Category Archives: Recipes

How does an elephant ask for a bun?

Elephant buns

with many thanks to Dan Lepard for teaching me how to make milk breads in the first place and for advice on UHT milk

Sponge

15 g fresh yeast
500 ml  UHT milk – at room temperature or slightly warmer
320 g strong white bread flour

Dough

All of the above plus
a dessert spoon of golden caster sugar
40 g of melted butter
2 tsp vanilla essence
1 medium egg
13 g salt
175 g chocolate chunks and chips
350 g strong white flour

1463 g dough in total

Mix the sponge 2 – 4 hours or so before you want to make the dough. I am currently using a very strong flour which seems to absorb a lot of liquid, you may wish to reduce the amount of milk in the sponge if your flour is not so strong or add more flour to the final dough.

When the sponge has risen and flowed gently all over the worktop, while you were out walking the dogs, scrape it back into a bowl, take a deep breath and add the melted and cooled butter and the egg, vanilla essence and a spoonful of sugar.

Mix these well and then add the rest of the flour, leave the dough to rest for 10 minutes.

Add the chocolate last to the dough; chips, chunks,  whatever you have, try and get them distributed evenly through the dough.

I don’t do intensive kneading if I can avoid it, only enough to make sure the dough is well mixed. Leave for half an hour, come back to it and give it another light knead, oiling the worktop lightly with oil if the dough is very sticky to make it easier to handle. You can do this again later if it makes you feel better, but I forget.

Total time for first prove is about one and a half hours.

Divide dough into 14 balls. You might need  a dusting of flour to help with this part.  Shape and place on baking parchment lined trays. Leave to rise for another hour. Cover the trays with either a plastic box or clingfilm or put them inside a carrier bag and prop it up with something.

Bake at 210 degrees C in an ordinary oven for 22 minutes till golden brown and sound good and hollow when tapped.  Cool on a wire rack,  and brush the tops with a glaze of 2 spoons of boiling water, 2 spoons of sugar and a teaspoon of Fiori di Sicilia ! The air will fill with the glorious perfume  of orange and vanilla and make you think momentarily of Jacobs Club Biscuits and school trips. Actually it’s better than that and a little goes a long way.  Thanks Lynne for that inspiring gift!     Enterprising importers and artisan baking suppliers please note we want you to stock this, please please please! You’ve got until Christmas to sort it out.

To print the recipe click here

I really adore these buns, they look like traditional english bread rolls, but they are soft and rich tasting from the addition of the egg and the butter and have  just enough chocolate in them and a hint of panetonne taste as you take the first bite!

I tell myself they are less fattening than croissants or pain au chocolat with its layers of buttery pastry,  but are still yummy enough to please a fussy elephant!

Answer:  ‘May I have a bun please?’ (muttered coyly from underneath a flowering dandelion :) )

Stem Ginger and Dark Chocolate muffins


50 minutes from thought to eating. If you were organized you could probably do it in 30 but I am just not that quick!  It finally rained today so now the weather is back to normal, we needed muffins for tea! I have reduced the butter and increased the milk in this recipe by a little as I am trying to cut down on butter.

From a recipe by Diana Bonaparte in Mad about Muffins my favourite muffin book! Loads of other wonderful recipes in here, including B’s all time favourite, mint choc chip muffins and many, many more!

Preheat oven to 170 C Fan. Find muffin tin with 12 compartments, find muffin cases, find the rest of the ingredients and off you go…..

The wet stuff: two parts to this:

  • 110 grams unsalted butter
  • 100 grams dark chocolate

Melt 100 grams of dark chocolate  and 11o grams of unsalted butter in a pan or the microwave on a low heat just enough that the butter melts and stir until smooth.

In the meantime mix up in a separate bowl:

  • 1 egg
  • 100 grams plain yoghurt –  (I used homemade)
  • 160 grams skimmed milk

Then add the butter-chocolate mix to the egg mix, or the other way round, just make sure the chocolate isn’t too hot or you will end up with scrambled eggy bits.

Whizz 2 nuggets of stem ginger, the sort that comes in syrup in a jar, in a food processor, or chop finely and add to the wet mix as above.


The dry stuff:

  • 260 grams of plain flour (all purpose)
  • 200 grams light brown muscovado sugar (sieved to get rid of the lumps)
  • 10 grams ground ginger
  • 1 and a half tsp of bicarbonate of soda
  • a pinch of salt

Sieve these together and mix well in another bowl. You now have one bowl of dry and one bowl of wet ingredients

Filling and topping – weigh these out before you mix the wet and the dry together!

  • 150 grams dark chocolate, chopped up roughly or use choc chips
  • one more nugget of stem ginger finely sliced into 12 slivers

OK, all set! You should have one bowl of wet stuff, one of dry stuff, one little bowl with more chocolate bits in it and a saucer with some slices of ginger.

Fold the dry mix into the wet mix, work quickly, don’t beat it,  just mix it enough that the flour has just disappeared, more like folding than beating. The batter can look quite lumpy which is fine!  Then quickly fold in the second lot of chocolate bits.  Spoon the batter  into the paper cases. Put a sliver of stem ginger on top of each one and bake for 20 – 25 minutes. Mine took 25 minutes because I think I made a bit more mixture than I meant to and so the muffins were quite big! They are done when they are well risen and spring back a little when you press them.

Cool on a wire rack but don’t wait too long to eat them, in fact invite someone round for a cuppa and then you can eat two while you are talking to them and no one will notice!

For an easy to print version of this post click here

Wild Garlic update…

Lynne has sent me this great pic of her wild garlic spaghetti dish!

Wild garlic pesto spaghetti, roasted vegetables and parma ham by Lynne

She makes the pesto with no cheese…

take a few handfuls of wild garlic, a handful of pan roasted almonds, juice and rind of 2 lemons and a glug of olive oil and a teaspoon of salt…pulverize to within an inch of its life in the processor (otherwise it seems to be just too fiery) and keep in jar in the fridge.  Very hard to not just keep on eating it.

It looks delicious Lynne! Thanks for sharing the recipe and your photo.

I’m going back to the woods tomorrow to get some more… When I went today I noticed it was in full flower and the air was sweet and pungent with bluebells and garlic, what a great combination, an opportunity for an enterprising perfumist or a Heston Blumenthal icecream…..

It’s all flowering now so the season will be over soon!  Gather ye garlic while ye may…if you’re not sure what it looks like, here is my best close-up shot to help.