a simple yarn

Take one part organic chocolate, add a bit of Fairtrade, throw in a free recipe book… I’d say that’s a pretty sweet deal!

Many people love Green & Black’s chocolate.
I have not been one of them.
Tried their dark chocolate and hmm…too dark?  too bitter?  Don’t know.  Couldn’t put my finger on it, but never really jumped on the G&B bandwagon.  Funny how a bit of incentive can change perspective.

Walked into the local Centra (read ‘mini-mart’) for…um, can’t remember what I went in there for originally…but saw the display for a free recipe book.  What’s this?  Buy 3 bars of Green & Black’s chocolate and get a recipe book…FREE.  Not an inky, dinky pamphlet with a few half-hearted recipes.  Nope, a substantial, real-honest-to-goodness-192-page-suggested-retail-price-of-£14.99-book of chocolate recipes!  With categories claiming to be ‘mystical’ and ‘wicked’ I certainly couldn’t leave the shop without one… and surely no one would fault my temptation to buy merely 3 chocolate bars to get it, would they?

So I did.

Was willing to give the dark chocolate another go, but none to be had and contented myself with 2 milk and 1 white.  Must say that the milk chocolate has an unusual but smooth taste.  Perhaps that’s what ‘organic’ tastes like?  So, when occasion calls for milk chocolate, it’s a lovely choice.

Have to say I’m sufficiently chuffed over my impulse buy and am looking forward to creating some chocolate delicacies from what is claimed to be the ‘best chocolate book in the world.’  Wow, that’s sweet.

Right, so the official start to summertime (or what you would call Daylight Savings Time in North America) has thrown my clock off in more ways than one.

And as we moved our clocks ahead one hour over the weekend, I feel the need to post Saturday’s activities one day later, er…today.

Admittedly, it’s been a busy few days…
Thursday: Return from Cork with kiddies
Friday: Bake
Saturday Morning at Ungodly Hour: Collect Husband-Will from airport
Saturday: Bake
Saturday Evening: Host Will’s birthday party until wee small hours to help him overcome jetlag
Sunday Morning, 1:00am: Move clocks forward one hour

Since Husband-Will is not a cake-loving man, it becomes pie baking at our house. Apple pie, that is. A nice variety of apples, especially some Granny Smiths, to throw a bit of zing into the flavour.

A good fair bit of sugar, cinnamon, flour, and butter for appley-pie-goodness.

When I’m in a hurry, such as now, the ready-to-roll crusts work a treat.

And hopefully the outcome of baking will yield many happy returns!

Or rather, shamrocks of the sugary kind…

Saturday baking came earlier this week as Daughter-Kate was enlisted to bring biscuits, er sorry…cookies, to school on Friday, a shortened party day in anticipation of upcoming St. Patrick’s Day and the two-week-end-of-term-Easter-holiday. So, what else would I bake but sugar cookie shamrocks?

As I hunt for the shamrock cookie cutter, which I am absolutely positively sure that I own I realise, after an exasperating search, that…oops, I was wrong. Cutters of all shapes and sizes but no shamrock. Rats. What am I gonna do? For crying out loud, I live in the country now and can’t just hop in the car to the nearest Cookie-Cutters-R-Us! Grrrr….

Right, not to be undone by this setback, I dig around for Irishy alternatives.
Gingerbread-Men-Turned-Leprechaun?
Jumping-Reindeer-Disguised-As-The-Island?
Santa-Incognito-As-A-Pudgy-St. Patrick?

Aha! The simplest solution found an unused circle scone cutter reshaped into a trefoil…love the power of pliers…

Admittedly the dough shapes looked a little shaky but the magic of baking covers a multitude of cookie cutting sins.

The icing…green, of course. Didn’t have any store bought sugar sprinkles, but substituted granulated sugar whizzed with a bit of green food colouring.

Apologies, Irish Cultural Baking Diversion:
The icing which is found here is a mysterious entity to me, the North American baker. The icing in Ireland, or the British Isles, or even perhaps Europe is usually that hard-roll-it-out-to-form-fit-the-cake type stuff and to be honest…it scares me a little. I admit I have never used it as the thought of it gives my hands little tremors. Where’s the fluffy frosting that I’m used to?

So, you will appreciate my relief when, a few years ago, this little familiar package finally made it to Irish supermarket shelves….and so my sugar cookies are saved!

Ah, baking is done and I’ve got plenty of sugary shamrocks for Kate’s class…and Alex’s…and the Infants class…the entire school, actually…yep, it’s a small school.

