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Blueberry muffins (version 2)

I asked my son what he would like to make the muffins with. I offered different options but he was firm that his preference was blueberries. He then assisted me and helping with some steps in the preparation of these beautiful muffins. 

This is a super simple and quick recipe with ingredients that you usually keep in your fridge, with the exception of blueberries of course. You do not have blueberries? No problem, pick another fruit.

It is not the first time that I do blueberry muffins, here you can find my first version. I use these muffins as a snack for my kids during the school day, so keeping the sugar at a low quantity is important for my kid's general health.

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Coconut Bundt


There are times I wish I lived in another century, but then I remember that I wouldn't enjoy all the remarkable progress the humans made since then. But I can close my eyes and dream that I was leaving in a countryside castle and enjoyed the style of those times. Then I can just open my eyes and I am back to our times. So convenient right?

I leave you to imagine the same and and a bit more... a bundt cake made with coconut.


 


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Plum Dumplings


Ingredients:

Dough:

  • 550g boiled/steamed potatoes
  • 150g all-purpose flour
  • 80g sugar
  • 2 yolks
  • a pinch of salt
Plums:
  • 20 small plums
  • 40g sugar
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
Coating:
  • 150g breadcrumbs
  • 60g butter
  • 60g sugar
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon


Directions:
  1. Prepare the plums by cutting them only on one side to remove the pits. You should not cut them in halves completely, the 2 parts need to stay together to maintain the integrity of the plum.
  2. Add over the sugar and cinnamon and stir the plums with your hand. Set aside.
  3. Prepare the coating by melting the butter in a pan and adding the bread crumbs.
  4. Toast the breadcrumbs on low heat and stir until the colour is a beautiful light golden brown. 
  5. Turn off the heat and add the sugar and cinnamon, Set the pan aside and let's start the dough.
  6. For the potatoes, I prefer to peel them first and steam them. Smash or grate the potatoes (without peeling obviously if you chose the boiling option)
  7. Add over the sugar, yolks, flour and salt and mix. You should be able with all these ingredients to form a sticky dough using your hand. If it feels too wet, you may add one extra tablespoon of flour. It is not recommended to use a mixer at this stage to avoid gluten formation and because the dough will turn too elastic and very sticky.
  8. Portion the dough into 35g balls. This is the quantity needed to cover the plums.
  9. Dress each plum with the dough from a ball, sealing well the dough around. Repeat this for all the plums.
  10. Boil 2-3 litres of water in a pot and add 10 dressed plums using a slotted spoon.
  11. Let them boil on medium heat until they float, then remove them to a plate. Put the second batch of plum balls to boil in the pot while we are coating the first batch.
  12. Roll the hot dumplings in the toasted breadcrumbs until they are completely covered. Proceed in the same way with the remaining plums.

You can serve them warm or cooled.


Recipe inspired from here.

Lemon Bundt Cake

When autumn starts to install, I too begin making bundt cakes.

I made this cake recipe for the occasion of my daughter's birthday. To be sure it would be a successful cake, I did it 3 times. The first time was a catastrophe. If you recall, I have a bundt cake book that I love in terms of a combination of ingredients but it is way unbalanced when it comes to quantities. So, every cake is a real challenge. But I do not give up, because this is how I learn to adjust the recipes. The more I fail, the more I search for the mistake and I fix it with the next bake. This is how I grow my experience with baking.

The first one rose nicely in the oven but when cooling it fell down to a level lower than before the baking. I've learned 3 lessons: first, the butter needs to be at room temperature when I bake this type of cake,  second, never trust the timing mentioned in the recipe book and third, if you feel there is not enough flour to make a consistent batter, simply add it. My cake was undercooked in the middle and overcooked on the crust. The combination of those factors led to the cake falling down. 

The second bake was a control bake and is the one you see in the photo. It turned out with a great crumb, exactly as I wished for. The third one was the cake that my daughter brought to school for her birthday and went exactly like the second one. 

I learned my lessons and I've put another brick in my baking experience.

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50% Semolina Sourdough Bread


Semolina is my new obsession. I knew about semolina since I was a child and my mother was making milk porridge with it. It was one of my preferred breakfasts. Little did I know that it will later become one of my favourite ingredients for bread.


