Have you ever wanted to choose what to put in your florentine? Mine can be considered as a florentine or nut and oats bars. Here are a few tips and my recipe.
Through a trial at making the florentine I really liked, I ended up with a pretty good cereal bar. I was after an oat and nuts dark chocolate coated florentine. I am not a big fan of the dry candied fruits in those, neither of the cornflakes nor of the very high dose of sliced almonds.
Tip 1 – the “glue” of your florentine
In the end, I realised it doesn’t matter too much what you want in it, it is important to make sure you have a good “glue”. I looked at a number of recipes for that binding mix and opted for my own made with simple ingredients (butter, honey and brown sugar), so no glucose syrup or other fancy items.
Tip 2 – you need salt in your florentine
One thing I did wrong was having a little too much salt. So put salt but go slowly, once added you can’t remove it
Tip 3 – solid ingredients: let yourself go!
There are no limitations there. You need to think of the flavours you are combining together, this is crucial but not too hard. if not sure, stick to a few nuts, seeds, or dry fruits in addition to the oats.
Mine was a little extravagant as I went through the pantry nuts jars: brazil nuts (cut), shredded coconut, pepitas, walnuts, roasted hazelnuts, and macadamia pieces. And some dry cranberries.
A salted caramel chocolate ice-cream is one of my favourite ice-creams! The ice-cream is based on a chocolate custard. In itself, that base makes a wonderful chocolate ice-cream. There would be different ways to introduce the salted caramel into the chocolate ice-cream. This version allows for a liquid caramel which can just be poured into the chocolate custard.
This salted caramel chocolate ice-cream is both strong in chocolate flavour and salted caramel flavour. If you are after a milder chocolate taste, omit the cocoa. If you are after a light salted caramel, only use one teaspoon of salt.
Ingredients:
500 mL of full cream milk
6 egg yolks
100 g of sugar
150 g of dark cooking chocolate (70%)
1 tablespoon of dutch cocoa
300 cl of cream
good quality vanilla extract
For the salted caramel:
120 g of sugar
50 g of butter and 2 tablespoons of cream (a splash of cream)
2 level teaspoons of salt
Method:
To make the salted caramel (read this whole section before you start)
Place the sugar in a thick bottom saucepan and heat up. Have the butter and cream handy near you.
When the sugar starts to melt and brown, shake the pan to ensure all of the sugar melts homogeneously. The more you cook a caramel the bitter and less sugary it becomes. Here we are after a golden brown colour, which comes rather quickly.
As soon as you have reached the desired colour, add the butter and cream and mix with a whisk away from the fire. The caramel has now stabilised. If the butter is not fully melted you can place the saucepan a few seconds over the hot plate.
Add the salt and mix well.
To make the chocolate custard, the body of the ice-cream
Heat the milk, chocolate, cocoa, vanilla and sugar in a saucepan. Stir from time to time to ensure the chocolate doesn’t burn at the bottom and all ingredients are well dissolved.
Place the egg yolks in a large bowl and give them a good mix.
As soon as the milk mixture is about to boil, remove from the heat and pour a little of it over the eggs while mixing. Then pour the rest, mix and return to the hot saucepan. There may be enough heat in the pan for your custard to thicken and coat the back of a spoon straight away. If not, place on low heat and keep mixing slowly until the custard is done. This is the trickiest part, do not overdo it or it will become grainy.
Add the salted caramel and mix well.
Place the custard in a container with a lid, allow to cool at room temperature for an hour, then in the fridge overnight. Note that if it tastes a little too salty or sweet: you still have the cream to add the next day.
Churning
Before churning the next day, add in the cream.
Place in the ice-cream machine and churn for about 45 minutes or until ready.
Transfer to a box and freeze. You can choose to add some shaved chocolate to the ice cream at this stage.
Easter 2020 and pear. And chocolate of course. Did you manage Easter without a chocolate overdose?
Not to worry, there was chocolate involved in our household. We made an Easter bunny, two large Easter eggs and a myriad of small eggs. Tempering chocolate is a great introduction for children to chemistry. Very messy though!
