Hot Cross Buns Day

Good Friday has traditionally been Hot Cross Buns day at our place.  I would get the mixture made and leave it proving and go off to the community Cross Carrying around the streets, in commemoration of the events leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus.   By the time I came back it would just need the last rising and it would be yummy hot cross buns for lunch.   These days I use the bread-maker to do the work for me, so am sharing both recipes.

Number 1 daughter made the buns the traditional way for her family this year, so I have pirated her photo, and this is the recipe for these delicious handmade buns:

​

HOT CROSS BUNS 

3 ½ teaspns dried yeast

1 cup warm water​

1 tblspn sugar

¼ cup sugar​

50g butter​

1 teaspn salt

1 cup milk​

1 egg​          

3 ½ cups flour

1 teaspn cinnamon​

1 teaspn ground ginger​

⅔ cup currants

1 tblspn sugar​

1 tblspn water

Sprinkle yeast on to first measure of water, containing the first measure of sugar.  Mix 2nd measure of sugar with butter and salt in a bowl.  Heat the milk and pour over this.  Stir until dissolved.  Allow to cool until lukewarm, then mix the yeast mixture into it.  Lightly beat the egg and add to this, then sift in 2 cups flour.  Beat well.  Sift the remaining flour with the spices and add sufficient of this to form a soft dough.  Add the currants and beat thoroughly.  Cover and set in a warm place to rise until double in size.  Turn on to a lightly floured board and knead well. (or use kneading hook in Kenwood).  Divide into 24 pieces.  Roll each piece into a round and place in well buttered patty tins.

Cover and leave to rise until double in bulk.

Crosses:

½ cup flour​1 tblspn melted butter. ​5 tblspns water

Sift flour, stir in butter and add enough water to enable dough to be piped.  Using a fine nozzle, pipe crosses on each risen bun before placing in oven.

Bake at 220° for about 12 minutes.  Take from oven and brush the tops lightly with sugar and water (or milk) which have been mixed together.  Return to oven for about 1 minute to glaze.

Number 4 daughter has most conveniently blogged about making hot cross buns in the bread-maker, so rather than repeat the recipe, I suggest you pop over to her lovely blog and check it out there. She also designs stunning knitting patterns that you might want to admire and/or knit too!

Happy Easter everyone!

More uses for left over cooked rice

Following on from my post yesterday, there was more left over rice, and so more ideas for its use.

To take to The Ancient One for Sunday lunch - 

QUICK QUICHE

½ cup self raising flour​

3 eggs​

1 chopped onion

1 ½ cups milk​

1 cup grated cheese​

1 cup cold cooked rice

2 tblspns chopped parsley

1 tblspn oil​

Pepper & salt​ to taste

2 rashers bacon 

capsicum​, peas, beans, tomatoes​, courgettes, asparagus -about a cup in total of any combination of vegetable

Beat eggs and milk, add cheese, onion, rice, oil and about a cup of vegetables.  Fold in flour.  Chop bacon and sprinkle on top.  Bake ¾ hour at 180°.

I used sliced tomato instead of the bacon.

And for Saturday dinner, I shall treat myself to

KEDGEREE

½ Onion

1 clove garlic 

knob of butter

1 teaspoon curry paste 

2 cups cooked rice 

200g tin of fish

2 hardboiled eggs

coriander leaves

Slice the onion, crush the garlic and fry them in the butter with the curry paste.  Add the rice, and the drained fish which has been broken up with a fork, and heat through.  Add the quartered eggs, coriander and salt to taste and enjoy!

Using left-over cooked rice

Every year at the school where I work, we have a day of solidarity with the poor and with refugees, which we call "Rice Day".

For this one day, the students - aged from 5 to 13 years old - have as their lunch, a handful of cooked rice. The little children are allowed their two mid-morning breaks with "brain food" but the rest of the school - staff included - have no other food than the lunch time rice.

The children line up with their hands cupped to get their lunch, in much the way we imagine they would do at a refugee Aid Station.

I have to say too, it's jolly good rice, donated and cooked for us by one of our parents, the proprietor of the authentic Indian restaurant "Kiwi'n'Kurry"! Children also bring a gold coin donation which goes to Caritas an international aid organisation.

