Three Ingredient Scones

I mentioned quirky recipes a while back.  At least I think I did. Anyhow, there is one I have wanted to try ever since I saw it.  Today was as good a day as any.  I’d had a bad night with pain and at 03h30 I gave up and took some morphine which helped, but, once up later on this morning I was still feeling very dopey.  So why not bake, eh!  What could possibly go wrong?!  Luckily there was not too much danger with this recipe as it is so simple.

Who would have thought that you could bake scones with just three ingredients?! No tedious rubbing the butter into the flour. I have a recipe I make time and again, for scones made with oil.  It is so easy and always successful and easily adaptable between sweet and savoury, but they are a lot softer and more crumbly than traditionally (with butter rubbed in) made scones.  I do however occasionally like to bake the traditional method as they look much better (shallow, me??).

This recipe seemed both quirky and simple. It comes from the book “Three Ingredient Baking” by Sarah Rainey.

Ingredients:

600g self raising flour, sifted

300 ml double cream

330 ml fizzy lemonade

Method:

Preheat the oven to 220°C (200°C fan).

Place flour in a large bowl and slowly stir in the double cream and then the lemonade.  This seems like madness, doesn’t it! Knead the dough lightly, shape it into a ball and then pat down until it’s about 4cm thick (I made them slightly thinner, closer to 3cm in thickness).  Cut into circles and place on a baking tray lined with baking paper.  Bake for 20 minutes, until golden brown.

Leave to cool on a wire rack.  Serve with jam and cream.  Feel smug at your creation!

I was amazed, the dough felt more kneadable than the usual scone dough, but I was cautious as I didn’t want to over-handle it. My scones were slightly mis-shapen because my dough was on the damp side, and I didn’t want to add too much extra flour.

The scones rose well in the oven, they could have benefited from an egg wash on the top – but that’s purely aesthetics, and of course then it would no longer be just three ingredients. I didn’t have any jam so we had the scones with salted butter.

Would I bake these again?  Most definitely! I may do a slight tweak, such as adding some lemon zest to the dough, but they are fine as they are.

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, I wish you a peaceful day 🙂

Dark Chocolate Brownies with Tahini Buttercream

Brownies, eh…….love ’em.  There is something about the dense, chocolately stodginess, lifted at times by other flavours – coffee, peanut butter, caramel, a bit of salt……aaah!

I saw this recipe for Dark Chocolate Brownies with Tahini Buttercream in the July 2019 issue of Olive magazine.  I love sesame seeds, I love halva, I love tahini, I love brownies….you get the picture?!  I am always on the lookout for a way to incorporate tahini into baking and so  I simply had to give this one a go.  The only thing I did differently was substitute some of the caster sugar for light muscovado sugar.

Ingredients:

250g butter

200g roughly chopped dark chocolate

50g plain flour

90g cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

200g golden caster sugar

150g light muscovado sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 eggs

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan). Grease and line a 22cm square brownie tin with baking paper.

Put the butter and chocolate in a bowl over a pan of hot water and melt gently. Stir to combine.

Put all the dry ingredients plus a pinch of salt into a large bowl and lightly whisk to remove any lumps.  Pour in the butter and melted chocolate mixture, with the vanilla extract and beat until combined.  Beat in the eggs one at a time (I whisk them up separately before adding them) until the mixture is smooth and silky.  Pour into the tin and bake for 25 to 30 minutes until a crust has formed around the edges, but the centre still has a little give. *I ended up cooking mine for 20 minutes longer.

Leave in the tin to cool for 10 minutes before transferring on to a wire rack to cool completely.

In the meantime, make the buttercream by  whisking together 125g softened butter with 250g icing sugar until light and fluffy.  Add 4 tablespoons tahini, a pinch of sea salt flakes and beat again.  Add 1 tablespoon of whole milk if the mixture is too dry.  You want it to have a spreadable consistency.

Once the brownie has cooled, spread the buttercream over the top and cut into squares.

These were lovely and easy to make.  I was slightly put off by the grainy look of the buttercream, but that is simply due to the texture of the tahini.  The brownies were lovely, with a rich chocolately flavour, and that lovely squidgy texture that a good brownie requires.  The tahini buttercream was nice, it gave a light “lift” to the dense richness of the brownies, but I am not convinced that it was necessary at all.  There wasn’t enough flavour for my liking, and I felt it could just as well have been interchanged for a peanut butter frosting. Maybe adding more tahini would help, I don’t know.  But that is just my opinion.  The taste testers gave the brownies a big thumbs up and demolished them in no time at all!!

