Taste and Create: Cinnamon Sugar Donut Muffins

Now this is food blogging commitment! It's almost midnight and I've just finished packing to go on holiday tomorrow. Earlier today I realised that the deadline for Taste and Create is whilst I'm away... Q mad kittie rush to find a recipe that a) I can make in less than an hour and 2) I can make with all the ingredients I already have at home. The fact that 3) it tasted great was a fantastic bonus!!

My challenge was easier in that I was paired with KJ from A Cracking Good Egg - who was my match last time I joined in! So I had already had a good look through her blog! The thing I really wanted to make - crumpets - was outside of my time possibilities, so instead I chose these gorgeous Cinnamon Donut Muffins. They are so tasty - I've just devoured two with a cuppa - the perfect wind down after a manic evening!

Following KJ tip I adjusted the baking powder down to 1 heaped teaspoon. And as I was out of brown sugar I used white. And the results were well worth the rush! Moist, squidgey muffin with a crunchy cinnamon topping. All in 25 minutes - and hardly any washing up!

Thanks for another great recipe KJ!

Cinnamon Sugar Donut Muffins

Look at these - how much will my workmates love me tomorrow!!

But this one was all mine!

Taste & Create: Focaccia

This is my entry for this month's Taste and Create, which is hosted by the lovely Nicole over at For The Love of Food! This month I have been matched with KJ over at A Cracking Good Egg. I spent a fun couple of hours looking through her archives, and eventually narrowed my choices down to the luscious Flourless Chocolate Cake, her take on French Onion Soup, homemade crumpets, or Fantastic Focaccia. Due to serious overindulgence at the weekend, I've had to forgo the chocolate cake, I couldn't find my crumpet rings (I'm sure I had something like this before!), then arbitrarily decided on Focaccia between the last two! I'm definitely keeping these other recipes in my to-make list!

(I've got a rotten head cold just now - which seems to be adversely affecting my writing ability. Apart from the fact that I need to retype every other word due to misspelling (do colds cause the hapless victim's fingers to swell??) I also can't think of anything remotely interesting to say! I'm off work and watching daytime telly - right now, I'm watching a 6ft tall nanny being transformed into SJP. Oh dear, has it really come to this - I'm regaling you with what I'm watching on TV??? I should probably delete it, but bet I probably don't ;)

Ok, ok, stream of consciousness typing ends here!

Focaccia

This recipe was really easy to use. I had to make a couple of alterations - I used 1.5 tsp of active dry yeast, activated in the tepid water with 1.5 tsp of sugar instead of the fresh yeast.

I also let it rise slighty differently - I placed the runny dough into the greased baking tin before a first prove for 40 minutes or so. I then used an oiled spoon handle to push down the dough and create indents in which the olive oil would run. I then recovered it and left it for another half hour. Just before baking I drizzled some extra virgin olive oil over the surface and sprinkled with maldon sea salt.

The resulting bread was really tasty - with a lovely open springy texture - I'm looking forward to trying it again with some different toppings!

Store Cupboard Cooking Day 17

Taste & Create: Buttermilk biscuits... or scones!

Hello! Happy Easter! I'm back!!!

I actually started this post on the 20th March at 11:47, then decided to finish it over the Easter long weekend... However it was not to be and I ended up achieving exactly ZERO over the whole holiday. Well except a fair amount of whinging... it's fair to say I am not very good at being sick - I may well have had man-flu ;)

I missed Monday's deadline for Taste and Create - but Nicole was lovely and understanding, so here's my entry for this month!

Nicole's blog made for enjoyable browsing - For The Love Of Food. Although it has been in my subscription list since I discovered food blogging in January, it was great to have an excuse to peruse through the archives.

My initial temptation was to make a homemade pizza - something I really don't make enough of... but adore! Specifically the Wing-less Buffalo Pizza with Feta - which is soooo on my to-make list. But I was already making my Berber Pizza for the Pizza Blog Party - and thought that two pizzas in two days may be a little too much (for my waistline if not my appetite!). Another one that was high up on the list was the Tortilla Lasagne - great idea Nicole!

