Santa Lucia sour cherry and saffron buns

Usually it takes me some time to consider a cookbook a top favorite – I love beautiful books and they certainly get my instant attention, but I like to try some of the recipes first to be sure they actually work. However, Signe Johansen’s Scandilicious Baking is so pretty and everything in it sounds so delicious I came to the conclusion that it was the best cookbook I purchased in the last 11 months. Absolutely gorgeous.
Picking the first recipe to try was hard – I actually feel like making all the recipes in this book! – so I settled for one that reminded me of my mom: when I was little, she had a small statue of St. Lucy at home, and I was very intrigued and even a bit scared by the image of a woman holding a tray with two eyes in it. Later on in life, when I was 8 or so, I found out that my dad had had an accident in the late 70s and lost one of his eyes in it – that is why mom had St. Lucy around the house.
I don’t believe in God or in saints but could not resist making these buns just because of my mom.

Santa Lucia sour cherry and saffron buns
from the absolutely beautiful Scandilicious Baking

375ml whole milk
pinch of saffron threads
2¼ teaspoons (7g) dried yeast
¼ cup (56g) unsalted butter, melted and warm
350g all purpose flour
150g whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
4 tablespoons granulated sugar
½ teaspoon salt
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
24 dried cherries (double the amount if they’re too small)
1 egg, extra, lightly beaten with a fork, for brushing the buns

In a small saucepan, heat the milk with the saffron strands until it starts to come to a boil. Remove from the heat and set aside until lukewarm. Sprinkle the yeast in a large bowl, pour over the milk and mix with a fork. Stir through the melted butter. Add the flours, cardamom, sugar, salt, egg and vanilla to the milk mixture and mix with a spoon until a sticky dough forms. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 5 minutes until the dough starts to feel smooth and elastic – the dough is quite wet so you may want to use a dough scraper during the early stages of kneading (I used the Kitchen Aid with the dough hook and added 1 tablespoon of all purpose flour to the dough because it was too liquid). Transfer the dough to a lightly buttered large bowl, cover with plastic wrap and put in a warm place to rise. Leave it for about 1-1½ hours until it has doubled in size.
Line a large baking sheet with foil. Punch the dough to remove the excess air then transfer it to a lightly floured surface. Knead it in to a log and then slice into 12 pieces of roughly equal size. Shape these into balls and then splay your hands to roll the bun into a sausage shape, then fold the ends into an S shape and carefully place them onto the prepared sheet. Cover with a clean tea towel and leave in a warm place to prove and double in size again. This should take 20-30 minutes – in the meantime, preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F.
Once the buns have risen, stuff each crevice of the S shaped bun with a dried cherry (two each if they’re too small). Poke them into the dough so they don’t pop up during proving or baking. Lightly glaze each bun with a little beaten egg and bake for 20-30 minutes or until they’re golden and sound hollow when tapped on the bottom.

Makes 12

St. Clement’s drizzle cake

Not everything in life turns out the way we expect it be and to me understanding that is part of growing up – learning to deal with deception and disappointment may not be a pleasant thing to do but it is certainly necessary. And exactly because of that I find it wonderful when something I expected to be great actually is, even little things like a good movie or a good book. My hopes were high for “Skyfall” and the movie fit the bill perfectly – Daniel Craig has proved once more that he can play the part infinitely better than Brosnan, Javier Bardem delivers another great villain (Joel and Ethan Coen knew what they were doing!) and Sam Mendes is as talented directing an action movie as he is directing drama.

Coincidently, a couple of days before I watched “Skyfall” Rachel Allen’s gorgeous book on cakes arrived, and that was another highlight of my week: the book is absolutely beautiful, packed with delicious recipes, and this citrusy and very moist cake is one of them.

St. Clement’s drizzle cake
slightly adapted from the beautiful Cake (mine was bought here)

Cake:
175g unsalted butter, softened
175g granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
finely grated zest of 1 lemon (you’ll use the juice for the syrup)
finely grated zest of 1 orange (you’ll use the juice for the syrup)
2 large eggs
¼ cup (60ml) whole milk, room temperature
1 ¼ cups (175g) all purpose flour
1 ¼ teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt

Syrup:
juice of the lemon and orange
½ cup (100g) granulated sugar

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F. Butter a 1.5l loaf pan, line with baking paper and butter the paper as well.
In the large bowl of an electric mixer, beat butter, sugar, vanilla and lemon and orange zest until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Scrape the sides of the bowl occasionally. In low speed, beat in the milk (batter may seem curdled, don’t worry). Sift the flour, baking powder and salt over the batter and fold in. Transfer to the prepared pan and smooth the top.
Bake for about 45 minutes or until risen and golden and a skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
In the final minutes of the baking time, make the syrup: in a small bowl, mix together the ingredients. As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, prick several times with a skewer or dried spaghetti, then slowly pour the syrup all over the top, letting it soak into the cake. Leave to cool completely in the pan.

