Bread: The Essential White Loaf (Nigella Lawson)

I finally mustered the courage to bake my very first loaf of bread. Properly. Without a bread machine or even the dough hook on my Kenwood Chef. Just good old fashioned mixing and kneading and proofing and bashing and shaping and rising and baking...

I naturally turned first to Nigella Lawson's recipe for "The Essential White Loaf" in How to be a Domestic Goddess. The recipe seemed simple enough. Apart from bread flour, yeast and salt. It called for butter as well as potato water to give the bread a light crumb and last longer.

As much as I enjoy reading her recipes. I must say that this recipe failed totally for me. It clearly was not written for a total novice at bread baking. I can understand that Nigella cannot possibly tell me exactly how much water I need, since this will depend on the type of flour and the humidity and temperature at which the bread is being prepared. But precisely because of this, I thought she needed to provide more information on when we knew that the dough had the right amount of water. Instead, I had to deal with "(b)e prepared to add more water, but bear in mind that you want to end up with a shaggy mess."

Wha?! Shaggy mess?? Is this shaggy enough for you?

And about kneading "(y)ou may need to add more flour as you do so; if the dough seems stickily wet, it means you do want a little more and often a lot more."

Huh? A little ...often...more...?

She lost me and I really didn't know what I was doing. My mother, who has made bread before, happened to be visiting that day. She took a look at my dough and told me straight away that it needed more water. I had no clue. I though kneading it would help to soften it. But I kneaded, and kneaded, and kneaded, for almost an hour (it's supposed to take only 10 or 15mins) and still the dough was tough! Needless to say, my dough didn't rise. It was hard and tough.

I tried this recipe twice. Adding more water the second time. But still, I had no idea when enough was enough. And still it remained tough with uncooked bits of dough in the middle of the bread.

I decided that I would try other recipes before ever coming near this one again.

Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes

I baked these Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes for some friends as to a a treat for their birthdays. The special ingredient is the morello cherry jam which is rather hard to find in Singapore. When I found them at Cold Storage (United Square), I told myself that this was a sign that I had to make these cupcakes!

It is very very easy to make. I must admit that I messed up the icing though, and overwhipped the double-cream slightly.

So instead of a nice smooth icing, it got somewhat lumpy. But it was still good.

It is very very lovely dense cake. I must admit that the first bite was slightly disappointing, because I thought it was too sweet from the jam.

But then, towards the end of the first bite, and definitely by the second bite, the complex flavours kick in, and you get that sour kick from the morello cherry and the wonderfully rich, smooth, bitter background of the dark chocolate. What an explosion of flavours! And for some reason, the sweetness never bothered me again.

I love this cake. I can't wait to do it again. I don't know if I prefer it to the Dense Chocolate Cupcake, though, as they are very different types of chocolate cake. Both are very good.

One in a very traditional chocolately chocolate sort of way, and the other in a snazzy jazzy sort of way.

My friends loved it. It did look rather pretty too, after I added the little rose-buds and packed them in a nice cupcake box (both from Bake-it-Yourself).

Nigella Lawson's Old-Fashioned Chocolate Cake

Maybe I should stop pretending that this blog is about baking in general, and re-name it Chocoholics Anonymous! And so here I have yet another chocolate cake baked from Nigella Feasts. I was inspired because Nigella described it as being "melting, luscious and mood-enhancingly good". And of course, I'm always on the look-out for the perfect chocolate cake.

It's quite a straightforward cake to make. The only vaguely special ingredient is sour cream. There's also no worrying about creaming etc. as you basically process all the ingredients together and fill two sandwich tins with the batter. There is, however,

some melting of chocolate to do for the icing, which can be tricky. But I didn't have problems this time.

As for the icing, I used 2/3 of the icing sugar than the recipe called for, and there was still a lot and it was very sweet.

I actually made this at the end of February, but have been too busy to blog about it, so I can't really remember all the taste details. But I remember it being moist and crumbly, and sweet. It was good, and enjoyed by various people. For me though, while I enjoyed it, I did not think it was as good as THAT Chocolate Cake. To be fair, THAT Chocolate Cake is one fantastic chocolate cake, and it will remain my go-to Chocolate cake recipe.

Double Apple Pie, Nigella Lawson, How to be a Domestic Goddess

I had always been intrigued by Nigella's Double Apple Pie but never got round to making it because the thought of peeling and coring all that apples just did not seem like a very good use of my time. But with my brother recently back home for the vacation, I decided to take advantage of his enthusiasm to finally make this pie.

