Colomba Revisited

Last week, with guests coming for lunch and Easter fast approaching, I was thinking of a desert that would be appropriate for the season. Also having remembered that I still had some of the Colomba moulds in the cupboard from last year I figured that all stars were aligned and that a Colomba was the way to go.
This year I was better prepared for this Easter treat. Having made it a few times last year I knew the time I needed to put aside. I started it on Friday evening (the guests coming for Saturday lunch) and put it in the fridge for it's final rise overnight. I used the same recipe as last year (Bakery Bits) but used active dried yeast rather than fresh. I have to say that in the last few months I have been using dried yeast instead of fresh and, truth be told, I am preferring it. It works just as well, maybe even better, it's easily available and I get a perfect loaf every time. I have been using Doves Quick Yeast which comes in a 125g pack and lasts me about three months. As long as you know that a sachet is 7g then your ok.
I was making a sourdough loaf at the same time so I had my doughs rising at intervals on the Friday and then both went in the fridge. I took them out first thing in the morning and left them to warm up before cooking. One of the wings of the Colomba hadn'r really risen and I was worried that it would look like a dove with a broken wing. But once it was cooked it was fine.
I served it with a marscapone cream. This is a recipe from my sister-in-law, she is Swedish but lives in Milan so had the inside track on the authentic accompaniment. This is the same cream used in a Tiramusu. Mix two egg yolks with 200g of sugar until fluffy. Add 200g mascapone and 1-2 tbs of your alcohol of choice (Amaretto, Cognac or Rum, I chose Rum) and mix carefully. Whisk 2 eggs whites to stiff peaks and then gently fold into the marscapone mix. This is divine and it goes brilliantly with a slice of Colomba and great conversation.
P.S. just in case you were wondering, the sourdough turned out lovely too.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I'm not one for celebrating the day that's in it, well not since I was a child at home in Dublin. Then it meant a day off school, the St Patrick's Day parade, some green food (usually jelly!) and all you could eat of the thing you had given up for Lent. It's a St Patrick's Day rule, if you have given up something for Lent you can eat it on St Patrick's Day. I think this is becuase it always falls during Lent and as it is a celebration your Lenten fast can be forgotten for a day.
Having said that the opportunity to make a Chocolate Guinness Cake can't be passed up, can it? I was getting some stick from a couple of friends at work because I hadn't brought in cake for a while so celebrate we will. I have made this cake before, the last time a few weeks ago for a friends 40th. It is in Nigellla Lawson's Feast, in amongst a great chapter on celebration cakes. Not only does it have Guinness in it, it looks like a pint of Guinness with it's deep dark chocolate cake and it's cream cheese icing slathered on top.
It is also an easy cake to make, the Guinness and butter are melted together and everything is added to this brwon beery batter. The batter is very liquid so I always put the tin on a tray in case of seepage. It takes about an hour to bake and then is left in the tin until it has cooled completely. I made the icing and then iced it at work. So yesteday afternoon at 3.30pm we had a small St Patrick's Day celebration in Holland Park. It is a moist cake that has an earthy chocolatey flavour, you can almost taste the Guinness.
And now that it is the day that's in it I will be having a pint of the black (while watching Ireland beating England in the rugby, hopefully) and some chocolate, well it is a St Patrick's Day rule and I have given it up for Lent!

Sourdough Sorted

I was going to a friend's house for lunch a couple of weeks ago and decided to bring a sourdough loaf to help things along. As you know my started has now been alive for almost a year but as I don't make a loaf every day I have to reactivate it a few days before I want to bake the loaf. It sits in a cupboard in the kitchen quite happily. When it has been left for a while it separates, on top there is a brown liquid and underneath a creamy sludge (sounds good doesn't it?). This sludge is the stuff I need, you take a couple of tablespoons of this (discard the rest) and add 100mls of lukewarm water and 125g of strong white flour (from The Handmade Loaf by Dan Lepard), mix and leave for 24 hours. Next day you discard about three quarters of this and add the same quantities of water and flour and repeat this the next day. As the natural yeasts come alive again it starts bubbling and once that happens it's ready to use, if I want to bake a loaf at the weekend I usually start this process on Tuesday evening.
I guess it is a bit time consuming but it's worth it in the end. I decided to do the main mixing, kneading, proving on the night before (it still takes about 5 hours, it's a slow riser the sourdough) and then put in the fridge overnight for it's final rise. First thing on Sunday morning I put on the oven to warm the kitchen and took the dough out of the fridge to come up to room temperature, about an hour. It then bakes for 50 minutes to 1 hour, not forgetting the steam to help with the crust.
It was a hit at lunch and what was left was frozen and was nice and fresh after defrosting. I do like making sourdough but I do wonder about those who make it to sell. It must be like painting the Forth Bridge, they just have it proving constantly, as one is rising another is being mixed. Hard work if you are producing hundreds of loaves a day. Worth it of course.

