- home made butter and a sprinkle of seasalt or jam that reminds me of the warmer days of the year passed.

But it has become so hard to get a decent loaf these days, I admit I’m not the easiest of customers but I think my wishes aren’t odd at all.
I want ‘real’ bread made from good quality – organic – stone ground flour, not low protein Chorleywood style loafs or other breads that have been made in a jiffy filled with additives and bread enhancers that feed food intolerance and allergies.

Many people don’t realise that when they buy this unnaturally square shaped spongy bread they get more than they bargained for. Chorleywood bread is one of these wonderful inventions of the 60’s when everything had to go fast and had to be industrialised. The ingredients don’t only list low quality wheat flour, water, salt and the double amount of yeast used for ‘real’ bread, it also contains a cocktail of hard fats, ascorbic acid, enzymes, emulsifiers and other chemicals that speed up the process.

Some scientists claim that the Chorleywood method is responsible for the growing amount of people who have trouble digesting bread, the use of potassium bromate (E924) -which is now banned in the EU but not the US- being the primary cause. Potassium bromate is carcinogenic and nephrotoxic to experimental animals, causing cell tumors to the thyroid and Renal cell carcinoma.
I apologise for the usage of these scary words but when I found out about this an researched it some more I felt I had to share it with you.

Soda bread, oysters and a pint of stout. A fisherman’s tea.

I don’t want to be the one screaming ‘horse meat’ but I wouldn’t be surprised if this harmful E924 would still be circulating in our food chain. After all it isn’t banned all over the world and still used widely in the US.
The Chorleywood method is used all over the world and not exclusively for the iconic square shaped loaf but also to speed up the process of regular bread.
I’ve stopped eating store-bought bread unless I know it was made traditionally.

Now I know some people might argument that baking your bread takes longer and one hasn’t the time to do this very often and I agree.
Baking this Soda bread is in my opinion a great alternative to baking your bread traditionally when in urgent need of it and no time to spare. Made with good quality organic wholemeal flour this makes a fine loaf in just 45 minutes – baking included. This is faster than hopping on my bike and driving to a store.
Soda bread is an acquired taste but I promise you it is very much a treat on busy saturday mornings when all you need is to get on with things.
In soda bread Bicarbonate of soda is used as a raising agent instead of yeast or a sourdough starter, the process is activated by the acidity in buttermilk, live yoghurt or in some traditional recipes even stout beer. Buttermilk and live yoghurt contain lactic acid, which was also used in Milk stout beer before the usage went out of fashion. The lactic acid reacts with the baking soda and forms air bubbles of carbon dioxide. The trick is to underwork your dough and get it in the oven as fast as you can to get a good rise.
Unlike the chemicals used in Chorleywood method, baking soda and lactic acid from buttermilk, yoghurt or beer, isn’t harmful to your health.

In Ireland Soda bread is often eaten with oysters, before the decline of oyster beds they used to be a cheap source of protein. The tale goes that down at the harbour pubs, fishermen used to get served soda bread and oysters along with their pint of stout. I must say it is a treat indeed, the bitter taste of the stout pairs perfectly with the salty oyster especially when fresh and still drowning in seawater. The soda bread brings a slightly sweet and sour taste to the table, along with a crumbly texture.
So now perhaps a treat only enjoyed on special occasions.

What do you need

500g good quality – organic wholemeal wheat or spelt flour
2 teaspoons of baking soda
1 teaspoon of seasalt
400 ml buttermilk
or 200ml live yoghurt and 200 ml milk
or 200ml stout beer and 200 ml buttermilk

Method

Preheat your oven to 180C°
Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper
Combine the flour, baking soda and salt well in a bowl.
Add the buttermilk, milk, yoghurt or stout – whatever you chose – and mix with the dry ingredients.
Quickly form a wet dough – it is important to get the bread in the oven as quickly as possible and not to overwork it – dust it with flour and cut a cross half way down the dough.
Put on the baking tray in the oven for 40 minutes.

Eat warm and spread with a generous amount of butter …

For a smaller loaf, split the recipe in half.

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Cranberry and Apple Spelt Crumble – a review of the new Falcon enamelware

5th January 2013 by Regula 12 Comments

Those blue rimmed pie dishes, plates and mugs are something I’ve always associated with Britain …
Imagine a rustic wooden table in a ‘chocolate box cottage’ kitchen, I’m sure you can see the white enamelware stacked somewhere in easy reach. Because these are practical utensils, durable and -yes in my opinion- pretty to look at. They are the essential oven to table ware, the perfect picnic crockery and the last thing we like to see when finishing a delicious blueberry pie.
Falcon enamelware seems to have always been there on your kitchen shelve, like the color blue in the sky and the smell of freshly mowed grass in the air. A thing your kitchen needs, a thing that will age with you and even outlive you.

I love these simple and timeless objects. Yes, I find happiness in the little things …

I would hope for my future children to cherish my old enamelware and have memories of me serving him or her a cranberry and apple crumble in them. I would give them a set of their own when they marry, to keep in arms reach in a cupboard in their kitchen too. More on the origins of the humble crumble later on…

The people at *Falcon asked me to test their bake set and I love it.
They have re-launched their line of enamelware and now have a few new vibrant and attractive looking colored rims and they are even more durable as some of the items are fitted with a much heavier gauge. This makes them a bit more expensive than the old range but you do get a better product.
I’m blown away by the red ones… if you know me … well … red is my color!
Apart from new colors the design mostly stayed the same, thank god for that.
I am missing the round pie dishes though, but perhaps they will be re-launched eventually as well.
The sets come in great looking boxes, the graphic designer in me approves.
I will most likely keep the box as well …

The first thing I baked was a Cranberry and Apple Crumble.

The apple crumble became part of British traditions during World
War II. History says that the Apple Crumble was invented due to strict food rationing,
to replace the apple pie which contained too much quantities of flour compared to the crumble. A simple mixture of flour, bread crumbs, margarine (during the war there was a shortage of real butter) and sugar created a pastry lid over stewed fruit.

Cranberry and Apple Crumble

What do you need

650 g cranberries
2 Bramley or any other cooking apple diced
100 g soft raw cane sugar

For the crumble

100 g wholemeal spelt flour
50 g raw cane sugar
60 g rolled oats (I sometimes use muesli)
100 g cold unsalted butter
0,5 cup of shaved almonds

Method

Braise the fruit in a pan, with sugar over medium heat.
Leave the fruit whole, it should not me reduced to jam

For the crumble

Mix flour, sugar and oats.
Rub the butter into the mixture, I like to use a knife to do this at first, this way the butters stays cold.
Add the shaved almonds.
Now use your fingers to bring the dough together leaving it rough and crumbly.
Put the mixture into the fridge for about an hour.

Preheat the oven to 160° celsius

Place the fruit in the baking tray
Arrange the crumble on top, divide evenly
Put in the top side of the oven and bake for 30 to 40 minutes

Serve with Clotted cream or vanilla ice cream.
Enjoy!

*I received this bake set from Falcon, other than the set I didn’t receive any payment.

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