My Fluffy Croissants

Me: Honey, what would you like to eat?

S: Croissants...

Me: Croissants it is!

When one is finishing a big project one needs to do it often alone. But as much as I can't help with finishing the project, I can at least supply the food to power the brain to finish the project. 

With this croissant project I was aiming at something soft, delicate and fluffy, and that's exactly how they ended up :)

My Fluffy Croissants 

500 g all-purpose flour

40 g fresh yeast

250 ml 38% sweet cream

2 eggs

2 egg yolks

80 g white sugar

80 g butter

1 tbsp vanilla extract

lemon zest from one lemon

pinch of salt

dense marmalade or jam (e.g. blackberry)

9 tbs icing sugar

Rub yeasts together with sugar. Add cream, 2 egg yolks and 1 egg, vanilla extract and lemon zest. Knead the dough for a short while, add melted butter and a pinch of salt. Keep kneading until all ingredients are well mixed. If the dough is too sticky, add a bit of flour and knead again. Let the dough grow for 1 hour in a warm place. In the meantime enjoy this:

Amelie - La Noyée

After the incubation divide the dough into two halves. Roll the first half into ~32 cm circle and cut it into 8 equal pieces. Place a teaspoon of marmalade at the outer part of each piece and roll it tightly toward the middle of the circle. Place the croissants at least 6 cm away form each other and brush them with an egg. 

Bake for 15 minutes at 180C. After removing croissants from the oven, let them cool for 2 minutes an brush them with glaze (7 tbs of icing sugar dissolved in 1 tb warm water and 1 tb lemon juice).

Repeat the same procedure for the second half of the dough. 

Sprinkle with icing sugar before serving and enjoy with a cup of black tea.

Very Blueberry Muffins

Do or do not. There is no try.
That's what I was reminded recently while re-watching Star Wars marathon with my beloved sister-in-law, Monika, and it is probably one of the best advice one can give to the modern society. We're surprised that we don't have the life we wanted, our careers don't go as we planned and we still did not rescue the world, at least not yet. But we all want to. We all have the drive to do great things, achieve great goals, cure all diseases, work as volunteers, save the turtles (or whatever is your favourite endangered species), be successful (in general), be fit as one could be, travel the world. The problem is we don't. We don't and we won't because we sit and talk about how much we would love to do things, but instead we just scroll through Facebook and wish we were part of something great. Don't. Don't try, don't wish, just go ahead and do it, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. You may fail, and probably you will, but at least you will gain experience to fail less the next time. And the next, and the next time and at some point, who knows, you may even succeed. Just please, don't sit and tell me that you want to change the world, but you're just waiting for the better moment, perfect opportunity. They're not coming. 
And now to cover all that bitterness, something sweet in return :) Something new, something healthy, something appropriate to eat for breakfast or brunch. Monika proposed this recipe, the Very Blueberry Muffins, and it is marvellous!

 Very Blueberry Muffins

200 g flour

125 g wholemeal flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

80 g brown sugar

240 ml milk

1 lemon

2 tsp vanilla extract

80 ml vegetable oil

2 eggs

1 grated apple

150 g fresh blueberries

Zest one lemon and squeeze juice (one tablespoon). Add the juice to milk and let it stand until it becomes lumpy. In the meantime preheat the oven to 200 C, sieve the dry ingredients together (both types of flour, baking powder and soda, salt and sugar). In a separate bowl beat eggs, milk with lemon juice and vanilla extract together. Add liquid components to the dry mass and add one grated apple with zest from one lemon. Fold the mixture with a silicon spatula until all ingredients are well combined and flour is well incorporated. Fill muffin forms with baking paper and transfer the dough into 12 muffin wells. Bake for 25-28 minutes, the muffins will rise and become golden on top. 

