The Modern Housewife Series Vol. I

Ezekiel Bread

Ezekiel bread made with whole-wheat flour, barley flour, chickpea flour and cooked red lentils. I used a recipe from "100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes" by Kris Holechek. I would not agree that they are the best vegan baking recipes as I've barely used this book, this is only the third thing I remember making (the other two were Irish soda bread and a quite sickening gooey layered goodie bar). I am always put off by difficulty ratings, everything seems like much more of a palaver so I find a recipe somewhere else. However, now that I am not frightened of yeast I might try some more of the breads and there is a recipe for making pain au chocolat from scratch which sounds good.

This bread was much more substantial than my usual bread. It does taste a little healthy but that can be covered up with peanut butter and jam or Marmite. It seemed a bit dry the morning after I baked it but Jonathan liked it. He thought it would be good with caviar and onion. He is disgusting.

I doubled the recipe and used 50g fresh yeast. This bread really needs to be baked in a loaf tin. My second loaf was free form and grew very wide but stayed fairly flat. I got about 30 slices from that giant which are in the freezer and the loaf from the tin gives about 20 slices. The original recipe states 10 slices, she must slice it very chunky!

Next time I make Ezekiel bread I might try this recipe from Urban Simplicity which also gives some information on the origins of Ezekiel bread and uses different beans. 

Pizza

Pizza made with the magic dough from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's "Veg Every Day". Cat has already posted a link to the recipe in this post. I used 25g fresh yeast instead of dry. The dough made a really delicious, crispy base. We made two pizzas and four flatbreads the next day with one batch of dough. There was a little filling left over from the lasgne so that went on my pizza. It was basically ratatouille with chickpeas. Also thrown on there are some torn spinach leaves and grated Sheese. I have mixed feelings about Sheese but I get it occasionally for lasagnes and pizzas. It is funny to see "made in Scotland" written in Swedish.

lemon banana loaf

It's somewhere inbetween a cake and a loaf. The outside is crisp and the inside tender but a bit denser than cake.

2 bananas, mashed

100g  Sunflower oil

175g light muscovado sugar (although caster it fine)

Zest and juice of a lemon

225g Self raising flour (sieved)

1 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 180C and line a loaf tin

Cream bananas, oil, sugar and lemon (zest and juice) together.

Fold in the flour and baking powder and put in lined loaf tin.

Bake for 1 hour but check after 45 minutes. A skewer should come out clean.

Cool before slicing.

(Freezes well either whole or in slices and can happily be doubled up for batch baking)

crumble

If pastry making scares you then crumble is the place to start. It involves the beginnings of making a shortcrust pastry without the terror of making a dough. You get to practice crumbling the fat and flour together without being too concerned about whether you're being too hamfisted.

All your ingredients should be cold, the fat should be cut into diced pieces and rubbing the fat and flour together involves just the tips of your fingers. You shouldn't ever be squeezing or squishing the fat and flour together.

I prefer to use self raising flour in my crumble topping and if I don't have any will stir in a teaspoon of baking powder. I have no explanation as to why I do this, I just do. Plain flour would be fine.

For my fruit base I just use whatever I have to hand: apples, pears, frozen fruits (defrosted) etc. Just put them in your dish and sprinkle enough sugar on them so your lips don't pucker.

Crumble topping

200g flour (self raising or plain)

125g margarine (good quality, good tasting)

60g caster sugar

Rub the flour and maragrine together until it looks like rough breadcrumbs then stir in the sugar. 

(Variations:
Topping: replace some of the flour with ground almonds or any other type of crushed nut (pecan or hazelnut spring to mind). 

Can also be used for: sprinkling on/covering top of cakes and cupcakes.

Freeze? Yes. The crumble topping can be kept in bags/containers in the freezer)

my oven runneth over

Pepper stuffed with this sunflower seed, lentil roast mix stuff, one of last years leeks from garden mixed into stuffing. Served with Cat's potatoes au gratin and a salad of green leaves and beetroot.

I put the potatoes in the oven first and forgot about them, but all turned out well in the end...everything was delicious and I had to clean the oven which would never have happened otherwise...

Kolakakor or caramel biscuits

I came home to a sweetly scented flat today. It smelt like that sweet microwaveable popcorn which was very confusing as we never buy microwaveable popcorn and Jonathan hates sweet popcorn. It turned out that he felt that I hadn't been pulling my weight on the blog so did some baking on my behalf. I'm not going to complain about freshly baked biscuits. They were delicious! Buttery, caramelly and fairly crunchy but a little chewy in the centre. They are very easy to munch down, before you know it you've eaten 10. 

Jonathan used this recipe from recepten.se which he assures me was very easy. Even if you don't speak Swedish it's worth checking out the original as there are pictures of each step. In Swedish recipes, vanilla sugar is usually used instead of vanilla extract. The shop bought vanilla sugar in Sweden is a mixture of icing sugar, vanilla/vanilla flavourings and potato starch and tastes a bit funny. I would just use vanilla extract or paste in it's place. If you are adventurous you could try other flavours such as almond.

