R is for Rusks

Some of you will now be in a very happy place thinking about rusks. In fact, I suggest that before you read any further you make a hot milky beverage of your choice to enjoy with a rusk while you read.

The rest of my readership will fall into the category of uninitiated in the way of the rusk and are probably thinking "why is she writing about baby teething biscuits that do nothing but cause a mess and turn to musk" right now.

Well, prepared to be enlightened.

Rusks are the anglicised term for beskuit a traditional biscuit in South Africa that you have for breakfast, they are designed for dunking...nay... soaking in your morning tea or coffee.  You definitely cannot eat them dry or you are likely to break a tooth and that will really spoil your day. Of course you don't just have to keep them for breakfast either, they are great as a snack with a hot drink any time of the day,

So why am I eating rusks? Well, here comes a bit of background for those that don't know me so well.. my dear husband is from South Africa I have been enjoying rusks for a good 6 years now, and whilst you can buy the big brand Ouma Rusks over here in the UK they are massively marked up so they became a bit of a treat that we would always bring some back after a trip or visiting family would cram packs into their suitcases.

But then I realised that actually, maybe it was time it was only after our visit in December 2013 that I decided to step out, be brave, and make my own.  And you may not think it, but it is a big deal as the rusks that we buy when in South Africa aren't a mass produced product but something that a ladies bake up at home and sell at the local corner shops to supplement their income and they are faultless...and delicious...and when they hold such a central place in your families heart, trying to replicate them is quite a daunting task.


But what is a rusk in baking terms? Essentially they are is a bread based dough that is baked twice so in a way very similar to biscotti.  Some recipes call for yeast, some don't. It really is totally dependant on the type of rusk you are after. Once you make and prove the dough you separate it into balls, pack it into a tin and bake. Once baked you tear the pieces apart and put them back into the oven at a very low temperature to dry out (preferably overnight)

So I returned home with a few cut out recipes from magazines as well as looking up a few online recipes to see what they had to say and then every Sunday for about 4 weeks, I made rusks.

Now some batches were much more successful than others, the one I tried to make with yeast was alright but possibly in trying to be clever and cook it in my large square stone baker it didn;t quite work. I should have rather used several smaller loaf tins so the dough in the middle wasn't undercooked...if they were judged on Great British Bake Off they would definitely get the Paul Hollywood prod of disaprovement.  I also used 100% whole wheat flour in an attempt to make it healthier but that also didn't quite work. In subsequent batches I still used it but only as 30 or 40 % to plain white flour.

I then moved on to the more breakfast type rusks, the ones where one or two will set you up for the morning but a third would just be too much. With these I really could go to town on what when in; seeds, ground nuts (like almond and coconut which in turn reduced the wheat content), museli. They were also a simpler bake as there was no proving to do it was very much a case of mix the wet and dry ingredients together and bake. These proved to be much closer to the ones that we bought when in South Africa and are still my favorite ones to make, the recipe was from another blog called Under the Blue Gum Tree and I highly recommend following the link if you want to try it.

 Due to our moving house in March I started packing up the kitchen in late February so my weekly stashes of rusks came to an end.  I also have to admit to getting a little frustrated with my Little Giant as he had just started walking and had a tendency to like turning the oven temperature knob....so two batches instead of "drying" actually got baked to a crisp and burnt raisins are really not nice.  Thankfully the oven in our new kitchen is higher and I also have a baby gate to keep the Two Monkeys out while I am cooking so I really have no excuses not to start making them again.

So put away your Rich Teas (or Marie Biscuits), hide the Hobnobs and ditch the Digestives, when it comes to dunking biscuits in your tea or coffee...you need rusks in your life.  I know that writing today's post has made me quite hungry for some so I am making sure the ingredients have gone down on my shopping list for this weekend!

O is for Ooops

I failed! I didn't make my self assigned Friday deadline last week...oops in a major way! 