 In the meantime you can enjoy this piece:

Passenger - I Hate

When you take out the muffins from the oven leave them in the form for the next five minutes and then transfer them on the baking rack to let them cool. The muffins are ideal for breakfast, as a healthy snack during the day and the also fit perfectly to the afternoon tea. Bon Appétit!

Croissants with fruit marmalade

Me: I'm finally happy. Life: Lol, wait a sec.
After a week like that these croissants were my little treat to bring some balance and joy to the household. Cherished by their origin (home recipe of my friend's mom) and filled by the fruit marmalade (also a gift from her mom), they were the perfect remedy for the piles of worries. And here's how to make them.

Croissants with fruit marmalade

500 g flour type 450

300 g unsalted butter

2 eggs

2 egg yolks

50 g yeasts 

6 tbsp 18% sour cream

300 g unsalted butter

3 tbsp vanilla sugar

1/2 jar fruit marmalade in block (very solid one)

sugar for sprinkling

Before starting make sure that butter, eggs and sour cream are at the room temperature. Crumble yeasts into 6 tbsps of sour cream and stir the mixture until they completely dissolve. Mix the dry ingredients together, add eggs, butter and yeasts and knead the dough until they are well combined. Refrigerate the dough for at least one hour. In the meantime you can entertain yourself with:

Muse - Mercy

Remove the handful of dough form the fridge, roll it out and cut a circle out of it. Cut the circle into 8 equal pieces. Put half a teaspoon of marmalade at the outer part of each piece and roll it into a croissant. Croissants should not be bigger than your pinkie finger. Brush the croissants with the remaining egg whites and sprinkle them generously with sugar. Bake at 180 C for 25-30 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool at the wire rack. Store them at the room temperature preferably in an air-tight container.

Chocolate mini-cakes

Dear Chocolate Cake, tomorrow is Monday and I have so so much to do, so I'd like to eat you, so please be good to me and at least don't make me fat because summer is coming. Sincerely, Me. 

However, the chocolate cake was not merciful, so the only way to deal with it was to prepare mini-chocolate cakes out of it (so then I can eat more of them, because that makes sense for my brain). Chocolate, cream and raspberries <3

 

Mini-chocolate cakes

3.5 dl boiled water

65 g unsweetened cocoa powder

260 g sifted all purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp natron

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

170 g unsalted butter

200g sugar

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix the cocoa powder with water and make sure cocoa is fully dissolved in water. Set aside and let it cool. Preheat the oven to 175 C and in the meantime mix flour, natron, baking powder and salt in a separate bowl. Beat softened butter and sugar together until it becomes fluffy mixture and start adding eggs one at a time. Add vanilla extract to the egg and butter mass and then start adding flour and cocoa mix interchangeably three times until everything is added. Keep beating the mixture until everything is well combined. Smear the 23x 33 cm baking tin with butter and sift a bit of flour on it. Transfer the chocolate batter into the tin and bake for 15-17 minutes. After removing the cake from the oven cool it to room temperature and cut little circle cakes out of it. Assemble two cakes with the use of cream. The one I've made was mascarpone-vanilla. Beat 250 g of mascarpone cheese with 25 g of unsalted butter, 2 tablespoons of vanilla sugar until combined and seeds from half of vanilla stick. However, this recipe for chocolate cream also works brilliant: mix 4.5 dl icing sugar, 1.25 dl cocoa unsweetened powder, 90g softened butter, 0.62 ml milk and 1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract.

Asaf Avidan - Love It or Leave It

Homemade Lemon Curd Cookies

Make a poster for the conference. Make a poster. Make a poster, make a... bake? Cookies? Cookies! What kind of cookies...? Something cosy... so maybe... make them with a good lemon curd? And then put it on cookies? Oh, yes! And they have to be lemon cookies, definitely, lemon cookies. 