Caramel biscuits

Recipe from http://www.recepten.se/recept/sirapskakor.html?cid=1255669. 

Makes about 50 biscuits which can be frozen for up to 3 months.

• 200 g margarine at room temperature
• 1.75 dl (about 160 g) sugar
• 1.5 tablespoons vanilla sugar (or about 1 tsp vanilla extract)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 tablespoons golden syrup
• 5 dl (310 g) flour

Preheat oven to 175°C and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Whisk margarine and sugar together with an electric whisk until well combined then whisk in the vanilla, baking powder and syrup.

Add the flour and mix for about 1-2 minutes until the mixture forms large clumps then press the dough into a ball with your fingers (see pictures 5-9).

Lay the dough on the work surface and knead it a little until it is smooth and lump-free. Divide into four pieces.

Roll each piece into a long snake about 40 cm long and lay them on your baking tray. Make sure they are spaced out as the dough will spread.

Bake in the middle of the oven for 18-20 minutes until golden.

Allow to cool on the baking sheet for about two minutes then cut into squinty slices and allow them to cool completely under a clean tea towel.

Store in plastic bags or airtight tubs.

To eat, dip into black coffee. I do not like black coffee but this was gooood.

Potatoes au gratin

Part of an over the top mid week meal. Thinly sliced potatoes cooked at 160C in a mixture of soya cream and vegetable stock, salt, pepper and garlic. It was covered until the potatoes were tender and then allowed to colour on top.

One recipe Three ways: Cookies

Tweak a recipe and it's possible to go from one to three recipes fairly quickly. They don't always work out as planned but that's part of the fun of baking!

The original recipe: Raisin oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

¾ cup caster sugar

½ cup sunflower oil

½ cup margarine

1 tsp Vanilla

1 ¾ cups plain flour

½ cup oatmeal

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp salt

Up to 1 ½ cups mix of chocolate chips/raisins/ walnuts 

Heat oven to 180C.

Cream sugar, oil, margarine and vanilla together. Mix in oatmeal, flour, bicarb and salt. Fold in your choice of chocolate chips etc.

Spoon on to baking trays (makes about 16-18) and bake for 8-12 minutes

Verdict: Always good! sweet but slightly salt, crispy but tender inside. Very good!

 Version 2: Peanut butter, chocolate chip and raisin

 

¾ cup caster sugar

½ cup sunflower oil

½ cup peanut butter

1 ¾ cups plain flour

½ cup oatmeal

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Up to 1 ½ cups mix of chocolate chips and raisins 

Heat oven to 180C.

Cream sugar, oil and peanut butter  together. Mix in cocoa oatmeal, flour and bicarb. Fold in your chocolate chips and raisins.

Spoon on to baking trays (makes about 16-18) and bake for 8-12 minutes

 

Verdict: Very tasty but they don't spread out and are very delicate probably from altering the fat content. I should rename them peanut butter mounds and then they'll be just fine. Will make again.

 Version 3: Orange chocolate chocolate chip

¾ cup caster sugar

½ cup sunflower oil

½ cup margarine

2 tsp grated orange zest

1 tsp instant coffee powder

1 ¾ cups plain flour

½ cup cocoa powder

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp salt

Up to 1 ½ cups of chocolate chips 

Heat oven to 180C.

Cream sugar, oil, margarine, coffee powder and orange zest together. Mix in cocoa powder, flour, bicarb and salt. Fold in your choice of chocolate chips etc.

Spoon on to baking trays (makes about 16-18) and bake for 8-12 minutes

 Verdict: OK. Not as chocolatey as I hoped and the cocoa powder really dried up the mix (absorbs more liquid than flour) so the end result was a very crisp biscuit rather than a moister cookie. 

Vegan bake month

Next month (May) is going to be a dedicated bake month here on Modern housewife. Anything which gets "baked" in the oven is fair game so there will be savoury as well as sweet. Who knows what baked delights will appear here next month! Feel free to join in and let us know what your making and baking.

(Posts will not be set for specific days so you'll just have pop by to see what's happening or follow us on twitter (see sidebar). Some days there may even be two posts!)

Another day, another chocolate cake

I used to think there was room in my life for only one chocolate cake. How wrong I was. It's good to have different cake for different occasions. This one turned out more like a pudding and was eaten warm with soya cream. It was supposed to be a quadruple chocolate cake (another Nigella one...I like to think she would be horrified by the substitutions/omissions I make) but I settled for double chocolate and managed to completely leave out 175ml of oil when mixing it up. I'm not entirely sure how this happened but it turned out just fine without it.

It would have been ridiculously dry if left until the next day so we ate it immediately.