Chocolate brioche and Monthly Mingle

Last week I announced my first participation in a blogger event. I joined Coulinary Tour 2010. During the virtual foodie visit in Brazil I found my new sweet passion - Dulce de Leche. You can still join the tour if you are interested and explore new culinary worlds. I've truly enjoyed the event and decided to go on.

I might have already confessed that I have a sweet tooth. My sweet tooth and the fact that I constantly try to improve my bread-making skills inspired me to join another blogger event. This time I chose Monthly Mingle hosted by Jamie from the lovely blog Life's a feast. The theme for this month is Bread & Chocolate. I just could not resist!

To be honest, it took me a while to decide what was I going to bake. Bread and chocolate? I did not want to think about a classical bread. I just didn't like the idea of sweet chocolate bread. But what else can be counted as bread? I found many chocolate bread recipes. I wasn't intrigued by any of those.

I woke up on Saturday morning with a sudden flash of inspiration. Brioche! But... What is brioche? Is it type of bread? I have never tasted it. Again! There are so many goodies I still don't know! I love foodie world. Sometime it is kind of frustrating though. I feel like a kid in the grown-up world. A friend of mine talked about brioche a couple of weeks ago. He said it was delicious. That's all I knew.

Thank you uncle Google. You know everything what I don't know! You helped me again.

Wikipedia. Another favourite site of mine!

"Brioche is a highly enriched French bread, whose high egg and butter content give it what is seen as a rich and tender crumb. It has a dark, golden, and flaky crust from an egg wash applied before and ager proofing."

Source: Wikipedia

Bingo! That's the one I have been looking for. Let's just add some chocolate. Yum!

I liked brioche a lot. I will definitely make it again. I just wonder if I can freeze them. We had a hard time eating 12 rich and buttery brioches. I might also point out that the recipe originally called for kneading dough in a stand mixer. As I don't have one, I had to knead it by hands. I also had to ask P. for help during a phase where recipe said "increase speed to medium-high"! :) Fresh warm brioche with melted chocolate centre was well worth all the effort!

Chocolate Brioche

Ingredients

1/3 cup warm milk

1/3 cup warm water

10 g dry active yeast

450 g plain flour

2 tsp salt

3 large eggs

55 g sugar

300 g butter, cut into small cubes, softened

150g dark chocolate, broken into pieces

1 egg, beaten with 1 tbsp water, for egg wash

1. In a large bowl mix warm water, warm milk, 1 teaspoon of sugar and yeast. Stir until yeast dissolves and let proof for 10 minutes.

2. Add flour and salt and mix with a wooden spoon until flour is moistened. Beat in eggs, adding one egg at a time, making sure each egg is well incorporated before adding another one.

3. Add sugar and keep kneading dough until it comes together. Now comes the tricky part. Mix in butter, adding only one or two cubes at a time, kneading well until each cube is incorporated before adding another cube. This can takes about 10 minutes before all butter is fully incorporated. Dough is fully kneaded when it pulls away form sides of your bowl.

4. Transfer the dough into a clean bowl, cover with a plastic wrap and let it rise at room temperature for 1 hours or until double in size. Lift up dough around edges and allow it to deflate.

5. Refrigerate the dough for 2 hours. Punch the dough down to deflate it every 30 minutes until it stops rising. Cover bowl with a plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

6. When you are ready to make brioche, butter a muffin pan or brioche tins you want to use.

7. Take the dough out of the refrigerator and scrape it out on a floured surface. Divide dough into 12 equal pieces. Roll each piece between your palms to form a ball. Flatten each ball of dough and put several pieces of chocolate in the middle of each one. Roll up into a ball shape and place in the pan.

