Doughnuts

A while ago I was feeling the need for lots of sweet things, and as we know most cakes/pastries/desserts are a no-go if you need gluten free. It was the September issue of delicious magazine that caught my eye. I was actually fancying a go at making doughnuts, then the magazine came out with mini doughnuts on the cover! After a quick look through the recipe I thought I'd give it a go, substituting the strong white bread flour, for Doves Farm gluten-free bread flour to see how it would go.
The recipe was easy to follow, but for just two of us there seemed to be a lot. This is an issue I have with the yeast sachets rather than the recipe though. I couldn't accurately halve the yeast to reduce the quantity, so I made the full amount.
I made mini doughnuts rather than full sized and half dusted with sugar and half dusted with cinnamon sugar, and both were delicious, especially when still warm. I didn't attempt to pipe the jam into the doughnuts as I thought it would be rather fiddly.
One thing I did notice was that they seemed to go stale quite quickly, whether this is because they're best eaten straight away, or something to do with the flour, but halved, with a bit of whipped cream and jam in the middle, this wasn't a problem!

Recipe (taken straight from delicious magazine)

200g strong white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
50g chilled unsalted butter, diced
7g sachet dried fast action yeast
4 tbsp caster sugar
1 medium egg, beaten
100ml whole milk, heated to lukewarm
Sunflower oil for deep frying, plus extra for greasing the bowl
4 tbsp raspberry jam

1. Sift the flour and a pinch of salt into a large bowl, then rub in the butter with your fingertips. Stir through the yeast and 1 tbsp of the sugar, then make a well in the centre. Mix the egg with the lukewarm milk and pour into the well. Mix quickly and bring together to make a soft dough.

2. Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for  minutes or until silky smooth. Put in a very lightly greased bowl, cover with cling film and leave in a warm place for 1 hour or until doubled in size.

3. Dived the dough into 12 evenly sized pieces and shape these into smooth balls. Do this by pinching the dough on top, rolling the bottom on a smooth surface, then turning them over so the pinch is on the bottom. Place them, spaced well apart, on a baking tray lined with baking paper, then loosely cover with a sheet of greased cling film. Leave for 45 minutes in a warm place until doubled in size again.

4. Heat the sunflower oil in a large deep pan to a temperature of 190C. Carefully lower the doughnuts into the hot oil using a slotted spoon, in batches of 2 or 3. Fry for 30 seconds on each side until golden and cooked through. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper.

5. While the doughnuts are still warm, spoon the jam into a disposable piping bag or sheet of baking paper rolled into a cone. Make a little slit in the side of each doughnut with the tip of a small sharp knife, then squeeze a little jam into the centre.
6. Roll the jam-filled doughnuts gently in the remaining caster sugar to coat them completely or dust well using a dredger. Serve warm or allow to cool.

How Nana used to make

For a while now, I’ve been searching for a raspberry bun recipe to recreate one of the treats that my Nana used to make. My Nana and Grandad had a set of cake tins which stacked on top of each other, each housing a different home made treat, whether it was rock buns, raspberry buns, or what we called “pasty jam cake cakes”. Of all of those it was the raspberry buns which has stuck in my head. The texture was crumbly, but not too dry, and each was dusted with sugar to give a lovely crust. There was always just enough raspberry jam on the inside, and we were always warned about eating them when they were too hot as the jam could burn your mouth.

I tried asking my Mum about the recipe, and she thought my Nana could have used a rock bun recipe, but wasn’t sure. I do remember making them, and the dough was pliable and you could easily wrap it round the jam to seal it in, and to me, a rock bun recipe wouldn’t do this. Via the internet I found a recipe which could work – and set about it with the hope of creating Nana’s raspberry buns.

Taken straight from the fantastic blog The English Kitchen:

225g of self raising flour (a scant 2 cups)

1 tsp baking powder
75g of butter (a scant 1/3 cup)
75g of caster sugar (a scant 1/2 cup)
1 large free range egg, lightly beaten
a little milk
raspberry jam

To glaze:
a little extra milk
a little extra sugar

Preheat the oven to 180*C/350*F/ gas mark 4. Butter a large baking tray. Set aside.

Sift the flour and baking powder into a bowl. Drop in the butter and then rub it into the flour mixture with your fingertips, rubbing until the mixture resembles dry bread crumbs. Stir in the sugar. Beat the egg and stir it into the flour mixture with a fork, along with just enough milk to make a soft dough. Divide the dough into 12 equal pieces and roll each into a ball. Flatten the ball and place a dab of jam in the middle of each. Bring the edges of the dough up around the jam to cover it completely enclosing it. Flatten slightly and place 2 inches apart on the baking sheet. Brush each with a bit of milk and sprinkle with more sugar.
Bake in the heated oven for 15 to 20 minutes until golden brown. Scoop off onto a wire rack to cool. Cool completely before tucking in as hot jam can really give you a nasty burn!

One of Tim’s memories was of cornflake crispy cakes that his Grandma would make. Since moving house, and re-discovering all the cooking books we have my attention was turned towards a rather battered copy of the Ladybird publication We Can Cook for something similar. I used to make a few things from this book all the time years ago, but mainly an adapted version of their “Golden Crunchies”. This was adapted by adding chocolate. This gave the resulting cakes a different, gooey texture than the normal chocolate crispy cake type things.

I’d made a batch recently when Tim asked if the next time I made them I could also include desiccated coconut since that was how his Grandma made them.

1 rounded tbsp sugar

2 cups cornflakes (or enough until the mixture looks right!)

25g margarine/butter

2 rounded tbsp golden syrup

100g milk chocolate

1 heaped tbsp desiccated coconut

Melt the margarine/butter in a pan with the sugar, syrup and chocolate.

