Baking bread is one of those things that sounds so intimidating at first.  When I mention I’ve been baking bread at the weekend, I inevitably get reactions like “Wow, you know how to do that?” or “You must have a lot of free time.”

Au contraire.

I’m a bit obsessed with baking, and especially with baking bread.  I truly believe that cooking more is the key to good health.  Have you ever looked at the side of a packaged bread wrapper?  There are a whole bunch of ingredients, including lots of unpronounceable chemicals (never a good sign).  You know what’s in my bread?  Flour, water, yeast, salt, and sometimes olive oil.  That’s it.

Then there’s another element to bread baking, the intangible stuff.  It’s comforting. It’s satisfying. It’s such a sense of accomplishment. It smells amazing.  You can even use breadbaking as meditation.

I know I am supposed to posting more recipes from my big weekend extravaganza of homegrown produce.  But I got distracted by cookie baking.

This happens a lot to me.

I just love baking.  Especially baking cookies.  Cookies are so quick & easy, there are so many varieties, they make the house smell amazing, and they’re one of my favorite comfort foods.  So it doesn’t take much of an excuse to break out the mixing bowl and start making cookies.  The ‘excuse’ this time was a good one – some very good friends have just moved down the road from us and needed a housewarming gift.  One batch of cookies coming up!

Snickerdoodles are a classic American cookie.  They are soft and chewy, with a buttery, vanilla-y cookie and a crisp outside where they’re rolled in cinnamon sugar.   My UK friends were a bit disappointed to learn that despite the name, these cookies do not contain Snickers candy bars … but they managed to eat the entire batch within a day or two anyway!

I found the basic snickerdoodle recipe in my reprint of Betty Crocker’s 1963 classic ‘cooky book’.  This book has special significance for me because both my grandmother and my mother have (much older) copies of this book.  My mother bought me a reprint of this book for Christmas one year, complete with handwritten notes about which recipes are “good” and which are “excellent!!”.

Clearly, we are a cookie crazy family.

Snickerdoodles are great with a cup of tea.  I haven’t had much luck freezing them though, so eat them within a few days.  (Not like these cookies which I like to eat straight from the freezer.)   If you don’t want to make a whole batch, you can freeze some of the dough to  bake later.  Just form a log out of the dough, wrap well in freezer paper and plastic wrap and freeze.

And in case you’re curious, my mother’s notation by the Snickerdoodle recipe in the cookbook is “Very Good”.  Underlined too!  A definite must-bake.

Snickerdoodles

adapted from Betty Crocker Cooky Book (1963)

You need:

1 cup salted butter

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

2 3/4 c. white flour

2 tsp. cream of tartar

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. vanilla

2 Tb. white sugar + 2 tsp. cinnamon for coating

How to:

Preheat oven to 400F (200C).

Cream butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar together until fluffy.  Add vanilla.  Add eggs one at a time, mixing well.  Entire mixture should be light and fluffy looking.

Add flour, cream of tartar and baking soda stirring until well incorporated.

In a separate bowl combine 2 Tb. white sugar and 2 tsp. cinnamon.

Take a spoonful of dough and roll it between your hands to make a ball.  Roll the ball in the cinnamon sugar until well coated.  Place on a cookie sheet leaving about 2 inches of space between dough balls to allow room to spread.

Bake each cookie sheet for 8-10 minutes until the cookies are lightly golden and slightly firm to the touch.  The centers of the cookies will puff while cooking, but then flatten out when they are ready.

Eat within 3 days of making for the best flavor!

Makes approximately 36 cookies.

You know when you’re in a fancy food shop and you find the most precious, gorgeous little bottle of something which would add such a magical finishing touch to your recipes?

Then you turn the bottle over and have a little heart attack from the price tag.  And you think “$15 for sugar?!? I could make that!”

One of the best things about learning to make stuff yourself is that most of the time – you CAN make that.

A perfect example of this happened recently.  Knowing that I’m crazy about food, my lovely French friend sent me this delicious little bottle of violet infused sugar from Toulouse.

