Stuart's Soliloquy to the void

Chocolate cupcakes

Saturday, November 14th, 2009 | Cooking | 2 Comments

Recently, my youngest sister wanted to bake these ‘advanced’ cupcakes, so she asked whether I would bake them with her. Never avoiding a chance to bake with others, I immediately agreed, and we had a lot of fun preparing, decorating, and not least eating the cakes.

It’s a fairly standard chocolate cake with whipped egg whites carefully folded into the chocolate batter. After a good bake we piped butter frosting over the cupcakes and drizzled candied violet over it.

Looking closely we can see the small pieces of candied violet better:

Normally I don’t fancy cupcakes too much as I think they have a tendency to become a bit too dry, but these were very good. Yummy.

Tags: baking, cake

Slow durum bread

Saturday, November 14th, 2009 | Cooking | No Comments

If one has better time, it is, of course, preferable to give the bread a slow rise, which brings out more flavour nuances in the bread. There isn’t that much difference in consistency to the quick durum bread, but it does have better flavour.

The ingredients are:

• 700 g wheat flour
• 300 g durum flour
• 10 g fresh yeast
• 20 g sea salt
• 700 g water

The ingredients are mixed together for 3 minutes at first speed to incorporate the ingredients, and then continuing on first speed for another 7–8 minutes to develop the gluten.

The dough ferments for 3 and a half hours with folds every 50 minutes and then the dough is shaped into pretty loaves.

After 1½–2 hours of proofing, the loaves are slashed and baked. Looking closely after the slashing we can see the bubbly activity inside the bread.

After baking they have a lovely golden durum crust.

And after cooling, the bread is ready for serving, perhaps with a nice variety of seafood.

Bon appetit!

Tags: baking, bread, white bread