Homemade Lemon Curd Cookies

Cookie Dough:

225 g unsalted butter

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

2 egg yolks

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 tbsp lemon zest

1/2 tsp salt

Lemon curd:

170 g unsalted butter

3/4 cup lemon juice

4 tbsp lemon zest

1 1/4 cup sugar

10 egg yolks

pinch of salt

Start with the lemon curd. It's gonna be way less messy in the kitchen when you have the curd ready and just waiting for the cookies. In the saucepan combine lemon juice, lemon zest, egg yolks, sugar and salt. Whisk the mixture to combine it and add butter. (Oh, eggs, sugar and butter <3) Cook the curd over a medium heat, keep whisking the mixture until it starts sticking to the spatula. Don't worry if the curd is not dense, it will thicken when chilled.

When the curd is ready preheat the oven to 180 C and start with the cookies. In a large bowl beat butter and sugar until a fluffy mixture. Add one yolk at a time and continue mixing. Add lemon juice, lemon zest and flour and beat it well with a mixer until the flour is well combined into the dough. At the end knead the dough lightly to combine it into a ball. Form 2.5-3 cm balls, press them lightly on a sheet of baking paper and then make a little thumbprint in the middle of each cookie. 

Bake cookies for 18-20 minutes, remove them from the oven and fill the middle of each cookie with lemon curd. Return cookies to the oven for additional 2 minutes aaand they're ready! Let the cookies cool down so the lemon curd can cool down and thicken.  

Leszek Możdżer-Sortello

Almond Butter

Weekend is coming and weekend means pancakes for breakfast. And this would be the end of the weekend story if I wasn't that picky. What to put on my pancakes? (my first world's problems...) Nutella? Too boring. Jam? Too sweet and artificial with all the 'let's pretend there were more fruits added than they really were'. Lemon curd? Cool... but for morning pancakes? Naaah... rather for afternoon cookies. Peanut butter! Nope... I had peanut butter cookies not that long ago. Honey? Fits rather for toasts and butter than pancakes. Time for something new. This time homemade Almond Butter won :)

 

 Almond Butter

500 g raw almonds

1 1/2 tbsp honey

2 tbsp olive oil

salt

Preheat oven to 200 C and spread almonds on a baking sheet so that you get a single layer of them. Roast almonds for 10 minutes and change their position occasionally with a spatula. Remove them from the oven and let them cool. 

Something to listen to while waiting for them:

Placebo- Kings of Medicine

When cooled transfer roasted almonds to your food processor, add honey, one tablespoon of olive oil and salt and blend until smooth. First almonds will become very crumbly, but with time you will be able to see that they blend into a smooth nutty butter. Add another tablespoon of olive oil, spice to taste (e.g. I prefer my almond butter a bit more salty) and blend a bit more. Transfer Almond Butter to jars and store at room temperature. Spread it on pancakes, use it for cookie dough, add it to ice cream, blend it with smoothies, eat it with with your fingers. There are countless possibilities :) 

Pecan Cookies

I didn't have much luck in the kitchen this time. The first time I've tried to make these cookies I burned nuts instead of roasting them (not good). The second time I've tried to make these cookies I've mistaken salt with sugar and I'm telling you... 20 cookies don't need 100 g of salt (really not good). The third trial was successful though. And these Pecan Cookies are definitely worth trying. The recipe is simple and they're delicious as long as you follow the recipe :)

Pecan Cookies

1 cup pecans

100 g unsalted butter

1/3 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp salt

1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour

Roast pecan nuts in the oven to 180 C for 7 minutes (and that's absolutely enough... I've checked it for you). 
Beat butter, sugar, salt and vanilla extract together until well mixed, add flour and beat it for 1-2 more minutes. When nuts are roasted and cooled blend them into tiny pieces (you can also finely chop them). Throw chopped roasted pecans to the dough and knead it fast. Form little dough balls and press them on baking paper to form cookies, cookies, cookies! Sprinkle tiny little bit of confectioners sugar on cookies and bake at 190 C until they become golden. 
Something to listen to while cookies are in the oven: 

One Republic- Counting Stars