I do have a very good excuse though, The Two Monkeys and I were away for a few days visiting my sisters and her family to celebrate my nieces 4th birthday and so I wasn't actually at home to write and too busy to put my thoughts onto the screen of my phone.  I will be doing some writing on birthday cakes in the future and I did deconstruction of the pink castle cake to write up on here for you all.

However, I am here now and thought I would share with you a few of  my kitchen "ooops" moments...because lets be honest, unless you are Mary Poppins there will be times when things just go wrong.

My most recent ooops can actually only be described as a complete disaster and happened just yesterday. The boys and I were off out to a friends for a play date and I thought I would be super organised and take over some fresh baked danish pastries. I am going to be totally honest and say they weren't my own pastry, rather the lovely bake-it-fresh range from Jus-Rol

They look lovely don't they.  

Really delicious.

Just perfect with a cup of something and a natter with my friend whilst our children played on the trampoline or ran laps of the garden.

But I got distracted.

First up was the nappy change that needed doing, but having sorted that and taken a quick peek in the oven and I thought I still had plenty of time.

Then the laundry needed hanging out on the line and as the sun was out for the first time in days I wasn't going to waste the opportunity. Half way through the basket of wet clothes I come across a shirt, which meant a quick dash inside and upstairs to grab a hanger or two out of the wardrobe. Back out to the garden (passing the oven on the way but not checking this time...error!) I finish pegging the last t-shirt and odd sock up on the line and head back towards the house, but not before I pick up all the various plastic toys of the lawn and put them in a pile for later. I feel a real sense of achievement, I am winning, in that moment I am a domestic goddess.

As I get to the back door I smell it...the unmistakable smell of burning food.

I run to the oven and pull down the door to be greeted with the most unfortunate and charred sight and with various muttered expletives I pull the stone tray out of the oven for closer inspection. Could they be saved? Was it just the corners?

No.

No such luck for me. 

What should have been delicious morsels of yummy goodness were now well burnt offerings fit only for the food waste bin. They looked bad, smelt bad and tasted even worse.

Ooops.

Needless to stay I stopped by a mini supermarket on my way to our playdate and grabbed some much better looking and very scrummy maple and pecan danish plaits.

I is for...

...inert, idle, immobile, inactive.

All these words could be used to describe the state of this blog. And yes, if this post seems familiar it is because I wrote something incredibly like this in October last year but it got deleted and no other posts followed on. Life got in the way - which is no bad thing! Being a stay-at-home-mum has, and continues to be, a lot of fun...even if it does mean I am constantly on the go.

When I started this blog I had fully intended to write about my experience of weaning The Bug, and our journey discovering food together. I had envisioned that I would write the alphabet series over 26 weeks and be done with it before moving onto another title sequence. Only problem them is that The Bug is just about to turn three and eats pretty much anything and everything we put in front of him.

Not only that but in the intervening years The Bug's little brother the Little Giant arrived (as you may have guessed from previous mentions of The Two Monkeys) and is also completely weaned and has a more voracious appetite than his brother. So I can't talk about his weaning journey either. Talk about blogger fail.

What's worse is that I have plenty of material to hand. I have meticulously photographed my baking and epic cooking achievements but they just sit idle on my laptop gathering digital dust.

So where does this leave me now? Playing catch up for the most part...but that is OK as my family (and cooking for them) come before my writing, or my crafting, or anything else really. Part of me wishes my writing could come before housework but invariably that also wins out too. But I am going to try and post every Friday from this point on for the remainder of 2014...I even have it scheduled in my diary.  In the meantime, if you want to read a real foodie blog, pop over and visit my friend Lucy at The Pie Patch as she is fairly awesome and is also into all sorts of crafty things that I like too.

'H' is for Hot Pie

OK, so I have kinda skewed the title of this post to make it fit the topic that I want but who can blame me? After all it is British Pie Week and therefore it is most appropriate to write about the British passion for pastry encased yumminess.

