I tell you what is eye-opening – cleaning your computer screen – I just did it and now I need to wear sunglasses to shield my eyes from the glare. I must have been looking through a veil of cake batter for the past 6 months or so. Besides the obvious advantage of being able to see what I’m doing now, it’s also incredibly rewarding – top tip, clean your computer screen friends!
What is also very rewarding is clearing out and cleaning out (some of) the kitchen cupboards – I did that on Sunday afternoon when the weather was grotty, and we now have sparkly clean organised kitchen cupboards… not sure how long they’ll stay that way for, but we can remain hopeful can’t we? OH OH, I also changed an oven light bulb this week which felt like a MIGHTY achievement, I then cleaned its glass cover which was embarrassingly dirty and now it’s like a Disco in our oven, so much fun – it’s the small things right?
Talking of the weather… sorry, I couldn’t leave it undiscussed, WHAT.IS.GOING.ON? (I’m not really interested in the technical answers regarding the jet stream here by the way, I just want a spot of the warm, bright summer, I feel like I deserve… please!?)
Jokes aside, is anyone else feeling utterly sapped by the relentless drizzly, coldness? It just makes me want to return to my winter hibernation state!
… more of a recap
You may recall that last week I was bobbing around like Donkey from Shrek… this week I have, quite predictably, been less bobby. I can’t quite put my finger on why, although Mum managed to injure her back on Sunday and has been in a lot of pain since - I simply cannot bear seeing her in distress and vulnerable, so that’s been tough, although I’m relieved to report that she seems to be on the mend. On top of that, my customary uneventful, un-people-y routine has been slightly disrupted which I always find discombobulating. I had a physio appointment on Wednesday as well as a couple of other meetings dotted through the week and although it hasn’t been a terrible one, it’s just been bitty and the kind of stressful that I don’t really acknowledge until I realise that my shoulders and neck are as stiff as a board, and my chest feels tight from trying to take deep breaths too often. Not ideal.
Nevertheless, I have a couple of YUM recipes to share with you – including the burger bun recipe that I promised you last week and some seedy crackers that you may or may not be as excited about as me! The other news from this week is that I think I’ve nailed down my fave blueberry muffin recipe which has been a long time coming… I really can’t wait to share that with you in the coming weeks. I realise there are countless blueberry muffin recipes out in the world and who needs another one? But I’ve always been a bit disappointed with recipes I have tried UNTIL THIS WEEK… so I’m excited to share my findings with you!
I also have THAT trifle cake I mentioned a few weeks back sat in the recipe queue and some other fun stuff like copycat Nature Valley granola bars which are SO addictive, and some strawberries and cream ideas, in the pipeline too… I’m still desperately manifesting summer, can you tell?!
Oh, and one more thing… I have the biggest apology to make - I was making my Chicken and chickpea curry again on Monday and whilst following my recipe, realised I had made a slight error in the method - essentially, I told you to blend up the curry sauce base until smooth but I didn’t tell you to remove the cinnamon stick and bay leaves before blending - I’M SO SO SO SORRY, I cannot tell you how devastated I was to see my mistake on Monday morning - you know when you go all light headed and feel like your stomach is doing summersaults? That’s how I felt… I thought I’d sent a ‘note’ out to you all but given my incompetence when it comes to navigating this platform, I have no idea who I sent my rueful apology to! Anyway, I’ve amended the recipe now and hope it didn’t cause too much stress for anyone!
What ELSE is there to tell you…
I’ve been enjoying all the sport – in the past week, I’ve watched: Formula 1, tennis, the athletics European champs, Le Mans 24H is on as we speak andddd… England kick off their campaign in the Europeans tonight… I do just LOVE having sport on in the background – I find it incredibly therapeutic… unless I’m very invested and then I have to admit I get very anxious… but what’s new there? HAHA!
I treated myself to a packet of these expensive almonds from Waitrose on Wednesday - they’re wildly good and a bit too moreish - I know, I’m SO wild.
Don’t judge me on this one but has anyone seen or tried the viral cottage cheese wrap doing the rounds? I’m intrigued and might have to have a go!
I’m due to make a Christening cake for my best friend’s daughter next week… which is both exciting and terrifying - wish me luck and I’ll report back with how it goes.
Ok, I’m going to round things up here and spare you any further pointless rambles from this week. Let’s get down to the good stuff… in the meantime, hope you’re all doing ok, and as always, sending so much love to you all!
Steph X X X
Crackers
HELP… I hate to admit this, but I have major cracker fatigue. And do you know what the real kicker is here? I bet none of you even want or care for this recipe… it’s just plain old me who loves a dry, seedy cracker to snack on – weirdo!
Nevertheless, you’re getting this recipe whether you like it or not because frankly I’ve sweat BUCKETS over it and cried a bit and not slept that well and I can’t not share it now.
If you’re a newcomer to TCC newsletter, you may well not be up to scratch on why these crackers have been on my mind. To recap, basically, a Gail’s bakery rocked up in Chester about a month ago and on a gloomy day a few weeks back, I sauntered in to check things out. I purchased these crackers, and they are, in my opinion, snack HEAVEN… however, they’re pricey and I decided I could probably make them myself. SO… I eyeballed the ingredients, AND found a recipe online (here) that, according to the article, was going to be similar if not THE ONE used in store, and got cracking with my testing, (lol, see what I did there?).
Predictably I encountered endless hiccups resulting in multiple tests – no less than SEVEN TESTS - but I feel like I’ve settled on something I’m very happy with and hope you might like to try too – trust me when I say they’re not as dull as they sound, they rival crisps for addictiveness and if you like a ‘crackers and cheese’ supper, these may well become your new fave cracker choice.