*english = ‘biscuit’

… it’s not just for Christmas anymore.

When living in the US, the highlight of the Christmas season was invariably being the recipient of a lovely stollen baked by an equally lovely German friend. And so with fond memories, a few loaves of stollen were added to our Christmas festivities this year.

Since we gave most of them away during the holidays, I’ve still had a bit of yearning for something almondy. So, why wait until next Christmas to satisfy that desire?

While the recipe sounds complicated, it’s easily done in steps, most of which are waiting for the dough to rise.

Stollen
3/4 cup chopped candied citron (6 oz)
1/2 cup light raisins
1/2 cup light rum
4-1/2 cups flour
3 pkgs active dry yeast
3/4 cup warm milk
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
2 tbl almond paste
2 tsp salt
2 tsp grated lemon peel
2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp nutmeg
3/4 cup sliced almonds
melted butter
powdered sugar

Marzipan (optional)
1 block marzipan
1/2 cup powdered sugar

For each loaf, use 1/2 of marzipan. Roll in powdered sugar until smooth—not runny. Soak citron and raisins in rum overnight. In large bowl combine 1 cup flour and yeast. Add warm milk; beat smooth. Cover and let stand at room temperature for 1 hour.

In small bowl, cream 1/2 cup butter, sugar, egg, almond paste, salt, lemon peel, vanilla and nutmeg. Beat into flour mixture. Stir in fruit and almonds. By hand, stir enough of the remaining flour to make a moderately stiff dough. Turn out on lightly floured surface, knead 5-8 minutes until smooth and elastic. Shape into ball. Put in greased bowl turning once to grease dough’s surface. Cover. Let rise in warm place 1-1/2 hours or until doubled in bulk. Punch down. Divide in half. Cover, let rest 10 minutes. Roll each half to 7”x10” oval.

If desired, place marzipan onto half of each oval. Fold long side to within 1/2” of opposite side and seal edge.
Place on greased baking sheets. Cover, let rise about 1 hour or until doubled. Bake in 350-375ºF/180-190ºC oven 20-25 minutes. Brush warm stolen with melted butter. When cool, dust liberally with powdered sugar.

I confess that I was less than pleased and left feeling a little ‘flat’ with the dough’s temper tantrum and unwillingness to rise. Ah well, it still tastes quite good, even while being a little shorter in stature. In looking at the photo, I also wonder about the glob of marzipan that sits in the middle. Hmm…think that next time I shall roll it out quite thinly and put it into the dough ‘swiss-roll’ style. Might make a nicer presentation I think.

But satisfied that there is an almond-something in the house, just have to heat the kettle for a nice cup of tea.

Every now and then I get overzealous about the quantity of apples I buy for the Kiddies to eat…

It happened when two thoughts collided in my brain.
“Those apples are going to spoil if I don’t do something with them.”
“What shall I feed the kids for after-school snack?”

And so following the train of thought, out comes the food mill with applesauce in mind.

Warning: Cultural Comment on Applesauce
I find it interesting that in the US, applesauce is a mainstay in many a child’s diet. From individual portions to super-size-mega jars… extra-sweet to natural and unsweetened. In Ireland, however, applesauce is just that… sauce. It’s shelved with other add-it-on-the-side-in-small-portions sauces, like mint jelly, and generally comes in one very tiny jar. I wonder why that is? Is applesauce uniquely a North American cultural concept? Hmmm… might have to Google that…

Anyway, apples cooked and strained with a wee bit of organic/Fairtrade sugar (feelin’ really good about that!) and afternoon snack is done.

Um….hang on….that’s a lot of applesauce. Could freeze it, I suppose, or it just might spoil before we get it all eaten. Uh oh, here we go again…

And so following the (runaway) train of thought, out comes the flour with turnovers in mind.

And because I never intended to do any of this today, I might as well do one more variation, right?

Maybe next time I’ll just compost the overripe apples?

…and we’re still not talkin’ about snow…

So, what d’ya do when you have a surplus of powdered icing sugar intended for Christmas baking and a borrowed bread machine?

You make doughnuts of course! Authentic-yes-they’re-fried-in-oil-real-homemade-goodness doughnuts with lots of powdered sugar oozing into a proper glaze by morning.

Would I buy doughnuts with regularity? Not really. Will I make doughnuts with regularity? Hmmm…
Think this bread machine might be the hyper-carb-death of me!