This year there was some rice left over, so I brought a container of rice home, and this is what I had for dinner!

VEGETABLE FRIED RICE

As the pan was heating, I beat an egg with a few drops of water, poured it in and spread it out so it cooked like an omelette. When it was set I removed it. Into the hot pan I tossed garlic, onion, soy sauce, fish sauce and sesame oil, and when that was cooked nicely, a couple of cups of my cooked rice, and from my garden, some chopped butter beans, chopped silverbeet, tomato and grated carrot. I tossed it often until it was all nicely cooked, added a splurt of oyster sauce and then added the omelette which I had rolled and sliced. Heated it through and enjoyed it immensely!

Saturday in the 'burbs

A sultana cake for a friend whose brother died -
and the recipe, because this is one of my all time faves. Easy to make, easy to take, yummy to eat. Back in the day, I used to double the recipe and make two every time I made it.

SULTANA CAKE
450g sultanas​
225g butter
​3 eggs
1 ¼ cups sugar​
350g flour​
1 teaspn baking powder
lemon, vanilla and almond essence

Cover sultanas with water and boil five minutes. Drain, add butter while still hot, stir. Beat eggs and sugar together with essences and add to sultanas. Beat together and mix well. Add flour and baking powder. Bake 1 hour at 160°.

Oscar enjoying his ice cream

My celery is ready for harvesting, but it's still summer and I will mostly use it for winter soups and stews, so into the freezer it goes. Celery is great to freeze - just wash, chop and free flow freeze! (And as we're in the middle of a drought here, the water used for washing the celery gets poured over a wilting cape gooseberry plant.)
The container I'm using for the celery - well last week, there I was with my son and grandson, sitting in the sun in Napier having an ice cream, when the shop owner came out with these two empty 5 litre ice cream containers and lids, (the sort the ice cream is in, in shops that sell cone ice cream) and asked us if we wanted them. Son didn't, but I could see they'd find a use, and they have! My method of free-flowing celery in bulk is to wash and chop, and put in a container in the freezer, making sure it's no more than three-quarters full.   I set the timer for 20 mins, and every time it beeps, I give the container a good shake until the celery ends up free flow frozen! (You'll notice also that I use the leaves as well as the stems - they're full of flavour and goodness too!)  My freezer is pretty full at the moment, and there isn't any room for trays. This is easier and works well!


And a loaf of bread.
This is my "regular everyday bread". Delicious and healthy!

100% WHOLEMEAL BREAD
320 ml water (1 ¼ cups)​
1 teaspoon salt​
2 tblspns milk powder
2 tblspns oil​
1 tblspn treacle​
3 cups wholemeal flour
3 teaspoons Surebake yeast

Regular wholemeal setting.

My 100% wholemeal bread

And now for those apple muffins....

A couple of days ago, I posted about making apple sauce, and mentioned that I was going to make apple muffins.  You'll find that post here.

In that post I gave the recipe for my spiced pickled oranges - one year the entire crop of oranges fell off the tree, ripe, perfectly formed, but little.  It seemed such a pity to do nothing with them, but they were too small to eat by the time they'd been peeled.  So I pickled them, and I'm still using them!  They've gone more brown in the jars since then, but are still a fabulous accompaniment to ice cream, or as an ingredient in my apple muffins.

The secret of making good muffins is not to overmix the batter - there should still be signs of flour.  Beat them, and they will be tough and small.  As you would too, if you'd been beaten!!

As I use homemade apple sauce if I have it, I don't stew apples just prior to making these muffins, so I measure out the apple and add the orange, and then pop the butter in with that and warm in the microwave for a minute.  I should also say that I use raw sugar, and half and half wholemeal and white flour.

APPLE MUFFINS 

1 ½ good cups flour​            ½ teasp salt​             ¾ cup sugar

1 tblespoon mixed spice​1 teasp baking soda​1 cup stewed apple

1 cup sultanas​                        125g butter       ​1 egg

Stew the apples and while hot add the butter to melt.  Add to dry ingredients together with the beaten egg.  Mix lightly and quickly.  15 mins at 200°C.  A lesser amount of apple may be made up to 1 cup with stewed rhubarb, spiced orange preserve etc.  I use about  2/3rds cup of stewed apple and make it up to a cup with finely chopped Pickled Oranges.

