Easter Treats - Spiced Honey Buttermilk Buns

We have a few very strong holiday food traditions in my family. Firstly, we have Christmas Biscuits. These are a traditional Estonian biscuit, sort of like gingerbread but soooo much better! They are a heavily guarded family secret recipe. And you are only allowed to make and eat them at Christmas (much to my husband’s dismay!)

And for Easter, we have Pasha. Pasha is a sweet lemon and vanilla cream cheese, designed to go on sweet yeast breads, such as Hot Cross Buns. It is a smooth and airy cream cheese, made by whipping a few types of cream cheese together, and adding the flavouring ingredients. The lemon makes it feel light and moreish, but it is so creamy and decadent still.

These buns here are the perfect base for Pasha, if you don’t want to go the Hot Cross Bun route. They are lightly spiced, soft and slightly sweet. They go equally well slathered in butter and jam. Or jam and cream. Or honey and ricotta. Or my Chocolate Halva Spread. You know, if you don’t have a secret family recipe for Pasha. Eat them warm, straight from the oven (after allowing to cool enough to handle!), or halve and toast them like you would a hot cross bun.

These buns are barely adapted from the Honey Buttermilk bread on Local Milk. I’ve merely added spices to make them more festive, and swapped out some of the flour for Rye Flour. I love rye bread, and I love the extra nutty/sweet flavour dimension it gives these buns. I also lazily use my KitchenAid to do all the kneading.

I find this dough is also good to leave the second rise overnight, and you can bake them fresh for the morning. Simple form the buns, then loosely cover with plastic wrap. Place in the fridge overnight. In the morning, remove the plastic wrap, brush with egg and place in the oven while it’s heating up. They will still take around 40 minutes from when your oven reaches temperature, but if they start to get too brown before they’re ready, cover the tray with foil for the last 10 minutes or so.

Enjoy! Happy Easter!

Spiced Honey Buttermilk Buns

(adapted from Local Milk)
(makes 12 small buns)

¼ cup warm water

1 tsp sugar

2 ¼ tsp yeast

1 ½ cups buttermilk

1/3 cup honey

3 tbsp butter

1 tsp salt

1 ½ cups rye flour

3 cups plain flour

1 ½ tsp ground ginger

2 tsp ground cinnamon

¼ tsp cloves

¼ tsp nutmeg

1 egg, lightly beaten for brushing

Mix the warm water with the sugar and add the yeast. Set aside to get frothy for 10 minutes.

In the bowl of your standmixer, mix together the two flours, spices and salt.

In a saucepan over a low heat, melt the butter, then add the honey and buttermilk. Keep over the heat until the buttermilk is warm. Not hot, else the buttermilk will separate, just warm. Take off the heat and stir through the yeast mixture.

Pour the buttermilk mix into the flour and, with the dough hook attached, start kneading into a dough. Leave it kneading for 5-10 minutes, adding extra plain flour 1 tbsp at a time if the dough is sticky. It’s ready when it forms a firm ball.

Grease a large bowl lightly, and place the dough in. Turn to coat the other side with oil too, then drape a clean tea towel over it and leave it in a warm place to rise for 1 ½ - 2 hours, or until doubled in size.

Grease a lamington tray. When the dough has doubled, punch down to remove the air. Divide into two equal balls. Re-cover half of the dough, and divide the other half into 6 equal balls. Roll into neat balls between your palms and place in the tray, spacing them a little. Do the same with the second half of dough.

Set aside to rise again, this time for 40 minutes or so, until doubled. They’ll probably all be touching now. That’s good. Brush with egg.

Heat the oven to 170C and bake for 40 minutes, or until toasty and golden on top, and hollow sounding when you tap the bottom. Allow to cool for a few minutes before slathering with butter, or pasha!

Secret Cake Club (Take Two) - Profiteroles with Camembert Creme Patisserie

So, given that I don't bake a huge amount, I decided to bake a few things to take to the French Secret Cake Club. Just in case my cheesecake was a massive fail. It wasn't, but I still decided to take my back-up dish as well. Having a whole batch of profiteroles in the house just for Lance and I is never the best idea in the world.

My second French dish is an actual French pastry, with a Skamp-twist. Again, I stuck with the cheese theme, and made a Camembert Creme Patisserie to fill my profiteroles. Fragrancing it with a touch of cardamom and drizzling some dark chocolate ganache over the whole affair.