8. Cover the pan loosely with a plastic wrap and let rise for two hours at room temperature.

9. Brush each ball with egg wash and bake in the preheated oven to 180C/fan for 20 - 25 minutes until golden brown.

10. Allow brioche to cool for a couple of minutes in the pan and then transfer onto the cooling rack.

Culinary tour to Argentina, Panqueques de Dulce de Leche

I can't believe it, it's finally here! I've decided to participate in a blogger event and I made it to the end. On top of that, it's a wonderful event! I joined Culinary Tour 2010, hosted by Joan from Foodalogue. The theme for this year is "South of the Border". This week we are in Argentina.

Argentine cuisine stems from the combination of Spanish, French, Italian and other European cuisines. Another important factor is that the Argentina is one of the world's major food producer. Who doesn't know Argentine beef? What really surprised me was that Argentineans eat a lot of pasta. Mmmm, I love pasta. But you already know that. I wanted to try something special, something I didn't know, and of course, as typical as possible. Well, I'm not sure I met these requirements when talking about crepes. However, I read that Panqueques de Dulce de Leche are very popular Argentine dessert. And, Dulce de Leche on its own is the most typical and favorite dessert.

When I tried to find a dish to recreate I liked several of them. For example Argentine locro soup was my hot favourite and I will definitely give it a go sometimes because it looked extremely delicious. My final choice - Panqueques de Dulce de Leche was influenced by the fact that I heard about Dulce de Leche couple of weeks ago, when I read David Lebovit'z post about Food Bloggers Camp in Mexico. I googled Dulce de Leche instantly, and it looked very intriguing. Oh yes, can you believe it? I'd never heard of it before that!

So what I can say? Be careful. Dulce de Leche is pretty darn addictive! :)

Panqueques de Dulce de Leche/ Crepes with Dulce de Leche

Crepes

3 eggs

2 cups milk

1 cup plain flour

pinch of salt

1 tsp sugar

1 tbsp melted butter

vegetable oil for frying

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, flour, milk, salt and sugar. Add the melted butter and whisk until fully incorporated.

2. Heat a lightly greased frying pan over a medium heat. Ladle or pour a little batter (depending on your frying pan size, just enough so it will thinly coat your pan) into the pan and tilt and rotate the pan until the batter coats the bottom evenly. Cook over medium-high heat until the edges start to brown. Flip the crepe and cook the second side for a few more seconds.

3. Remove the cooked crepe from the pan and place it on a plate.

Dulce de Leche

1000 ml whole milk

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 vanilla bean, split (optional)

1. In a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine the milk, sugar and baking soda. Stir well to dissolve the sugar.

2. Bring to a boil over medium heat without stirring. Remove from the heat and skim off any scum on top.

3. Add the vanilla bean (if using) and bring to a boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat to very low and simmer gently for 1 hour, stirring frequently.

4. Remove the vanilla bean (if using) and discard it. Continue to simmer gently for another 1/2 - 1 hour over very low heat, stirring frequently, until thickened and caramelised. Remove from heat and let it cool.

5. Dulce de Leche can be stored in a refrigerator in a clean glass jar for 1-2 weeks.

Once more for lychee, Lychee Ice cream

What can I say about lychee ice cream? I love lychee. And I love ice cream. And now, I know I like lychee ice cream! But still, pistachio ice cream is my all times favourite. Nothing can beat pistachio ice cream. Not only pistachio ice cream is heavenly delicious, but it also has a gorgeous colour. Mmmmm. I so much like the green pistachio colour. Oh, I almost forgot, I wanted to write about lychee ice cream.

Well...

I don't want to bore you with a long writing. There are so many wonderful books to read. Let's just look at some pictures.

Shall we?

And besides, I've got a cold, have a runny nose and stuffy nose at the same time and my eyes keep getting itchy. I shouldn't really spent this much time with my laptop, should I? I had an urgent need to share this ice cream recipe with you though. Because I so much needed summer! And I had my bit of summer in the London winter when eating my homemade lychee ice cream.