Mix in the coconut then stir the chocolaty mixture through the cornflakes. Divide into paper cake cases.

Both the resulting cakes were how we remember them. The raspberry buns were the correct flavour  (thanks English Kitchen!), although the texture was a little more dry then I remember (possible gluten-free flour), and the crispy cakes were spot on it seems.

This got me thinking that all these recipes and ways of cooking need to be written down somewhere. Our Grandparents are no longer here to ask, as these things are all memories from our childhoods, which might have bypassed a generation of our parents.

I will be looking out for one of those stack-able cake tins, asking cousins and my Mum about things they remember Nana and Grandad making, and the next thing to try making (and to blog) is those pastry jam cake cakes! Yum!

Summertime Cake

The title of this post should really read experimental summertime cake.
It was experimental for a few reasons;
a) Gluten-free flour was used in a standard recipe, although using Doves Farm Self Raising has worked well in the past;
b) We have just moved house, to a house with a lovely new kitchen complete with a fan oven. My only use of a fan oven was at school for part of either GCSE or A-Level Home Economics. We were experimenting with different sugars (Sugar subsitute Canderel, Fructose and normal sugar) and their reactions in a standard fairy cake recipe. Everything was prepared and cooked in the same way, but my left over mixture went into bun cases in the teacher's fan oven. The result was black-crusted buns, with runny centres. Not the greatest influence a fan oven could have had on me! The rest of the experiment went well - in the normal oven!
c) It was a large-ish recipe and I normally split the batter into two tins, but I thought I'd cook it altogether and slice it afterwards.

After various pieces of advice about how to cook with a fan oven, I thought I'd might as well give it a go. Some people said to reduce the temperature and cook as normal, and others said to cook for less time. I even referred to the oven manual, which did give some time and temperature indications for different things. But I couldn't decide if my normal victoria sandwich cake should be classes as Chocolate Cake or Risen Cake. Plus the manual indicated timings and temperature by weight, but there was no idication what the weight measurement actually was! So I thought, I'd go the for normal temperature, and keep an eye on it.
Plus my other frames of reference for most things basic yet culinary, the Leith's Techniques Bible or the Dairy Book of Home Cookery (were fan ovens around when that was written?) were packed away in a box somewhere waiting for the shelves to be put up.

Basic recipe:
150g Sugar
150g butter
3 eggs
150g self raising flour (sieved)

Filling:
Mascarpone
Double cream
Strawberries and blackberries

1. Cream the butter and sugar together.
2. Add the beaten eggs with a little of the flour, and beat in.
3. Stir in the remaining flour until combined.


Anyway, once made, the cake went in. And I kept an eye on it. It went in at around 180C, which is about Gas 4. I usually cook cakes for around 20 mins at Gas 4 so with the excellent oven timer (also new to us in this house). I then prodded it a bit, it seemed to be cooked, but then started to sag in the middle. So I put it back for a little longer - about 10 minutes more. After that time it seemed cooked, was a little more browned and the edges had become crumbley.

The cake was then cooled thoroughly and I attempted to slice it. It kind of worked, but the two pieces definitley were not even. But in my defense, since it sagged in the middle, the slicing would always be a little dodgy.
I filled it with the mixture of mascarpone, whipped cream, and summer fruits of strawberries and balckberries and the same on top. Admittedly these were all shop bought - we are hoping to go to a pick your own or foraging at some point soon.
The cake itself was rather dense and a little dry, almost like a shortcake texture. I don't think this was entirely down to the gluten-free flour, probably to do with the baking time and temperature. But the rich cream and sharp fruit balanced the dryness and made it feel it more like desert rather than cake. Lovely.

Thankfully now the cooking books have been unpacked and there will be more experimental baking until I get used to this oven.

Coffee Cake

This is my first proper attempt at a gluten free cake, and in fact at gluten free baking. Actually it is cheating a bit since I used Doves Farm gluten free self raising flour. I have been reading Gluten-free Girl and the Seriously Good! Gluten Free Baking book by Phil Vickery and realise that the real science and skill is in the blending of the various flours for each particular dish, whether it be for a cake, biscuits, muffins etc. Thankfully Doves Farm have done the hard work for me on this occasion. I do want to try some of Shauna's recipes from her book as well as some of the Phil Vickery ones, but I'll use up my pre-blends first.

Coffee Cake:
6oz sugar
6oz butter
3 large eggs, beaten
6oz Doves Farm gluten free self raising flour
15ml strong coffee

Icing:
Mixed chopped nuts
Butter
Icing Sugar
Strong coffee

1. Cream together the butter and sugar - ideally until pale.
2. Mix in the beaten eggs, a little at a time, adding a tablespoon of flour if it curdles.
3. Sieve in the flour and stir through gently.
4. Add enough of the coffee to get the flavour balance. I found this to be around 15ml.
5. Divide into 2 cake tins (I used silicone cake tins - just as I'm too lazy to grease the metal tins) and bake for 20-25 mins at 180C or until evenly cooked. Test with a metal skewer - if it comes out clean, the cake is ready, if not cook for a further 5 mins.

Icing:
Combine enough butter, icing sugar and coffee, tasting as you go to make the amount of icing you need. Spread between the cake layers and over the top and decorate with the chopped nuts.
The icing measurements are intentionally vague, it depends how sweet your tooth is so to speak, and how thick you want your icing. I was actually far more stingy than I have been previously, as eating mainly icing is a bit much!

The cake turned out surprisingly light and moist. I was expecting it to be rather dry as some gluten free baked goods can be. We didn't keep the cake for long enough really to see how stale and dry it got, as it was just so lovely! After about 3 days, it clearly was still edible!