A perfect gift for me.  The color! The smell!  It feels really special and luxurious, something I wouldn’t buy for myself but which I’ll love to use in the kitchen.

And it got me thinking – I could make that (if I had violets!).  In fact, infused sugars are really easy to make.  Just mix together ingredients, store in an air-tight container for several weeks, then sift before using.  If you are planning ahead for holiday gifts, this would be a great project to start now – then just package and give to your foodie friends in December (along with a bottle of homemade vanilla extract).

How to use infused sugars

• Add to your coffee instead of regular sugar
• As a fancy rim on your cocktail glass – pour some sugar on a plate, then simply moisten the rim of the glass (with lemon or water) and dip into the sugar.
• Sprinkle on the top of creme brulee, then heat to melt
• Sprinkle on the top of delicate shortbread or butter cookies
• Sprinkle on fresh fruit, yogurt or crepes
• Sprinkle on hot buttered toast (for grown-up versions of cinnamon sugar toast!)
• Add herbal-infused sugars to your face cleanser for a customized facial scrub

 How to make infused sugars

Making infused sugar is easy.  Put regular white granulated sugar in an airtight container (jar or plastic zipper bag).  Add some of your flavoring.  Seal and let sit for several weeks, shaking occasionally if you remember.  Sift out the pieces of flavoring before using.  If you’re repackaging for gift-giving, I often sift-out things like petals – but would leave in a few larger flavoring items like vanilla pods or whole spices to indicate the flavor.

For every 1/2 cup of sugar, I add 2-3 Tablespoons of flavoring.  Here I’m making rose sugar, lavender sugar and star anise sugar (which I think will be great on holiday shortbread!)

If you’re looking for other holiday gift ideas to start now, you could try making some winter warmer rum.

What flavors of infused sugar would you love to have? Let me know in the comments, and I might give it a try!

Want to try making your own vanilla extract?

It’s super simple and the results are just as good as store-bought – maybe even better!

Earlier this year I tried turning an unwanted bottle of vodka into vanilla extract.  As a baker, I go through a lot of vanilla extract, and it’s not cheap.  I was skeptical about making my own though.  Would it taste as good?  Would it be as strong?  Vanilla extract is so expensive, there must be some secret to it, right?

Oh, I just love when handmade projects turn out so much better than their store bought counterparts!

So rather than just showing you my homemade version, I thought I’d do a proper comparison with store-bought.

I picked up this 100ml bottle of nice vanilla extract at my local supermarket for £4.99 (about $8).   It’s sitting beside the 300ml bottle of my homemade vanilla extract.

PRICE

In terms of cost, making my own vanilla extract definitely wins out.  Vodka is cheap (probably about £1.50 per 100ml), and while vanilla beans are expensive they will make a lot of extract (plus other cooking projects!).   I bought a pack of 2 vanilla beans for £4 … and it has already made three times the amount of vanilla extract – and I plan to keep topping it with more vodka as I use it up.  I would imagine I can get at least 500ml of vanilla extract from those beans.

APPEARANCE

Comparing the color, the store bought extract is slightly darker than my homemade version.

The store-bought version is also slightly thicker than my homemade version.  That’s because they included sugar in the store bought vanilla extract.

Ingredients in the store bought version are Vanilla Bean Extract (Water, 35% strength Alcohol), Sugar.

Ingredients in my version are Vodka (29.5% strength) and 2 vanilla beans.

I didn’t include any sugar in my homemade version because I mainly use the vanilla extract in sugary baked goods.

TASTE & SCENT

But really the cost and appearance don’t matter – it’s all about the taste!

The store-bought smelled like regular vanilla extract – a strong alcohol scent and something slightly pungent about it.

My homemade vanilla extra smelled like – pure vanilla!  It smelled a lot sweeter and more ‘pure’ than the store-bought version.  It was a strong, but smooth, vanilla scent.

Since I’m a little biased, I also had Zak do a blind testing of the two extracts.  I thought for sure he would pick the store-bought one, simply because it looked darker & richer.  His verdict? The store bought version was thicker, but smelled bitter.  The homemade version smelled like he wanted to eat it!

