Let’s face it: Easter just isn’t Easter without hot cross buns.

And chocolate.

But mostly hot cross buns.

If you’re feeling a bit daunted by the whole prospect of making your own, don’t be. Let Auntie English Mum guide you through the whole process.  Think of me as a little friend hovering at your shoulder in the kitchen.  Actually don’t.  That’s a bit creepy.

Anyhoo, it’s really easy (with a bit of waiting around), and the gorgeous scent of these spicy orangey wonders fills the whole house.  So let’s get cracking.

You’ll need:

150ml milk

150ml water

Zest of 1 orange

50g butter

450g strong white bread  flour

1 tbsp mixed spice

1 tsp salt

75g sugar

1 x 7g sachet dried yeast

100g sultanas (or mixed peel if you must – bleurgh)

For the cross:

2 tbsp flour

1 tsp caster sugar

For the glaze:

1 tbsp orange marmalade, rindless or sieved

Step one:

Before you start, assemble and weigh out your ingredients.  This will save you time and prevent any flapping half way through the recipe.

So in a small saucepan (or jug if you’re doing it in the microwave) warm the milk, water, orange zest (use the finest grater you have) and butter until the butter is just melted, then turn off the heat.  Let it cool so that when you stick your finger in, it feels like blood temperature.

Step two:

While the liquid is cooling, sieve the flour and ground mixed spice together into a large bowl.  Next, stir in the salt, sugar, dried yeast and sultanas (have a quick pick over to make sure there are no stalks left).

Step three:

If you’ve got a mixer,  pop in all the dry ingredients, then set it on low and slowly pour in the milky mixture until the dough comes together (you might not need all of it so go steady), then plug in the dough hook and set it to knead for a good five minutes.

If you’re old-fashionedy or are still waiting to meet the mixer of your dreams (they do actually come out nicer and lighter if you knead them by hand), you’ll have to get to it for at least ten minutes.  Yes, I know, sorry, but it’s true.  Knead away, holding the dough lightly with one hand while you stretch it away from you with the other, before bringing it together and repeating the process.  The sultanas keep trying to escape, but grab any of the little blighters trying to make a quick getaway and poke them back in. Keep going until the dough is nice and springy and firm (think the texture of a boob, or possibly a bottom cheek – poke your finger in – if the dough springs back, then it’s done – if not, knead a bit more).  Disclaimer: possibly best if you don’t actually do this with people’s boobs.

Step four:

When your dough is sufficiently springy, leave it covered with a clean tea towel in a warm place until it’s doubled in size.   Then, just knock it back with your fist and cut it in half, then half again and half again.  Form each of your 8 pieces into a ball and place them on a floured baking tray.  Cover and rise again until they’re puffed up.

Step five:

If you want to add the cross, then mix about 2 tbsp flour, a tsp of caster sugar and enough water to make into a thick paste and either just dribble it with a teaspoon, or pipe it onto your buns (ooer Missus) with a disposable piping bag.  Or, you can cut a cross in the top of the buns and pipe the cross into the little lines.  Totally up to you.

Step six:

Bake for about 15-20 minutes at 180/gas 6 until they sound hollow when patted on the bottom.  Finally, when they’re just out of the oven,  warm up the marmalade with a splash of water and brush it on for extra glossy stickiness (use rindless here – you don’t want bits of peel sticking to your buns). If you’re going to freeze them, slice them in half first so they can go straight in the toaster.

And that’s it.  Congratulations, you are a master bun maker.  Go you!

I do make my own bread, but it tends to be a batch of sticky iced buns if I’m feeling like a baking session, or an easy Irish soda bread on a Sunday morning, so when I was asked to review Bread Revolution I was really interested.

Duncan and Patrick own The Thoughtful Bread Company in Bath and really want to encourage us all to bake (or at least buy) proper bread.  There are all sorts of wonderful recipes (don’t miss the Cider and Apple Bread), and great step-by-step guides to mixing, kneading, shaping, etc, plus loads of interesting stuff about ingredients.  The one that fascinated me, though, was the sourdough.  Basically, you make a sourdough ‘starter’, which ferments and becomes your very own living, breathing yeasty friend who lives in the fridge.