Creme Anglaise is the base for this ice cream recipe. Since I have only made creme Anglaise once in my life, and I'd ended up with horrible scrambled egg taste, I needed some help this time. I googled for a while and I found a wonderful video about making ice cream. Finally I made some changes to David Lebovitz's recipe for pumpkin ice cream.

Lychee Ice Cream

Ingredients

375 ml milk

250 ml double cream

95 g granulated sugar

1/4 tsp salt

5 large egg yolks

60 g light brow sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

450g fresh lychee, peeled ad stoned, pureed

1. Mix the milk, cream, salt and granulated sugar in a medium sauce pan. Heat the mixture over a low heat until it starts making little bubbles but do not boil. Keep stirring at all time to prevent burning. Turn off the heat.

2. Whisk the egg yolk in a medium bowl. Temper egg yolks with about half cup of hot cream mixture. The easiest way to do this is to use a spoon to ladle hot cream mixture into egg yolks while whisking rapidly. It is very important to add only a little bit of hot cream mixture at a time, otherwise you might scramble your eggs and it would not be tasty. You want to add in about half of the hot cream mixture as you constantly whisk it.

3. Return the warmed egg yolks in to the sauce pan, add the vanilla and cook over medium-low heat whisking constantly, until the mixture thickens. If you are not sure how thick the mixture is, stick a wooden spoon into the mixture to coat the back of your spoon and run your finger down to create a line. If the line holds, you know it's ready.

4. Strain the ice cream mixture through a sieve into a clean bowl set in a ice bath and chill. Add the brown sugar and stir until cool. Cover and refrigerate for at least 8 hours or overnight.

5. Stir in the lychee puree. If you don't have an ice cream maker (I don't have one) follow these instructions, otherwise freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions. Pour your ice cream mixture into a freezer safe container and place it in the freezer. As the mixture starts to freeze around the edges, remove it from the freezer and stir well. Try to break up any frozen sections. Return to freezer. Repeat the process until the mixture is smooth and frozen.

Enjoy Lychee Panna Cotta during a snowy winter

Hello and welcome! I'm back. I spent wonderful three weeks in Prague with my family and friends. I really looked forward to be back home though. I sometimes tell myself I'm too old for this. Ha ha, I know what you are thinking now. But three weeks of a "nomadic life" are quite tiring. I was dreaming about my own bed.

Luckily the weather was merciful to us once again and we arrived on time to London. Which was kind of a reward for a canceled flight and 10 hours delay on the way to Prague before Christmas.

I'm not a fun of New Year's resolutions. I don't think that just the fact that a new year starts will bring me more strength or will. So I don't make New Year's resolution. Full stop! However I promised myself (unofficially, psst!) I would try to become more organised in 2010. And my main aim is of course to improve my food styling and photography. So much for the New Year's resolutions. Do you make any? :)

Prague is a wonderful and beautiful city but I can say I missed London. So at the weekend P and I decided to go for a walk to say hello to London. We had been really amazed right after our arrival by the quantity of snow in London. It looked like a winter wonderland everywhere.

We headed for Greenwich. I love the Greenwich park. And it looked even prettier covered in white snow. I did not have many opportunities to take pictures in Prague so I had to take my camera with me to satisfy my photography desire. Lucky me! Snowy Greenwich was very photogenic!

As we reached the Royal Observatory a very amusing scenery revealed in front of us. People of all ages took advantage of a snow covered hill to slide down on all kinds of sledges, plastic bags or even surfboards. I was tempted to slide down myself! ;)

Then it started to snow again and it was time to go home. I had a craving for something sweet. We stopped by the market on our way home and bought about 1kg of lychees. I have been wanting to make a panna cotta for a while. I was thinking, why not to combine both. It was a very good idea. Scrumptious! White like a snow with an exotic taste of lychee and coconut. Yummy. I might just substitute a coconut milk for more double cream and a yogurt next time as P. didn't like the coconut taste that much. I did like it as it was!