Poached autumn pear and its zabaglione mousse
This Easter 2020, for the meals I aimed at using some beautiful autumn ingredients I had gathered (in the shops considering we can’t travel): chestnuts, mushrooms, beans, a nice joint of lamb, different types of pears. What to do? Slowly this idea came up. Pear was going to be the queen of Easter 2020. I ended up poaching some pears in a mix of squeezed orange juice and spices. I was not going to discard the poaching liquid! The poaching liquid was the basis for a zabaglione mousse. The zabaglione was delicious warm, as a mousse, it has a great texture and works well with the poached pear. I prefered it warm butone of my kids loves it as a cold mousse, so that comes down to personal preferences.
Other pear recipes
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I cook a lot with pears at the moment, obviously peak season. Check out these recipes that may inspire you.
Pear tarte tatin – works for pear and apple. The trick is to cook the fruits in a very buttery water bath before making the pie. The method behind the recipe comes from a reknown French pastry chef, Christophe Michalak. PS- you can find real butter puff pastry in Asutralian supermarkets now!
Pear and chocolate flan – a rapid and very easy recipe. It is a crowd lover and can be used to make use of those pears about to go off.
A bit more elaborate, this pear and chocolate tarte is a winner and always makes an impression. You will need to make a shorcrust pastry. It is a great dessert to finish off a diner party! – the photo I have is not exceptional, a good excuse to do it soon!
My last idea, the very simple Poire Belle Helene, one of my favourite classic. Here with a little chocolate twist.
I can’t believe I was about to forget the good old simple rural pear tarte. it is the same recipe as the classic apple tarte or pretty much. The evening classic of many families. I grew up with those!
Zabaglione mousse with its autumn pear or as I wanted to name it Mousse sabayon a la poire d’automne. More simply it is a beautiful poached pear in a pear mousse.
There are three ways the pear flavours and autumn tones come in: the colours are the yellow and brown of the autumn season, the pear is poached in an orange and spice syrup, the same syrup is then used in the zabaglione mousse.
For the poached pear in autumn syrup, click HERE to the recipe.
Serves 4 or 5 . The recipe here ends up making 5 mousse servings, so either add a pear to the recipe of the poached pear if there are five or you will just fill one ramequin for an extra serve the next day.
Poached pears you will need for this recipe, you will also need its cooking syrup.
300 mL of the poached pear syrup, strained through a sieve.
4 egg yolks
50 g caster sugar
1 portion of cognac (optional)
1.5 gelatine leaf titanium strength (5 g)
300 mL of cream, whipped.
Rosemary to serve
Method:
Place 3 cm of water in a saucepan and bring to the boil, once boiling, allow to simmer.
Put the gelative leave in a bowl of cold water.
In a large metal bowl, place together the syrup, egg yolks, caster sugar, cognac. Give it a good mix.
Place the bowl over the simering water. From that time you need to whisk until the mix at least doubles in volume, becomes clear and becomes very foamy. It will also thicken. This takes about five minutes.
Remove from the heat. Drain the gelatine and add it to the zabaglione, mix well. Allow to cool for a few minutes while you sort out your serving dishes, then fold through the whipped cream.
Distribute between five ramequins or bowls. Place the pears in the middle of each dish. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours. Add a few leaves of rosemary before serving.
This poached pears in autumn syrup recipe aims at a not too sweet cooked pear with subtle earthy flavours. To be eaten with a dry biscuit, or a crumble of roasted chestnuts or a cream such as creme anglaise or a sabayon.
A sabayon is more known in Australia as a zabaglione.
There are many ways with poached pears. None can be wrong, pears are so versatile! If you are after stronger flavours you can use white wine or red wine as a basis to your syrup. Here the syrup is based on orange juice.
Ingredients:
For poached pear in autumn syrup, think what may be available easily. It is peak citrus season, the beginning of colder days where fresh ginger is a must have stapple against the eventual cold, rosemary is abundant (that can be said all year round really for rosemary) and summer fruits season with stronger flavours are over.