Ours was called Fluffy (someone on Twitter told me to give it a name – apparently this helps you ‘bond’).  It’s relatively easy to make (a mix of live yogurt, skimmed milk and bread flour), but you do have to remember to feed it, otherwise it dies.  We had a little wobble when I opened up mine to find mould all up the side of the tub, but I managed to rescue it, and with a new, sterilised pot, Fluffy thrived.  The boys (find them on Twitter @thoughtfulbread) were really helpful, and shared my immense pleasure and pride when my very first sourdough loaf came out of the oven.

Seriously, I don’t think there are many things quite as satisfying as baking your own bread, and having Fluffy in the fridge ready to go whenever I want to bake makes me more determined than ever to keep going.  That, and the chewy-crusted, soft-doughed gorgeousness that is a fresh-from-the-oven sourdough loaf.

What a wonderful book.

Bread Revolution is out 1st March priced £10.59 on Amazon.  Here’s a vid of the boys in action:

Lovely Helen, our judge and resident wino (sorry, wine expert) had a terrible time picking a winner, but eventually decided on the one she’d most like to scoff (perfect way to choose, I reckon), which was…

Mari’s amazingly squishy chocolate, mascarpone and raspberry tarts.

Congratulations, Mari, because not only have you got two of these beautiful pink fizzy babies winging your way from the fabulously generous Jacob’s Creek, but two extra ‘secret squirrel’ wines not on general release!

Special mention from Helen went to Iris’ blackberry mascarpone macaroons, Laura’s chocolate whoopie pies and Helen from Icklebabes’ gorgeous caramel banana French toast, oh, and Yvonne from Hey Pesto!’s ‘heart’s desire’ cake too…. along with ‘anything with a small child in the photo’.

Thanks so much to everyone who entered, big squishes and snogs to our lovely judge, Helen, who was steadfast in the face of much crawling and flattering, and many thanks also to Jacob’s Creek for their generosity.  Thanks all!

So the weekend was somewhat traumatic.  I won’t fill you in on all the events, but needless to say being trapped in a packed train carriage all the way from Shepherds Bush while the three teenagers I was escorting serenaded their fellow commuters with loud renditions of My Horse is Amazing (seriously – don’t bother watching it, it’s that bad) and then being politely told that we were, in fact, accidentally in the first class carriage, shall remain with me for a long time and was one of the lesser traumatising events of the weekend.  Read out of that what you will.

Anyhoo.  In other news, I’m still on the lookout for a lovely breakfasty-type recipe that’s also quite healthy (I know, I know… giving up alcohol and vowing to eat healthily for the whole of January was a BIG HUGE MISTAKE – I have learned both that I could never be teetotal, and that I can’t live without cake) still, it’s nearly over now).  Yesterday I came across possibly one of the prettiest blogs I’ve ever seen: Eat Yourself Skinny.  It turns out that not only is the blog pretty, but the writer, Kelly, is ridiculously pretty as well.

So I thought, well.  If I eat what she eats, surely I’ll wake up looking exactly like her.

Right?

Oh.

Anyhoo, on to the trial and error.  I noticed that lovely Kelly’s blueberry and lemon bread was adapted from  Joy of Baking, so I went back to the original recipe to have a look.  Here’s my version.  I had to change it all from cups, and I decided to use rapeseed oil instead of butter (similar calories, just much better for you).  The result was yummy, although the inside of the cake was a bit too stodgy, presumably because beating the butter and sugar together introduces air into the mixture.  So I say stick with butter (the calories are the same).  I will say, though, that cutting it into the recommended 12 portions proved to be too much of a challenge.  Still, if you do manage it, you’ll be pleased to know that it’s just 159 calories a slice (might be better to cut it into 6 slices, then cut each in half). I also used a sugar substitute to keep the calories down (I know, I know, but honestly you can’t taste the difference).  Lastly, I used a whole punnet of blueberries which is a bit too much.  Stick to 150g.

You will need:

80g butter

6 tbsp granulated sugar substitute (try the new Truvia one – I haven’t been able to get hold of it yet)

2 eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Zest of 1 lemon

225g self raising flour

125ml milk

So preheat the oven to 180/gas 4 and spray a loaf tin with cake release (or butter it very lightly).

