Easy like Sunday morning.

Maybe it's just me, but a warm, baked breakfast is pretty much the best thing ever.  I do love to head out to a sweet little cafe for weekend breakfast, but when you can have these lovelies baked and ready to eat in less time then it would take you to get ready and get in the car, why would you?  The gorgeously sweet cinnamon scrolls went down a treat with my morning English Breakfast and were a lovely treat for my beautiful family. Weekend perfection.

Sweetest Cinnamon Scrolls

Scroll Dough

2 cups plain flour, sifted

2 tsp caster sugar

2 tsp baking powder, sifted

1 1/4 cups thickened cream

Filling

30g unsalted butter, melted

 2 tbsp brown sugar

2 tsp ground cinnamon

Icing

1/2 cup icing sugar, sifted

1 tbsp milk

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celsius.  To make the dough, combine all your dry ingredients before mixing in the cream.  Knead the dough until nice and smooth before rolling it out into a large rectangle (about 3-4 cm thick) on a floured bench or silicone mat.  Use a pastry brush to distribute the melted butter over the rectangle of dough.  Combine the brown sugar and cinnamon and then sprinkle evenly over the top of the melted butter.  Leave a 1 centimetre edge free of cinnamon sugar on the long edge of the rectangle.  Roll from the other long edge of the dough to make a log.  Cut the log into 8 scrolls and place, swirl up, on a lined baking tray.  Give each scroll a little 'squish' to flatten them slightly.  Bake for 20 minutes or until just beginning to brown.  While scrolls are beginning to cool, make your icing by combining the icing sugar and milk.  Drizzle around a tablespoon of icing as artistically as you like over the top of each scroll.  Don't wait for these to cool before you tuck in!

F. x

Happy Easter!

A very important lesson that I learnt during my childhood was that chocolate is not an acceptable breakfast food.  Except....if it's Christmas or Easter!  And so, in paying homage to this, here I am - with book, cuppa and the quintessential Lindt Bunny.  The sun is shining, the birds are singing and I am eating chocolate for breakfast: how could today not be a good one?! 

I wish everyone the happiest of days for Easter!

F.x

Lazy Days

One of the loveliest things about a public holiday is taking your time: taking your time to roll out of bed, taking your time before you have a shower and staying in you PJs as long as possible, and taking time to put together a real treat of a breakfast.  Public holidays are special days, pancake days, eggs benedict days....muffin days.

This morning's breakfast is definitely a treat: warm and fluffy Raspberry and White Chocolate Muffins.  These  muffins are very loosely based on Nigella's Blueberry Muffin recipe in How to be a Domestic Goddess with a few added flourishes.  Muffins are the perfect lazy day breakfast food.  You can literally put in WHATEVER you like.  Having no blueberries, I used the frozen raspberries that I always keep handy in case of such emergencies.  I roughly chopped up about 6 squares of the raspberry's perfect partner, white chocolate and threw in a dash of vanilla.  A quick grating of orange rind finished off the batter, taking the edge off the sickly sweet white chocolate.

Raspberry and White Chocolate Muffins - My Way

75g unsalted butter, melted

200mL buttermilk

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

200g plain flour

1/2 tsp bicarb soda

2 tsp baking powder

35g caster sugar

40g raw sugar

pinch of salt

handful of frozen (or fresh) raspberries

handful of chopped white chocolate

sprinkling of orange zest

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees.  Grease a muffin tray or spread baking cups on a baking sheet.
Combine all of your dry ingredients in a large bowl and roughly combine.  Use a measuring jug and beat together the buttermilk, egg, melted butter and vanilla.  Pour your wet ingredients into the dry and mix gently to combine.  Don't worry about trying to beat out lumps, a light hand works best as you don't want to over-work your batter.  Fold the berries, zest and chocolate into the batter with minimal mixing.  Spoon the mixture into your baking cups or tray.  I use an icecream scoop to do this. It seems to be a lot less messy and also means that each muffin contains the same about of batter.  Bake the muffins for around 20 minutes, depending on your oven.  A skewer should come out clean and the muffins should be golden brown and smelling gorgeous.  This recipe makes 12 medium sized muffins.

Accompanied with a traditional English Breakfast, these muffins are sure to provide a gorgeous start to a gorgeous day.  May your lazy days over this Easter break be truly delicious and well-enjoyed.

F.x

Feeding the Soul

I truly believe that there are foods that make you feel better.  For me, banana bread is one of these.  While I am typing, I am munching away on a warm, buttered slice of banand bread and in a happy place.  Whether it is because of the crunchy walnuts, the dense banana or the naughty bourbon-soaked dates I snuck in,  this recipe is soul warming.

I started on this recipe at 7am yesterday morning, so eager was I to get into baking!  However, the warm, aromatic fug that took over the kitchen wasn't quite so appropriate for the time of day.  My first task was boiling up chopped dates in bourbon and setting them aside to soak.  They looked simply beautiful: a thick, dark potion of sweetness.  This, however, was nothing compared to the familiar, homely aromas of my amazing loaf rising in the oven later on.

While I am including the recipe for you today, what I love most about it, is its flexibility.  You can pretty much throw in whatever you have sitting around in the pantry.  Don't have dates?  Use sultanas.  Or frozen blueberries.  No walnuts?  Chuck in pecans or slivered almonds, or even leave them out altogether.  Chocolate fiend?  Substitute some of the flour for dark cocoa and/or add in some dark chocolate chips. Anything goes so enjoy experimenting with this one.

100g pitted dates

75mL bourbon

1 cup plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp bicarb

1/2 tsp salt

125g unsalted butter, melted

1 cup caster sugar

2 large eggs

1 cup mashed banana

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1 tsp vanilla extract

Bring dates and bourbon up to the boil before covering and leaving soak for an hour, then drain.  Preheat your oven to 170 degrees C.  Sift together flour, baking powder, bicarb and salt in a medium bowl and set aside. Blend together the butter and sugar until the sugar has dissolved and then add the eggs, mixing well after each addition.  Stir in the mashed banana, followed by the walnuts, drained dates and vanilla.  Add in the dry ingredients, a little at a time, stirring well.  Pour the golden batter into a prepared loaf tin and bake for an hour. 

Hot from the oven, cold or toasted this is sure to be a crowd favourite!

F. x

Easy like Saturday morning

Well, well.  Hasn't it been a while?  I simply cannout believe that it has been over a month since I last baked - an absolute travesty!  After (impatiently) waiting more than eight weeks, I finally have a new oven - cue some sort of uplifting music.  As a result, breakfast this morning became a special moment between my recipe books and I, as I pondered over which recipe would break the drought.  Bet you can't wait to see what delectable delight triumphed?

F. x