A little pat on the back, yep, that’s what I’m after… just so we’re all clear.

Before we begin—

Attention Baking Aficionados!
The following is not whole-wheat. It is not filled with other healthy grains. It is not fashioned by hand. It is not baked on a stone. But what it is…my first baby steps toward breaking the bond that supermarket-purchased bread has on our household.

So, deciding that it’s better to begin with a process that makes it as easy as possible to stick with it for more than just one week, I availed myself of Lucy-Of-The-Lodge’s offer to use her bread machine, which was sitting in the back kitchen unused for many a-year. Right, viewing that as my own personal ‘re-use and recycle’ programme…

Of course I wrestled with the conundrum of which is better—to add another electrical appliance to the kitchen (thereby using more electricity) or establishing a habit of bread baking. I vote good-habit-making and I’ll make sure the kids turn off more lights in the house. Besides, having bread rise in a more-often-than-not chilly house might present its own challenges. It’s all about sustainability at the moment…sustaining the initiative to do this!

Finished product? A little loaf for the Kiddies and me…now, where’s the organic honey?

Okay, ‘new’ favourite done, ‘old’ favourite done…let’s see…all that’s left is ‘favourite’ favourite.

In our household, Christmas = gingerbread. For the Kiddies’ school lunches, in the run up to the holiday break, it’s a must have. The key to tasty gingerbread is definitely the molasses. Hold on, molasses? Ah sure, not to be found here…at least not when we first arrived on these shores. However, world-domination-disguised-as-globalisation has changed all that, but even so, a wonderful substitute has been found…..treacle.

What is treacle? I have no idea….probably molasses incognito and renamed by Europeans to confuse North Americans…but it works a treat in gingerbread!

Warning:
More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Treacle Diversion Ahead
Recipes4us.co.uk says ‘Strictly speaking, treacle is the British generic name for any syrup made during the refining of sugar cane. Therefore, theoretically, Treacle, Black Treacle, Molasses, Golden Syrup and Blackstrap are all treacles. In practice however, there is a technical difference between “treacle” and “molasses” in that molasses is obtained from the drainings of raw sugar during the refining process and treacle is made from the syrup obtained from the sugar.’

Frankly, I’m no gingerbread expert, but personal tastes favour this recipe. Unlike other ‘I-have-no-idea-where-they-came-from’ recipes, this originates with the Longaberger Basket Company in Ohio, USA.

Father Christmas Gingerbread
2-1/4 cups sugar
3/4 cup water
3/8 cup dark corn syrup or molasses (or treacle!)
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1-1/2 teaspoons ground cloves
1-1/4 teaspoons ground ginger
1 cup PLUS 2 tablespoons butter (1 cup in Ireland is 1/2 standard block of butter)

1/2 teaspoon baking soda (also called bread soda)
8 cups flour

Preheat oven to 350ºF/180ºC. Combine sugar, water, corn syrup, cinnamon, cloves and ginger in a large saucepan. Place over moderate heat and stir until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat; add butter and stir until cool. Dissolve baking soda in 1 tablespoon of water and add to mixture. Add flour gradually and work until dough is firm. Cut in various shapes. Place cookies on baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes.

Wait! Important Recipe Discussion To Follow
So there are two camps of thought regarding baking times for cookies:
Do you like them crisp and dry?
Or soft and chewy?

We like them soft, so I a) do not roll the dough too thinly and b) reduce the baking time to 9 minutes in the fan-assisted oven.

What could be better than warm gingerbread and a cup of tea?

Postscript of the Sweet Kind
Of course, the gingerbread wouldn’t be complete without the Royal Icing to go with it (also from Longaberger)….

2-1/2 cups confectioner’s (icing) sugar
2 egg whites
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar (in Ireland it’s known as Bextartar)

In a small glass or ceramic bowl (not plastic), beat ingredients on high for 5 minutes or until stiff peaks form and icing is glossy. Cover bowl with plastic wrap when not using to prevent icing from drying out. Makes approximately 2 cups.

Is the ’sugar cookie’ a victim of poor public relations?

It seems that in the quest for new and exciting Christmas cookies, I sometimes forget the faithful tried and true…

Contrary to its unfortunate name, a well-baked sugar cookie is never too sweet and a perfect companion to a cup of tea.

Light, fluffy, buttery….yum…..