Beat the butter in a mixer (or by hand if you’re feeling butch), then add the sugar and beat until the mixture’s really light and fluffy.  Add the eggs, beating between each addition, and then the vanilla extract and lemon zest.

Stir in the flour and then the milk.  Finally, stir in the blueberries

Pop the mixture into the loaf tin and bake for about 50 minutes.  Pop a knife tip into the centre to check that it’s done, otherwise leave for a bit longer.

Allow it to cool before slicing into your minute portions.  It really is surprisingly lush though – and the blueberries make it quite jammy and sticky too.  Top tip: freeze your slices (with a piece of greaseproof paper between each one). Then they’re easy to pop into the toaster for a quick and healthy breakfast.

Okay so not exactly science… just baking jiggery pokery really.

First, can I say that I’m not a fan of processed low-fat ANYTHING.  If I’m going to spread butter on my bread it’s going to be butter (Yeo Valley out of preference), and nothing remotely low-fatty or weirdly whipped with water.

Still, it’s the New Year and while I love my cakey buns, I’m determined to shed a few Christmas pounds, and when you’re healthy eating, sometimes the worst thing to get over is a craving for something sweet.  A banana or handful of raisins will often do the trick, but let’s face it, you can’t beat cake.  The worst thing about cake is, well, everything really – fat, sugar and refined white flour are possibly the things that most of us are trying to avoid.

Enter stage left, the well-loved but often under-appreciated Mr Muffin.  He’s smaller, more portable and, in lower-fat baking terms, easier to keep moist.  Bless him.

So what’s the difference between a muffin and a cupcake (or fairy cake)?  Well, I’d say a muffin is more breakfasty and bready, and a cupcake is more, well, cakey.  Also I find that muffin recipes tend to contain oil, while cupcakes are more buttery, and more often than not are iced too.  But hey, a cake is a cake is a cake, right?  HOWEVER.  There are substitutes you can make in baking, and it IS possible to make a healthier version.  So let’s attack these babies one at a time, shall we?

FAT

Fat plays an important part in a cake recipe.  Butter, for a start, adds flavour, but more than that (and without getting too technical) it’s essential for lightness, as it plays a part in holding the air bubbles you’ve produced (by whisking the eggs and adding stuff like baking powder) and keeps the cake soft by ‘wrapping’ itself around the protein in the flour.

So. You can’t get rid of it completely, therefore use it wisely and make sure the fat you do use is good for you.  Rapeseed oil is excellent (I’ve talked about it before here).  You can, however, cut it down and replace some of it with other moist ingredients like fruit (apple purée or mashed banana, prunes, squished peaches…) or low-fat dairy like yoghurt and creme fraiche.  Yes, you’ll reduce the lightness a little bit, but you can get away with it.

SUGAR

Sugar obviously adds flavour (and again, without getting too technical, it inhibits gluten development, which, when allowed to run rampant can make cakes and biscuits a bit hard) and it also helps with browning.  If you’re using fruit as a substitute fat, this can help with sweetness too, and it can help with browning as cutting down sugar can sometimes make cakes look a bit insipid.  Honey can help here as it’s much better for us and has natural sweetness.

REFINED FLOUR

If you’re reducing fat and sugar, you’re going to give yourself the problem of toughness (remember the protein ‘wrapping’ and gluten development I mentioned above?  This is why an awful lot of low-fat foods have TONS of sugar in – it’s not just flavour, it’s about a tender end result as well).  So what else can we do?  Well, we can reduce the gluten in the first place, by replacing some of it with things like oats, which are much lower in gluten-producing proteins.  You can also experiment with low-gluten flours like rye flour.  Wholemeal flour is obviously a healthier option too and should contain less gluten (although I’m being cautious here, as this isn’t always the case).

Other tips for low-fat baking:

So now I’ve bored you to death with all this talk of gluten and ‘wrapping’, here are a couple of other things to consider:

Experiment.  You might love a recipe made with peach purée but hate mashed banana.  You might find that a recipe is too tough, but taking away a little flour and adding another handful of oats can make a terrific difference.  Have a play.  The only thing you’ll lose is the odd cake or batch of muffins (which will probably still be nice enough to eat anyway).