New Kitchen Friend

I realise that it has been a while and if my faithful followers are not so faithful anymore then I understand completely. I will only say that it has been a tough six months and although I have been baking and knitting I haven't felt inspired to write about it, until today. Not sure what has changed today but this morning I found myself thinking about writing and I didn't immediatley think "naw, can't be bothered", a step forward I think you will agree. So enough of that and onwards with the news.
The post title implies that I have a new friend, I do indeed. But it's not a flesh and bone friend (don't worry it's not a six foot rabbit called Harvey!), it is a brand spanking new glorious....KitchenAid. Now people who even have a vague, passing acquaintance with me know that I have coveted one of these babies for, well a long time. My friends are positively sick of hearing about it and as for the boyfriend well he had reached the end of his tether. Perseverance pays off and having been a good girl last year Santa came up trumps leaving a Candy Apple Red KitchenAid under the tree for me! I have to say that in person (well, it is my new friend) it is a thing of beauty, such a wonderful design and you can see why so many people want one. But does it work? You bet ya it does. The only thing I haven't done yet is knead bread in it but that's more to do with me having learned how to do it by hand and preferring it that way. But I will try it. I've used it to make cakes, icing, pastry, meringues and, I think, everything tastes so much better! Not really, but it does make creaming the butter and sugar very easy, just turn it on and let it do its thing. But I think I have waxed lyrical enough about the shiny red thing and will move on to my other activities.
In my efforts to make cakes from around the world, I made a couple of Pannetone's for Christmas and am planning to make some Colomba's again in the run up to Easter, I still have some of the moulds left. I am still baking bread but now almost exclusively using the Dan Lepard kneading method (see The Handmade Loaf) with great success. My sourdough starter is still alive, almost a year old now, and although I don't make a loaf every day it is very easy to reactivate it as long as I plan ahead. In fact, I have just taken it out of the cupboard today to remind me to do just that so I can make a loaf at the weekend. I have also worked on getting the loaves as crusty as I can and have managed this but still can't work out how to maintain that crust, any hints gladly accepted.
In the knitting stakes I was stymied in my "lace cap sleeved top" project by running out of wool that you can only buy in Italy but I have an insider on the case. So while that is on hold I have started a runner for one of our beds. I've made up the pattern myself, altenating suares of stocking stitche and moss stitch in a red aran wool. Not groundbreaking but I think it will look good in the room.
I think that is enough for now, I will post about my weekend sourdough and hopefully kepp you glued to cakes and cardies for the rest of the year.

Technical Bake 2: Iced Fingers

I'm not doing the technical bakes in any order. I have decided that number two is the iced finger. I remember having these when I was growing up, yummy doughy fingers with sweet icing. These Paul Hollywood fingers have the addition of fresh cream and strawberry jam and I have to say their addition makes for a great afternoon sweet treat.
I started to make these last Sunday morning and I made the full amount, 12 iced fingers. Might as well go the whole hog. With all the ingredients surrounding me I added all the dough ingredients to a bowl, holding back about a third of the water. I put my bowl on the scales so that I could add the rest of the water but for some reason I just added all the water in my jug rather than weighing it and got a very, very watery dough. I know it's supposed to be watery but this was too much. So I had to throw it away and start over. Second time around I got it right.
The dough was still very wet and kneading was almost impossible, I had more on my fingers than on the surface. In the end I just gave up and put in back in the bowl to rise and hoped for the best. An hour later and it had risen beautifully and after knocking it back I divided into 12 balls which I then rolled into finger shapes and placed on a greased tray. These are covered and left to prove for 45 minutes until doubled in size and all touching. They then went into a preheated oven (200 degrees) for ten minutes. These were left to cool and I made the icing. I followed Paul's instructions to dip the roll in the icing and then smooth it with your fingers, it worked a treat. I then piped the cream and tried to pipe the jam but I bought jam with fruit bits in (I know!) so a spoon did the trick.
One of the things that Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry looked for in the 12 iced fingers was a consistent size. On that, I'm afraid I failed. But I think Paul would have been happy with my "bake". They were soft, sweet and moreish (I had two, I confess). The extras came into work with me on Monday and got an office thumbs up.

Deathly Beautiful!

A friend recently gave me some Halloween themed cupcake holders and last week, it being Halloween and all, I decided to try them out. I didn't make Halloween themed cakes, in fact they were rosewater flavoured butterfly cakes! I use Nigella's cupcake recipe from How to Be a Domestic Godess, it never fails. I replaced the vanilla extract with rosewater to give a delicate floral flavour. So these may have been spooky on the outside but sweet and soft on the inside.

Technical Bake 1: Tarte au Citron

My challenge began yesterday with my mini Tartes au citron a la Mary Berry's masterclass. I decided to do mini ones because if I had a whole one, well it would be eaten. Simple really!
I started with the pastry and rather than dividing by two I made the full quantity and then froze half of it (more tartes in the near future). The cleverest thing about this recipe is Mary Berry's tip for rolling out the pastry. I always have that problem of getting the rolled out pastry from the work surface to the tart tin without it breaking up and Mary has the solution. Roll the pastry out on the base of your tin! Place it on some greaseproof pastry and mark a circle about 4cm bigger than your base, flour the base and then place the ball of pastry on top. You then roll out as normal, moving the paper rather than the pastry. Once it is the correct size fold in the edges, lift the base and drop into the tin. You can then unfold the pastry and press into the fluted edges, no breaking or sticking, genius! The other tip was to use tinfoil to hold your baking beans for the blind bake, it makes it so much easier to support the beans and to take them out half way through. As a result of these I managed to get two almost perfect pastry cases, something I have never managed before. Thanks Mary.
The top tip for getting the filling into your case without spilling any is to fill the case once it is on your baking tray in the oven. As my tartes were smaller I knew I needed to alter the baking time, so I left them in for 20mins (rather than the 30-35 in the recipe). I checked them for the "wobble" but they were pretty much set so I was a bit worried that I had failed on the first hurdle. I took them out and let them cool for about 5 minutes before moving them from the tins to the serving plates.
All that was left was the tasting. I dusted them with icing sugar just before I served them and we dove in. The pastry was nice and thin and it wasn't soggy and the filling was smooth and lemony. I think that Mary would have been pleased with my first effort and now I know how to do it I will be making it a lot more often.