Sugar Cookies
1-1/3 cups butter, softened
1-1/2 cups sugar
2 tablespoons PLUS 2 teaspoons milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 large eggs
4 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Cream butter, sugar, milk and vanilla in large bowl at medium speed until well blended. Beat in egg. Combine flour, baking powder and salt. Mix into creamed mixture. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Heat oven to 350ºF/180ºC. Roll portion of dough to about 1/4 - 1/8” thickness on floured surface. Cut into desired shapes. Place on ungreased baking sheet. Add sprinkles or coloured sugar. Bake 7-9 minutes. Do not overbake.
Variation: Add 2 teaspoons grated lemon or orange peel and 2 teaspoons lemon or orange extract.

In which the week’s work can be timed in eight-to-twelve-minute intervals.

I don’t do cakes.
I don’t do puddings.
I don’t do mince pies.
I do cookies.

The one North American Christmas tradition, which has followed our family to Europe to be foisted upon friends and neighbours, is the practice of making cookies. Piles…mounds…heaps of cookies to share. So, it’s been baking week at The Bell House…

Baking Trilogy, Part 1: New Favourite
Admittedly, these take a little bit of effort, but it’s oh so worth it when you see each beauty come consistently perfect out of the oven. And chocolatey? Oh yeah…

Chocolate Crackles from Martha Stewart’s Holiday Cookies magazine
makes 5 dozen

8 ounces (227 grams dark chocolate) bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1-1/4 cups all purpose (plain) flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon coarse salt
1/2 cup (1/4 of standard Irish block) butter
1-1/2 cups light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup milk
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup confectioner’s (icing) sugar

Preheat oven to 350ºF/180ºC. Melt chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water, stirring. Set aside and let cool. Sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl; set aside.

Mix butter and brown sugar on medium speed until pale and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. Mix in eggs and vanilla, and then the melted chocolate. Reduce speed to low; mix in flour mixture in 2 batches, alternating with the milk. Divide dough into 4 equal pieces. Wrap each in plastic wrap; refrigerate until firm, about 2 hours.

Divide each piece into 16 (1-inch) balls. Roll in granulated sugar to coat, then in confectioner’s sugar to coat. Space 2 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment (or greaseproof) paper.

Bake until surface cracks, about 12-14 minutes. Let cool on sheets on wire racks. Cookies can be stored between layers of parchment paper in airtight containers up to 3 days.

Time to make a coffee, I think…

Why is it that certain smells evoke such pleasant memories?
And at the top of the list…warm cinnamon….mmm…

The ornaments on our Christmas tree are, for the most part, homemade. Felt stars, orange slices, rag bows. But where are the cinnamon hearts? In opening the decorations we found casualties, succumbing to being stored in the ‘perpetually-damp-and-the-excessively-wet-summer-didn’t-help’ shed. Icky shades of green. No need to go on.

Time to make more.

Warning: Unintentional Copyright Infringement Ahead
I really wish I could remember where I got this recipe. In a book somewhere. Never noted and now long forgotten. So, apologies to the person who first created these little beauties.

Also:  A Wee Bit of Addendum To Follow:

I at first posted this recipe as it originally appeared in the long forgotten book, but the cinnamon measurement seems to cause confusion, so I’ve altered it for clarity.  And I would also suggest rolling out the dough a little thinner than you see in the pictures.  The ornaments need to dry completely through in the baking-and-sitting-in-the-oven-process.  A little less than 1/4 inch should do…

Cinnamon Scent Ornaments
6 tablespoons applesauce
9 tablespoons PLUS 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
Mix ingredients together in a small bowl. Work with hands until dough is the consistency of clay dough. Roll out between sheets of plastic food wrap.

Cut in various shapes. Use a toothpick to make a hole for threading ribbon later. Bake on a cookie sheet at 150ºF/65ºC for 1-1/2 hours.

Turn off oven and leave in oven for 5-6 hours or overnight. Depending upon the thickness of the dough, baking time may take longer.

And ESB said, ‘Let there be light.’

The Electricity Supply Board made a visit this week. That and the obligatory brown envelope in the hands of the monopoly’s employee brought power to our house. Oops, feeling a rant coming on about the strangle-hold monopolies have over poor consumers…ack…must…not…go…there…feel…blood…boiling…

Anyway, back to more pleasant thoughts. See this?

This, then, is the inaugural use of the oven, now that we are holders of proper electricity. The Kiddies and I celebrated with a long overdue home-baked-pizza-and-family-movie-night.

And no, the oven will not stay that immaculate for long…