Try just cutting the fat down on a normal recipe.  You can often eliminate a third or even half the amount of butter without doing that much damage to the finished cake (trust me).

Lessen cooking times to retain moisture – with lower fat baking, you might find your cakes need less time in the oven.  This is often why muffins are better than cakes – they require much less oven time.

Remember the GMR.  The Golden Muffin Rule is most applicable when healthy baking – stir ONLY as much as necessary.  Working the mixture will develop the gluten and toughen up your end result.

If you find your recipe is a bit dense, try beating the egg whites and folding them into the mixture.

And finally, DON’T ever bother cooking with low-fat butter or margarine type thingies.  They are the spawn of the devil and should be avoided at all costs. Bleurgh.

So here’s my recipe for healthier muffins.  They’re not sweet, delicate little cupcakes, but for a healthy breakfast, they’re pretty unbeatable.  Try stirring through a handful of blueberries or some raisins too:

Banana, oat and honey healthy muffins

So…preheat your oven to gas 4/180.  Pop paper cases into a 12 hole muffin tin.

First combine your wet ingredients:

1 large egg

120g low fat yoghurt

120g milk

2 tablespoons rapeseed oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 large or 2 small bananas, mashed

1 or 2 tbsp honey

Then get all the dry ingredients ready in another bowl:

50g porridge oats

100g golden caster sugar

60g wholemeal flour

150g plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp baking powder

Now, bung the wet into the dry and quickly combine with a fork (remember the GMR – don’t worry if there’s the odd bit of flour left).  Pop a tablespoon of mixture into each muffin case and get them into the oven quickly.

Bake for 15 – 20 minutes (remember, the moister the better).  They won’t keep more than a day or two (in an airtight tin), but they’re a great healthy breakfast or sweet treat to keep you on the straight and narrow, or to shut the kids up when they’re after cakeage and you don’t want them rolling around like fat little barrels.  Oops, a bit non-PC there. Sorry.

A word of warning here, though, if you eat all 12 with three cups of tea, then possibly the ‘healthy’ tag doesn’t apply.

Just saying.

And lo, many moons ago (three years, to be precise) there was a foodie obsessed blogger who thought it would be really nice to get lots of pictures together from all the other foodie obsessed people out there and have a bit of a ‘look what I made!’ type get together.  And it’s grown to this – the wonderful Big Christmas Bakeoff.

Thanks so, so much if you entered this year.  Every single entry is amazing – some are technically brilliant, some are made with love by very small people… but all are fabulous in their own way.

The winners will be announced at the bottom of this post as soon as I can track down the chief judge, English Grandma.

The main winner will receive brand spanking new copies of both Jo Pratt’s books: In the mood for entertaining and In the mood for food, along with a load of other goodies like Leisure tea towels and oven gloves from Leisure Range Cookers, and FIVE lucky little bakers will win a Jingle the husky Story Buddy, complete with their very own storybook. Mahoosive thank you to both Leisure and   www.hallmark.co.uk for being so generous with the prizes.

So feast your eyes, then, and I’ll be back soon to tell you all about the winners!

AND IT’S OVER TO ENGLISH GRANDMA WITH THE RESULTS!….

The winner is Chelsea Mamma’s Baileys Cheesecake

Christmas biscuits by Cari’s 3 year old [so love that angel - with wings!]

Chocolate yule log from Marie & twins [yummmmm]

Carol & BG’s Christmas biscuits [so pretty]

Cass’ daughter’s gingerbread house [clever]

Nessa and family’s chocolate marshmallow brown sugar fudge [need you ask?]

Well done everyone!  Get in touch and we’ll get your prizes to you asap  And thanks to my fab sponsors and my wonderful Mum too!

I’m not completely sure where I first saw this recipe.  Rest assured it wasn’t my idea – I’m thinking maybe Martha Stewart or somewhere like that?

Anyhoo, if you’re entertaining on bonfire night, these little beauties are a great talking point.  If you don’t fancy chicken, just fill them with your usual minced beef recipe, or even just squeeze sausagemeat out of the casing to fill them.

