Quick Fix Weekend Bread!

(Cheats) Honey & Oat Scone-style Loaf

Last Saturday I was the Accidental Domestic Goddess. I woke up early - that's the accidental part, I have noisy neighbours to thank for that - and was going about all of my boring weekend chores when I decided that it would be much more fun to get my bake on and fill the house with lovely bread-y aromas instead.

I have never made bread before asides from using pre-made mixes, and this recipe, whilst you could argue it's not really bread as such, was a great place to start as it is super easy to whip up in literally a matter of minutes. No endless kneading or waiting for dough to rise, this loaf is a quick fix bake using store cupboard ingredients, minimum input for a lovely weekend breakfast output.

The finished loaf is quite dense and almost like a wholemeal scone. It's best eaten on the day you make it (hence the serious lack of pictures), served warm from the oven and slathered with butter :)

Ingredients - Recipe taken from Red Online:

175g self-raising white flour
175g self-raising wholemeal flour
50g porridge oats
75g salted butter, diced
3 tbsp clear honey
1 egg
200ml semi-skimmed milk
2 tbsp seeds, such as sunflower seeds. I used a ground seed mix containing linseed and pumpkin and sunflower seeds.
 
Method:

1 - Add the white and brown flour into a mixing bowl with the butter and three quarters of the oats, then rub together until it resembles fine crumbs.

2 - Add the honey, then beat the egg and milk together and gradually mix in enough milk mixture to make a soft (but not sticky) dough. I added almost the full amount and it was a tad sticky, so do be careful. Reserve whatever is left for glazing the finished loaf.

 

3 - On a lightly-floured surface knead the dough gently until smooth. Roll into a round shape about 20cm in diameter. Cut into eight wedge shapes - I used a pizza cutter for this - then transfer to a lightly greased baking sheet, separating wedges slightly so that there is space for them to rise during baking.

4 - Brush the tops with the remaining milk mix, then sprinkle with the rest of the oats and seeds (if using). Bake in a preheated oven set to 200°C/400°F/gas mark 6 for 15-20 minutes, until golden and well risen. Ta-dah!

Rule #1 Of Blogging – Don’t Eat The Cake Before Photographing It!

Curly Whirly Chocolate Cake – Konditor and Cook

A long long time ago whilst I was studying at university I used to work for a chi-chi-ra-ra coffee shop in south London, called Blue Mountain Café. It was a lovely, rustic, cool looking place that by day was a haven for yummy mummies with hydraulic buggies, arty freelancers and c-list celebs from The Bill and Corrie. Whilst the food there was completely fine (lots of posh fry-ups) what they were best known for was being a coffee and cake meet up spot. Blue Mountain didn’t make their own cakes however; a few were bought from local bakers, with the majority being supplied by a fantastic bakery based in central London called ‘Konditor and Cook’  (http://www.konditorandcook.com/).

In all honestly it is of no coincidence that during this time, I was probably at my most ‘curvaceous’, the perks of working in a café serving delicious cakes you might say. I ate a lot of K&C cakes and you can trust me when I tell you that I know how most of their cakes should look and taste! Even after leaving Blue Mountain I bought many cakes from them for special occasions as they taste fantastic (soo many to try) and look amazing with lovely writing, decoration, glitter – whatever you want on your cake they can do, and at pretty short notice too.

With this in mind I was recently asked to make a birthday cake for a friend – it didn't have to be anything overtly decorated or flashy, just a delicious cake that we could put some candles in and use to sing happy birthday to the birthday boy. Immediately I thought of the easy option of buying a lovely ready-made cake as I still get nervous when making cakes for others, I’m definitely still in the stage where everything is a bit trial and error. I’m working towards ‘my little black dress’ of cakes, the ones that you can go to time and time again knowing they will always work but I haven’t had as much practice with larger celebration cakes and I was anxious to make something edible and presentable.

I remembered how pretty the cakes at Konditor and Cook are and so did a Google search to see if I could perhaps use an image of one of their birthday cakes as inspiration for this bake. Luckily for me I came up with so much more – an actual recipe for their famous chocolate ‘Curly Whirly’ cake with cream cheese and vanilla bean icing, which is perfect for a birthday - flashy enough for a party yet easy enough to whip up in a few hours. The risk that you always take with new recipes is that you have no idea if they’ll work, I find that this is especially the case with internet recipes. However, I had high hopes for this recipe as a) I knew only too well how it should taste and b) the recipe was posted in a blog for The Guardian by the owner of Konditor and Cook, so I crossed my fingers and went for it!

The recipe was perfect and tastes exactly the same as the product that you can buy in their stores, the only problem that I had was this: I made the cake in a hurry, it was presented to the birthday boy and was whisked off by an all too efficient waiter who chopped the cake into a million pieces before I could take a single picture. Major cake blogging fail! So you’ll just have to trust me on how pretty it really was, I *promise* the recipe works and that it didn't resemble a pancake.

Rather than repost the entire recipe I’ll let you check it out for yourselves here, with pictures of how the cake should look: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2007/nov/26/features11.g21

Here are my top tips:

• The cake is a dense, fudgy and rich chocolate cake, it isn’t light and fluffy like a sponge. It will be a bit squidgy and moist.

• Do use 17 cm sandwich tins, I know that this is a bit smaller than normal but the cakes don’t rise a huge amount and so you really do need a tin with a smaller circumference to add more height. I used 19 cm tins and this meant that the final product was a bit flatter than I would have liked.

• Foil lined tins sound strange but do go with it, and *do* leave them to cool completely in their tins. The cakes are quite fragile and they really will crack if you take them out sooner.

• When the cakes are cool, spread one layer of icing on and then pop the cake in the fridge to set. Once cooled spread on another layer of icing and decorate as you wish!

For more Konditor & Cook inspiration, check out their Flickr photostream here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/konditor/