Then as a final test I thought I’d taste them (well, they were already poured into glasses…).  I don’t recommend doing this!  Tasting commercial vanilla extract is really REALLY strong and tastes horrible!  On the other hand, the homemade version tasted like vanilla.  Still not very drinkable as-is, but you could easily add some sugar to the homemade version and create a vanilla liqueur.  Yum.

The Verdict

I’m never buying vanilla extract again.  Seriously, making your own vanilla extract is So Easy and the flavor is much more smooth.  

Homemade vanilla extract would also be a great holiday gift to start now in preparation for December.  Buy a big bottle of vodka and some vanilla beans and start them soaking now.  Then in December just transfer to pretty bottles and add a handwritten label.  Perfect gift for the foodie in your life!

If you want to try making your own vanilla extract, read how I made it here.

My problem with the traditional hot cross bun is that they are filled with currants, raisins and other dried fruits … and I really don’t like raisins.  So I decided to use my tried and tested switch – to replace any raisins with chocolate chips!  Fortunately I have a large bag of chocolate chips on hand at all times for just such emergency ingredient substitutions.

I used a recipe from Delia and also a recipe from River Cottage Bread as inspiration, but this recipe takes off in a different direction – lightly cinnamon spiced rolls filled with citrus peel and chocolate chips, glazed with a little bit of marmalade.   These are hearty yeast rolls which are delicious split, toasted and buttered (in a toaster oven, please!  No one wants melted chocolate chips in a toaster…).

Chocolate Orange Hot Cross Buns

2/3 c. (150 ml.) warm water

1 Tb. dried yeast

1/4 c. (50g.) white sugar

4 c. (450g.) plain flour

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/4c. (40 ml.) warm milk

1 egg, lightly beaten

2oz (50g.) butter, melted

1/2c. (75g) chocolate chips (mini chips would be nice if you have them)

1/4c. (50g) mixed citrus peel

Crosses- 1/4c. flour, 3 Tb. water

Glaze – 1 Tb. orange marmalade + 1 Tb. warm water

Mixing: In a mixing bowl, combine sugar, salt, cinnamon, flour, yeast.  Now pour in the liquid ingredients – water, milk, melted butter and egg.  Stir until it comes together into a dough.

Kneading: Turn dough out onto floured countertop or board.  Knead for 5 minutes until dough becomes smooth.  This dough will be a lot softer than your normal bread dough, so don’t add too much flour, let it remain soft.

Press dough into a rectangle shape.  Now sprinkle on the chocolate chips and citrus peel.  Fold the dough in half, press down and stretch to incorporate the chips.  Now fold it over again.  Repeat this process several times until the chocolate chips and peel seem to be evenly distributed through the dough.  Form the dough into a ball.

Rise: Grease the inside of the empty bowl with a little butter or oil.  Place the ball of dough in the bowl, then flip it over (so the top of the ball is now greased).  Cover bowl with a tea towel and leave to rise in a warm location for 1 hour (up to 1 1/2 hours).

Shape: Now we need to shape the dough into buns.  Divide the dough into two equal halves.  Now divide each half, you should have 4 balls of dough.  Now divide them once more – you have 8 balls of dough to form into buns.  Form each piece of dough into a round bun and place on a baking sheet.

Loosely cover the rolls with the tea towel, and leave them to rise for 30 minutes.

Preheat: Preheat your oven to 425F / 220c.

Crosses: In a small bowl, stir together 1/4c. flour and 3 Tb. water to make a paste.  Put this mixture into a zipper-type sandwich bag.  Squeeze it all down into one corner of the bag.  With scissors, clip a small corner off of the bag – making a temporary icing bag!  Use this to pipe crosses onto your buns.

Bake: Bake the buns for 15 minutes until golden brown.

Glaze: In a small bowl, mix marmalade and warm water.  Brush over buns as soon as they come out of the oven.  This glaze gives a shiny, slightly sticky finish to the buns and enhances the orange taste.

Serve warm from the oven or toasted with butter.