The teenagers, you’ll  be delighted to know, took me to task over my original ‘scary’ description in the title, and said that it should be ‘grumpy’ or maybe ‘ugly’, so ugly it is, but if you want to make smiley ones go for it – they’re your pies, after all.

You will need:

3 chicken breasts, cut into small chunks

1 onion, finely chopped

Ham, cut into small chunks

1 tbsp flour

Chicken stock (about 200ml)

Seasoning

Making the filling:

So sauté the onions in a couple of tablespoons of rapeseed oil.  Add in the chicken and fry until it’s lightly browned.  Bung in the ham, then add in a tablespoon of flour, salt and pepper, and about 200ml chicken stock.  Stir well and cook gently for a while, just until the ‘rawness’ of the flour disappears and the sauce looks creamy.  Add in some thyme here if you like. It’s my favourite flavour with chicken.

The pastry:

If you want to make your own pastry, rub 200g of cold butter into 400g of plain flour, then add in 3 or 4 tablespoons of cold water until it just comes together.  If you’d rather buy it, that’s fine too.

Preheat your oven to gas 4/180 degrees.  Roll out your pastry and line a 6 hole yorkshire pudding tin (or individual little pie dishes) with pastry.

Baking blind:

You don’t have to blind bake these, but the bottoms will be crisper and they’ll hold together better.  Up to you.  Scrunch up some squares of greaseproof paper, then smooth out and pop on top of each pastry base – pour in baking beans (I use some old dried haricot beans that I keep especially for blind baking) and bake for about ten minutes.  Then remove the beans and give them another 5 minutes.

Making the pies:

Now roll out the rest of the pastry and cut out your scary faces (I cut round a saucer, then used a piping nozzle for the holes).  Fill generously with the chicken mixture then top with the pies.  A quick pass through the eggy wash department and your ugly faces are ready for the oven.

Bake for about 15/20 minutes until golden.  Pair with mini baked potatoes and maybe some roasted butternut squash soup and you’re good to go.  Have a great bonfire night.  Oh and be careful out there!

So who’s baking what for Halloween (or Hallowe’en) then?  My novelty baking skills are somewhat lacking (as evidenced by the debacle that was the spider cake a while back).  I’ve had a look around and here are some of my faves so far:

Asda’s spooky recipes (especially the skeleton gingerbread men)

Sprinkle Bakes’ frankly fabulous ‘batty’ Battenburg cake

Lovely Jam and Cream’s Hallowe’en cupcakes

Lavender and Lovage’s Halloween owls

Annabel Karmel’s ghostly cakes

New Mummy’s Tips’ spider cupcakes

National Baking Week’s spooky cookies

Maison Cupcake’s fabulous chocolate orange bats

Cherished by Me’s spiderweb cakes

Nessa’s Family Kitchen’s selection of Hallowe’en recipes (love the severed fingers best)

Bat and Ghost cookies from The Party Times

Jules’ amazing beetle cupcakes, plus her new beetle forest gateau

Lovely Helen at Aardvark Cakes’ ghostly gifts

Leave a comment telling me which one you like best (or telling about any Halloween recipes I’ve missed – or just say hello if you like) and you’ll be entered into a draw to win all the Dr Oetker baking goodies!

Dr Oetker are also giving away tickets to Cake 2011 via their Facebook page - you can become a fan here.

THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED – THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR  YOUR ENTRIES!

I used the random number generator and the number produced was 14.  The 14th comment appears to be: Beth!  Congrats Beth – email on its way to you

My Disreputable Dad is back from his holidays.  Bronzed and beautiful.

Two weeks in the south of France. They ate in the same restaurant every night.

‘Every night?’, I ask, incredulous.

‘Well yes’, he says, ‘except one.  Their steak frites was incredible.  We tried another restaurant for one night, but it wasn’t as good, so we went back to the original one’.

He’s a creature of habit, my father.

On my visit, we walked around his beautiful garden.  The plum trees are groaning with hard, green fruit.  A bumper crop.

And the apples got so heavy that they actually broke the bough of the tree.

I left with treasure of the appley variety.

Perfect for rustling up a simple apple crumble:

.

