My Kingdom for a pair of choux (buns)!

Bit of a manic Sunday, had promised myself to complete a challenge set by the Daring Bakers, and August's task has been "chocolate eclairs" - a brilliant choice, who doesn't love good choux? As it's my first Daring Baker challenge as newbie member, I wasn't going to miss out, pastry being my nemesis but thankfully choux buns are pretty foolproof.

So even if you're a bit of a pastry-phobe like me, give this a go, it's much more straightforward than other traditional pastries and so satisfying...my flatmate and her other half happened to be in when I made these and we managed to scoff ALL that I made (which was admittedly a small batch). A confession though: I didn't have time to make the filling, so I cheated by picking up vanilla custard from my local supermarket and cheekily adulterating it with some passionfruit pulp....mmm! Naughty to cheat, but in the broad scheme of things, better to enjoy these babies rather than forego the challenge! 

Recipe: 

• 125g whole milk
• 125g water
• 115g unsalted butter
• 1/4 tsp sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 140g plain flour
• 5 large eggs

Bring the milk/water/butter up to the boil, making sure to melt the butter completely before boiling the water.

Sift the flour with sugar and salt and add this to the boiling liquid whilst turning the heat off, immediately stir the mixture like a mad woman (!) for ca. 20 sec until the mixture is thick, gloopy and comes off the sides.

Allow the mixture to cool slightly, then add the eggs in increments until the mixture reaches a smooth, dropping consistency. 

Preheat the oven to 200ºC. Get a baking tray out and line with silicone paper. As my piping bags are MIA, I simply spooned dollops of mixture on the sheet and smoothed them with a wet finger so there were no spiky bits. So you have choux buns, not eclairs :-)

Bake on the top shelf of the oven for 25-30 minutes. It's VERY important NOT to open the oven door for at least 20 minutes as this will lead to deflation of the choux (or at least it has done in my experience)...when they look puffed up and golden, take the baking sheet out of the oven, pierce the underneath of each choux bun with a skewer and place them upside down back on the baking sheet and back into the oven to dry out for 5-10 minutes.

When the choux are dried out, allow them to cool whilst preparing the filling and chocolate glaze. In my case, as I was rushed for time, I made the following glaze:

• 100g plain chocolate
• 25g butter
• 1 tsp golden syrup
• 1-2 tsp water

Place all of this in a heatproof bowl over a pan with simmering water and allow to met until a smooth glaze is formed. This will require tasting, so dip your fingers in, but no double-dipping :-)

For the filling, I simply added the pulp of 1 1/2 passionfruit to the vanilla custard and improvised with a plastic food bag to create a rather slapdash piping bag to squirt the filling into the choux buns. A bit messy but that's part of the fun of making this...

Bread, sweet bread

Like George Costanza in the sitcom 'Seinfeld', I too like a good sandwich. It's an abomination the stuff you get in supermarkets, delis and 'sandwich' joints around London. Seriously. The city is pining for a good sandwich. Why is there such a paucity of good sandwiches? I blame the bread. And too much mayo, plus over/under-seasoned fillings. Truly awful. Don't go out for a sandwich in London. New Yorkers are still kings of the sandwich. Actually, so are Scandinavians ;-)

In fact, constructing sandwiches was how I got into food and cooking in general. I won't go into detail, in order to spare my otherwise wonderful and adored Mother any blushes, but the sandwiches being shipped off in my satchel on weekday mornings were, well, rather Anglo-Saxon in their quality. Mama J is not a morning person at the best of times, so it must've been a complete bore making sandwiches for her demanding daughter, and sadly her otherwise excellent culinary skills were lacking in the sandwich department. Tant pis, in hindsight I suspect this was a cunning ploy to get me interested in food, as I had an incentive to make my own school lunch. Establishing that the bread was crucial, I then investigated our bread options. Not three-day old fibrous mountain bread, which sucked the moisture out of your mouth, but good, fresh wholemeal bread, or a German-style Landbrot with a hint of rye. Norway, thankfully, has a great culture of bakeries, and German-style Konditoreis which sell freshly baked bread on a daily basis. And not bread that's been treated with all sorts of preservatives and is full of sugar, salt and e-numbers, but real, wholesome, fresh bread.

