Hot Cross Bun Recipe | Lifestyle

This wasn't originally what I had planned to be posted today but this Hot Cross Bun recipe just fits so perfect with Easter I thought I'd to it today. 

These Hot Cross Buns may not be the prettiest - I kinda lost the crosses because they were too runny, however it was a first attempt so I don't think it went too bad. I got the recipe from BBC Good Food  where I get quite a lot of my recipes from but I didn't realise how hard this one would be. Next time I'd definitely have a look around at some different recipes because this one took forever and I wasn't too happy with them, but the family were which I guess is the main thing. 

Let's start with the ingredients for the buns:- 

• 300ml full-fat milk, plus 2 tbsp more - I used skimmed milk I don't know why you'd need to use full fat
• 50g butter
• 500g strong bread flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 75g caster sugar
• 1 tbsp sunflower oil
• 7g sachet fast-action or easy-blend yeast
• 1 egg, beaten
• 75g sultanas
• 50g mixed peel
• zest 1 orange
• 1 apple, peeled, cored and finely chopped - I grated it instead
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 75g of glace cherries - I decided to add these

For the cross

• 75g plain flour, plus extra for dusting

Method

The BBC Good Food website suggest you've gotta boil the milk and them add the butter but then you have to wait for the milk to cool to hand temperature which bloody takes forever. I think next time I'd melt the butter and add it to the milk which would heat it up a bit but not a massive amount. 

Add the caster sugar, yeast, flour and salt in a bowl together, once you have your "hand temperature" buttery milk add it little by little to the dry ingredients. Keep all the fruit in a separate bowl for later.  I say add the milk little by little because I added the whole lot in the bowl and it was an utter nightmare because there was too much liquid, I couldn't knead the dough properly. Once you have kneaded it put it back in the bowl and cover over with some oiled clingfilm in a warm place for an hour.

Once it has risen, add all the fruit into the bowl and knead again to make sure the fruit is evenly distributed. I added glace cherries because I saw an M&S advert which had them in their hot cross buns so I just had to add them too. I must admit they make a lovely addition. Once all mixed put it back in the bowl and leave to prove for another hour

Then you can separate the dough into 15 little buns - leave to prove for another (!) hour, then add the crosses on them. I really would advise adding the water to the flour in very small amounts because if it's too runny the crosses just disappear, as you can see. Then pop them in the oven at gas mark 7 for 15-20 mins and you're done. You can add the apricot jam but I didn't actually think it added anything extra and made it incredibly messy to eat. 

The end result 

Have you got any other hot cross bun recipes that are slightly easier?

Raspberry Swirl Cheesecake | Recipe

Oh yes, it's that time of the month again, it's my usual baking post, in the past we have had Onion Bread, Double Chocolate Muffins and  Healthy Fruitburst Muffins so today, I thought I would bake a cheese cake. 

I thought I would share with you my ultimate favourite white chocolate Raspberry Swirl Cheesecake and a gingernut biscuit base, YUM!

Now the reason I added a picture of the chocolate is because I cannot stress enough how important it is to use good quality chocolate, I really hate it when people just use cooking chocolate. I understand that those types of products melt quicker but the reality is the the taste just is not the same. So when I bake I always make sure I use the products that I know I love and Green and Blacks is one of them. 

Whilst I have taken a picture of the book to include the ingredients and method I thought I would just break down how I actually made the cheesecake because if you have read my baking posts you'll know that I like to do things with my own twist. 

The Base

This part is pretty long if you don't have a food processor, it probably takes me about 10 mins of bashing the gingernut biscuits into crumbs. The books tells you to put them in a plastic bag and start hitting with a rolling pin, however when I did this the bag of course popped and biscuits went everywhere. Too dramatic for my liking, so I just put them in one of my plastic bowls and hit with the base of my rolling pin. 

After all the bashing, you add melted butter and two tablespoons of caster sugar, mix altogether and put it in your cake tin. Put it in the oven for 10 mins on gas mark 4, when you take it out switch the gas mark to 1 and just leave the base to cool.

The Filling

This is quite straightforward as well, start with your cream cheese, I used Philadelphia because the book states that Philly is fine, so why not. Add your sugar and vanilla essence and mix together to a paste. The next bit is the bit I hate purely because  it changes the consistency of the mixture, adding eggs. As soon as you add one it goes incredibly runny and the recipe tells you to add two. I just add one because in the past I have found that the mixture is so wet that the base lost it's "crunch". 

The next stage is to add the melted white chocolate and mix it altogether, then you simply add the ingredients to the cooled gingernut base. 

Topping

Melt a bit of raspberry jam and add blobs on to of the cheesecake and create a marbled effect on to using a knife or spoon whatever is easiest. Personally add as much or as little as you like, my family is a jammy kinda family so I added quite a few blobs. 

Once that's done you put it in the oven on gas mark 1 for 40 mins and then turn the oven off and leave it in there for about an hour with the door shut to cool down. I then take it out of the oven to let it cool further and then whack it in the fridge for another couple of hours, the book says 3 but as long as it's solid should be fine.  


The end result.

Unfortunately the light was not in my favour when it came to take pictures of the final cheesecake but you can get an idea at least. Sorry it probably doesn't look that appetising, but I must tell you that it really was.   