Firstly, I'm not very good at pastries. In fact, I suck at it and had real trouble with this one. I just couldn't get it to roll out properly. I was wondering if it had anything to do with the recipe, but I googled it and found that no one else had my problem. I guess as with all things, practice makes perfect, and I will be practising more. She does make it up in the food processor, as opposed to by hand. Perhaps next time I'll try the traditional method. It could be easier. Anyway, back to the pie.

The recipe calls for two different types of apples, hence the "double" element of the pie (no, it's not referring to the size, though it is a rather big pie, and it's baked in a Springform tin). I can't find Bramleys or Coxes here in Singapore, so I used Granny Smiths (for the green Bramleys) and Fuji apples (for the red Coxes). The green apples were to be mashed, and the red ones were to be chunky.

The shortcrust pastry is slightly different from regular shortcrust patries, in that it uses Cheddar in the mix. It may sound weird, but they actually go so well together. I recall as a little girl, I loved eating cheese with apples - in fact that was the only way my mum could get me to eat cheese.

I really enjoyed the pie. It was a very substantial and sliceable pie. It was great when fresh and hot out of the oven. When it cooled, I thought the pastry was a bit tough (my fault), but the filling was great, especially since the apples were of different sizes and textures. My husband, surprisingly, loved the pastry, but wasn't so keen on the filling because he thought the apples were too chunky. I guess he likes them small a la MacDonald Apple Pie. I would love to make these again, but now that my brother has gone back to school, it might be awhile...

Butterscotch Layer Cake, Nigella Lawson, How to be a Domestic Goddess

I realise that I've been doing A LOT of chocolate recently. Probably too much. What can I say. A girl just loves chocolate.

Bucking the trend, I baked Nigella's Butterscotch Layer Cake for my mum's birthday (once again, with the able assistance of my brother).

This recipe surprised me. It's basically a sponge cake recipe with light muscovado sugar and a butterscotch-cream cheese icing.

It was great fun to make and a wonderful revelation. I loved it, even though it didn't contain any chocolate! (Oh, and mum and the others at our small party enjoyed it lots too.)

It was moist but not too damp. As always, the light muscovado in the sponge gave it a beautiful sweetness. It was very rich, but you could just go on eating and eating. The sweetness of the cake and caramel balanced by the sour-saltiness of the cream-cheese, so it was never cloying.

I would definitely bake this cake again. It's a gorgeous cake. And I hardly ever consider a non-chocolate cake as being gorgeous.

Chocolate Honey Cake, Nigella Lawson, Feast.

This recipe is from Nigella Feast, which has got a great section on chocolate cakes. I decided to bake this cake for my Dad's birthday party. It would be too small for the over 80 people expected to attend, but I thought it would provide a really pretty visual treat.

It's a damp, moist cake that is easy to make. Just dump the ingredie

nts into the food processor and blitz.

Honey is used in both the cake and the icing. And because of it, it's one of those cakes that some people love, and some others could hate. It looks dark and chocolatey, and so it is what your tastebuds are expecting. If you didn't know it was a honey cake, you would be surprised by the taste of the honey, which is quite pronounced. Therefore, you need to choose the type of honey you use carefully. It wasn't something I thought about and so I used whatever was already open in the cupboard. The fact that I didn't actually like the taste of that particular type of honey very much, somewhat compromised my eventual satisfaction levels. You could also probably reduce the amount of icing sugar in the icing, which was very very very sweet.

I did, however, love the decorative bees, which are made with marzipan and almond flakes and drawn with the honey chocolate icing. They were adorable.

The cake was generally well-received. The kids, especially, came back for seconds and thirds, and asked to eat the bees. I thought it was nice, in an OK kind of way. I'm not sure I'd make this cake again, since I have other chocolate cake recipes to try out and ones that I've tried before that I know are winners. As a chocolate cake, it's not the best I've tried. As a honey cake, with better honey, I think I might like this more. Love the bees though.

Oh, and I need to acknowledge my brother's help with this cake. It's useful having an assistant!

Chocolate Truffle Cake, Nigella Lawson, Feast

Forgive the pictures this time. I forgot to take a picture of the cake when it was ready and by the time I remembered, it had been cut and messed up.

