Sourdough lemon cake

Sourdough for breads, yes, of course... 

but how about sourdough for cakes?

Yes! Totally possible and rather nice!

Ingredients:

Flour 100g

Starter 60g

Egg 1

Sugar 30g

Butter (melted) 30g

Honey 1tbsp

Lemon 1

Because the natural yeast in the sourdough starter is used as the rising agent, making cakes with sourdough starter takes much longer time than without. It took me about 4 hours before I put my cake in the oven. Yes I know, it's bit long but don't rush, the key to success is 'patience'.

And when you see the nicely risen fluffy cake, you know it was worth for all that waiting time... ;D

I tried using as little sugar as possible with this recipe without making it a lemon tasting bread-like thing (it's still called 'cake' so got to have some level of sweetness, right?). If you like your cake to be sweeter, add a few more tablespoons of sugar. ;)

Hope you all enjoy 'something-a-bit-different' cake with sourdough. :-d

Earl grey sourdough cube loaf

I believe that the more you use (feed, refresh, whatever you want to call it) the sourdough starter, the better they get. So, based on this, I'm currently using my still-very-new Lemon Yeast more often than my other starters.

Mr Lemon has quite a strong lemon smell, which gave me an idea for this particular loaf, Earl grey tea loaf. Yes, lemon tea, indeed! ;D I used earl grey tea as a liquid (The tea was very strongly brewed, and cooled down beforehand).

Earl grey and lemon worked well together. The tea gave the loaf nice caramel colour and the bread had quite a distinctive fruity aromatic flavour.

Along with the regular size cube loaf, I made some small ones. I bought some small cube tins back in Japan, and I absolutely love them! They are the cutest mini loaves. :D

Loaf for one? ;)

With the Lemon and Coconut curd..., it went down beautifully too...

(The lemon and coconut filling from the croissants.)

Croissants with Lemon Yeast

My new Lemon Yeast is doing pretty well, and the sweet smell of the starter inspired me to make some pastry stuff with it such as...,Croissants, yay!

The recipe is the same as Croissant - Strawberry Yeast -.

Although the lemon starter has a quite strong lemony smell that carried on to the dough, I didn't really taste the lemon when the bread is baked.

This time, I made three different types of croissants.

Plain...

Almond... (filling recipe below.)

Lemon and coconut... (filling recipe below.)

Almond filling -

Ingredients:

Almond powder 50g

Sugar 40g

Butter 40g

Egg 30g

• Cream all the ingredients and chill in the fridge. 

Lemon & Coconut filling -

Ingredients:

Fresh lemon juice 100ml

*Sugar 50-100 g

Egg 2

Coconut butter 75g

Lemon zest 1/2 tsp

(*50g make it very lemony and sharp. Adjust the amount according to your desired sweetness.)

• Mix all the ingredients together in a heat proof bowl, and Bain Marie until the mixture thickens. Sieve the mixture for a smooth texture.

I made these croissants a day before the Race for Life 10km run so that I could treat myself after my race. And yes, I did... I had four of them afterwards! The flaky buttery pastry was the best cure for my empty and exhausted stomach...:D

Andy made me omelet to make a croissant sandwich.

Seriously..., the Croissant sandwich...

If I didn't care about my figure, I would choose croissants as my sandwich bread all the time...;d

Lemon yeast bread

For the last few weeks I've been making lemon yeast. It took longer than my raisin yeast to be ready and I didn't get as many bubbles as raisin one. But it started to smell like alcohol so I decided "it's ready" and baked a mini loaf with it.

I thought... since I waited patiently for this yeast to be ready, I shouldn't rush for the important "bake" part. So, I took my time:) I left the dough in the fridge for overnight. Resting the dough in a cool place for a long time brings the sweetness of the flour and gives the bread more depth of flavour.

After two weeks of careful preparation, my lemon yeast bread came out from the oven nicely. I couldn't wait any longer and had one immediately!

It was so good, simple, sweeter than usual bread. Hummm, nothing can beat freshly baked bread...

Ingredients:

Flour 500g

Sugar 40g

Salt 7g

Honey 2 tbsp

Oil 2 tbsp

Lemon yeast 350ml

1. Put all the ingredients in the standing mixer with a dough hook attached. Turn the mixer on and knead for 10 minutes.

2. Cover the dough with cling film and rest it in the fridge overnight.

3. Punch the dough to let the air out. Rest for 10 minutes.

4. Grease a loaf tin with oil, place the dough and rest it until it has doubled in size.

5. Preheat the oven to 200ºc. Bake for 30 minutes.