I remember my nanna making choux pastry when I was little. I didn't know back then that it WAS choux pastry, I just remember it being crazy. Pastry, cooked in a pot? What!? Then when it's baked it turns into Chocolate Dog Bones! Or at least, that's what my brother used to call Eclairs. Then when I was in my early twenties the croquembouche as birthday cake and wedding cake really took off in Perth. I know some people were paying $3.50 per profiterole on the cake, and I automatically assumed that must mean that it was difficult to make a profiterole. I know my nanna used to be a great cook, so it made sense that it was something she'd practiced and perfected. Turns out, profiteroles are actually easy. Like, really easy.

The way the pastry is made requires a little elbow grease, but it comes together pretty simply. Boil the water and butter. Stir in the flour. Cool briefly, stir in the eggs. The hardest part is that the eggs won't immediately want to combine, but they do with a bit of stirring. It takes around 5 minutes of stirring with a wooden spoon. The water in the dough does the rest of the work for you, puffing up the balls into lovely airy pillows.

Make the filling first, so it can cool.

Camembert Creme Patisserie

1 3/4 cups milk
3 cardamom pods
80g camembert, rind removed and chopped
3 egg yolks
1/3 cup caster sugar
1/3 cup + 2 tbsps corn flour, sifted

Warm milk and cardamom pods until a simmer, and add the camembert pieces, stirring to melt the cheese. Whisk yolks and sugar together in a bowl. Add the flour and whisk well.

Sieve the milk to remove the pods and any unmelted lumps of cheese. Pour over the egg mix in a thin stream, and whisk to combine.

Return the whole mix to the saucepan over a medium heat and stir for 5 minutes, until mixture thickens. Pour into a glass bowl and cover surface with plastic wrap. Cool in the fridge.

Profiteroles

(makes about 24)

100g butter, softened
1 cup water
1 cup plain flour
4 eggs

Preheat  oven to 200C

Combine butter and water in a large saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat, stirring to melt the butter.

Add the flour in one go. Stir with a wooden spoon to incorporate fully and continue beating mixture until it pulls away from the side of the pan. Remove from heat and set aside to cool 5 - 10 minutes.

One by one, beat the eggs into the mixture. Making sure the first egg is fully incorporated until you add the next.

If you'd like you can pipe the balls, but I just form balls with 2 tablespoons, rolling a bit of dough between the two, then placing on baking paper lined trays. Should make around 24 balls. Sprinkle a bit of water on the trays.

Bake for 15 minutes without opening the door. Then remove, pierce the bottom of each one with a knife or skewer to remove steam. Lower the oven temperature to 170C then bake an additional 5-10 minutes  until golden and dry.

Cool on wire racks before piping the filling in through the hole you made with the knife earlier.

Chocolate Ganache

50mL cream
100g dark chocolate, chopped

Heat the cream in a small pot to a simmer. Take off the heat, and drop the chocolate over the top. Let stand 30 seconds, then stir to a smooth mix. Drizzle over the top of your profiteroles.

Secret Cake Club - Brie Cheesecake

My first foray into cooking was through baking. I used to help mum bake biscuits and cakes all the time when I was little, then when I was old enough, I was off and running doing it by myself. I'd generally work my way through a well-used copy of the Australian Women's Weekly Big Book of Beautiful Biscuits. It remains one of my favourite baking books with simple, no-fail versions of a lot of classic cookies. I have yet to meet a better ANZAC biscuit recipe! As I got older and other things got in the way of baking as a hobby, my cookies skills were stretched in a more 'practical' way and meals have become my focus. But I still love baking, I just don't do it as often. And as such, I haven't experimented as much. I'm more a special occasions baker. Realistically, I'm more of a baked-goods eater, than a baker!

After hearing about the Secret Cake Club, I knew it was something I wanted to get involved in. It was the perfect excuse to get my bake on, and dust off some skills. The theme for the one I scored a place in was French. Now, everything I know about French baking is that it's notoriously 'finicky'...and that it's delicious. People get extremely passionate about their patisseries and I wanted to make something worthy of the theme, and the event. I didn't have time to learn the secrets of a perfect macaron foot. And I didn't want to splurge and buy myself Madeleine or financier trays. And the only French things I've had experience with - souffles and French Toast - are best served immediately (although someone brought a French Toast that was fantastic!)

So, me being me, I thought I'd go a little bit out of the box and bake something "French", rather than a traditional French baked good that I probably wouldn't do justice. So, what's French? For me, that's cheese and wine. Specifically, soft cheeses like Brie and Camembert. And red wine, like a Cab Sauv, or a Burgundy. The idea for a French Cheese French Cheesecake was borne. It just needed a little fleshing out.