Makes 8 buns

I cannot stop eating these scones.  Nor can Zak or his coworkers. They are That Good.

These scones were born out of a crazy birthday gift of an All Bacon Themed dinner.  Every food served during the meal included bacon … even dessert!  (The dessert will not be featured on Vintage Savoir Faire however as it was a bit of a caramelly disaster, but hey, I tried!).  These scones were the accompaniment to the starter salad with bacon-wrapped dates.

These scones are so good that I had to make another batch the following weekend, just because.

Bacon Cheddar Scones

Adapted from River Cottage Bread Handbook basic scone recipe

300 g. flour

2 tsp. baking powder

salt & black pepper

75g. butter, soft

1 egg

120 ml milk + 1 Tb. yogurt (or use 120ml buttermilk!)

140g (4 strips) cooked bacon, chopped/crumbled – I prefer streaky bacon but you could use British rashers too

75g. grated sharp/mature cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 200c / gas mark 6.

In a bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, salt/pepper, cheese and bacon.  Now pour in the egg, milk, yogurt and butter.  Stir until JUST incorporated.  With scones, you want to mix them as little as possible to keep them nice and tender.  Overmixing = hard scones which is not good.  So incorporate in the wet ingredients, and then turn out onto a floured board and shape into a circle using your hands.  Slice the circle into 8 wedges.  Brush each wedge with milk and sprinkle pepper on top.  Bake for 15 minutes until golden brown on top and cooked through.

Makes 8 scones.

I usually eat a bowl of oatmeal with cinnamon for breakfast … but on the weekends when Zak  and I eat together, we like to have something a little more interesting.   So this weekend, with sausages nowhere to be found, I dug through the pantry and found the ingredients to make these yummy muffins.

Apple and Blackberry is such a British Autumn combination for me.   Apples are easy to find year-round, but the blackberries I had stashed away in the freezer a few months ago after Zak’s mom came to visit (she always brings a supply of home-grown produce in-season.  For a city-dweller like me that’s such a treat!).

This is one of the reasons I love my (very small) freezer.  Finding some fruit (or veg or herbs) that I put away in the peak of the season really cheers me up in the middle of gloomy winter!

This basic muffin recipe is based on the classic from my 1960′s Betty Crocker Cookbook.  It’s really easy to change the spices and add-ins with whatever you happen to have on hand. Great for an emergency weekend brunch.

Apple Blackberry Muffins

(makes 12)

1 egg

1/2 c. milk (120ml)

1/4c. vegetable oil (60ml)

1 1/2 c. flour (165g)

1/2c. sugar (100g)

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 cup blackberries (fresh or frozen) (100g)

1 grated apple

Method:

Pre-heat oven to 400 F (200 c).  Beat egg, stir in oil and milk.  Add flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and cinnamon – stir very gently until just incorporated (don’t overmix muffins or they’ll be tough).  Fold in blackberries and grated apple until evenly distributed.  Drop by large spoonful into 12 muffin cups.  Bake 20 minutes until cracked on the top (and you can test by inserting a toothpick in the center of a muffin, and if it comes out clean, it’s cooked).  Remove muffins from pan and let cool on cooling rack.

This post is included in House of Annie’s Grow-Your-Own Blog Roundup #40.

Going through my pantry the other day (full disclosure: My pantry is really one small kitchen cabinet crammed to the brim – ahh the joys of apartment living!) I found unopened dark chocolate Easter bunny that I had stashed away last year.  Since Easter is just around the corner, I figured I should really use this one up before the new season of chocolate bunnies appear on my doorstep.

OK, I could just eat the chocolate bunny.  But it was the weekend and I was feeling more adventurous.  I’ve been having a wicked craving for 7-layer bars recently, but haven’t quite made the effort to figure out substitutes for graham crackers etc. here in England.  These blondie brownies have that toffee-coconutty goodness of the 7 layer bar, with a very dense chewy consistency.  Don’t be discouraged by the super thick batter (mine was basically a dough) of this recipe, just press it into the pan like a cookie dough.