But in the end I opted for the Homemade Buttermilk Biscuits - mainly because I've never made anything like that before (I have been facing my baking fears recently - I think this was my most successful venture!). It was almost aborted - firstly because I couldn't find any buttermilk (not such a common ingredient in the UK, but I finally found some in Sainsburies!) and secondly, when I ran out of flour half way through. But there was enough in my flour shaker to make up the quantities - yay!


See Nicole's recipe here!

This was a great recipe - very easy to follow - and I think it took me about half an hour from starting to getting them out the oven... and about the same length of time for me and two girlfriends to polish them all off! They were flakey and buttery, and gorgeous straight from the oven - I didn't get a chance to try them cold - but I'll let you know next time!

I followed the recipe pretty much as is - except I made the dough in a food processor - pulsing it to get the pea-sized butter lumps, then a couple of times more to mix in the buttermilk. Finally I turned it out onto the floured work surface and continued with the recipe.

Thank you Nicole - I will be making these again!

My First Taste & Create: Curly Wurly Cookies!

I signed up for my first ever Taste and Create last month... and that was almost as far as it went! It wasn't until I received a comment from Grace over at A Southern Grace that I realised my confirmation had been trapped by my spam filter. (At the same time, I found a missing invitation to Blogging By Mail - sad to miss that one - but can't wait for the next!)

Anyway - back to T&C!

Taste And Create is a blogging event where you sign up and are matched to another blogger at random. You then have to look through each other's blog, then make and blog about one of their recipes! As I said - I was matched up to Grace - a southern USA gal, living in New York. I've always been fairly sure I was Scarlett O'Hara in a past life - so I think it's a good match!

Grace blogged about my coconut rotis that I learned as part of my Sri Lankan cookery course - check out her recipe here!

I looked through her epicurean endeavours, and immediately fell in love with Ebenezer. I'm not a natural baker, though am trying to improve my knowledge and skills... (watch this space for efforts good and bad!) I have been thinking about creating a sourdough starter for some time. Unfortunately, with the whole notification spam thing - I only had a few days to get this blog out - nowhere near as long as I'd need to cultivate my own little sourdough pet!

So instead I opted for the Toffeed-Up Oatmeal Cookies. Given I've had moderate success in making cookies before I hoped to be successful...

Now, before I proceed any further, I'd like to give a disclaimer... My cookies don't look anything like the ones in the pictures. Something weird happened and they went very flat and thin. I'm thinking it may have been too much butter, and maybe the type of toffee... I'll let you know when I try my second batch! Unfortunately that was my last chance to bake before the deadline, so I didn't have time to try again!

However... HOWEVER... Despite appearances, they tasted amazing! I let them bake for about 8 minutes, and the toffee went all chewy, and they had a winning combination of crunch and chewiness... they just didn't look too pretty!

Curly Wurly Cookies!

It was fun using cups to measure this - I've had a set for years, but hardly ever use them!

So there was a couple of things I had to change: I was out of baking powder, so used bicarbonate of soda instead; I'm not used to measuring butter with a tablespoon, and didn't know if it meant heaped, level or rounded... I think my equivalent was about 50g; and finally Grace's recipe called for Heath bars - I figured Daim bars would be a good replacement... unfortunately the supermarket didn't have any, so I had to opt for curly wurlies!! I also did everything in the food processor - yay for lack of dishes to do!!

• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1/2 cup porridge oats
• 1/2 cup curly wurly, chopped
• 50g butter, at room temperature
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 egg

Preheat oven to 180 c (350 f)

In my food processor, I mixed the butter, vanilla extract, and brown sugar to a cream.

I added the egg and whizzed until well mixed.

Add the flour, baking powder, salt and mixed until well combined, then add the porridge oats and pulsed to mix. Fold in toffee.

Place tablespoon-sized blobs of dough on cookie sheets and bake for 8 minutes or until they look "set" and the bottoms are just golden. I had to let mine cool a little before I could peel them off and pplace them to cool on a wire rack.

The original recipe said this would yield 2 dozen cookies, but I only got 14 from it. I think next time I'll add a bit less butter, and an extra 1/4 cup oats. I also think the softer caramel in curly wurlies probably broke down too much, so I will hold out for the daim bars!

Thanks for a great recipe Grace - I look forward to making a friend for Ebenezer soon!!