4 beurre bosc pears, firm
juice of 6 oranges
juice of half a lemon
1 string of rosemary
140 g of white sugar
about 3 cm³ of fresh ginger cut in thing slices
250 mL of water (1 cup)
1 cinamon roll
2 pinches of grated nutmeg
Method:
Assemble all the ingredients in a saucepan and slowly heat up.
In the meanwhile, peel the pears without cutting them. With the pointy end of the knife you are using remove the core coring through the bottom of the pear. At the same time, ensure the bottom is flat so the pear can stand vertical, if not, trim slightly.
Place the pears in the syrup (you may have to put the pears on their sides), bring to a simmer and cook for about 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to cool down in the saucepan.
When ready to serve, remove the pear and place them on a plate to allow them to drain. Pass the syrup through a sieve and retain separately.
Tip: the syrup can keep more than a week in the fridge if you dont use it readily. Use the syrup in a drink such as spiced hot wine, or a flavoured tea, or to make a semolina cake or as a basis for zabaglione.
It was a weekend in chocolate, I have been watching people speaking about making their own chocolate. I had purchased some time ago some cocoa butter, so I thought I may as well use it.
This is when I realise most homemade chocolate blog discussions are by raw food fans
So you try to understand what you should be doing and the first thing you get is all these fancy ingredients: cacao (and raw please) and not cocoa, sweeteners of all kinds, oils of various types, and of course cocoa or cacao butter. Waho!!! Hello Moon, this is raw food land! I don’t mind raw food people (up to them – and you will see my next recipe is a yummy raw food bar !) but I don’t see the benefit of fancy ingredients with higher environmental and socio-economical costs for the sake of it.
So let us remain on basic ingredients, I used:
Cocoa powder (dutch cocoa)
Cocoa butter
Icing sugar and/or honey
Nuts
Plus a range of ingredients through trials and errors as you will read below
Cacao on the left, dutch cocoa on the right
Cocoa versus Cacao
The french for cocoa is cacao. But this is not the focus here, just something to muddle up everything. English speakers call it -if I get it right – cacao powder, the powder obtained by the drying and grounding of the cocoa beans after extraction of the oil (cacao butter) without any need for roasting the beans. At this stage, I must say, I am not too sure of the last statement, I found two variations of what preparation involves online (a little or not at all). Cocoa powder is obtained after drying and grounding to a powder the remaining of the cocoa beans after it has been roasted and pressed to remove the oil (cocoa butter).
And what is dutch cocoa? Cocoa is naturally quite acidic, a process of neutralisation called the dutch process (designed by a Dutch man) aims at neutralising the acidity. This brings the colour to a deep dark and the neutrality of the powder makes it easier for baking and other chocolate processes.
Making your chocolate, proportions
The next thing I had to sort out are the relative quantity of cocoa butter to cocoa powder and sugar. Keep in mind that the mass of cocoa powder and cocoa butter makes your percentage of cocoa in your chocolate.
One last thing, cocoa butter is an oil, only called butter because it solidifies just below 30 degrees (celcius).
Dark chocolate
In other words for a 60% cocoa solids chocolate, you have 40% sugar and the rest is a range of possibility of cocoa butter and cocoa powder.
To be honest, my measurements soon became alchemy and tasting became the rule.
For the nuts same thing, it is pretty much up to you. The less, the cheaper from a manufacturer’s point of view of course. I tended to put way more than what recipes called for.Pl I found it was nicer by roasting the nuts slightly, especially the hazelnuts. You will need to remove their skins too.
Milk Chocolate
Dark chocolate contains milk solids. I must say that at this stage my attempts were not very successful, the powdered milk did not want to dissolve and with the icing sugar it seems too much for the cocoa butter which became a few times a solid mass. So I added more melted cocoa butter, I tried vegetable oils, passed it through sieves,….
My attempts at milk chocolate were always grainy and not very satisfying.
What I learnt?