Apple Crumble

500g apple (weigh after peeling and coring)

Sugar for sweetening the fruit

175g plain flour

110g cold butter, cubed

110g golden caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees/gas 5.  Then just tumble the apples into a baking dish and sprinkle on a little sugar (these apples weren’t too sour, but taste one to judge how much sugar you’ll need to add).  If your apples are a bit ‘floury’ (like Bramleys can be sometimes), you might need to add a splash of water or fruit juice.

In a bowl, rub the butter into the flour gently with the ends of your fingers until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs.  Don’t make it too uniform – the odd lump of butter is nice.

Stir in the sugar.  If you like here you can add a handful of porridge oats, some nuts, orange zest, cinnamon… whatever you fancy.

Sprinkle over the fruit and bake for about 30 minutes until the fruit is tender and the top golden.

So thanks Dad.  I’ll be back when the plums ripen too.

So after promising my lovely cousin, Moon and his wife Miska that I’d make cupcake towers for Mattie’s Christening, I’ve been having Laura-like cupcake anxiety dreams for the last week – nightmares about everything from collapsing towers to rock-hard icing have plagued my sleep.  I was almost glad when Saturday arrived and I could stop worrying and get on with it.  Brace yourself, then, a few gazillion photos to follow…

When I’d asked Moon and Miska what they wanted, they said ‘really bright colours’, so I chose base buttercream colours in violet, tangerine, lime and ice blue, topped with flavoured fondant in chocolate, sherbert lemon, fizzy orange and strawberry (not too much pink, obviously).  I spent a nice relaxing couple of days cutting out loads of stars and circles and also made some stars on ‘springs’ made of florist’s wire to dangle over the edge of the towers.

I was a bit disappointed as the fondant dried considerably lighter in colour, but hey, I decorated some of the stars with very dodgy ‘M’s and pearlised white writing icing and sprinkles and was quite pleased with the end result:

I then spent a very sweaty couple of hours in the kitchen baking the vanilla cupcakes, then mixing up the buttercream in batches and blending it with the colouring paste.

After the buttercream icings were completely chilled, I whipped them up again and piped them directly onto the cooled cakes. I did some with traditional swirls, some with little star clusters and a few ‘turds’, as my lovely son nicknamed them.  It started to go slightly wrong at this stage because the kitchen was so hot that the buttercream was starting to melt, so after a quick panic call to my Dad, he arranged for me to get into the venue and we transported all the cakes into their fridge – just in the nick of time.

The next morning I went and decorated all the cakes in situ and I have to say I left for the church feeling really proud of myself.  The buttercream stayed really vibrant, and it didn’t seem to matter than the fondant was slightly lighter in colour:

The actual Christening was wonderful.  Little Matty behaved so well and the Vicar was really lovely:

Everyone was so nice about the cupcakes and I absolutely adored watching this little girl concentrating so hard on choosing which one she’d have:

Matty was an absolute trooper, giving constant smiles and cuddles to everyone…

He showed off his walking:

and even gave his Dad a quick round of applause after his speech:

The hubster popped in to say hi on his way back to work:

And I was so proud of my fellas and my beautiful niece Lu, who were a great laugh and absolutely lovely company:

A special thank you to Helen at Aardvark Cakes for emergency Twitter panic support and her invaluable help and advice.

Also big thank you to Renshaw for the lovely flavoured fondant (my favourite was the lemon sherbet!).  Check out their amazing website: http://www.mybakes.co.uk/

Recipes:

The cupcakes were just basic vanilla sponges made in batches of 6 eggs (weighed in their shells), then equal weights of butter, caster sugar and self-raising flour.  Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then beat in the eggs a little at a time.  Add 2tsp vanilla extract and then stir in the self-raising flour. Spoon into 24 muffin cases (1tbsp mixture into each) then bake at 180/gas 4 for about 20 mins.  NB: if you add a tray of water into the bottom of the oven, the cupcakes stay nice and flat on top.

The buttercream was 500g butter and 1kg icing sugar (per 24).  Cream the butter then gently add in the icing sugar and a splosh of milk and beat until soft and fluffy.  Add in about 1/2 tsp of colouring paste (use less for pastel colours), beat again, then refrigerate. Before piping, whip until soft.