One of my other left-field ideas was to use French Lentils as my "Frenchness". I toasted (on a tray in an 165C oven for around 10 minutes) and ground some lentils into flour to experiment with and found they gave a lovely nutty flavour, but made for the crumbliest of biscuits. A little bit of reading informs me that pulse flours need to be used in combination with other flours because of the lack of gluten, and some arrowroot powder will help it 'stick' and bind together. Voila! Perfect. I changed a simple Sables Breton into an even more French Biscuit by adding French Lentils. The cheesecake was bake on top, and the crowning glory comes from Cabernet Sauvignon Caramel Figs. Traditional French? No. Skamp's French? Totally!

French Lentil Sable Breton

makes a 23cm cheesecake -serves 10-12
(adapted from Gourmet Traveller)

240g butter, softened

6 egg yolks

260g caster sugar

1/2 tsp ginger powder

105g french lentil flour

10g arrowroot powder

115g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 165C. Line the bottom of a 23cm springform cake tin with baking powder and lightly grease the tin. 

In a small bowl with a handbeater,beat the butter until very fluffy and pale. This will take around 3 minutes. In a standmixer, whisk the egg yolks until creamy, slowly adding the caster sugar until it's all combined. Beat until this is also very light and fluffy. Add the butter in 3 batches, beating until smooth. Then beat in the ginger.

Turn the beater off, then sift the flours and baking powder over the top, then fold until just combined. Spoon the batter into the tin and smooth down the top. Baked until golden and puffed, around 25 minutes. Set aside to cool completely in the tin.

Brie Cheesecake

350g cream cheese, at room temperature

350g Brie cheese, at room temperature, rind removed.

4 eggs

1/2 cup cream

1/3 cup sugar

Preheat oven to 165C

In a medium bowl with a handbeater, beat the brie until light and fluffy. This will alter in time, depending on the softness of the brie you bought, but it could take a few minutes.

In a standmixer, beat the cream cheese with the sugar until smooth and fluffy. Beat in the brie, then the eggs and cream. Make sure it's well-combined, but don't over beat because the cheese can separate.

Pour the cheesemix over the sable breton base and tap the container on your counter a few times to remove air bubbles.

Fill a roasting tray with boiling water and place it on the bottom rack of the oven. Pop the cheesecake on the middle rack. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until set with a tiny amount of jiggle in the centre.

Set aside to cool to room temperature

Cabernet Sauvignon Caramel Figs

150g sugar

1/4 cup water

2 tbsp Cabernet Sauvignon red wine

1 tsp water

6 figs, sliced into quarters

In a small saucepan, heat the sugar and 1/4 cup of water over medium heat. Stir until the sugar dissolves, then leave it to boil and become a lovely caramel colour. Stir via shaking the handle here and there to keep the liquid moving. And brush any sugar crystals that form down with a wet pastry brush.

When caramel coloured, very carefully add the red wine and extra teaspoon of water. It will fizz and spit at you. Stir through and mix until smooth. Using two forks, drop the fig slices in the caramel, then place on the cake. Drizzle the remaining caramel over the top. You can briefly reheat the caramel over a low heat if it starts getting too solid.

Serve!

Easy Dinner - Chickpea Dutch Baby with Gin and Blood Orange Ratatouille

Have you ever had a dutch baby? It’s not the most common of dishes here in Perth, but I absolutely love them because of how versatile and easy they are. It’s essentially one large baked pancake. And like normal pancakes, you can flavour them up in any way you want. But unlike normal pancakes that require cooking in batches, this is all done in one go. That makes it one of my go-to dinner dishes for something quick after the gym. I’ll serve it with some form of vegetable concoction to go on top. It’s also one of my go-to breakfast/brunch dishes. It is a super quick dish to prep, and you can chuck it in the oven while you shower, or sitting and quietly having your morning coffee…and before you know it, you have deliciousness. If I’m making a savoury Dutch Baby, then I love making them with chick pea flour. Both for the added protein it adds, and more importantly, for the flavour profile it adds. Just by swapping out the flour, you add that specific slightly smokey, slightly nutty flavour that chickpeas have. It also makes it gluten free, if that’s an issue for you.

I didn’t get any meat out for dinner when I cooked this dish, so I thought I’d make a ratatouille to go with it. I always have tomatoes and zucchini in the house. Always. And, it has been pointed out to me that I cook with booze a lot. Which I did here. I added some gin and blood orange marmalade to add a little oomph.