While sitting calmly and enjoying the lychee panna cotta I was thinking about last days in Prague. We had been very busy, though not that much as our best friends who had welcomed their first son just 2 days before the New Year! We visited a little O. in a hospital just one day after he had been born. I can say the baby was best Christmas present for our friends. We shared their joy and happiness. Beautiful moments indeed. I want to wish all the best to a little O. and his parents!

Lychee Panna Cotta

Serves 4

Ingredients

285ml double cream

215ml coconut milk

50g sugar

1tsp fresh ginger, peeled and grated

200g fresh lychees, pureed

1tsp vanilla extract

4 leaves of gelatine

8 fresh lychees, to serve

4 fresh strawberries, to serve (optional)

pistachios nuts, to server (optional)

1. Soak the gelatine leaves in cold water to soften (about 10 minutes).

2. In a saucepan heat the double cream, coconut milk, sugar, vanilla and ginger. Leave to simmer for about 10 minutes but do not really boil.

3. Take the cream mixture of the heat and add the pureed lychees. Add the gelatine leaves and stir until dissolved.

4. Leave the cream to cool and pour into prepared cups.

5. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight.

6. To server panna cotta place the cup in hot water for a while and then put it on plate. Garnish with fresh lychees, strawberry and pistachios.

Coconut Rice Pudding with Pineapple

Hey my friends, I'm back. Not that soon as I promised, though. I don't know what is keeping me from doing anything! May it be Christmas around the corner? May it be my laziness? Or both? I just know that I feel like I have less energy left inside of me these days. I want sunshine or snow. I guess, I simply just need more light.

I know that sugar makes me happy and keeps my energy up! This theory was thoroughly tested during my studies. Oh yeah, I can not even say how much chocolate I ate during every exam term! :) I did not nourish myself with chocolate this time, though. I know I have already posted a recipe for a rice pudding some time ago. However, rice pudding is one of my all time favourite desserts, and I made a lighter version, omitting a double cream, and I used a proper pudding rice.

I got the pudding rice in a local food centre. I was actually quite surprised. I felt like Alice in Wonderland while browsing the shelves full of all kinds of rice, bulgur, polenta, couscous and other yummy stuff. Unfortunately, I could not spent so much time there as P. was not so excited to be in a food kingdom and kept asking me if I got everything I needed. I have to go back alone! :)

I used a pineapple to serve my rice pudding, but it is delicious with any fruit you find at home. I even like it just plain when the pudding is still warm.

Coconut rice pudding with pineapple

Serves 4

Ingredients

1/2 cup pudding rice

400ml coconut milk (1 can)

150ml ful fat milk

4 cardamon pods

2 tbsp palm sugar

shredded coconut to serve

unsalted pistachios, chopped

fresh or canned pineapple, diced

1 Wash and drain the rice in a sieve.

2 Heat the coconut milk mixed with the full fat milk and cardamon pods in a small sauce pan over a low heat. Bring to the boil.

3 Add the rice and stir well. Simmer, covered for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until almost all milk is absorbed and the rice is tender.

4 Discard the cardamon pods. Add the sugar and stir well. I usually let the rice stand, covered, for couple minutes before serving.

5 Divide the rice pudding between prepared bowls or glasses and top with pineapple, coconut and pistachios.

Back to Reality

It has been more than one week since Food Bloggers Connect '09, the first official conference of food bloggers held in Europe. What a wonderful weekend it was! Ah, I still can not get myself over it somehow. That one single weekend changed my life. It brought me new friends. It gave me the feeling that I am no longer alone in a blogger world. And it still keeps me thinking about and recalling all joyful moments from those two days. I still did not managed to re-establish my daily routine. And I know, I have not posted in a while. So what was I up to over the past week?

At first. Our broadband at home. Actually, to be clear, no broadband at home! It is another issue actually, which totally changed my daily routine for the whole week. Can you imagine it? No internet connection for a week?! I tried to live without it. However to be honest, it just did not work! Am I an Internet addict? Maybe... Yeah, apparently I am! :) But try it yourself just for two or three days, and you will see...