Of course, allowing me to wrest control of sandwich-making was a pandora's box, as I subsequently demanded to join in the grocery shopping, and insisted on the type of bread, fillings and various crunchy salad/veggie options we purchased. As a result, Mama J claims our weekly grocery bill went stratospheric, but at least we all started eating much better lunches!

Recently I penned a short feature on bread-making which you can read all about if you click on the link above. It was an introduction to breadmaking, with a 'quick' bread recipe for Irish soda bread. This is bread made with baking soda, and not yeast, thus rendering it an easy and quick bread recipe for sandwich fans...The perfect partner for Irish soda bread? Torn between good cheese and smoked salmon, I'd have to go for the latter. Here's what I would do for an extra-fancy, brain-boosting (all that fish!) sandwich

• Couple of slices of freshly baked soda bread, buttered!
• 100g smoked salmon
• couple of pickled, sweet beetroots
• zingy horseradish mixed with a dollop of fromage frais or quark
• finely chopped onion
• a few leaves, such as parsley, chervil or dill
• capers (optional...make sure they're not too vinegary or salty, in fact perhaps best to leave them out)

As this is meant to be Scandinavian in spirit, start by making an open-top sandwich. None of this squishing the filling between thick slices of bread.

Mix your horseradish with the fromage frais/quark and spread this on the soda bread, then place your chopped onion on top, followed by the salmon slices, and then add a few pieces of pickled beetroot. If you want to garnish it with greenery this is the opportune moment. Otherwise, scoff away and rejoice in art of a good sandwich.

P.S. Admittedly the bagel is also a good foil for smoked salmon, and the best place in London for this is the brilliant Brick Lane Beigel Bakery. Don't try making your own bagels, I once did and it only ended in tears... 

It don't mean a thing if you ain't got that zing!

Perhaps Scandilicious should be re-named the 'Passionfruit' blog, as this dark, wrinkly fruit has been at the forefront of all my recent thoughts on baking. Which means all my thoughts generally. Not terribly exciting ones admittedly, but thoughts which nonetheless result in playing around with my favourite fruit on a bank holiday Monday evening. Does this mean I need to get out more? Probably. I'd like to think it's yet another successful experiment baking with passionfruit - this time with the addition of orange, and my Mother is visiting tomorrow so I've taken care of afternoon tea - bonus! Not to mention midnight scoffing later this evening ;-) By the by, these muffins are dedicated to my most fabulous former flatmate Nina - currently rusticated to Beijing - ni hao Nina, aka fellow passionfruit fan...

Passionfruit Muffins with Orange and Oats (or what's left over in your cupboard/fridge with a bit of zing)

• 250g plain flour
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 100g porridge oats (gives a good texture)
• 150g caster sugar
• 100g melted butter
• 180ml Quark (this was in my fridge, but use milk/yoghurt if you don't have any)
• 2 eggs
• 2 passionfruit
• 2 oranges - zest & juice
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 180ºC. Lightly oil 6 jumbo muffin tins, or 12 regular ones

In a large bowl, sift all the dry ingredients and stir through to distribute the raising agents. Add the orange zest then add all the liquid ingredients, stirring through with a large metal spoon, careful not to overfold or the muffins will be tough. Scoop mixture into muffin tray

Bake on centre shelf of the oven for 25 mins (regular size) 35-40 mins for the larger ones. These muffins come out light and fluffy, and predictably taste rather good with a cup of good olde English tea - see, I'm becoming more Anglo-Saxon by the day....

