Rum & Raisin Buns

I think decorating is like the sea. The ebb and the flow. The high tides and low tides. Of inspiration and of willingness. I'll binge in Homebase and Toast and scour the internet for the perfect dressing table mirror. Some days, I'll stare at the Ikea catalogue and then toddle off to make a cup of tea and play video games. If you're wallowing in wallpaper, tile and curtain samples, there is one thing you can do make it more interesting.

Jim and I have slowly been repairing and decorating the cottage. Ripping up carpets, laying wooden floors, fixing those dodgy DIY coverups from the last owners and painting.

But if you feel you are in an ebb, just grab some paint charts and laugh at the ridiculous names given to some paints.

They go from the obvious like Buttercup and Barely Beige to the downright crazy. Some of the best are Whisper of Rodeo Drive, Mizzle, Fluffy Bunny and Almost Oyster.

But there is one. One that stands out about all of the rest. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you:

Grandma's Refrigerator

Another problem is that you can run your finger across the paint charts and hit things like Rum & Raisin, and rather than sway me into buying brown paint, it just made me hungry.

Adapted from this recipe

Ingredients

Dough
600gr plain flour (plus a little more)
75gr butter
Pinch of salt
1 x 7gr sachet of easy blend dried yeast
250ml semi skimmed milk
70gr caster sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
2tbsp rum
3 eggs

Filling
130gr raisins
4tbsp rum
2tbsp boiling water
2tsbp melted butter
30gr caster sugar

Icing sugar for dusting

Method

1, Sift the flour into the bowl of your stand mixer. Rub in the butter until fully combined and stir through the salt and yeast.
2, In a medium saucepan over a low heat, stir the milk and sugar together until the sugar has dissolved and it has come to a lukewarm consistency.
3, Pour this into the flour and using a dough hook attachment, combine together.
4, Add in the rum, vanilla extract and crack in the eggs.
5, Knead the dough for a couple of minutes, you're aiming for a smooth dough that isnt sticky to the touch so you might need to add in more flour at this point. Add it slowly, spoonful by spoonful. When you've banished the stickiness, knead for a few more minutes or until your dough is stretchy and elastic.
6, Remove the dough from the mixer and place in a bowl. Cover with clingfilm and pop somewhere warm for an hour or until the dough had doubled in size.
7, Whilst the dough is proving, you need to make the filling. Ideally, if you can soak the raisins with the rum and hot water overnight that would be awesome but I'm not the most organised so we'll go with popping the raisins, rum and hot water in a small saucepan and setting over a really low heat. Stir until the raisins have plumped up a bit but you still have a little liquid in the pan. Let this go completely cold.

8, Knock the dough back with your fist and roll into a 30cm squareish shape.
9, Brush with the melted bitter and sprinkled on the caster sugar. Spread the rum and raisin mix all over the dough and press it in lightly with your hands.
10, Roll the dough up, trim off the edges and cut into 10 rolls.
11, I baked mine off in two batches, I put seven of my rolls in an 10 inch round tin and the remaining three in a 7 inch round tin. If you want to bake them on the same day you make them then simply cover with clingfilm, leave to rise for 30 minutes and then bake at 190o/c for 20-25minutes. If you want soft, raisin studded buns for the morning, cover with clingfilm and put in the fridge. You can leave these for up to 24 hours. To bake from the fridge, leave to stand for 30minutes at room temperature before baking as above.
12, Leave to cool slightly before dusting with icing sugar.

We Should Cocoa: Chocolate & Almond Swirl Rolls

This month's We Should Cocoa is being guest hosted by Laura from How to Cook Good Food and she has set the ingredient of almonds. You can see the cheese round up here.

I posted a recipe after Christmas for a Brown Butter Banana Bread. I had just taken down my Christmas decorations and the cottage felt really empty. I tried to fill it with warming, comforting smells.

The cottage didnt feel empty at the weekend but filled with tension. Tension to get things sorted in time for Saturday. Who not to sit next to who. Who is going to be where and at what time. What (or who...) potentially is going to be a problem. Who hasn't returned my emails and who did I forget to email.

I ended up beating the crap out of some dough. It felt good.

