TWD - Hungarian Shortbread

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie is Hungarian Shortbread. It is basically a shortbread sandwiched with jam in the middle. Of course Dorie suggests you make your own jam and gives the recipe she does also state it is fine to buy some. I had a BAD experience making jam last year which involved me spending months, and yes I mean months, trying to save my big pan which had the thickest layer of burnt sugar over it and so I have no intention of trying jam again too soon. For the purposes of this TWD, therefore, I have used the jam fresh from a jar which I bought at the shops!

The dough is made in the mixer; 1lb of butter (!!!!!) mixed up first until light and fluffy then add your sugar and egg yolks.

Then you add your flour and baking powder and the dough is complete, easy peasy. The dough is divided into two balls (or square type things in my case) and frozen for up to 30 minutes.

Once the dough is out of the freezer, one ball of it is grated into the tin, the jam added and then the second ball of dough grated on the top. I had loads of dough left over and I've left that in the freezer to use another time.

Here is the end result

You can see that my icing sugar went a bit yellow from the heat of the shortbread but apart from that they looked lovely and tasted really, really nice. I was planning to freeze half of them as there were far too many but my husband and daughter managed to polish them off (I'm dieting!)

Bread Revolution - English Muffins and Eggs Benedict

As I'm not keen on chocolate my Mother-in-Law gave me £10 for Easter rather than buying me an egg and with it I bought Bread Revolution which is written by Duncan Glendinning and Patrick Ryan. I've wanted the book for a few months after following the guys on twitter @thoughtfulbread and seeing them re-tweet all the pictures that people send them of delicious breads they have made.

This is my third recipe from the book, the first being the plain white loaf and the second being flatbreads. I didn't take many photographs of them and will dig them out and add them to the blog at some point. I really fancied trying the English muffins this week.

They are surprisingly easy to make. You start the dough like a scone dough by rubbing the fat into the flour, I mis-read the recipe and added tablespoons of butter rather than teaspoons but it didn't seem to affect the bread at all. Then you add your milk mixed with yeast. My first two attempts at bread have not been wet enough so I added slightly more milk than the recipe stated (as advised by the guys on twitter - thanks for the tip!) and the dough was gorgeous when I was kneading it. It took me around 20 minutes kneading to get to the 'windowpane' stage before the dough goes off for the first rise.

You then shape the dough into balls before the second rise. I made half the mixture (as usual) and made six muffins.

You then fry the dough for a couple of minutes each side in butter and oil before transferring to the oven for 10 minutes to finish the baking and here is the result - delicious!!!

After I made them I wanted to have them with my dinner but couldn't decide what to do. The book also has a recipe suggestion for each bread and for the muffins it was Eggs Benedict. Well I love eggs benedict but have never tried a hollondaise sauce before but the ingredients were all to hand and I had to do was pop down the road for some bacon and our dinner was sorted.

I was so pleased with the sauce. I must admit it did split initially but the book gives great advice for rescuing it. I also poached an egg successfully for the first time in water (I usually use a poach pod) following their steps. What a delicious meal, I know it should be for breakfast but it made a great Saturday night meal while we watched the Voice.

It's a great book and I intend to try a recipe a week (if I can) as each time they are gettting better and better!

TWD - Lemon Loaf Cake

This week's Tuesdays With Dorie is Lemon Loaf Cake. For the first time I made the whole recipe! Cake is always a hit in our house and I love a loaf cake, plain and simple and great to wrap in foil and take to work or school and to have with a cup of coffee.

This was such a simple cake to make. A very basic mix the only lemon flavouring was rind, not juice was used.

Then added the flour and melted butter

and put in a loaf tin. You can see I'm lazy and use the pre-pepared liners. They are so handy to have in the cupboard and save having to grease and deal with cakes getting stuck.

Here is the finished product, it's a terrible picture I know but I meant to take more when I realised it was all gone! We loved it, great on it's own but when it was a couple of days old I had it toasted with butter - delicious. I will most definitley be making this one again.

Tuesdays with Dorie, Pizza Rustica

So this week's TWD is pizza rustica, although it technically isn't pizza at all. It is more of a quiche but the pastry is sweet. Sounds a bit weird, well it is!!

So the dough was easy enough to make, a few minutes to do in the food processor.

Then you separate it into two balls, one twice the size of the other. I should say I did half the recipe (as usual) and decided to do individual tarts rather than a large one using three of my individual tart tins. Here's my dough in the balls on my work top and then after I'd rolled them out and lined the tins.

You then fill the dough with a ricotta and egg mixture and some proscuitto ham and then top with the smaller piece of dough which has been cut into strips. The strips should be cut with a fancy cutter but sadly I do not have one (nor do I really need one!) so mine were cut (very slapdash) with a knife.

Here is the finished article. My daughter loved hers and ate the whole thing with some salad while it was still warm from the oven. I wasn't too keen and nor was Mr DJ. The sweet pastry was very strange with the cheese filling and to be honest I'd rather just have a slice of quiche! So this was my first Dorie recipe that I won't be doing again. I'm glad I had a go though.