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, I wish you a peaceful weekend 🙂

 

Cheesey Garlic Focaccia

I had decided to eat lightly for one day this week with mostly fruit during the day, and in the evening I would have soup.  But I wanted just that little bit more to go with the soup.  Why not bake focaccia?  Indeed, why not.  Once baked, I can slice it into portions and freeze them separately.  This way, I can heat up just the amount I need, and still have spare portions for future use.

My focaccia of choice is garlic, olive and rosemary.  Unfortunately, I only had rosemary.  I contemplated cheese and onion, but in the end chose an even easier solution.  I had garlic granules which I would use in the absence of fresh garlic, and I had Emmental cheese.

The recipe I used was based on the one for Focaccia con Olive in the book “Bread” by Eric Treuille & Ursula Ferrigno.  I do love this book as the recipes are really well written out, step by step and they give options to vary the recipe, including using different yeast types (fresh or dried).

Ingredients:

500g strong white bread flour

1 ½ teaspoons salt

1 sachet fast action dried yeast

150ml olive oil

175ml lukewarm water

Cubed cheese (Emmental or Gruyere work well) (use the amount of choice)

2 tablespoons garlic granules

Extra olive oil for drizzling

Sea salt flakes

Method:

Mix together all of the dry ingredients, make a well in the center and add in the oil and water.  Add in the cubed cheese.  The amount of garlic granules might make you panic, but the end result doesn’t actually taste that strongly of garlic.

Mix together carefully until it all comes together, then turn out onto a clean surface lightly dusted with flour.  Knead until the dough becomes smooth and elastic – around 10 minutes.  I did debate the wisdom of adding the cubed cheese so early on, as kneading was slightly awkward, but in the end it turned out fine although the dough looked (obviously) very lumpy.  Place the dough into a clean lightly oiled bowl, cover with a clean cloth and leave to rise until doubled in size – about 1 ½ to 2 hours.

Remove the dough from the bowl and knock back.  Leave to rest for 10 minutes then place on a lightly oiled baking tray rolling / stretching it out to the size and shape of choice.  You’ll want it to be about a centimeter thick.  Cover with a cloth and leave to rise until doubled in size – about an hour.

Preheat the oven to 200°C (180°C fan).   Using fingertips, press into the surface of the dough to form dimples about 1cm deep.  Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt flakes.

Place in the oven to bake for around 30 minutes, until golden brown.  Sprinkle with more olive oil and leave to cool.  That aroma of fresh bread – heaven!!

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, I wish you a peaceful weekend 😊

Butterscotch Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Buttercream

I saw this recipe on What Jessica Baked Next’s site.  What was not to love – butterscotch, salted caramel, and a quirky ingredient: butterscotch Angel Delight!! Here is the link to Jessica’s recipe for butterscotch cupcakes with salted caramel buttercream. It is definitely worth baking.

I love trying recipes which might be slightly quirky or different, where an unusual (or seemingly unusual) ingredient gives the recipe that little bit of something extra.  Some recipes worked, and some didn’t.  The failures were probably down to error on my part, or that I simply didn’t like the taste of the end result.  Years ago I tried a lager & lime sponge cake recipe, but personally I found the cake tasted too “yeasty” for my liking and so that was a big no.  Adding ingredients like carrots, courgettes and mayonnaise to a recipe often works really well, and there was the magical recipe of egg free meringues, using the liquid from a can of chickpeas, which has been a big revelation and a success.  But back to this recipe – I did wonder how the addition of this powdered pudding mix would work, would the batter end up as a thick stodgy mess?  There was only one way to find out, and of course, we all know, butterscotch Angel Delight is the best flavour of Angel Delight, so I simply had to try this.

I have a tried and trusted recipe, which I posted some time back, for sticky toffee cupcakes with salted caramel buttercream and I am always looking out for any variation along the theme to try.

I used light muscovado sugar in the cake batter – I did debate using dark muscovado sugar but was worried it might end up with too strong a taste.  With hindsight, I think the dark sugar would work really well and just enhance the flavor.  I was worried that there might not be enough batter – the recipe makes 12 cupcakes, yet I panicked unduly and there was plenty.

I did initially think I would make a chocolate buttercream, but the salted caramel won.

With the buttercream the only change I made was the addition of a couple of teaspoons of vanilla extract. Oh, and a tiny bit more salt, because salted caramel………………..

My taste testing panel gave these cupcakes the big thumbs up!

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, I wish you a peaceful weekend 😊