This situation called for an instant solution. What everyone likes? And what does every food blogger do best? Yes, the correct answer is - FOOD! And if it is sweet food, you have a 99% chance of success. I made chocolate muffins as a bribe. And I bribed P's colleagues to let me occupy their office with a super fast internet connection.Problem solved! :)

I was going to the office after one year working from home! Phew, I felt really tired! :) I did not cook much. Though a quick mushroom soup for dinner was enough.

And, of course, we all know that Christmas time is here again. I am christmas lights nut and I just can not imagine Christmas without them. I was excited like a small kid when I have finally installed my lovely christmas lighst to our all year IKEA dried plant decoration. Beautiful. That made my made.

One more pic of my leftovers for lunch, before I go to bed. Yes, it is time for bed. I can not believe it. Is it 3am again? Is anyone stealing time?!

Good night then. I come back with a yummy recipe soon, I promise!

Homemade yogurt without a yogurt maker

Finally!!! I have been wanting to make my own homemade yogurt for, I would say, more than a year? Phew. Yeah that long! I thought it was too difficult and that I needed a special yogurt maker and so on. The result was, I did not even try. The good news is, it is not difficult at all, quite the contrary, it is easy-peasy :)

I have noticed recently that I tend to cook at night. I am not exactly sure why. I can see several advantages though. First, I like the quiet all around. It is just me and sounds of cooking or baking. Secondly, I like the freshly baked cake or bread in the morning. Thirdly, with the winter coming slowly and days shortening day by day, I have more time to photograph my produce! And lastly, I do not know, I just like it. Well, it was about 10pm again, when I decided I would make a homemade yogurt.

I told my boyfriend: "I am going to make a homemade yogurt!". "Now?", he asked. "Yes, now. It is easy-peasy!".

I went to our kitchen and only a few minutes later my boyfriend appeared. "So, how do you do that? How do you make the yogurt?", he asked.

"Well, that is it", I pointed to a pot of hot milk. "I just heat the milk, add the yogurt, and in the morning, yogurt is ready!".

And that was it! I woke up in the morning and ran straight to a radiator where the yogurt was sleeping and maturing. I was excited like a child before Christmas! I still kind of did not believe that the milk, I just heated and mixed with a couple of spoons of yogurt, would turn into a yogurt overnight. It was a beautiful day. The sky was blue without a cloud which is very rare these days in London. I felt happy! :)

I put the yogurt in the refrigerator and let it get cold. After 3 hours, I could not wait any longer. The taste of the yogurt was delicious. Very smooth and not that sour as some yogurts might be. I ate it straight from the jar. Later that day I just mixed the yogurt with mango and shredded coconut to make a delicious snack.

Homemade yogurt

Ingredients

1000ml whole milk

5 tbsp plain yogurt with active cultures (I used greek yogurt)

1 In a saucepan, heat the milk over low heat. Remove the saucepan from heat just before it starts boiling (82-85ºC).

2 Let the milk cool down until you can keep your finger in there (42-43ºC).

3 Add the yogurt to the milk and stir well. Pour the milk into carefully washed jars and close with lids.

4 Set all jars in a warm place for about 8 hours or overnight until thickened. I placed jars on a warm radiator covered in kitchen towel to make sure they would keep warm. (The yogurt bacteria need temperature around 43ºC to grow.)

5 Refrigerate the yogurt for about 3-4 hours before eating.

Chocolate muffin story - searching for a moist chocolate muffin recipe - attempt no. 1

I have decided to find the most moist and heavenly good chocolate muffin recipe. Do you know the feeling when you desperately want something sweet? All this endeavour started one evening (almost night) when I had a pretty large sweet tooth, and I was pretty sure about what kind of sweet tooth it was.

Chocolate!