Lemon Poppyseed Cake...with a dollop of Quark and "rips" (norwegian for redcurrants)

Sundays are meant to be relaxing. A time to recalibrate, catch up with family or friends, walk the dog, go to the cinema, an exhibition, or even shopping (my least-favourite activity in the world - seriously). These are things perfectly sane people do on a Sunday, however I decided to do a stock-take of my kitchen cupboard as various items such as jars of pesto and bags of sugar kept falling on my head every time the cupboard door was ajar. Infuriating to say the least, and I'm easily ired, so I spent a couple of serene hours listening to Magic FM, whilst scrubbing the inside of the cupboard, re-organising all the jars of pesto and bags of sugar and then suddenly it occurred to me that I am in possession of far too much food. The mission for Sunday? Use up the remnants of the following: poppyseeds, ground almonds, polenta (uncooked), couple of lemons, etc. There's so much brown sugar in my cupboard that later this week will see a cornucopia of cookies, ginger cake and brown sugar oat & apricot muffins in the scandilicious kitchen...Oh, and I wrote down all the items in the cupboard which will go up as the official cupbopard stock-list on the inside of the door. Clearly I need to get out more. 

This lemony cake is akin to an American-style cornbread, which needs something like quark, or greek yoghurt to go with it (or lashings of butter if you're so inclined). If by chance you're feeling peckish on a Sunday, this is an extremely easy wheat-free cake to throw together - gluten-free, though not dairy-free as you'll see, especially with the extra dollop of quark on the side as evinced in the photo, one step at a time folks... 

Ingredients

• 180g polenta (cornmeal)
• 100g ground almonds
• 140g caster sugar
• 100g melted butter
• 100g Quark
• 2 eggs
• zest & juice of 1 lemon
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/8 tsp salt

You'll need to lightly oil a 20cm round cake tin. Preheat oven to 180ºC

Place all the dry ingredients into a medium bowl and blend together to distribute the raising agents 

In a small bowl, using a fork mix the eggs with the quark and zest & juice of lemon. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add this to the well, blending in with the melted butter, until the mix is even. Spoon into cake tin and bake on the centre shelf for 45 minutes...

Serve with a dollop of either quark or fromage frais. For a more indulgent treat serve with creme fraiche or vanilla-whipped cream...I also squeezed the juice of one more lemon on top of the cake for a bit of zinginess!

Recession-busting Raspberry & Almond Muffins

High summer has just passed its peak, and we're being buffeted by autumnal gusts of wind, the occasional drizzle - or indeed downpour as I write - of rain. Not to mention gloomy economic news. The evenings are cooler, but I love the fact that fresh air is breezing through my window at night, as opposed to the humid, warm air of weeks gone by. Historically, I've always been a fan of summer - months spent in the sun, by the sea, and plenty of opportunity for grazing on berries and yummy fresh beans and peas and other seasonal gems. This year's buzz word for a trendy holiday? A "staycation" which is an abomination of the English language, but kinda sums up the mood of the nation - stay at home this August, and reap the benefits of, well, the rain. Instead of gloom and doom, I'm embracing the imminent arrival of autumn. It's less frenzied, everyone's returning to work or school, but the highlight for me has to be the colours - soft and warm and pleasing to the eye. There's nothing like a walk through one of London's parks in September and October - and I can't wait for plums, in all their shades from yellow to purple, to be fully in season. Not to mention indigo blueberries, tart apples and sweet juicy pears. Bring on autumn I say!

So this recipe is a swansong for summer's princess of red berries: a muffin speckled with the last of British raspberries, fragrant orange zest and lovely ground almonds - with a helping hand from some yogurt too. The method? Couldn't be easier, so no excuses, get baking!

Makes 6-8 jumbo muffins or 12-14 regular ones. These freeze like a charm...

• 200g ground almonds
• 100g melted butter
• 125g plain flour
• 125g caster sugar
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• juice and zest of two small oranges
• 75ml yoghurt - milk will do fine, just happened to have yogurt to hand...
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 150g raspberries - reckon chopped dried apricots would work too (a la the great birthday cake my flatmate made last week!)

