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.

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!

Experimental desserts

This is a recipe, or combination of recipes that we made some time ago, when the parents came over for dinner. In fact, it was the same night as the Tomato Consomme.


Dinner with the parents

 The inspiration for this dish came from a very memorable meal that I had year ago at the stunning Three Chimneys restaurant on the Isle of Skye. I won't go on about the meal and experience there too much, as it was years ago, and in a previous life, but if anyone ever gets the chance to go, or even if you're on a visit to Skye, then seriously, really do try to get there.

The dessert that I had there was listed on the menu as "Marinated Fresh Pineapple with Passion fruit Jelly, Coconut Ice Cream, Rosemary Sorbet & Cardamom Biscuit". A real mix and explosion of flavours and it was the Rosemary sorbet that stuck out for me. It was unlike anything I had ever tasted, it was sweet yet had the fragrance, taste and almost the feeling of the rosemary which you would normally associate with savoury dishes. I had bought their recipe book from the restaurant itself, and was told by the waitress that if the recipe for the sorbet wasn't in there, just to email and they should be able to send it to me. The sorbet recipe wasn't in, and so I sent the email. I received a reply rather quickly from Sarah and the team at the restaurant thanking me for the visit and complimentary comments, and letting me know exactly how they made it. Hurrah!

Anyway, I decided to try and re-create elements of the dessert at home, and with the added bonus of having an ice cream maker, I was really looking forward to re-trying the rosemary sorbet.
To re-create the whole thing would be way to complex for me, so I decided on the coconut ice cream, marinated pineapple, a gluten-free experimental tuille biscuit and the rosemary sorbet.

I couldn't remember exactly what the pineapple was marinated in at the restaurant, apart from a small amount of fresh chilli, so I went with a mixture of Lime juice, orange juice and chilli. I used the juice of one lime, and one orange and a whole chilli, de-seeded and finely chopped.



Pineapple marinating

 The recipe for the coconut ice cream was adapted from here, mainly because a lot of other recipes had what seemed to be crazy ingredients. I used sweetened desiccated coconut rather than just grated coconut, and therefore adjusted the sugar accordingly. It wasn't as successful as I'd hoped as the recipe says to blend the coconut with milk until smooth to start, and this didn't actually work as the coconut and milk mixture just seemed to whizz round rather than blend. This gave a grainy consistency to the ice cream.

The tuille recipe was from another online source, which I can't find right now, and was almost successful, but by the time of serving they had gone soggy, and were rather more like super-thin cakes rather than biscuits. This could have been because I hadn't let them cool completely before putting them in a box, or maybe something to do with the gluten free flour, I don't know, but I am no pastry chef. Clearly.

Anyway, the main event. The sorbet.

The recipe is as follows

6 sticks of rosemary
Grated rind & juice of 1 lemon
500g sugar syrup (450g sugar+ 1pint water)
250ml water
250ml dry white wine

Bring syrup, water, rosemary & lemon rind to boil, remove from heat, add
white wine, cool, then add lemon to taste.
Strain, to remove rosemary then churn in an ice cream maker.
I thought this was great. Very reminiscent of my outing in Scotland. I think I perhaps used too much Rosemary as we do have a very well established Rosemary bush in the garden, and I did choose a couple of very bushy stalks. Next time I will use less for a more subtle flavour. This almost tasted like ginger, which seemed very odd, but when people didn't know what it was their first guess was ginger. Maybe this is a flavour combination or substitute we should consider further.

Experimental desserts

The dessert itself did seem a bit out-there for us, and more like a collection of ideas on a plate. At the Three Chimneys everything is clearly more refined and more thought out, and this was my rough attempt at something vaguely similar.  One thing we did think about the sorbet is that it needs to be with something, and not by itself. It is too much, and rather too odd to be eaten as a dessert alone. The pineapple and the coconut ice cream were both very good and went down really well, perhaps the sorbet should only be served in more refined places than our kitchen! It has inspired me to think about other experimental type ideas in the world of sorbets and ice creams.

Manchester Food and Drink Festival and Lemon Chilli Tart

Window Grow stand at the Manchester Chilli Lovers' Fair

Last Friday saw a very wet start to the Manchester Food and Drink Festival. We had planned to go into town and see what was on, and after studying the program we found out that the "Manchester Chilli Lovers' Fair" would be on in Albert Square. After splashing through the rain to Albert Square we found various tents and stands up, along with a stage which was to showcase the Chilli Eating Competition. Something which neither of us were particularly interested in. Maybe we're party-poopers, but we like chilli because of the flavour and kick it gives dishes, not because of how entertaining it is to eat so many your mouth hurts, or because eating the hottest thing possible would impress your friends. (Which it wouldn't by the way!)

The trade stands which were there were various different producers of chilli products, sauces, pickles, spices, plants, and even pastas. There was one particular stand, Window Grow, was selling self-watering growers, and they had samples of the various chillis which could be grown. We were chatting to the traders about their product as I've tried, and as yet, failed to grow chillis from seed this year, but I will not give  up, and as we were doing so noticed the Lemon Drop Chilli. 

This was familiar to us as a while ago, after reading Alex Rushmer's blog we had bought some Lemon Drop Sauce from the Cambridge Chilli Farm and attempted his Lemon and Chilli Tart.   

We ended up buying a few chilli pickles and sauces and headed off to find something more substantial than the samples to eat.

Anyway, our visit to the Chilli Fair inspired us to try the tart again. Recipe here.

  

Alex Rushmer's Lemon and Chilli Tart
(Not even half as pretty as Alex's but still tasted good!)

I was a bit panicked about the whole whisking eggs over simmering water thing, but everything worked how Alex described, and I did know when it was ready! I used gluten free flour for the pastry, which made it very crumbly, and almost disastrous, but that's just me getting used to how the flour works. We added more chilli sauce to the filling than in the recipe, which at the time seemed a good idea, but now seems a little too much heat, and probably not what he was getting at for the overall flavour. But still, we love the way that the tangyness of the lemon comes through first, then you're left with the slight heat, no warmth actually, in your mouth. Lovely. We served it with some homemade coconut ice cream.

P.S. We noticed that the number of eggs for the filling had been missed out from the recipe on Alex's new website, but he very kindly let us know, via twitter, that it should have 3 eggs. Thanks Alex!