To make fantastic sourdough bread with any kind of flour you need to understand its characteristics.

Semolina (or semola rimacinata di grano duro) is made from hard wheat not from the common wheat usually used for bread flour. Semolina is very popular for making pasta, couscous, and porridge but it can be successfully used in bread as well.

Semolina has a coarser texture than classical flour but should not be confused with rice or corn semolina. Semolina comes from durum triticum wheat and when ground in a coarser texture is called semola rimacinata. If it is further ground to a very fine texture, it is called durum flour.

Besides its texture, semolina has a pale yellow colour, has a more earthy aroma and it is rich in proteins but forms a low-quality gluten. This makes the dough less extensible and affects its structure.

However, there are some tricks that you can apply to overcome this issue.

  • First, you can improve the structure by adding strong bread flour into its composition and this is exactly what we'll do today.
  • Then, you can make a longer autolyse of 2-3 hours to develop the gluten to its maximum potential.
  • or you can increase the mixing time too for the same goal.

I invite you to watch the video of this bread to learn more tricks about it.


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Nettle Aloe Vera Shampoo bar (version 2)


This is the second version of the Nettle Aloe Vera Shampoo bar and the last one in the series of recent soaps/shampoos.

Compared to the first version, this one is made in 3 layers (for decoration purposes) with rosemary, cedar and lavender essential oil. Made only with fantastic oils and butter for your hair, enriched with vitamin E.

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Autumn soap

 Sometimes, when verifying the pantry I find some stuff stored that I should better use before expiring. This is the case with some special oils and butter. This soap has some interesting oils inside (avocado, coconut, grapeseed) and is flavoured with cinnamon and cloves essential oils. Almost sounds like autumn right? In one month we will be there ...

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Nettle Aloe Vera Shampoo bar

Maybe once or twice a year I make my own cosmetics. My affair with homemade soaps and shampoos started some years ago when my childhood friend taught me how to do them. Since then I only use homemade staff.

Solid shampoo bars are my favourite because I can customise them to what I want. They are all natural and made by my own hands.
Recently I have done 3 types and I will share them here with you.

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Tart Tatin in the style of Wiliam Lamagnère

 

I am rarely highly impressed by recipes but this one was a love at first sight. The idea of rolling the apple sheets is brilliant not only from the practical point of view but also from the way it looks.
I'm sure that everybody made an apple tart at least once in life as it is such a common desert and I thought I cannot be any more impressed. But this one, first is a French-style apple pie, known as Tarte Tatin, usually made with caramel sauce and turned upside down after baking. Second, it has such a special design that you'll rarely see entering a classic pastry shop. Third, although seems fancy and complicated, it is super simple in terms of preparation and the number of ingredients used.
What was more complicated to figure out was how to cut the apples into such long sheets. Cutting them by knife is almost impossible. Using a potato peeler maybe can help a bit but it can be frustrating. You need a special cutter for them. The French chefs know this cutter well to create all sorts of fancy fruits and vegetable decorations but the price for one is way too high for a simple home baker like me. I found however a cheap plastic alternative (compared to full metallic French versions) with a good blade. How long this will be working well, we'll see, but for its first usage did its job perfectly and I am happy about it. However, I am not sure how often I will use it in the future.

I was mentioning earlier its simplicity. This tart is about a puff pastry sheet, apples and a caramel sauce made from sugar and butter. It takes longer to bake properly (about 2 hours) and it needs to rest for at least 4 hours (or better overnight in the fridge) to set properly. Yes, it takes a long duration but there is not much work time consuming for the baker (assuming you have the right tools to make the apple sheets).

Now that I tried it, I feel I want to do it again and my imagination has just opened to lots of new designs.

The tart itself is wow just the way it is. If you haven't tried it before, I highly recommend it. The taste is fantastic and deep. It is sweet but not extra sweet. I think that sugar can be even more reduced and still keep it delicious.

 

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Lavender Cake

Lavender is such a beautiful plant to grow in your own garden! When the flowers are blooming the life turns to a blue-violet color.

It is not the first time I use lavender in cakes, I've done Lavender Muffins and I loved their subtle flavour and aroma. Here I come now, with a little cake that turned out to be a great success as my kids loved it from the moment they've seen it. It was difficult to keep it for myself for some time just to film it and photograph it.

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