I learnt that chocolate making can be messy very quickly. When it works, it is very rewarding. I find that I don’t know enough to post a whole recipe, there are many aspects of chocolate making which I would love to understand better. If anyone knows a good class in Sydney, I am happy to go there!
Milk chocolate is not easy, probably because we don’t have the ingredients to the level of quality and thinness than professionals have access to.
The cocoa butter taste is quite strong and in many eating chocolate block, there is a fair amount of other vegetable oils.
Some dark couverture chocolate have some butter and concentrated milk. This is the case for the Lindt bittersweet (58%). I tried adding a little butter to a couple tablets, it is definitely a winner.
Adding salt bring the taste up. You don’t need a lot.
It is not cheaper to make it yourself except if you are adding a lot of nuts!
Adding honey is easier than adding icing sugar as it does not remain grainy, on the minus side, the chocolate bar is not as brittle.
Trying to transform the sugar into caramel and adding it to the cocoa powder and cocoa butter mix did not work.
In the end, you may wonder if there is a reason to do your own chocolate. I can see two really good ones which will make me do it from time to time:
The smooth feeling of the dark chocolate and the development to the taste of your choice
It is fun!
But to be honest, I am quite happy to buy good quality couverture chocolate! And no, we didn’t eat all this at once. It actually stayed in the fridge for quite some times until the good photo camera came back home, then it surely disappeared through flocks of kids and grown ups.
For this standing pear chocolate cake, you will need some small pears, preferably ripe, although not so much they crumble in your fingers. If your pears aren’t ripe, you should cook them partly in a sugar syrup . Note, there are many ways with sugar syrups for pears, for example, if you don’t have any wine for the poaching, you can use orange juice. The flavour will be different but still beautiful.
As for the nutmeg, I was experimenting and probably put a little too much (1/2 teaspoon) which was not overbearing but maybe not to everyone’s taste. I have reduced it in the recipe. You could also put a pinch of cayenne pepper or medium chilli powder.
Ingredients:
For the cake
5 small ripe pears, peeled and cored from the bottom, stem on
4 eggs (about 60 g each)
160 g of sugar
200 g of butter, melted
30 g of hazelnut meal
140 g of plain flour
1 tsp of raising powder
1/4 tsp of freshly grounded nutmeg
60 g dutch cocoa
For the chocolate sauce (from Pierre Herme):
250 ml of water
125 ml of cream
130 g of dark 70% chocolate
70 g of sugar
Preparation:
Line the bottom and side of a springform pan, about 25 cm wide (it can be less but no wider).
Preheat oven to 170°C.
Mix the eggs and sugar until quite moussy. Add in melted butter, nutmeg, cocoa powder and hazelnut meal.
Add in the flour and raising powder.
Pour the batter into the lined mould, placing on pear in the middle and the other pears evenly as a ring. Make sure there is batter underneath each pear.
Bake until just set (about 30-40 minutes, it varies between ovens), the cake will show a few cracks on the sides and the top does not appear wobbly when the cake tin is slightly pushed. Allow the cake to cool down a little (or more if time allows) before transferring to a serving plate. The cake will collapse in the middle as it should still be gooey.
To prepare the chocolate sauce, cut the chocolate in small pieces. Place in a thick based saucepan the water, sugar, cream and chocolate. Slowly heat up and stir until smooth with a wooden spoon. Bring to boiling point and simmer while stirring constantly until the sauce becomes unctuous and covers the back of the wooden spoon. Use the sauce hot, or allow to cool at room temperature and use warm. The excess sauce keeps in the fridge for two weeks.
Tip- transferring the cake can be a little tricky. I use the removable metal bottom of a tart tin as a very large spatula.
Tip – Keep the cake at room temperature if leftovers (i.e. not in the fridge).
Another birthday, another cake. This time for a six years old who wanted a swimming pool party. Since we live on an island in a protected bay (no waves), why not do it close to home, rather than drive 1/2 hour to the closest proper swimming pool. It was to be a swim party in the little bay down from the house: shallow water (easy supervision) , lilos, shade, grass and fun kids who can spend their time in the water. And that comes with a swim party birthday cake!