Preheat oven 190ºC, and line the muffin tins with parchment paper or lightly oil each cup

Put all dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl, add the eggs, melted butter, yogurt, and stir through, then add the raspberries, scoop into muffin tins and bake for 20-25 minutes (longer for larger muffins, add 10 mins extra)

A brief baking hiatus...

Been a somewhat manic week, between birthday celebrations, helping out two fellow Leiths alumni making samples for their company's debut at the London Fine Food Fair (ooh la la!), dinner parties, research on features I'm writing (and what a backlog of features...), which really begs the question: when's a girl got time to bake? My flatmate made a super-duper lemon almond cake, replete with juicy apricots and tangy lemon icing for my big day, thereby saving me baking, erm, a cake for myself. My Mother, saint though she is, happily relinquished that duty long ago. Will try and poach the recipe off said flatmate, or as I now to refer to her, baking-goddess, because it was a mighty delicious treat and a perfect way to start one's birthday on a hot August Monday morning ;-) 

Plenty of baking experiments in the coming days so watch this space...

Something to please chocoholics and passionfruit-obsessives alike!

Following Wednesday's feature on passionfruit and its many virtues, here's an addendum: throw the pulp & seeds from a passionfruit in with your brownie mix. Or anything with chocolate for that matter, provided the chocolate is dark as the tartness of passionfruit exposes the sweetness of milk chocolate, whereas it marries happily with the bitterness of dark chocolate. Have a super-duper weekend!

The recipe from today:

• 200g butter
• 5 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
• 150g 72% chocolate - I used Green & Black's cooking chocolate
• 320g caster sugar
• 125g self-raising flour
• 30g ground almonds
• 4 eggs
• 1 passionfruit
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 180ºC, line a 20x30cm cake tin with baking parchment

In a medium saucepan, bring 3cm of water to a simmer, and place a large heatproof mixing bowl (pyrex is good) on top of the saucepan. Turn off the heat, then add butter, chocolate and cocoa powder to the mixing bowl. Allow this to melt, stirring occasionally, while you weigh the other ingredients. In a small bowl, break up the eggs with a fork and set aside. When the chocolate and butter has melted and looks smooth, take the large mixing bowl off the saucepan and allow to cool for a minute or two before adding the ground almonds, sugar, vanilla, eggs and finally the flour. Fold everything through and pour into the prepared cake tin. 

Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 30-35 minutes. Keep an eye on the brownies - insert a skewer to see if the mix is cooked. If some wet batter still comes out, put the brownies back in the oven for another 5-8 minutes. Don't overbake them otherwise the brownies will be dry and cake-like :-) 

In praise of passionfruit...

Admittedly not a classic Scandinavian ingredient but passionfruit always reminds me of this heavenly tropical soda my Dad brought back from Sweden when I was younger. Amazing stuff, the Swedes do know something about making soda, although it's probably contraband (Norwegians don't like a lot of imports from abroad, even if it's their next-door neighbour). If I tasted this tropical lusciousness now I might be less enamoured by its walloping sacharineness, not to mention the plethora of 'E' numbers and preservatives. At any rate, the smell and taste of 

passionfruit pulp is an absolute joy and I don't bake nearly enough with this curious, wrinkly fruit. So, on the eve of my flatmate Sophie's birthday out came the baking bibles and I scoured through to find something worthy of her impending celebrations, et voila! a lovely citrussy sponge adapted from the Leiths Baking Bible with a passionfruit cream cheese icing. I added some ground almonds to the sponge for a bit of texture and moistness, and also chucked in frozen blueberries to the mix which went well with the lime zest, but was somewhat over

whelmed by the exquisite passionfruit icing. Whatever, it was still sheer passionfruit bliss, eat it and weep.

Cake Ingredients

• 150g softened butter
• 150g caster sugar
• grated zest of 1 lime
• 3 medium eggs
• 130g self-raising flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 70g ground almonds
• pinch salt
• 150g frozen blueberries (optional) or raspberries 

Icing Ingredients

• 150g Philadelphia Cream Cheese - no cheating, it has to be the full-fat variety
• 100g softened butter
• 60g icing sugar (this can be varied by 15g, depending on the tartness of the passionfruit)
• 2 passionfruit - 1 for the icing, 1 for decorating
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 190ºC. Lightly oil a round 20cm cake tin and set aside.