If you want my favourite version of a chickpea dutch baby, you’ll need to grab a copy of the Recipes and Ramblings III cookbook. In it, it has the recipe for a Spicy Chickpea Dutch Baby with a Tomato Bacon Jam.

Gin and Blood Orange Ratatouille

(serves 2)
1 tbsp olive oil
2 brown onions, thinly sliced
1 zucchini, thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tbsp blood orange marmalade
1 shot Gin (I like West Winds Sabre or Gin Mare flavours in this)
3 roma tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 roasted capsicum, roughly chopped
¼ tsp thyme leaves
½ tsp salt
Pepper

Chickpea Flour Dutch Baby

½ cup chickpea flour
¼ tsp salt
½ tsp pepper
½ cup milk (soured with ½ tsp lime juice)
2 eggs
1 tbsp butter.

Warm the olive oil to medium in a pot. Add the onions and cook until translucent, but not coloured – around 5 minutes. Add the minced garlic and cook a further 2 minutes until that is translucent. Add the rest of the ingredients and reduce to a simmer and leave for half an hour or so until all the vegetables are soft and the flavours have intensified. About the time it takes to make the dutch baby!

Heat the oven to 180C

Heat a frypan that can go into the oven to a high heat. In a large bowl, whisk together the salt, pepper and chickpea flour. Beat the eggs until light and fluffy. Then beat in the soured milk. Pour the liquid into the dry ingredients and whisk until completely combined.

Add the butter to the pan and swirl to coat the whole bottom of the frypan. Carefully pour the pancake batter into the pan and tilt back and forth to coat the pan. Place in the oven.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the dutch baby puffs up and is golden.

 
Remove from the oven carefully (the handle will be HOT. I have learnt this the hard way!). It will deflate once removed from the oven. Spoon over the ratatouille and a scoop of fresh ricotta or Greek Yoghurt

Using Leftovers - Smokey Duck and Lentil Empanadas

If you are lucky enough to have some leftover bourbon molasses braised duck, then this is the perfect way of utilising some of that delicious saucy meat. If you do not have any left, never fear – any leftover meat could be shredded to be added to the lentils. Or even some refried beans and a little grated cheese. Or the sweet potato and bacon filling from my bagel bombs. The recipe here is more for the dough than anything. The dough itself is flavoured in such a way that it lends itself to the smokey, BBQy flavours of the duck dish, so I would recommend using a little good quality BBQ sauce to coat the meat and lentils before forming the empanadas. Alternately, make sure you have a good dipping sauce if you have a plainer filling.

I make my pastry doughs in the food processor because it’s so much simpler, but it can be done by hand.

Oh, and my New Year's Resolution last year to eat more cornbread was a huge success. This year, I think it might be to practice making prettier looking empanadas!
 

Smokey Empanadas with Duck and Lentils

2 cups plain flour (‘00’ if you have it)
½ cup cold butter, cubed
½ tsp salt
½ tsp ancho chilli powder
1 tsp smoked paprika
¼ cup bourbon
2 eggs
1 tbsp molasses
1 Egg + 1 tbsp cold water for the egg wash

Filling

400g tin lentils
Few twists of salt and pepper
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 cup shredded duck

Remove the duck from the fridge to take the chill off.

Sift the flour, salt, paprika and chilli powder together and put it in the food processor. Add the butter and pulse until it is combined and resembles breadcrumbs. In a bowl, lightly beat the bourbon, eggs and molasses to combine. Add to the flour mixture and pulse until it comes together into a ball. Don’t overwork it.

Remove the dough, flatten it into a disc, wrap it in plastic and pop it in the freezer for 15 minutes to chill.

Take it out of the freezer, divide it into two pieces and roll each piece out into a rectangle about 5mm thick that you then cut into 4. So when both pieces have been rolled and cut, you’ll have 8 rectangles. Place on lined baking trays, cover with plastic wrap and put in the fridge for 10 minutes while you make the filling.

Rinse the lentils well as they come out of the tin and drain. Place in a bowl, season and add 1 tbsp of apple cider vinegar. Stir to combine, then drain the excess vinegar and measure out 1 cup of lentils. Reserve the rest for another use (I added to a salad). Mix the duck meat into the lentils.

Preheat the oven to 175C

Place around 1 ½ tablespoons of filling mixture along half of each piece of dough, leaving a 5mm-1cm rim around the edge. Brush the rim top and bottom with egg wash, fold the top over and crimp together with a fork. Poke a few air holes with the fork tines and brush the whole thing with egg wash.

Bake for 20 minutes, or until golden.

Serve with greek yoghurt or sour cream