The challenge
Resisting to heat and sun
It was a hot day, the party was at a little beach a few minutes walk. Bringing the party home for the cake was out of question of course and bringing the cake to the party meant it had to be able to suffer heat for some time: no cream based filling, no custard filling, no butter cream icing.
Swim party without the whole mermaids story taking over
The next part of the challenge was the decoration First I had only a limited amount of time available to complete the task. Then I still wanted a cake that did not hint oo much around the mermaids world but had more water features in it, think Moana if you want!
The cake itself
Here, I went for a sure value, a cake I know super well, the Reine de Saba (Sheba’s Queen), used a tall edge baking tin and this was it. Generally I would make that cake “flatter” , as a result it is lighter and more fluffy than when piled high.
Result: really good cake. Did I add a filling. No! I opted for the idea the children like simple things. The fact it was already a good chocolate cake was plenty.
The decoration
I opted for a layer of dark chocolate ganache surrounding the sides and top. This help for the next stage and add a lovely soft chocolate kick (yum). Nothing thick, that layer was maybe two millimetres thick, maybe three in places.
On top of the ganache, I used fondant icing. You know, the one you buy in packs at the supermarket and roll flat with the rolling-pin. Using different food colourants we got a pretty cool outcome. I say “we” because Ben joined me when I was starting the sides and completed the waves on the side.
On top, there were only few components: a mermaid which we had to find in the toy box late at night (it was getting late) and a clam. The pearl clam did take a little work. I am not the biggest fan of macarons (or macaroons), I find them so sweet! As a result, I never did them before. I did one trial a few weeks before and this set of macarons. Well, in the end, it is not that hard to make but you can’t really mak one or two, so make sure you have guests to help you go through the batch to avoid a sugar overdose! The coral reef was also made with the macaron mix, I just piped it in that shape which became quite handy.
The recipe of the swim party birthday cake
It can be found HERE. The recipe for macaron is not included, I will get around to do it. I did not find one that I liked in English , so used a French one. The recipe is the one used by the biggest French pastry chefs.
This cupboard is a street find, it was covered in brown paint. Ben sanded it back to timber or almost. We love it! It had a child drawing on the inside of the doors, we kept the drawing.
It is the year for replenishing the jam cupboard. There aren’t too many pots left. I did not do any jam last year, would you believe it?
I reassure you I did not cook any jam today. It has been awfully hot today. The breeze has just arrived and hopefully we will lose a few degrees overnight.
I usually make jams when fruits are in full season and their price has gone down sufficiently. I make:
strawberry jam
apricot jam
red current jam
raspberry jam
apple jelly
There are some odd batches as well, such as rhubarb or banana mango. The latest one is delicious but doesn’t keep very long. The mother of a close friend introduced me and my girlfriends to it years ago, during a trip to French Guyana. We must have significantly helped emptying her freezer of it over a couple of weeks!
Replenishing the jam cupboard
As I was looking through the jam cupboard for this post, I realised there are a few unlabeled jars, some I am not sure what it may be. One of the unlabeled jar looks like milk jam (homemade dulce de leche).
Apricot and rosemary jam
This week I made apricot and rosemary jam. The idea of adding a couple of sprigs of rosemary came a bit from nowhere. Maybe having a few sprigs of rosemary extra lying around inspired me (they use rosemary as ornamental bushes in the nearby township! 🙂 ).
I made a first small batch, loved it, specially on fresh bread with cream cheese. By now, I have made a bigger batch, enough for a while. Check out the apricot and rosemary jam recipe HERE.
This apricot and rosemary jam is a slight twist from the plain apricot jam. The best time to do it is in summer at the peak of the apricot season. If you can – I know this is not always the case – get them quite ripe as they then have more flavour.
This recipe makes six to eight jars of jam. The final number will depend of the volumes of your jars. I imagine you may be reusing any jars that come through the pantry!