In a medium bowl, cream the softened butter with an electric mixer, then add the sugar, beat again until pale and fluffy before adding the lime zest. Add the eggs individually, beating with the mixer after each addition, and then finally add the ground almonds, and flour, folding through 6-8 times with a large metal spoon. Add your blueberries or raspberries at this stage and give the mix a few more folds with the spoon before turning out into the cake tin.

Bake on the central shelf in the oven for 45 minutes. This is quite a moist cake so it will take a little longer to bake through, if it starts to scorch, turn the heat down to 170ºC.

When the cake is baked, allow to cool completely before preparing the icing: using an electric whisk, soften the Philadelphia for a minute, then add the soft butter and mix thoroughly. Add your vanilla extract and icing sugar, and finally take the pulp of 1 passionfruit, including the spawn-like seeds, and fold this in to the icing with as spoon. Using a spatula, smooth the icing over the now-cooled cake and then using a teaspoon place dollops of passionfruit pulp & seeds all over the icing to create a polka dot effect! As it's rather warm and sultry in London I would advise keeping the cake in your fridge to prevent the icing from going rancid, it keeps rather well for a day or two...

Ladies rule (Earls go home)

It's a fickle thing, baking. I was in my local supermarket Waitrose the other day and they have a series of recipe cards - one of which caught my eye: 'Lady Grey Tea Loaf', now a tea loaf may not sound terribly exciting, but the Lady Grey was what intrigued me. It's a tea I've always preferred to its more famous twin (husband?) Earl Grey, perhaps because the Lady Grey's bergamot notes are more subtle, or maybe its aromatic citrus scent is what's so enticing. Whatever, I liked the sound of this zingy-sounding tea loaf, so went ahead and baked it. The fruit is hydrated in Lady Grey tea which gives a lovely fragrant quality to this loaf, but the end result wasn't quite what I'd hoped for: neither cake nor bread-like, more like chewy dough, albeit with delicious tea-scented plums, pears, figs and cranberries...

So I consulted my trusty Leiths Baking Bible to find out where I went wrong. Apparently I didn't - tea loaves are traditionally low in fat (as you'll

 see, the recipe has no butter - sacre bleu!) and their moistness makes them ideal for keeping, ie. they're meant to be chewy. Perfect for our frugal times I suppose, but not entirely satisfying. The verdict? The Lady Grey tea imparts a fabulous flavour, but next time I shall add some butter, and perhaps 50g ground almonds for that extra texture - all the liquid in this recipe wreaks havoc with the gluten in flour, hence the chewiness not a revelation I realise, but there we go...experimentation is the name of the game! Oh, and I guess it wasn't too much of a disaster, as there's none left...

Waitrose's Lady Grey Tea Loaf:

• 2 Lady Grey tea bags
• 300ml boiling water
• 125g caster sugar
• 300g fruit mix - I used a mix of dried pears, figs, cranberries and luscious red plums (the plums are a winner)
• 2 eggs
• 225g self-raising flour
• zest and juice of 1 lemon

Steep the Lady Grey tea bags in the 300ml boiling water. After 5 mins, remove the bags, add the sugar and allow to dissolve before adding your dried fruit (I chopped mine in 1cm pieces, but if you're using dried cranberries or raisins just leave them whole!). Cover this and allow the fruit to absorb the tea for 5-12 hours. Then preheat your oven to 180ºC, add the eggs to the fruit mix, then your zest, juice and finally sift the flour in. Bake for 45 mins to an hour.

Future amendments (watch this space)

I would add some vanilla and cinnamon, also some ground almonds and lovely artery-clogging butter - it's about flavour and texture, not about the devastation of one's waistline. Why bake if it's going to be low fat! Gosh, I really have become very militant, must be all the time spent in France recently...

