It's fun to make a sweet bread sometimes, especially when we have extra dough left from making children's Pain Viennois.
Lemon Raisins Apricot Walnut Knot Bread
2/3 quantity of the Pain Viennois dough using bread flour only.
Fillings:
75g butter, softened
zest of 1 lemon
1 tsp cinnamon powder
1/2 tsp all spice powder
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup diced dry apricot
2/3 cup toasted and crushed walnut
1 tbsp cream sherry
Beat butter with sugar until smooth, mix in rest of the filling ingrediants and set aside while the dough was proofing.
Roll out the dough into a square and spread on the filling mixture.
Tie up into a knot and leave on the baking tray to proof.
Brush on egg wash
and bake....
I have been cooking a lot of Italian food, or Italian influenced food.
Our family love Italian food, especially children, and we have a lot of Italian families around us. When we get to another birthday party - the friends of our children, we get more Italian food and get more Italian recipes.
And some of them have been accepted by the Italians, when hubby brought them to work. Including the Italian Potato Donuts, Cannolis, so I said to hubby, time to re-visit some of the old time favourites and bring them to work, see if the Italians at work will OK them as well...
So, time to do Sfogliatelles. The little pastry wrapped sweets filled with ricotta ...
However, I made an almost fatal mistake, about the timing. Anyway, this is this batch of Sfogliatelles:
I didn't change the pastry dough quantity:
Ingredients
Dough
500g plain flour
50g sugar
1 tsp salt
80g water
80g milk
1 large egg
The dough was mixed, and rested for more than 3 hours, and rolled out and stretched, bit like how I'd do filo pastry, make it thinner and then brush melted butter on each later, roll it up like a long log.
Normally, I'd wrap it up in cling form and rest it for an hour as per original recipe suggests.
However, because I was very tired that night and decided to leave it in the fridge over night, and make the filling the next day.
The Filling:
75g thickened cream
75g milk
60g sugar
50g semolina
150g Ricotta
1 egg yolk
1 whole egg
Zest of 2 lemons
1/3 cup of crushed and roasted walnuts
1/3 cup of raisins
1 vanilla pod, sliced open and seed scrapped out.
Bring the cream, sugar, vanilla and milk to a slow boil and set aside and discard the vanilla pod.
Whisk the egg and the yolk, stir in the warm mixture, return to the small saucepan and add in semolina. Once thickened and smooth, fold in ricotta. Fold in the rest of the ingredients.
And, I found the pastry is too sticky to be moved like how I used to! So instead of the traditional method of cutting into 1cm rings and push out the middle, I roll it out and wrapped the filling like hmm... riviolis.
But they are still quite nice and well accepted by the Italians at hubby's work....
It's an classic dessert, the humble bread and butter pudding, very English, or shall we say, very Australian.
Great for the cool wet days and I happenned to have 3/4 loaf of my normal Eggy Loaf left so before I make another loaf of bread, I decided to use it in a dessert tonight.
Chocolate & Raisin Bread & Butter Pudding
1/2 Cup Raisin
100g dark chocolate (I use 70% cocoa Lindt's)
50g softened Butter - enough to butter all slices of bread
600ml Milk
4 eggs
12 Slices of Bread (it can be white bread, raisin loaf etc)
2 tsp Vanilla Essence
1 tsp cinnamon powder
4 tbsp raw sugar
2 tbsp rum
1 tbsp golden syrup
Method:
Grease an Oven dish (mine is oval, 18cm X 25cms).
Remove crust, butter both sides of bread, lay one layer at the bottom of the dish.
Layer with dark chocolate squares and raisins.
Lay the rest of bread covering the chocolate and raisins layer.
Whisk eggs, whisk in sugar and mix very well, add milk, rum, vanilla essence and cinnamon powder.
Pour over bread and drizzle the golden syrup on top.
Bake in pre-heated oven - 180C for 45 min or till golden.
Serve with Vanilla Icecream....
Although I love my wholemeal sourdoughs, hubby's not a big fan, and we do need different breads... He's got super sweet tooth so I normally make him something sweet for his brekky.
This is one of his favourite bread:
Cinnamon Raisin Loaf
• 380g Strong Bread flour
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp instant dried yeast
• 1 cup milk
• 2 tbsp raw sugar
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 whole egg lightly beaten
• 50g softened butter
• 1 cup raisins
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp all spice
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
Method
Mix flour salt, all spice, cinnamon and half of raw sugar and brown sugar.
Heat milk to moderate temperature, lukewarm, add half of raw sugar and yeast, and stand for 10-15 minutes till frothy.
Rub softened butter into the flour mix, until it resembles bread crumb and add vanilla essence and egg.
Add yeast mixture and egg, and add mix to a rough dough.
Add raisins and knead. It’s better to knead 6 minutes rest the dough for 30 minutes – and repeat the process for 6 times, until it’s smooth elastic and not sticky to hand.
Leave dough in a clean lightly greased pot and cover to proof till double the size.
Cut dough in 5 different portions and roll up to smooth rolls, set in a greased tin, proof till full size.
Brush on egg wash.
Bake in 190C oven for 30 minutes.