I mean, who ever came up with the idea for pies deserves an award for services to humanity and doing the world a huge favour. I mean there are chunky meat pies, then potato topped pies, little tarts and then fruity pies, cobblers and hot crust pies.

It makes my mouth water just thinking of it.

The alternative for 'H' is homemade, which is also (in part) what this post is about. I can honestly say that making a pie from scratch beats a store bought one of the same flavour (and I can say this as I bought one at the weekend) because you stir in that extra ingredient...love. (Smell the cheese of that last sentence there) But seriously, it does taste a whole lot better and you know exactly what goes into it. And most people will shrug off looking at the label but when it comes to feeding The Two Monkeys, it really does matter to me how much salt is in something and what additives it may have.

Having been inspired by the Hairy Bikers cookbook I was given for Christmas 2012 (as mentioned in an earlier post), I made my dear husband pick out a recipe for me to have a bash at for dinner one night.  My only previous pie attempts have been a fruit filled pies or a very lovely and sweet "Pumpkin Pie" from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook, this would be my first foray into the world of savoury pies and I was a little nervous.

However, I want to make it perfectly clear that making pies really does take baking to a whole new level. It's more than just a mixture in a cupcake case, it is a process that leads to combining filling and pastry and doing your best to avoid a "soggy bottom"

So today I set about creating the "Creamy Chicken, Ham and Leek Pie" that my dear husband had selected, if you're interested in trying it you can find it here. The prep for the filling took me just under an hour, which was good as I could fit it in whilst my Little Giant had an afternoon nap and The Bug played in the room next door.  From there on in it was just a case of making the pie prior to cooking.

Interestingly enough, the shortcrust pastry for this recipe differs from others that I have previously made in that it uses an egg rather than just water.  If anything it created a smoother dough that I could use instantly rather than needing to let it rest.  I also made a point of using cold and cubed butter to make the pastry which I haven't  done in the past and it worked much better.

So we sat down to a very lovely hot pie for dinner tonight and enjoyed every last bite.  There was even some pastry left over for me to make some mini chocolate tortes for pudding.

'E' is for eggs

Eggs are just wonderful things. So yummy. Often quick to cook. And lets not forget...so good for you!

Robust enough in their own flavour that you can eat them alone in so many ways - it's amazing.  Just stop and think about it...boiled, fried, poached, scrambled. Then there are numerous dishes in which they can be used, I certainly get through boxes of them when baking...especially birthday cakes but that is another post entirely.

Now when it comes to The Two Monkeys (who are currently 2 and a half-ish years and nearly 1 years) then eggs do actually prove a bit problematic. They will devour eggy bread in minutes but give them a fried or boiled egg and its picked over or pushed aside or ignored. Their most favourite form of egg is an omelette or frittata which I fill with shredded veggies and cheese...just typing this is making me hungry!

And sizes, eggs come in all sorts of sizes. Now I have held (and stood on) an ostrich egg and it is really huge, an omelette made from one of those would be the equivalent of 22 chicken eggs.  On the other hand quails eggs are tiny, and while they are not my favourite to eat they are very pretty to look at. In fact we have a carved ostrich egg that we put a light inside of and use as our Christmas tree topper, and lets be honest painted eggs at Easter hanging on twisted hazel can be so beautiful... so yet another use for them, home decor!

I mostly buy chicken eggs but I know duck eggs are particularly good for baking with and I have made a point of using them to make things when cooking for a friend who cannot eat chicken eggs.

I cannot imagine a culinary world without the humble egg and so I would like to raise my glass to the most versatile of all cooking ingredients.

An ode to eggs

Not only are you curves beautiful
       as you lie there in your carton.
The hue of your shell is alluring;
       duck blue, white, brown but not tartan.

You are the epitome of yumminess
         and can be used in all sorts of ways.
When removed from the fridge for lunch,
         my stomach will never be dismayed.