Go Bananas

It must be the most common baking dilemma: what to do with ripe bananas when their advanced state of maturity renders them un-appetizing at breakfast time. You have lots of options, for example if you are an inveterate smoothie maker, then peel the bananas, freeze them in small zip lock bags and then take them out as needed. You can also mash the bananas and temper their sweetness by mixing the banana mash with lovely unsweetened plain yoghurt. Banana bread is of course a fabulous way to use up those funky, rapidly darkening bananas, but I confess to a certain antipathy to banana bread, perhaps because it is so ubiquitous. So I made these muffins instead, and as evinced by the photos, you'll see that I lacked certain preparation materials! Most importantly, a large enough mixing bowl to blend all the ingredients together (it was a very large batch of banana muffins), but as necessity is the mother of invention I got round this slight wrinkle by using a wok. Yes, a wok. Most bakers out there would be horrified by the prospect of contamination from the garlicky-gingery-scented wok, but it worked out just fine and there was no residual waft from the muffins of a recent Thai Green Curry, which is just as well, otherwise I wouldn't be posting this little feature ;-)

Makes 12 jumbo muffins, or 24 standard muffins

• 4 large, very ripe bananas - they should be blackened, squishy and rather unappealing
• 500g plain flour
  
• 150g butter, melted
• 250g caster sugar
• 4 eggs, lightly beaten
• 125ml milk
• 125ml sour cream - yoghurt will also work, or just use milk, I'm just a sour cream fan...
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• pinch salt - up to 1/2 tsp if using unsalted butter, the salt will enhance the flavour of the bananas
• 150g toasted walnuts (optional, of course)

Preheat the oven to 190ºC, and line 12 large muffin cups with baking parchment (as I did, roughly). Mash your bananas in a small bowl, set aside. Sift the dry ingredients in a large bowl (or wok!) and stir through to distribute the raising agents. Blend the eggs with the milk and sour cream, and create a well in the middle of the dry ingredients, pouring all liquid ingredients in. Using a large spoon, fold through the wet ingredients to the dry, until the whole mix looks like a thick batter - usually between 12-15 folds will do it. Don't over-fold or the muffins will be tough. Add your walnuts if you're using them...bake for 30 minutes, they will double in size and look enormous so if you're not a greedy person, freeze some for future use

A la recherche du pain perdu

With apologies to Proust...

Just back from a hectic road trip to France, the last of my summer travels! Managed to squeeze in four cities, plus a fantastic 'wine & food' walk through the picturesque vineyards of Beaujolais before returning to London. The Aubois city of Troyes was a revelation - full of ecclesiastical history, and the site of the violent Champagne riots of 1911 which nearly brought civil war to France. Troyes is also the capital of stained glass, and its cathedral has some magnificent examples of bright, colourful stained glass windows. On a less serious note, if you like shoes and colourful tennis apparel you might be interested to know that Troyes is also the home of Lacoste.

While we were there, we stayed at the excellent Maison de Rhodes - a beautiful, understated hotel, rated by The Observer as one of the '20 best hotels in France' no less. It was once the Bishop of Troyes' mansion, a convent, and even the home to the Knights Templar, and recently converted to a delightful hotel with 11 rooms, each with their own individual character and decor - a happy blend of old and new. I would've stayed there a week if our schedule permitted it, and definitely recommend if you're ever in Troyes then have a look at www.maisonderhodes.com and book this hotel as a special treat...

Just before leaving England I grabbed Don & Petie Kladstrup's 'Champagne: How the world's most glamorous wine trimphed over war and hard times', a wonderful book for wine enthusiasts and history buffs alike, compelling in its narrative of how this region transcended centuries of wars and invasions, and how la champagne - the drink - has defined the region in ways not immediately apparent when sipping this effervescent wine. The book is really worth reading, and if you're interested in wine history generally, the Kladstrups also wrote 'Wine & War' another excellent read...