A few notes on the recipe:
Although Gail’s use buttermilk in their recipe, I found milk and drop of vinegar worked better for me, I got more reliable results this way, PLUS I almost always have these to hand which means I don’t have to go out and buy buttermilk especially. Good!
*Bit of a tangent here but you may have seen people suggest using a mixture of milk and some form of acid as a buttermilk substitute. The theory is that it works exactly the same. From experience, I *slightly* disagree and genetically, they are not identical, but I get the premise, and here I defo favour the lumpy milky/vinegar vibe - catchy name, eh?I suggest using a food processor to prepare the dough as it is the most streamlined approach – you can do it all by hand - rub the butter into the flour and then add the wet ingredients but I found this produced a less uniform cracker dough at the end.
You don’t want to stress this dough out too much, if it starts to ‘shrink back’ as you’re rolling it out, give it a 15-minute chill out in the fridge before having another go.
I’m warning you now, the seeds on top don’t LOVE sticking to the dough… I suggest gently rolling over the seeds having scattered them over the rolled-out dough, as this sort of presses them into the surface, helping them adhere. However, you’re likely to lose a fair few along the way – I just collect them up and use them for seasoning salads and stuff – YUM.
The first phase of the bake is fairly normal - we bake for 10 minutes, flip the dough over (fling a few errant seeds around the kitchen in the process) and then bake for another 10 minutes, BUT then I find the dough bakes quite unevenly, so I suggest you take a pair of scissors to it, hack it into smaller chunks. Remove any edge bits that feel firm, crisp, and look a deep golden colour – place them on a wire rack to cool - then return the remaining shards to the oven for up to a further 10 minutes or until they look the same golden colour. I know it’s a bit cavalier and I’m fairly certain Gail’s don’t employ this method, but they probably have much snazzier equipment, so I resort to this cowboy method and I kinda like it.
I think that’s about everything – if you’re still awake and fancy a savoury snack I urge you to have a go at these… you can omit the seeds and just sprinkle the top with salt (a touch of dried rosemary too if that’s your thing) - they still taste great or customise them as you wish. Alternatively, you can think I’m weird for my cracker preference and opt for something more exciting… whatever you decide - ENJOY!
Ingredients
Cracker dough
100g Plain flour
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp sea salt
4g/ approx. 1 level tsp caster sugar
25g Unsalted butter cold, chopped into small cubes
55g whole milk
1 tsp white wine vinegar
Seedy topper
15g sesame seeds
10g linseeds
3g fennel seeds
3g poppy seeds
2g caraway seeds
2g Nigella seeds
Flaky sea salt for sprinkling
Method
Combine the milk and vinegar in a jug and set to one side – it will go a bit lumpy – this is fine. Meanwhile, measure the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar in a food processor and pulse to thoroughly combine. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Finally, add the milk/vinegar mixture and pulse until the mixture starts to clump. Stop the mixer and use your hands to bring the dough together into a cohesive ball. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for a minimum of 2 hours – or overnight if possible.
Once rested, remove the dough from the fridge, very lightly dust the work surface with flour and roll the dough out to a large rectangle approximately 25x33cm in size - it should be nice and thin. If the dough becomes hard to roll at any point, pop it on a baking tray and get it straight back into the fridge for 15 minutes to chill out before continuing to roll – don’t be afraid to do this a few times, you don’t want tough crackers.
Once rolled out to the correct size, carefully transfer the dough to a baking tray lined with parchment, cover lightly with clingfilm, and refrigerate again for a minimum of 30 minutes.
Meanwhile prepare the seed mixture by mixing all the seeds together in a bowl, then preheat the oven to 190C/170C fan.
Once the dough has rested, scatter the seed mixture over the top - you may not quite want to use it all, but I tend to get as much on there as possible. Then use a rolling pin and roll over the seeds gently pressing them into the surface of dough. Sprinkle with an extra pinch of flaky sea salt and bake in the oven for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, remove the tray from the oven and carefully flip the whole sheet of cracker dough over – some seeds will probably fall off, they’re a tasty snack to enjoy afterwards - return to the oven and bake for a further 10 minutes. At this point, you will probably notice that the sides are a fairly deep golden, meanwhile, the centre is a quite pale and very bendy… now is when things become a bit cavalier. I suggest you take a pair of scissors to your dough, and cut it into approximately four or five strips, then snip each strip roughly in half so you have about 8-10 squares of cracker*. Remove any shards that are already firm and look well baked and leave the remaining squares of dough on the tray. Return to the oven for another 5-10 minutes, flipping them halfway through to achieve an even bake. You really are going to have to use your intuition here.
Once you’re happy with the bake on your crackers remove from the oven, and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
*It goes without saying that the dough is hot here so please be careful - I tend to sort of swear and burn my hands while manhandling the dough but using a clean tea towel or piece of kitchen towel to hold the dough is probably more advisable.
ENJOY!
BUNS BUNS BUNS
You know I love a soft bun by now, but I think this may be my best yet. It’s tender, light, keeps fresh for longer than most homemade bread doughs due to the addition of tangzhong in the dough, and it tastes ultra-buttery but not rich? It’s magic! Honestly, it’s such a winner!
You could feasibly use this recipe as a base for sweet dough recipes - I’m talking cinnamon buns or something equivalent - OR it will become your new favourite sandwich/burger bun dough - bake a batch at the weekend, eat a couple and freeze them to enjoy through the week… or if you are having a BBQ, double the recipe and bake a bunch for a crowd - they’ll go down an absolute STORM!
Hope you love them as much as I do… ENJOY!
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