Plus, you get the added enjoyment of chopping up an easter bunny, if you have a little pent-up frustration to get out

Long-lost chocolate easter bunny

Chopping in progress

Voila! Chocolate chunks.

Easter Bunny Blondies

Adapted from http://southernfood.about.com/od/browniesbars/r/r90510k.htm

1 c. flour

1/2 tsp. salt

4 oz. melted unsalted butter, cooled

1c. brown sugar

1 egg

2 tsp vanilla

1 c. dried shredded coconut

1 chopped up chocolate easter bunny (I used a dark chocolate Dove easter bunny) – about 1c. of chocolate chunks.

Method:

Preheat oven to 350F.  Grease & flour 8×8 baking pan.  In a mixing bowl, combine melted butter and sugar, then mix in one egg, stir well.  Add vanilla.  Stir in flour and salt until all combined.  Stir in coconut until combined.  Then, add chocolate chunks and stir until evenly distributed throughout dough.  Normally blondies are a batter, mine turned out very stiff like a dough – don’t worry about this.  Pour/press into prepared pan.  Bake for 25-30 minutes until golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Glaze (optional): Once cooled, I melted a little extra chocolate and 1 TB butter together and drizzled over the top of the blondies.

Amanda's Homemade White Bread

What’s the quickest way to make a visitor to your house think you’re a domestic goddess?  Fill your house with the smell of baking bread.  And no, a ‘freshly baked bread’ scented candle doesn’t cut it.

Mmmm, the smell of baking bread.  Enough said.   To really get this smell, you have to really bake bread. Yes, actual, homemade bread.  No, don’t run away yet. It’s easy!  And you’ll be so impressed when it comes out of the oven (as will the neighbors who will ineviatbly stop in to investigate the delicious smells wafting from your kitchen…)

But can’t I just buy a loaf at the store?

Have you noticed how long bread lasts without going off? How is that possible? Preservatives!

Check out the ingredients on the package. It’s a long list.  With unpronounceable words.  In your fabulous domestic-goddess homemade bread there are just a few ingredients: flour, salt, water, yeast … maybe some fat or some sugar.  Ok, so the loaf doesn’t last as long as the one from the store … but considering how good it tastes, it won’t stick around that long anyway.

Here is a small, easy to handle loaf that I make almost every weekend.

[Note: nowadays I tend to make artisan herb loaf or homemade sourdough, no baking tins needed!]

Adapted from Nigella Lawson’s recipe.

Domestic Goddess White Bread

adapted from Nigella Lawson How to Eat

Makes 1 small loaf

300g bread flour

10g yeast

10g salt

5g sugar (or 2 sugar cubes)

170ml tepid

10g fat (I like olive oil)

Put the flour in the tepid water and let sit.  Put the salt, sugar, flour and fat in a mixing bowl.  Stir in the water/yeast mix - this will make a mess at first but then will come together into a sticky dough ball.

Turn this out onto a floured surface. I use a floured pastry cloth (you can also use a thick smooth tea towel that you save just for this purpose).  You can also just flour your countertop.  Knead the bread for 5-10 minutes.  (Knead bread by forming it into a dough ball on the counter, then, with the heel of your hand, smoosh it away from you.  Then pull it back into a dough ball, and smoosh it slightly at a different angle.  Basically just work the dough around a lot during these 5-1o minutes, we’re trying to develop the gluten into a nice, elastic ball).  You may have to add a little bit more flour if the dough is sticking to your hands.

Place in a bowl, cover with a tea towel, and set it in a warm place for about 1 hour, or until the ball has doubled in size.

Now the fun part – punch it down. Literally punch your fist into the inflated dough, and watch it deflate! Poof! Take it out of the bowl, shape it into a loaf, and put it either in your loaf pan, or just as a round loaf on a cookeie sheet.  Cover and let rise again for 1 hour in a warm place.

Preheat oven to 350F.  Bake for 35 min.  You know if it’s done when the top is golden and the loaf sounds ‘hollow’ when you knock it with your fist.

Try to resist cutting until it’s slightly cooled (it will cut easier this way).  Serve with salted butter, jam or honey.  Yum.