However, I did not feel like eating just a plain chocolate. I knew I wanted something baked with a strong chocolatey taste.

Normally, chocolate cakes are not my favourite desserts, but this time, I would do anything to get at least a piece of it. The problem was, I did not want just any chocolate muffin or cake, I wanted a deeply chocolate and very moist chocolate dessert. And this is it. My moist chocolate muffin recipe hunting started here.

It was about quarter past ten, but it did not seem to be late enough for me. I wanted to bake something straight away. Finally, I found a recipe, and I ran to a local shop to buy all missing ingredients. Phew! I made it. I was a last customer. After I read the recipe more closely, I realised it was not the one! :( It called for a soured cream, however it was only for an icing. In addition, recipe comments were not the best. Well, I had to start again.

I finally found a recipe which seemed to be worth trying in the morning. Now, it was delicious, however not that moist a deeply chocolate as I imagined it to be. What can I do, I have to keep searching and trying.

Chocolate muffins

Makes 12 (standard size)

Ingredients

115 g unsalted butter

60g dark chocolate, chopped

42 g unsweetened cocoa powder

105 g all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp baking powder

2 large eggs

145 g sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp salt

120ml sour cream

1 Preheat oven to 175C. Line muffin tin with muffin liners.

2 In a heatproof bowl mix the butter, chocolate and cocoa powder. Set the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Heat the mixture until the chocolate and butter are melting. Whisk until fully combined. Set aside to cool, just warm to touch.

3 Mix the flour with the baking powder and baking soda.

4 Beat the eggs in another bowl, add the sugar vanilla and salt and whisk until creamy and fully incorporated. Add the chocolate mixture and stir well. Gradually add flour mixture, one third at a time. Whisk in sour cream until combined and the mixture is thick and creamy.

5 Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin tin. Bake about 18-20 minutes, until the skewer inserted in to the centre of the muffin comes out completely clean.

6 Cool muffins on wire rack until cool enough to handle. Carefully lift each muffin from the tin and set on wire rack to cool completely.

Blackberry and apple Yorkshire puddings

Making Yorkshire puddings was a very messy experience for me. Though, these are really easy and quick to make, if you use too much oil as I did, you will end up with a kitchen full of white smoke. Luckily, we don't have fire alarms installed, otherwise they would had been sounding crazily the whole time I was baking my Yorkshire pudding! :) Nonetheless having a hot oil is a key factor in making Yorkshire puddings. Other important thing is not to open a door of a oven during baking.

Luckily for me, after ventilating kitchen and cleaning oven, I tasted one pudding and they were just scrumptious! We ate most of them still warm and we had the rest for a breakfast the other day. I can say that they are great both hot and cold. I especially liked a custard-like inside of these puddings.

Blackberry and apple Yorkshire pudding

makes about 12 small puddings

Ingredients

25 g butter

140g golden caster sugar

4 apples (I used Bramley apples), peeled, cored, cut into bite-size chunks

1 egg white

2 eggs

140g plain flour

200ml milk

150g blackberries

2tbsp oil

1 Preheat oven to 220C.

2 Heat the butter and 100g of the sugar in a pan, add the apples and cook over a high heat for 3-4 minutes until slightly caramelised and just starting to soften. Do not overcook them, they should stay quite firm with a bite left in them. Set aside.

3 In a clean bowl, whisk the egg white until frothy, then whisk in the rest of the sugar, the whole eggs, the flour and the milk. Stir the apples and the blackberries into the batter. Meanwhile add a splash of oil to each hole of your baking tin and place the tin in the oven over a high heat. The oil should be really hot before you pour the batter in.

4 Spoon a large ladleful of batter into each hole. Put the tin in the oven and leave for 15 minutes, without opening the door, until puffed up and golden. The secret here is not to open the door during the baking time, otherwise you loose the height.

5 Remove from the oven and carefully place each pudding onto a plate. You can serve immediately or leave them to cool down.