Anyway, reading about le Champagne - the region - during our long car journey to Burgundy made the whole experience so much more interesting. Acres of champenois farmland bear a striking resemblance to the American midwest, gently rolling fields as far as the eye can see - a rather disconcerting sight to someone who grew up surrounded by mountains and fjords! Yet despite the benign landscape there's an eeriness to places such as the Somme and Marne, where millions of lives were lost in the first world war, and every small town and the sleepiest of villages in the area have prominent memorials to remember the 'Great War', a visible reminder that France suffered more from the first of the 20th century wars than the second. 

But I digress, this post was originally intended for Bastille Day, or 14 juillet as they say in France, and is a recipe for one of my favourite breakfast treats. Pain perdu, known as French toast in the States, or eggy bread - a horrible name! - in England. Translated as lost bread, it's what happens to old, or stale bread when industrious cooks transform it from something prosaic to something, well, delicious! Incidentally, I picked up a copy of 'Tous les bons pains de nos regions' or 'all the good breads of our regions' - a great way to practice one's French and learn more about the bread-making techniques and traditions of each region.

The trick with pain perdu, as learnt from the wonderful Cook's Illustrated website, is to preheat your oven and place each toast in after frying to keep it warm, also adding flour to the batter will create a crisp exterior to the bread. This recipe, although inspired by time spent in France, is unashamedly North American in that I pour maple syrup on the finished pain perdu, something that always reminds me of my Mother as she made this for my birthdays when growing up, but use whichever toppings/syrups you prefer, even if it's a sacrilege to the French ;-)

Serves 4

• 8 slices stale white bread, you can also use challah, cinnamon bread or brioche
• 2 large eggs
• 250 ml milk
• 2 tbsp melted butter
• 100g plain flour
• 2 tbsp caster sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tsp vanilla
• extra butter/oil for frying
• summer fruit for topping
• maple syrup and some fromage frais too

Preheat oven to 100ºC, place the 8 slices on a wire rack and allow to dry out 10-15 minutes in the oven

Meanwhile make your batter: mix all your wet ingredients in a medium bowl and whisk until smooth, then add your flour in increments, whisking continuously until a smooth batter forms.

Take 2 slices of bread and soak these in the batter for 20-30 seconds on each side, then heat your butter or oil in a large, non-stick frying pan over medium heat until the butter foams and place the battered bread in, ensuring that any excess batter drips back into the bowl, rather than in the frying pan!

Fry each side of bread for 2- 2 1/2 minutes, and then place the fried bread back on the wire rack in the oven. Keep warm while repeating the process with the remaining 6 slices. Serve warm with a dollop of fromage frais, some berries sprinkled over and a LOT of maple syrup..

* alternative suggestions for toppings*

• peaches, passionfruit, or try caramelised apples or pears - any fruit which is seasonal and has some acidity to cut through all the richness of the pain perdu
• sauces such as raspberry coulis, chocolate or butterscotch sauce, vanilla-infused acacia honey (see my previous post) or something floral like violet syrup. 
• Ice cream also goes extremely well, but then it becomes dessert, not breakfast!

The virtues of Bircher muesli with vanilla-infused honey

At the risk of plumbing the depths of blogging banality, I decided to post a feature on bircher muesli: a breakfast cereal which originated at the start of the 20th century when Swiss physician Dr Maximillian Bircher-Benner advocated soaking oats and grated apple with a teaspoon of lemon juice in lots of condensed milk, then eating it the next day. If the thought of condensed milk with your breakfast cereal makes you feel a little nauseous, then remember these were the days before dairy pasteurization was widespread, and fresh milk carried rather severe health risks such as tubercolosis...

Anyway, bircher muesli is my summertime breakfast favourite, a welcome ersatz for winter's oatmeal porridge. Plenty of other people have written extensively about the health benefits of oats: a source of slow-releasing energy seemingly capable of preventing all sorts of illnesses from diabetes to cancer. Be that as it may, I just love the taste of oats, so if you're a breakfast fiend like me, try this muesli during warmer summer months - not only is it full of fibre, but the soaked oats are more digestible so you're not left with a bloated belly after breakfast. 