This Chocolate Truffle Cake recipe is from Nigella Feasts. It's a relatively simple recipe, although it does comprise 2 parts, which can be quite easy to mess up.

The first part, and the only baking part, is the making the chocolate meringue base of the cake. I made twice the amount required, as I didn't have a 20" springform tin, only a 22" one.

The second part of the recipe, involves melting down

the chocolate, which as highlighted in a previous post, can be a treacherous affair. This time round, I had to melt 400g (!) of dark chocolate with some golden syrup and rum, then mix it with double cream. First of all, I only had baker's chocolate and a couple of bars of 75% chocolate. So my chocolate was very very very dark. Then, the melting didn't seem to go as smoothly as before, possibly because there was just soooo much to melt. It was impossible to get the chocolate into that nice smooth paste. After mixing it with the cream, it realised that there were small chocolate lumps in the mixture!

The cake didn't turn out too badly, despite the few lumps of unmelted chocolate in it. It was very very rich, and because I used bakers chocolate, it was also very very very bitter, to the point of being sour! This is one recipe from Nigella's vast collection that results in a very unsweet cake. Even if I had used 70% chocolate, I think it would still have retained that bitterness, though probably not so intensely. The chocolate meringue base gave the cake a nice twist, and was a nice light touch juxtaposed with with intensity of the truffle.

I love chocolate truffle, but I'm not sure I would do this recipe again as I wasn't able to get the truffle smooth enough. And, in my book, that counts for everything in a chocolate truffle cake.

Flourless Chocolate Brownies with Hot Chocolate Sauce

As you would probably have guessed, I'm a chocolate lover. And all chocolate lovers love a good brownie. This brownie from Nigella is very good, and very easy to make.

In place of flour, the recipe uses ground almonds. It also uses a lot of butter. The batter is a very oily proposition.

You basically melt the chocolate and butter, mix in the rest of the ingredients and then bake it. While hot, it never looks quite done, as it is still very gooey inside. But it will cool and set!

It's very very rich and damp and fudgy. Great with hot chocolate sauce. Nigella's recipe for hot chocolate sauce which contains some coffee powder, adding a nice kick. Great with ice-cream.

Totally Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

Who doesn't like a chocolate chip cookie? And, unless you don't like chocolate, why wouldn't you like this chocolate chip cookie from Nigella Express? It's more than a chocolate chip cookie, it's even more than a double chocolate chip cookie. It's a Totally Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookie.

As it's name suggests, it involves 350g of chocolate chips in addition to the chocolate & cocoa powder already in the dough. The dough was thick and smelt good enough to eat.

To bake, you spoon an ice-cream scoop full of dough onto the baking tray. The result is one huge and very very chocolatey chocolate chip cookie. Very nice with milk.

As usual it was easy to put together. The only problem I faced was that it was hard to tell when the cookie was done just right, as you don't have the usual "or when the cookies are golden brown" to guide you. My first attempt was a little burnt. But my next few attempts were fine.

It is rather rich and very huge, so you might find it better to share one cookie. I didn't think I would be able to finish a dozen cookies, so I froze half of the dough for a quick treat another day.

Butterfly Cakes

We planned a picnic to the Botanic Gardens with some friends. Since I had leftover ganache from the chocolate cupcakes (see previous post), I decided to bake some butterfly cakes and fill them with the chocolate ganache rather than the buttercream icing in the recipe.

Butterfly cakes are really just regular cupcakes with a twist. A little more baking powder is added so that the cupcakes rise a little more.

This, so that you can cut out a disc-shaped piece from the top of the cupcake, fill the cut-out section of the cupcake with icing, and fashion the cut-out piece of cupcake into butterfly wings and stick it onto the icing. Sounds complicated, but is really easy (for someone who always messed up in art class, take it from me).

The cupcakes were sweet. The ganache was bitter (I used unsweetened chocolate). The combination worked great together. Not as swoonable over as the damp chocolate cupcakes, but very easy to put together, and provides an nice variation to the regular cupcake. A very enjoyable treat. For a children's party, you could use a milk chocolate ganache, or a plain buttercream icing.

Dense Chocolate Cupcake

For my church's fund-raising bake sale, I decided to offer up Nigella's Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake, modified into cupcakes. On paper, the recipe looked really good, and I had been dying to try it out for the longest time.

