Boiled Dough Bread

      

On my quest to learn bread making I came across several videos on YouTube and FB on making different types of bread. This boiled bread recipe started on a Turkish site and when you keep clicking and going down the rabbit hole that is social media, you will eventually find something you can adapt and this is it for me. I LOVE this bread so much, so does the family so winners all around.

Ingredients 

400ml lukewarm milk

10g dry yeast

20g sugar

10g salt

30ml vegetable oil

600g bread flour 

1. Mix milk, yeast, sugar and salt.

2. Then add flour. Stir until it gets tough then use hands and mix. 

3. Add oil and mix and knead until incorporated through. Knead for a few minutes, then rest for an hour until dough is double in size.

4. Knock the air out and roll into a log.

5. Cut log in half. Then cut each half into 3rds.

6. With a rolling pin roll the dough into a rectangle of sorts, approx 5 and 6  inches a side (ish) ... or whatever size you want really, I was going for subs.

Square or rectangle is up to you

7. Then roll the dough into a log. Pinch and seal the seams and the side so that it the dough doesn't unravel.

8. In a pan with boiling water, put the dough in for 2 minutes. 

Boil for 2 minutes

9. Score the top of the boiled dough with slits for growth. In a 200 degree preheated oven bake for 25 minutes or so until it's brown and fat and fluffy.

10. Shove in face :)

Perfectly toasty

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

One way to guarantee kids eat vegetables is to cover it in chocolate. Obviously it's for a treat, or in my circumstance a trick as my twins refuse to eat zucchinis. They will willingly forfeit screen time just to avoid eating zucchini. Madness right? Hence why I hid the deliciousness of the zucchinis or courgettes in a cake. I was totally inspired by Sally's Baking Addiction, lots of very fab recipes there. This recipe is almost all Sally's, with my little spin.

Ingredients

2 cups plain flour

approx 3-4 cups of grated zucchini (squeeze some, not all liquid out)

1 cup dark cocoa powder

1/2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp bicarb soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup vegetable oil

1 cup granulated sugar

3/4 dark brown sugar

4 large eggs

1/3 cup sour cream

2 tsp vanilla paste

2 tsp instant espresso powder/granules

250g dark mini choc chips

Frosting

Use whatever you like but I wanted something creamy to counter all the dark choc in the cake.

400g  Better Crocker chocolate hazelnut frosting (you don't have to use all)

200g Cadbury dairy milk

a little drizzle of vegetable oil

1. Sieve flour, cocoa, bicarb, baking soda and salt into a big bowl. Then add coffee powder and mix, set aside.

2. In another bowl mix oil, both sugars, eggs, sour cream and vanilla paste until sugar has dissolved. Then add zucchini and mix some more. Once it's combined add it to the dry ingredients and mix well. I used a handheld mixer. Then stir in the choc chips.

3. Divide into 2 x baking pans or 1 large, whatever you want. Oven should be preheated to 180 degrees.

4. Bake for about 30-45 minutes depending on your oven. I would check with skewer from about 30 minutes. I think mine took a wee bit more time then the original recipe said. Let it cool before frosting.

5. Melt the Cadbury dairy milk with a little drizzle of oil, just enough to give it a nice runny consistency. I didn't really measure, sorry... maybe 3 tablespoons give or take.

6. Slap the hazelnut frosting between the cakes and drizzle the milk chocolate all over the top.

7. Shove in face!

Anything Goes Curry

It has been many years since I wrote any recipes down and this recipe is as good as any to break the blog drought I think. This is my Anything Goes Curry with which I mean you can use any meat, any veggies, any legumes... anything! I make this dish once a week to use up whatever I have in the fridge. I throw in so much vegetables but the kids don't question it, they just happily eat.

The key to this curry is the curry powder. I don't use Keen's, I only use Baba's Meat Curry Powder but anything from an Asian supermarket will generally do, the flavours will be slightly different but still yummy. The thing to note is the curry powder blend, it should say MEAT curry powder.

In this version I am using lamb. Not any specific cut, rather off cuts. You can get them super cheap from any butcher. It takes a tiny amount of time to cut the meat down and because it's off cuts I dice the meat small so that it doesn't need a lot of time to cook and it doesn't matter what lamb cut it is. If you are going to use big chunky cuts of whatever meat I would suggest browning the meat first before adding to curry.

INGREDIENTS

approx 800g diced lamb (beef, chicken, pork, whatever works)

1 big carrot

1 onion

2 stalks of celery

1 sweet pepper

1 fennel

2 large potatoes

1 bunch of kale or spinach

a handful of curry leaves

4 tablespoons curry powerder

1 teaspoons chilli powder (more if you want a spicier kick)

2.5 cups water 

400ml coconut milk

salt

coconut oil (but use whatever you want)

1. Roughly dice meat and veggies.

2. Sautee carrot, onion, celery, pepper, curry leaves and fennel until fragrant and a little soft.

3. Add meat to the mix and cook for another 10 minutes or so.

4. Mix curry powder, chilli powder and water into a slurry and add to the meat and veg.

5. Bring it to a boil and add potatoes.

6. Add the coconut milk and salt to taste.

7. Simmer until meat is tender.

8. Add spinach or kale.

9. Adjust salt if needed.

10. Cook some rice and/or roti and shovel in face !