I have to say that every time I've given a basket of these muffins as a thank you to my mechanic or other bloke-y blokes, they have been received with rave reviews, more so than any other muffins I've ever made! It's the secret ingredient, that pickled orange!

Wholemeal, carrot and wheatgerm bread

I threw this together yesterday before I got stuck into the apples. I haven't made it before, but have carrots in the garden, and it's a healthy 100% wholemeal loaf so was worth a try.
It's another from George Dale's "More Daley Bread".

Tastes great, and I'll make it again!

Apple Juice, Apple Sauce, Apple Muffins and Pickled Oranges

I was given a bag of apples, and decided to turn them into juice and sauce.

I use apple juice in some of my bread recipes, and apple sauce in all kinds of things, especially my Apple Muffins. These also use a preserve I make with little oranges - I sense some recipes will be called for here, and I'm going to have to make a batch of these muffins JUST so that I can take a photo for you!  But probably not tonight!

So firstly, preserved oranges.  For the muffins that I'm not going to make tonight..... Maybe things are not quite in the right order, but there you go.  Some days are like that.

SWEET PICKLED ORANGES (Yummy with ice cream)

2 ½ kg oranges (can be windfalls)​ 1 litre white wine vinegar

1.3 kg sugar.           ​1 ½ sticks cinnamon​                    13g cloves

2 teaspns mace

Cut oranges into ½ cm slices, lay them in a pan and just cover with water.  Simmer, covered until the peel is tender, about 1 ½ hours.  Put the spices into a muslin bag.  Put the vinegar, sugar and spices into a pan and boil well for a few minutes.

Pickled Oranges

Drain the oranges carefully, reserving the liquor.  Lay half of them in the pan of syrup, making sure that they are covered.  Simmer with lid on for 40 minutes until the oranges are clear.  Lift out with a draining spoon, put the rest of the oranges into the pan and, if syrup does not cover them, add a little of the reserved orange liquor.  Cook as before.  Put all back, cover and leave overnight.

Remove the spice bag.  If syrup is not thick enough, pour it off and boil until thick.  Then add the orange slices and reboil.  If the syrup is already thick and well reduced, heat slowly to boiling point with the oranges.  Arrange carefully in warm jars and screw down.

If there is not enough syrup to cover the fruit in the jars, make fresh syrup – cup to cup of vinegar to sugar – boil till thick and fill up the jars.  The oranges must be covered by the syrup during storage, otherwise they will discolour.   Any remaining syrup can be bottled as an ice cream sauce.

Now, the apples - - - 
So I washed the apples, cut them up (without peeling or coring them - as I was going to strain the resulting mush) added a small amount of water (probably about 5 cm up the side of the boiling pot), brought to the boil, turned right down and simmered for about an hour.

Then I strained to get some juice - I didn't filter it, as it doesn't need to be clear for my recipes or for drinking.  This is the result:  

Then I pressed the rest of the mash through a sieve to get out the pips etc.  It's fairly hard work, and not my usual way of making apple sauce.  Usually I core the apples first, then stew them and whizz them in the blender.  But that way doesn't give you juice as a separate product.

Letting the juice drip through

 I have to admit I helped the juice dripping through by pressing it with a spoon, as I wasn't too worried about getting cloudy juice for this lot.

And that's enough for this evening.  I've got a lovely supply of juice and sauce in the fridge and freezer, which will be used in all manner of recipes yet to come!

Now it's dinner time.....  Hmmmm..... what do I feel like?
(StoneSoup's chickpea frittata was the answer to that!  With grated carrot as I grated too much for the loaf of bread I'm making, and served with beans fresh from the garden.)

Rye, Molasses and Wheatmeal Bread

I had some molasses that needed using up, so the latest loaf from my kitchen is another of George Dale's, from his book "More Daley Bread".

I'm not going to copy the recipe in, being respectful of George's copyright, but here's a photo of the egg sandwiches being made for lunch today. Organic pullet eggs from my friend Steph's very free-range chooks, and fresh bread. Nothing better!

The molasses is a stronger taste than I'm wanting in my bread, so I won't be replacing it now I've used it up.  I'm thinking that treacle would work as well in this recipe, although this bread would be good with sardines and was nice with egg.