Orange brioche

So, as I mentioned before (on my Orange custard cream post), here is my orange brioche made with my banana yeast starter. It has a orange jam sauce mixed in the dough and orange custard on the top.

I think these buns are a perfect example of how versatile the sourdough starter can be. They've got such a nice soft texture and buttery richness that I'm sure they are pretty different from what you imagine as sourdough bread;)

Being quite a wet dough, it's pretty tricky to handle it so I strongly recommend using a mixer for kneading. You will also need to knead (oops..;D) longer than ordinary loaves (such as my Strawberry yeast bread) and it might be difficult to judge whether the dough is ready or not. But don't worry, when in doubt, we always go back to the basics. Feel the dough, stretch it to see it's nice and stringy and doesn't break.

This rich dough takes more time to prove too. I left the dough overnight to let it prove (it was about 10 hours on a warm day, so it can be longer on a cooler day) and then rested it in the fridge for half a day. This resting action is quite important to make it easy to shape the bread.

I haven't got brioche tins but tartlet tins worked ok. I added some orange custard on the top, then put a small piece of dough to cover it.

Not only were they a good energy booster in the morning, but also they were an excellent treat with coffee in the afternoon. :)

Ingredients:

Starter (banana) 125g

Very strong flour 250g

Salt 3g

Honey 50g

Butter 50g

Egg1+Egg yolk 2 + milk = 168g

Orange jam sauce 2-3tbsp

*I will post the brioche recipe some time but for now, please refer to the Banana buns Recipe for the method.

Gluten-free Orange & Poppy seed Swiss roll

With the orange custard and orange 'jam sauce' thing on my previous post, I made this gluten-free cake, Orange & Poppy seed Swiss roll.

I'm getting quite into the gluten-free baking and wanted to see how my basic Swiss roll sponge would come out with the gluten-free flour (I use Doves Farm plain white flour.). It worked so well that I could barely tell the difference and so did some people who ate the cake. Only thing was with the gluten-free flour the sponge cake was softer, which made the rolling action a little tricky.

The recipe for the sponge cake is the same as my basic Swiss roll. I just replaced the flour to gluten-free flour, then added a few table spoon of orange jam sauce, and folded a good amount of poppy seeds in the sponge.

For the cream inside, I mixed orange custard with whipped cream. Oh, I love custard and whipped cream together, and with a nice orange flavour with it, it simply cannot go wrong!

When you make Swiss rolls for customers or as a gift, I need to trim the ends, and they are, obviously, for me! ;D This time I put them in the freezer and had them a few days later. I couldn't wait for the cake to be completely defrosted so I had it half frozen, and guess what... it tasted amazing! It really was a treat for the baker! Please try it when you have Swiss roll next time;D

Basic Swiss Roll Recipe

More Gluten-free Swiss roll;
Coconut Swiss Roll

Orange custard cream

The other day I made orange custard cream... well, I was going to make orange curd but as I didn't have specific recipe in mind and I was kind of going with the flow, I ended up making more like an orange custard than curd, which turned out to be rather tasty! ;D

So the recipe goes like this...
Ingredients:

Orange 2

Sugar 50g

Butter 25g

Cornflour 1 tbs

Egg 1

Egg yolk 1

1. Squeeze the juice out of oranges. Keep 1 tbsp of the juice aside and combine the rest of the juice with sugar and butter in a pot.

2. Bring the pot to boil and strain the liquid.

3. Mix cornflour and 1 tbsp of orange juice.

4. Add 3 into 2 and mix well.

5. Beat the egg and egg yolk and mix into 4. Put the pot back on a low heat.

6. Stir constantly until the liquid thickens.

I'm not a big fan of orange skin so I don't add zest of orange but if you want more punch, then please go for it.

After squeezing the juice, I boiled the remaining of oranges with water, and then pureed in the food processor. I cooked the pureed oranges again with some ginger syrup (approximately 4 tbsp) and strained the liquid to make orange and ginger jam-sauce type thing (it wan't as thick as jam...)

This by-product was also very nice! I used it in the bread and cake, both of which had really nice refreshing orange flavour. :)

I used the orange custard cream as a filling of my Match macarons. And oh yes! Holly molly, the combination of match and orange tasted amazing...

Recipes for the gluten- free cake and brioche I made with the orange cream and 'jam-sauce thing' will be coming soon! Don't miss them;D

Orange & Chocolate pound cake

I made this Orange and Chocolate pound cake for Lana's nursery teachers who have been very nice to Lana (and me) since she started going there in April.

It's a variation of vanilla pound cake. The basic ingredient for a pound cake is equal amount of eggs, sugar, flour and butter (I usually weigh the eggs so that I know exactly how many grams of other ingredients I need), and you can vary it by adding chocolate, jams or flavourings whatever you fancy.

For this cake, I divided the batter into two potions and added orange juice to one, and chocolate to the other. For the butter cream, I added orange marmalade and also poured marmalade syrup over the cake before I sprinkled it with bits of dark chocolate and white chocolate.

I had a slice to taste it. It was lovely. Nice and moist, the refreshing flavour of orange went really well with the chocolate and the sweet butter cream.

The nursery teachers loved the cake too. They told me more cakes are welcome any time...;)

Leftover hard rock cakes

Whiteorangecreamcheese...

Racheal brought us suger supply at work. Those were the ones that unfortunately (to me fortunately) left by the monkeys who care about their calorie intake, so of course, I volunteered to take them back home. I kept them in the fridge to enjoy after dinner.

When I got them out from the fridge and put a fork in... it was blocked....

I was like 'Nooo"... my lovey soft sponge's gone rock... the cream wasn't really creamy anymore.. more like butter... though the orage jelly top was sort of ... ok...

They still tasted like cake though and actually quite a nice treat after a hard day.

Next time I will make sure just to eat them immediately without putting them in the fridge.