I love that this cheesecake is actually baked and not just chilled it adds the extra step and you can taste the difference. I mean It's definitely not a recipe to do if you are short for time, with the cooling process, it is several hours but if you are busy doing other stuff then it's great because by the time you come around to eating the Raspberry Swirl cheesecake it's perfectly ready. 

Have you got any cheesecake recipes?

Homemade Onion Bread | Recipe

I've always loved the idea of baking bread but I haven't done it since I was about 13 at school and even then they didn't turn out that great so I thought it's about time I try it out again. 

I went to a farm last weekend and as were were looking through the shop they had all these different types of flours, from Apple and Cinnamon to Tomato and Basil, each one smelled amazing. But I was kinda drawn to the simple Onion flour because it reminds me of a time where me an my dad always used to go to another farm of a weekend and buy the most amazing loaves of bread my fave was the Cheese and Onion loaf. 

I like the fact it came with a little recipe, however I didn't quite follow this one but it is handy. 

But I thought I would take you through how I made my bread, but I will just stress, this hasn't turned out amazingly! It's ok, but for my first attempt it's pretty good. 

Ingredients

• 500g of this onion flour
• 12g of yeast
• 40g of soft butter
• Large pinch of salt
• 300ml of tepid water

Nice easy and simple recipe which is what I like. The thing that's the problem is how bloody long you have to leave the dough to prove and how long you should knead it. 

You simply mix all the dry ingredients including the butter together and then add about half of the water. This is where it gets bloody messy, you gotta get your hands in. Start getting the mixture together and making sure you a picking up all of the flour on the side of the bowl. Keep adding the rest of the water little by little to the mixture. Don't add all the water at once, the job is messy enough without excess water. 

Once you have the dough in a pretty solid form, it's time to knead it. On a clean surface just sprinkle with a little plain flour and start working the dough. You wanna make sure that you are really stretching the dough. Personally I would say to do this for at least 5 mins, at least. 

Then you move it into a bowl, put a bit of clingfilm over the top and put it in a warm place 

It kinda looks small, but you need to double in size at least which is why you need it in a warm place, I left mine in there for an hour and this is how it looked after

Once it has doubled, you've gotta knock all that air out of it and get kneading again. I think I didn't knead the second time for long enough which is something I'm going to make sure I do next time. 

Then I transferred mine onto a baking tray and left it in a war place for another 40 mins to get it to rise again. 

I made a couple of little cuts into my loaf but I know think they could have been a little longer. I put it in the oven on gas mark 7 for about 20-22mins. 

The problem I had was the top of my loaf burned a little so next time I'm gonna make a little tin foil hat for it and put it on about 10 mins before it's finished. 

The result 

As you can see a little bit of a burnt top and the onion bits caught as well, but the inside still looks pretty good right?

This was my first attempt and I am going to do a few things differently next time but I'm actually pretty happy with how it turned out. 

Any tips for baking bread?

Double Chocolate Muffins | Recipe

Need I say more than Double Chocolate Muffins?

I'm going to share with you this incredibly yummy double chocolate muffin recipe but again I must state this is not my own, I found it online from the Dr Oetker website, so I am merely sharing the recipe love because it is good. 

A little while ago you may have seen my Fruit Burst Muffin recipe, those muffins were pretty damn healthy. But I had the devil in me today and wanted something massively indulgent so I opted to bake these Double Chocolate Muffins.

They look good don't they?

I just fancied something really sweet and I already had most of the ingredients anyway in my little baking cupboard so I thought I would take an hour to just faff around and bake. Now lets move onto the important stuff to bake these gorgeous treats. 

Ingredients

• 275 g Plain Flour 
• Baking Powder - 4 tsp
• 60 g Cocoa Powder 
• 75 g Caster Sugar 
• Medium Eggs x 2
• 225 ml Milk 
• 110 g Butter 
• Vanilla Extract -1 tsp

I know what you're thinking, I haven't added how much chocolate chips to add and this is where I get a bit creative, I don't like those store bought pre-made chocolate chips, I like chunks of real chocolate. So I bought two large bars of chocolate one white and one milk and used about half a bar of each and just chopped them up into chunks. I don't always like sticking to a recipe rigidly I like to improvise a little and add a little twist. I also used soft brown sugar in my recipe. 

Method

Sieve the flour, baking powder a cocoa powder into one bowl. Then in a separate bowl mix together, eggs, milk, sugar, butter and vanilla extract. There is quite a lot of milk in this recipe so I would advise adding the wet ingredients slowly to the powdered ingredients. The mix should be really gooey and a bit lumpy then add the chocolate chunks. 

Put into muffin cases in a muffin tray and whack it in the oven for around 20-25 mins on gas mark 7. 

Then Enjoy!

This recipe makes 9 really nice muffins, they're actually surprising very light not too dense and a little spongy which is really nice.  I actually added a little extra to the ingredients so that I could make 12 muffins. The reason I use chocolate bars because I love the taste of my favourite chocolate in the muffin, most chocolate cooks fine even if it isn't cooking chocolate so I always bake with good quality chocolate.

I really love baking and I don't do it enough, I'm going to try and make sure I bake at least once a month. 

Let me know if you have any great cake/muffin recipes for me to try next month?