Sourdough Pancake - testing...

Lately I've been testing out recipes for pancakes made with sourdough.

Don't get me wrong!, I do like pancakes made with baking powder or soda (as I mentioned here...), but I love the more bread-like and chewy sourdough pancakes. Plus, that unique, savoury but very slightly sour-sweet taste is something that you can only get with sourdough pancakes. ;D

Ok, the recipe..., the honest truth is... I'm still working on it, but I thought I'll share my attempt because it went pretty well.

Ingredients:

Starter 60g

Plain flour 60g

1 Egg yolk + Milk = 50g

Honey 1 tsp (optional)

1 Egg white

I separated the egg and used the egg white to help rise the pancakes as well as make them more airy. It worked. The pancakes were very light, probably a little too light for me.

Next time I'm going to beat the egg white less and try not to burn the bottom of the pancakes! (Why does a kid say 'toilet!' at the most awkward timing...?)

They still tasted good and were perfect for light sandwiches ;D

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

Basic Sourdough Loaf

As much as I love hard crusty country type bread, I sometimes do crave for a very simple white loaf...

Such as this one...

It's one of my basic bread recipes and can be used for rolls as well. ;)

Ingredients;

Starter 125g

Strong flour 250g

Milk 168g

Salt 4g

Brown sugar 25g

Butter 25g

Having butter and milk in the dough, the crumb is nicely soft and springy, and there is also a gentle sweetness from the brown sugar.

Some people say you need to wait for bread to cool down after the bake. But with this one, I really can't help myself breaking it apart ...and..,

...with a bit of butter, tuck in while it's hot...

This bread is definitely Lana's favourite too. 

She destroyed one third of the loaf!

And here we go..., I made cheesy toasted sandwich for myself;)

Have you seen my epic video of this sandwich on Instagram? 

If not yet, then take a look here! ;)

Carrot cornet bread

I love the way the cornet bread looks....

These cute looking cornet rolls are very poplar in Japan. They are normally filled with sweet cream such as custard or chocolate.


I used to make them everyday at my old job but I haven't made them for a while, so I thought 'why not practice the shaping a bit'.  Some of them were bit loose but I think I've still got it. ;)

This time I added carrot powder in the dough made with strawberry yeast to use them for a savoury meal. When I was making them, I actually had one very specific thing in mind to fill these buns...

Yes! Egg mayo! It was aaaamazing! 

I overloaded it and had to push the filling in with some asparagus...

Does this look like a carrot? ;D

Cornmeal bread

Ingredients:

Starter (Banana yeast) 130g

Very strong flour 250g

Cornmeal 20g

Milk 190g

Salt 4g
Olive oil 1tbsp

A variation of my basic white loaf. I added cornmeal to give the bread extra flavour and slightly yellow and lighter crumb.

I also tried a new scoring pattern, which, I have to say, I'm quite please with. It's my interpretation of 'Corn'. ;D

So, last Saturday started with my freshly baked Cornmeal bread. For breakfast we had some slices with butter, and some more toasted...

Bread and butter, such a simple combo yet, so satisfying. 

With the left over slices, 

we made nice homemade sandwiched for lunch.

....♥︎....

Mine with salad and peanut butter...

It sounds weird but tasted pretty good. ;)

The meat eaters had Andy-made burgers.

As I was preparing for lunch I caught Lana diving for a big piece!

I can already see this Cornmeal bread becoming one of our regular;D

Waffle maker sandwich with banana bread

 This morning I made banana bread again. This time I just baked it in a loaf tin. Since it didn't make it to breakfast, I decided that we were having sandwiches with the banana loaf for lunch. :)

I made tuna and cheese sandwiches and I used the waffle maker to press them. (I couldn't find the hot sandwich maker...) Look, it worked pretty cool!

The extra thick slices were real treats after a swim! Yum yum yum..., and being tired from the swim and belly full, Lana went to a deep deep nap while I was pushing the pram back home...;D

Jubilee tea party

Britain was filled with a festive feel as people celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. We enjoyed the last day of this long weekend too in a very English style... Afternoon tea.



The menu of our Jubilee tea party was...;

- Variety of sandwiches with homemade bread (I baked my super easy bread and Andy made the sandwiched.)
- Homemade scones (For the recipe, see The World of Sweets: United Kingdom)
- Berries & cream tartlets (For the sweet pastry recipe, see my Lemon meringue tart)
- Union Jack Battenberg. I made one too in a slightly different style for the royal wedding a year ago. (Have you seen my royal wedding battenberg?)

All the food was really good and I loved this cheesy setup too:D Now I'm thinking we should have afternoon tea more often ;)

Oh and these are the cupcakes that I made for the street party on Sunday which didn't happen in the end because of the bad weather... So we just ate them and took some to Andy's mum and dad. Raspberry cupcakes and Blueberry cupcakes for the colour of Union flag... tastes yum yum too... :)

Let's hope we'll have another Jubilee tea party in 10 years...

Posh peanut butter sandwich cake

A very simple vanilla cake with  peanut butter icing in the middle...This is indeed my dream sandwich...

I decided to call this cake "Posh peanut butter sandwich cake" because Andy described it "humm, it's like posh sweet peanut butter sandwich....". This nutty cake is so easy to make and no-frills whatsoever, but it does taste amazingly addictive. I was having it for my late lunch and before I knew half the cake was gone.... That's how good it is...;D

Well, like that famous french lady said... "let them eat cake...", I'm more than happy to have this cake sandwich instead of those boring sandwiches from supermarkets...

Ingredients;

Butter 175g

Sugar 175g

Flour 140g

Almond powder 50g

Baking powder 1 tsp

Egg 3

Vanilla extract 1 tsp

***

Peanut butter 5 tbsp

Icing sugar 2-3 tbsp

Water 1 tsp

1. Pre heat the oven to 180ºc. Cream butter and sugar together until it's fluffy.

2. Add egg into 1, and mix well.

3. In a separate bowl, combine flour, almond powder, and baking powder. Mix well.

4. Sift 3 into 2. Fold in.

5. Pour the mixture into a cake tin. Bake in the pre heated oven (180ºc) for 45 minutes. When the cake is baked, cool it down. 

6. Prepare peanut butter icing. Mix peanut butter, icing sugar and water together.

7. Slice the cake into half. Spread the peanut butter icing in the middle.

Sponge cake jam sandwich

Here we come...The World of Sweets's cake delivery is back!

Today's cake is the every one's classic favourite, Jam Sponge Cake! Simply sandwich whatever jam you like between the lovely home-made sponges (or why not ready-made one if you can't be bothered to bake one). This time I opted for the raspberry jam, and little change with the vanilla icing too.

Hope everyone has got a good sugar supply:)