Ingredients:
2.5 kilos of apricots (aim at 2 kg of fruits once the stone is removed, you will likely have a few extras)
1.8 g of white sugar
2 long sprigs of rosemary
1/2 cup of water
6-8 jars sterilised (you can do that when the jam is cooking)
Method:
Open the apricots (just with your fingers, no need for a knife), remove the stone and the remaining of the stem.
Place all the ingredients in a large pot (twice the volume of your ingredients), heat up slowly. Once it is boiling, reduce to a very slow boil and allow to boil for 30 to 45 minutes until the fruits are cooked and start to break apart.
Here you can choose to have big chunks of fruits and parts of jam without pieces or smaller chunks. For that use a soup stick blender and blend in short burst making sure you leave some apricots pieces in the mix!
The jam would have started to thicken (would coat the back of a wooden spoon and a few drops placed on a cold plate will not be runny). Remove the sprigs of rosemary. If the leaves are still attached to the sprigs, peel them off and leave them in the jam.
Stop the cooking and immediately transfer into the jam jars using a ladle and funnel with a large nozzle. Fill to a half a centimetre from the top.
Close with the lids and clean the sides of the jars if necessary. Allow to cool before labelling and storing away.
The jam does not need to be kept in the fridge. Opened jars can be kept in the pantry or the fridge, it is a matter of personnal preferences and time you take to go through the jar. If you need a couple month per jar, I would recommend storing in the fridge.
This recipe will make four sourdough baguettes. The baguette length is about 40 cm ( to fit in a home oven). These sourdough baguettes have beautiful crust and great bubbles inside. They are delicious.
There is no dry yeast added in this recipe (not necessary). You will need an active starter.
As for all sourdough bread making, there is flexibility in the timing of the dough making and baking. Assuming STEP 1 (see below) is complete (24 hours required), in terms of timing for the making of your baguettes, I propose two approaches:
Shorter time-frame: start in the morning and have sourdough baguette by mid-afternoon or dinner. In that case, the second rising is done at room temperature.
Longer time frame: if you want your baguette for, let’s say, Sunday morning, you would start the making sometimes on the Saturday, the latest mid-afternoon. Your sourdough baguettes will do the second rising in the fridge overnight.
NOTE: I posted this recipe a few years ago. I have slightly changed the ratio of starter to flour&water since. In the end, the wet to dry ratio is the same. What changes is the proportion of starter in the mix. These days I do not use the Kitchen id for the baguette dough. I would punch it once about half an hour after mixing the dough and forget the bowl (covered with a tea towel) in the fridge until the next day. That leaves plenty of time for the yeast to slowly develop and grow. The next day, I shape them, let them rise, and bake them.
A recent photos which I uploaded when updating this recipe
Starter
You will need 500 g of active starter. Once your starter is developed, don’t forget to save a little for next time. I do not cover here how to develop a starter. Here are a few pages that can help:
For my starter I used organic rye flour and bottled water. Organic rye flour because it has the natural yeast you are after and bottled water because there is no added chlorine. Then you will want to use unbleached white bread flour, organic or not. It worked every time, give it a go. For the water, once the starter is established, tap water is fine, the yeast will at that stage be strong enough to resist a little chlorine.
A starter takes a few bread cycles to develop to its full strength.
Alternatively, contact me and we can explore options of me sending you some starter (I have done so before).
Ingredients:
Note: flour in this recipe is bakers flour.
500 g of starter
750 g of bread flour
550 of water
14 g of salt
spare flour for dusting
UPDATED RATIOS:
225 g of starter
890 g of bread flour
640 g of water
14 g of salt
You will also need:
Optional – a stand mixer with a dough hook (see tip in method if you do not have it)
a dough scraper
baguette tins (enough for 4 baguettes). You can do without, the baguettes will be a bit flatter on the bottom.
a few clean tea towel
a large plastic bag
Method:
STEP 1: Starter development and pre-fermentation.
Twenty four hours before preparing the dough, feed your starter to obtain 500 g of active starter. In my case I mix the kept starter (150 g) with 200 of flour and 200 g of water and leave in the corner of the kitchen for 24 hours. Leave at room temperature until it is about three times the size. If you are starting from another quantity of saved starter develop to obtain 550 g . The 50 g extra is what you save to keep your starter for the next batch.