Ingredients
500g strong bread flour
50gr unsalted butter, chopped into little chunks
1 x 7gr sachet of easy blend (fast action yeast)
2tbsp caster sugar
1tsp salt
1 egg (medium/large)
200ml milk mixed with 100ml boiling water - you might not need all of this
50gr flaked almonds
20gr very dark chocolate, grated

Method
1, Sift the flour into a large bowl and add in the butter, yeast, sugar and salt. Rub the butter between your finger tips until it is fully incorporated and there are no large lumps.
2, Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture and add in the egg with around a third warm milk and water. Start to bring this together with a fork, adding more water if necessary, until you are left with a lump of dough that isn’t sticky to the touch.
3, Turn the dough out onto a work surface that has been lightly dredged in flour and knead for between 5-10minutes until the dough is soft and elastic. Pop in an oiled bowl and cover with oiled clingfilm. Leave this somewhere warm for an hour or until it has doubled in size.
4, Punch the dough down and give it another quick knead. Roll out into a large rectangle that measures about 17inches by 8inches (ish!)
5, Sprinkle with the almonds and the grated chocolate. Roll up and cut into ten equal rolls and lay into a greased baking pan leaving a little gap around each one.
6, Cover again with oiled cling film and leave the rolls for 20-30minutes To rise again.
7, Preheat your oven to 220o/c, brush the rolls with a little melted clarified butter or olive oil and bake for 20 minutes until rich golden brown and the rolls sound hollow when tapped underneath.
Notes
When I make these again, I'd probably add a bit more sugar to the dough (and probably the filling), cocoa to the filling and toast the flaked almonds.

Spinach and Feta Rolls

I love how food memories can be created at any point in your life.  Whether it be your first sip of wine (Wales, family camping holiday, 1996ish), my Mum’s amazing lemon meringue pie (that I still have to fight one of my sisters over) or the delicious spinach and feta rolls that Jim and I once devoured (last weekend, sitting in our car in a car park behind a farmers market in Rochester, we skipped breakfast…)

It’s not a surprise that in time where everyone is trying to save money, eat better/seasonally etc that packed lunches have started to feature heavily in cottage life.  Even when it gets to bedtime, Jim and I sleepily dance around each other in the kitchen preparing sandwiches, pasta, cous cous, salads, rinsing out Tupperware, writing jokes on each other’s fruit (time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana etc…) and chatting about our days and what we have on tomorrow. 

These spinach and feta rolls are a memory of a relaxing weekend which is definitely something you want to be reminded of when you’re sitting at your desk, trying not to make eye contact with that huge pile of files…

Ingredients

1 small onion

1 clove of garlic

1 small potato

Olive oil

260gr fresh spinach, chopped roughly

1 pack of puff pastry (500gr block)

200gr feta cheese, crumbled

1 egg, well beaten for brushing

Method

1, Finely dice the potato and boil in a little water until soft, this took about 10 minutes, drain and set aside.

2, Heat a little olive oil in a pan and slowly sweat down the onions and garlic until they are soft and translucent and starting to brown.  Tip in the potato and bring the heat up to a high and add in the chopped spinach.

3, Cook until the spinach has just wilted and remove from the pan to cool down in a separate bowl.

4, Preheat oven to 220o/c and line two baking sheets

4, Whilst the filling is cooling, cut the pastry block in two and roll each piece out in a long rectangle which is approximately 20inchs long and 6 inches wide. 

5, Split the cooled spinach mix in two and spread down the middle of each piece of pastry

6, Add half of the crumbled feta cheese on top of the spinach mix.

7, Brush the beaten egg along the uncovered parts of the pastry and fold the two sides crimping with your fingers, or a fork.

8, Cut each of the two pieces into 12 and brush with the rest of the beaten egg.

9, Bake for 12-15 minutes until the pastry is golden brown.

10, Eat either hot or cold.  They freeze amazingly well too, just let them defrost in the fridge overnight.   

Sticky Ginger Rolls

These were supposed to be yeast leavened cinnamon rolls… I forgot we had run out of cinnamon… And yeast… *facepalm*

I’m stubborn though and some form of sweet rolls would be coming out of my kitchen tonight regardless of two missing/vital ingredients…

Ingredients

Dough

400gr self raising flour

25gr golden caster sugar

Pinch of salt

½ tbsp ground ginger

2 egg yolks

100gr melted butter

200ml milk

Filling

20gr melted butter

60gr golden caster sugar

2tbsp golden syrup

1 knob of stem ginger in syrup (plus 1 tbsp of syrup)

Preheat oven to 180o/c

1, Whisk all the wet dough ingredients together in a jug until smooth.

2, In a separate bowl, sift all the dry dough ingredients together.

3, Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients to form a soft dough

4, Gently roll it out to form a rectangle which is 10inches by 20 inches

5, Make the filling by combining all the filling ingredients together and spreading over the dough rectangle

6, Roll up like a swiss roll and cut into 8 pieces

7, Line a 7inch round cake tin with baking paper and grease the sides with a little butter

8, Gently lift the rolls into the tin so one of the cut sides points upwards.   Brush with a little milk or melted butter

10, Bake for 40 minutes or until the tops are deep golden colour.

11, Leave to cool slightly before removing from tin and peeling away the baking paper

Best bit? The sticky caramelly gingery bit!