As this was my first time baking chocolate cupcakes, I had no idea how chocolate cupcakes should look when ready. The cupcakes had to spend 30 mins in the oven, which is much longer than the 15 - 20 mins for regular cupcakes, and I was concerned about over-cooking them. Because of the chocolate content, the cupcakes came out of the oven looking rather scarily black. It was hard to tell if they were over-cooked. Or under-cooked!

But I needn't have worried. Miss Nigella is right. The cupcakes turned out beautifully. They were wonderfully moist and chocolatey, and had the most amazing aroma. The critical ingredient for this recipe, I believe, must be the dark muscovado sugar, which I had much difficulty sourcing, so much so that when I stumbled upon it, I bought a stash for my cupboard. (If any of you need any in Singapore, they can be found at Tanglin Marketplace.) The sugar imparts a beautiful depth to the flavour of the cupcake. And unlike Nigella's other recipes, I was able to use the recommended amount of sugar, without having the end-product tasting too cloyingly sweet (a consistent weakness I find in Nigella's recipes). I will try the cupcakes with other types of brown sugar next time to see how it affects the flavour. I would definitely not use white sugar.

But this is not all. I decided that since these cupcakes are for sale, they deserved some prettifying. So, icing was needed. And Nigella provided a wonderful chocolate ganache icing accompaniment. I am pleased to report that this time round, I melted my chocolate perfectly. (Read my previous post describing my disastrous chocolate melting experience.) I took up Katong Gal's suggestion, and melted the chocolate and cream in a bowl above simmering water. Once about a third of the chocolate started to melt, I turned off the heat, not allowing the chocolate to overheat at all.

I had a treat icing the cupcakes, and topped them off with sugar rosebud I bought from a specialty baking shop (Bake it Yourself). Apart from tasting damn good, the cupcakes looked real good too. My husband, who doesn't usually bother with cupcakes, enjoyed them thoroughly.

The decorating must have been a good idea, as the cupcakes sold out at the bake sale. :-)

Coca-Cola Cake

It was my mum-in-law's birthday. Rather than get her the run of the mill beauty product/spa voucher as a present, I thought it would be nice to bake her a cake, especially since I know she rather likes my baking (or at least I'd like to think that).

Since I am down with the flu, I had to choose a recipe that wouldn't involve too much shopping, and that would be quick and easy. Nigella's Coca-cola Cake recipe was just the one. I had everything in my pantry, apart from the yoghurt (in place of buttermilk, which I happen to have, but I'm saving it for pancake...) and coke. I didn't have golden caster sugar either, and I haven't seen it at all here, so I just used regular caster sugar.

It was pretty straightforward to make. The only fiddly bit was having to line the springform tin with foil as the batter was very thin and would otherwise leak. I also had to leave it in the oven for about 50 mins instead of the recommended 40, and even then, I don't think it was fully

cooked through (saw damp bits after the cake was cut). But by then the top of the cake had cracked rather badly, so I thought it was time. (There must be something wrong with my oven. Will need to get an oven thermometer sometime.) Anyway, I just trimmed off the peaked sections (chef's treat!), and covered the cake up with the cola icing, which by the way was way too much and way too sweet, even though I had reduced the amount of sugar by about 20%.

The cake had a really lovely texture. Nice and moist. And you don't taste the cola at all. Though I must say, it could've done with less sugar (and I had already put in less sugar into the batter and the icing). The other disappointment I had was that it wasn't as chocolatey as it looked. But I suppose, it is afterall a Coca-Cola cake and not a Cocolate cake. I would do this again as a birthday cake or maybe as cupcakes. But not for dear hubby, as he still prefers Nigella's cheesecakes.

PS: I discovered not long after that this is actually a Southern recipe. I used to see it on the specials menu at the Cracker Barrel restaurant in Montgomery, and I had never ordered it as I thought it was a weird combination. Now I wish I had tried some during my year there.

Blueberry Muffins - Take 2

Blueberries are in season now! I wasted no time in making up a batch of blueberry muffins. I usually use dried blueberries for this, and they taste quite wonderful. With the fresh blueberries, they were exquisite. The blueberries burst in the muffins and bled their wonderful juice into the muffin. Really very very good. Too bad my boy doesn't fancy blueberries.

I'm totally inspired to find more blueberry recipes otherwise I'll just be making blueberry muffins and blueberry pancakes this entire blueberry season...