At the same time, mix in a plastic box the 750 g of flour with the 550 g of water, make a very rough dough. Place the lid on and put in the fridge overnight.
STEP 2: Dough making
Have your starter for the next batch? Take 50 g of developed starter from the starter, add to those 50 g, 50 g of water and 50 g of flour. Mix and place in the fridge for up to a week. If you are not a frequent baker, decrease the water to 25 g, this will keep the starter fed for longer, about two weeks.
Place the 500 g of starter, the water-flour mix and the salt in the mixer bowl. Mix on low-speed for about five minutes or until the dough forms a ball and no longer stick to the side of the bowl. Do not exceed ten minutes, you then run the risk of over-developing the dough.
Tip: if you do not have a mixer or prefer to do it by hand, this works as well. In a large bowl, place the flour, the developed starter, the water and the salt. Ensure the salt is not directly in contact with the developed starter at this point. With your hands (use the 2 of them), mix until it is homogeneous. Let to rest covered for 30 minutes to an hour. With one wet hand, grab a corner of the dough and punch it in the middle, give a quarter turn to the bowl and repeat about 4 times (imagine taking each cardinal point and placing it to the centre, do this twice). Alternatively, after the first punching round, place in the fridge covered with a tea towel overnight.
Tip: Because the baguette dough is more sticky than the bread dough, don’t forget to have a wet hand while doing the punching.
Place the dough in a large bowl, cover with a tea towel and allow to rise to almost double size.
Tip: The rising time will depend on the temperature and humidity level.
placing all ingredients in the bowl
Mixing
Mixing…
Mixed
Before rising
Raised
STEP 3: Preshape
This step is not strictly necessary, I often skip it. It is possible to skip it as long as you cut your dough in 4 balls gently and are not tempted to rework it.
The dough has risen. Dust the kitchen bench and gently pull the dough on the kitchen bench. Using a knife or the dough scraper, cut into 4 portions (4 baguettes).
One portion at the time, spread the dough gently (up to 20 cm wide) by pulling on it, this time in the shape of a circle. Again imagine four corners and pull each towards the centre. Repeat another time or two. You are close to having a ball. Pinch the centre to close the ball, turn around and using your hands firmly placed on the kitchen bench (they must not lift), scoop the back of the ball and bring towards you. The dough should roll tucking the front underneath and simultaneously tightening the skin. Turn 90 degrees and repeat. If the ball does not tuck or roll, often it is because there is too much flour on your bench.
Rest covered loosely with the tea towel for 10-15 minutes.
STEP 4: Shaping
It is now time to shape the 4 baguettes.
Take one ball of dough. Pull it gently until you get a rectangle about 20-30 cm by 10-15 cm. Be mindful not to push the dough but to pull it gently.
Tip: Here it is very important to understand that you want to keep as much as possible all the bubbles and air in the dough, so you need to be gentle with it.
The short edge will be facing you:
Imagine a line in the middle of your rectangle parallel to the narrow edges. Fold each narrow edge towards that line, the edges should just meet.
Using the heel of your palm, flatten the dough pressing down on the new line. Repeat the previous step (alternatively fold only to a quarter length each end then another quarter so that the halves meet in the middle). Now pull the upper edge 2/3 towards you. Next, pull and stretch the lower edge over as to wrap the log as much as possible. pinch the line where the dough stops to close the log.
At each end of the log pinch the end to close the baguette.
Turn the log seam down on the workbench.
Roll the baguette back and forth and lengthen it (remember your high school pottery class!) to the length of your baguette tin.
Transfer (seam down) on the baguette tin.
Tip: if you do not have a baguette tin, use a large tea towel and make little gutters, dust with flour and place your baguettes in each of them.
Pull getly to form a rectangle
Fold in each end towards the middle, then repeat.