Serves 8-10

Almond and rosewater shortbread

I might love baking cookies but I usually shy away from rolled out kind – yes, I’m lazy and yes, I’ve turned several rolled out cookie recipes into slice and bake cookies out of sheer laziness. Not a very nice thing to admit, I know, but true. So months ago, on a cool day – which because of the temperatures we’ve been having here lately seems even more distant – I decided to make roll out cookies, and the combo almond and rosewater seemed perfect: not only because I thought it would taste delicious (and it was, indeed) but also because all those almond pieces dispersed throughout the dough would definitely stop me from turning the cookies into the slice and bake kind. :D

Almond and rosewater shortbread
slightly adapted from the always beautiful Australian Gourmet Traveller

120g whole almonds
220g unsalted butter, room temperature
½ cup + ½ tablespoon (75g) icing sugar, sifted
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 teaspoons rosewater
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons Amaretto
330g all purpose flour
3½ teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt

Assembling:
2-3 tablespoons rosewater, or to taste
1½ cups (210g) icing sugar, for rolling the cookies

Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F. Spread almonds on an oven tray and roast, stirring occasionally, until golden (5-6 minutes). Cool completely, then coarsely chop and set aside.
Beat butter, icing sugar, vanilla and rosewater in an electric mixer until creamy. Beat in the yolk, then Amaretto, occasionally scraping down sides of bowl. Sift in flour, baking powder and salt, add almonds and stir to form a stiff dough, then turn onto a lightly floured surface. Shape into a disc, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours.
Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F. Line two large baking sheets with baking paper. Roll out dough between two pieces of lightly floured baking paper to 1.5cm-thick. Cut into your desired shape using any 5cm (2in) diameter cutter and place onto prepared sheets. Reroll scraps once. Bake until light golden on the edges (18-20 minutes), cool on sheets for 5 minutes, then sprinkle with rosewater. Carefully roll the warm cookies in the icing sugar, then cool over a wire rack.
Cookies will keep, stored in an airtight container, for 1 week (dust with icing sugar between layers).

Makes about 60

Molasses and caraway apple muffins

New ingredients always intrigue me: I love trying new flavors in my kitchen. I got even more interested in baking with different flours after making Alice Medrich's fabulous chestnut pound cake and also after purchasing Kim Boyce's fantastic cookbook; Kim's carrot muffins turned out delicious, so when I saw a new recipe for muffins made with a bit of spelt flour I had to try them - these are made with molasses and apples and come from Dan Lepard's delicious column at The Guardian.

Molasses and caraway apple muffins
from Dan Lepard’s column at The Guardian

100g unsalted butter, melted
50ml canola oil
50g molasses
1 cup (175g) light brown sugar, packed
3 medium eggs
3 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 teaspoon caraway seeds
150g all purpose flour
150g spelt flour
2 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
3 small apples, peeled, cored and diced
flaked almonds, to finish

Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F; butter a 12-hole muffin pan or line it with paper cases.
Whisk the butter, oil, molasses and sugar until smooth, then beat in the eggs one at a time, until evenly mixed. Add the vanilla and caraway, mix well, then add the flours, baking powder and salt, and stir just to combine. Fold in the apples, divide the mixture between the cases, filling them almost to the top, and scatter almonds on top. Bake for 25 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.
Remove from the oven, cool in the pan over a wire rack for 5 minutes then carefully remove the muffins from the pan and transfer to the wire rack.

Makes 12 – I halved the recipe above using 1 ridiculously large egg and 1 ridiculously large apple; I used a muffin pan with 1/3 cup (80ml) capacity cavities and got 7 muffins

White chocolate cake with passion fruit icing

I know, I know, white chocolate and passion fruit combined again – since I had passion fruits galore in my fridge and the flavor combo had worked so beautifully in cheesecake form, I thought that using it again as a cake would be a great idea – and indeed it was; but don’t worry: if you’re not into sour flavors as I am, just glaze the cake with a simple dark chocolate ganache – that is what Donna does in her book.

White chocolate cake with passion fruit icing
slightly adapted from the always delicious and foolproof Modern Classics Book 2

Cake:
185g unsalted butter, chopped
1 cup (240ml) whole milk
1 ½ cups (300g) granulated sugar
150g white chocolate, finely chopped
2 cups + 2 tablespoons (300g) all purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs

Glaze:
1 cup (140g) icing sugar
1 to 1½ tablespoons passion fruit pulp – with or without the seeds

Cake: preheat the oven to 180°C. Butter a 23cm (9in) round cake pan, line the bottom with a circle of baking paper and butter the paper as well.
Place butter, milk, sugar and chocolate in a medium saucepan over low heat and stir until melted and smooth. Set aside.
Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a large bowl. Add the eggs, vanilla and the chocolate mixture and whisk until smooth. Pour into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake for about 50 minutes or until risen and golden and a skewer inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 25 minutes, then carefully unmold into a wire rack. Remove the paper then invert the cake right side up on the rack. Cool completely.
Icing: sift the icing sugar into a medium bowl. Gradually add the passion fruit pulp and mix until pourable consistency. Pour over the cake. Set aside until glaze is set, about 15 minutes.

Serves 8-10