Make sure you use large, rolled oats though, not the quick-cooking kind for instant porridge which will turn into a unpalatable, gloopy mush! Some people like to use apple juice to soak their oats, others use yoghurt or plain old milk - in Germany I had bircher muesli soaked in cream, a decadent treat, but perhaps too filling early in the morning. The best way I've found is to follow this simple formula: rolled oats, grated apple, and milk. This is your bircher base, and then you can top it with fruity things such as summer berries, bananas, nuts such as almonds or walnuts, and seeds such as linseeds, sesame seeds, etc. 

Makes 5 servings (weekends are reserved for pancakes, waffles and other brunch treats!)

• 225g oats (ca. 3 tbsp oats per day)
• 2 grated granny smiths (or similarly tart apples)
• enough milk to cover

Place the oats and grated apple in a large bowl or tupperware container, stir through with a spoon, and then cover with milk. The oats will swell during the night, so make sure you don't fill the bowl/container all the way to the top! Cover with clingfilm

In the morning, take your portion out and top with whatever you have available. This morning I used a dollop of plain bio yoghurt, some rather crimson-coloured strawberries and a few squirts of my favourite sweet treat: acacia honey infused with the seeds (and pod) of half a vanilla pod, the perfect foil for nutty oats and slightly tart grated granny smiths...breakfast bliss!

Sunday Brunch: Mama Johansen's Sour Cream Waffles

Don't you just love Sunday brunch? I could wax lyrical about the joys of lazy brunches - meals that stretch in a languid, leisurely fashion, for those who haven't a care in the world. Brunch, to me, is the most feline (if there is such a thing) of meals: insouciant, with a hint of arrogance. After all, it's a luxury to spend hours on a Sunday morning/afternoon scoffing muffins, eggs benedict, pancakes, et al. followed perhaps by a walk in the park, or even better: a post-brunch afternoon spent reading the Sunday papers... 

Anyway, this is a recipe my Mother and I adapted from a recent article on www.aftenposten.no, the website for one of Norway's bestselling newspapers. Mama J was initially sceptical and reckoned her recipe would be better, but in the spirit of experimentation we decided to give this one a go. Effectively it's a cross between the Aftenposten article's "World's greatest waffles" and her recipe.  By the way, in case you're wondering, Norway is a rather waffle-obsessed country, thereby the assumption goes that the rest of the world must be too, a peculiarly Norwegian logic. Norwegian waffles done properly though, are light and fluffy, with a crisp exterior, but most importantly, they have a distinct tangy flavour thanks to the addition of sour cream. These can be made in any waffle iron, we just happen to have the traditional heart-shaped waffle iron at our house

 

Serves 6

• 350g plain flour
• 1tsp baking powder
• 100g caster sugar
• 100g melted butter
• 100ml water
• 200ml sour cream
• 150ml milk
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 tsp vanilla essence (you could also do cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg...)

In a large bowl, sift the flour, baking powder and add the sugar, blending well to distribute the baking powder. Make a well in the centre, adding your liquid ingredients and mixing thoroughly with a large spoon. Cover the bowl with a cloth and set aside for 1/2 hour...

Meanwhile, get your waffle iron ready, and all your accoutrements - I defrosted some sour cherry jam from the Johansen farm for this occasion. Other toppings which work well are greek yoghurt, cinnamon, any fruit, be they fresh or in jam/coulis form. Or if you have some Norwegians coming round, serve a few slices of Geitost, the infamous caramel-flavoured goat's cheese Norwegians know and love (and non-Norwegians apparently find revolting!) If you're making these for lots of people, plug in the iron and place on the table you're eating at, then each of you can make your own waffle...communal cooking at it's best!

When the waffles are done, eat them immediately - they go soggy quite quickly. Otherwise make a huge batch and freeze for future use - simply place in the oven 5-8 minutes at 150ºC and they'll be as good as freshly made ones