Form the “log”
Close the ends, roll to correct length then place in baguette tin
STEP 5: Second rising
If you are baking the baguettes the next day, wrap the tins with a tea towel. You can place them in a large plastic bag to prevent them from drying (it depends on your fridge). Then place in the fridge. You need to take them out of the fridge an hour or so before baking, you also need to ensure they have risen enough (almost double), else allow them to rise before baking.
If you are baking them the same day, cover with clean tea towels and allow to rise.
You know the bread is risen sufficiently when a little poke bounces back slowly yet leaves a print.
SEPT 6: Baking
Heat up the oven to maximum (about 250 °C) with a pan of water at the bottom of the oven.
Use a scoring blade (available online) or a very sharp knife, do incisions at 45 degrees as suggested here on the left. Add a dusting of flour if wished.
Place in the oven without losing too much of the heat and steam.
Reduce heat to 200 °C and bake until golden. Remove from the oven, allow to cool down.
This is pretty much as guilt free as chocolate cake go: no butter and pretty low sugar. What I like with this butter-free chocolate cake is that it is also much easier to digest than a traditional chocolate cake. Why? How? Simply by replacing the butter by very (like very) thinly grated zucchini (a.k.a. courgette). And if you are on a gluten-free diet, you could also replace the little flour in there by GF flour.
Before you start:
You need a good quality cooking chocolate (in Australia, the 70% cocoa Nestle Plaistowe is suitable)
The zucchini: 200 g of zucchini and no more (a bit less is fine). I have now done the cake a few times, trialing a few variations. The last one used 180 g of zucchini and was fine! However, if you add more (which I also did), the cake loses some of its moisture from a denser texture. Two hundred grammes zucchini is one average size piece of vegetable. You need to peel it and remove the ends. Then weight it. Grate it over a bowl and make sure to keep all the juice. I was asked the question: can you use the blender. I tried, it works, just a bit much more washing-up than the grater for little saving, your choice.
The flour: the flour weight is only 50 g. If you go for a gluten-free option, you can either use cornflour but then you need to reduce it to 35 g as corn flour absorbs more moisture than wheat flour, or use one of the GL flour mix.
Ingredients:
4 eggs
200 g dark cooking chocolate
80 g caster sugar
200 g thinly grated zucchini (see note above)
50 g plain flour (see note above)
100 mL milk (of your choice)
Method:
Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Butter and flour well a 20 cm round cake tin.
Break the chocolate in pieces and melt with half of the milk. You can either use the microwave on one minutes settings full power, repeat if not fully melted either with 30 second or another minutes (it depends on the power of your microwave). Once the chocolate is melted, stir until smooth and silky, add the remaining milk.
In a clean bowl, separate the egg yolks from the whites. Beat the yolks with the sugar until light and fluffy. Add the zucchini (juice included). Add the chocolate to the mix.
Finally, mix in the flour.
Beat the egg white to snow and carefully fold into the chocolate mix.
Pour into the prepared tin. Place in the oven, reduce the heat to 160°C after 10 minutes. The cake should cook in 20-30 mn depending on ovens. Remove when the centre is no longer wobbly when gently pressed with a couple fingers. Allow to cool down in the tin for five minutes before transferring to the serving dish: turn over a metal rack and then over the serving dish.
Tip: if you have a child helping you tell them to mix in the flour and cocoa starting from the centre, always touching the bottom of the bowl , let them enlarge the circle as the centre gets darker. This technique will avoid lumps.
Tip: wondering what happens if you don’t reduce the oven? The cake will cook quicker and can lose a little moisture but not that much, it will still be quite moist.
And if you are wondering about the taste brought by the zucchini, I will tell that if people don’t know about it, they are unlikely to guess. Once you know, you will possibly note a taste a little more “earthy”, but, to be honest, nothing preventing the cake disappearing in minutes and for zucchini-advert kids to take a second or third helping!
e the stone is removed, you will likely have a few extras)
If you are baking them the same day, cover with clean tea towels and allow to rise.
Use a scoring blade (available online) or a very sharp knife, do incisions at 45 degrees as suggested here on the left. Add a dusting of flour if wished.
