Cutting out the white stuff – two weeks in: calorie-free baking

I wrote a post about three weeks ago about cutting out processed sugar from my diet. So far, it’s been going pretty well. I am still eating fruit and dried fruit and drinking the odd glass of wine or beer. I’ve just stopped eating cakes, biscuits, sweets, and I’m starting to read labels and cut out some of the hidden added sugars in foods like ketchup and mayonnaise. I deviated slightly one weekend – I had the opportunity to try a pancake with salted caramel apple purée (like, who is going to miss something like that?), and I definitely was a little bit jittery afterwards. I’m noticing too that savoury food is a lot sweeter.

I had my first sugar craving about two weeks in and it lasted 24 hours. Like a lot of grown ups, we have a goodie cupboard and nothing in it appealed to me. Instead, I satisfied my craving with some things that did appeal to me: almond purée, dried dates (medjool dates are like Scooby Snacks to me now) and a yummy mix of sunflower seeds, raisins and pine nuts from Colruyt.

Side effects hit around that time. I’d had an active weekend, and then spent six hours cleaning and ironing. I was wiped for about a day. I was exhausted! Thankfully I’m over that now.

As I said, I’m eating dried fruit, which you’re not really meant to on a sugar-free diet. I’m going to cut this down this week (down from four pieces every day to maybe one) and see how I get on. I’m really surprised at how few cravings I’m having and my utter lack of enthusiasm for biscuits, cake or sweets.

Saying this, I’ve been looking at baking. Many of the sugar-free recipes I’ve found are paleo and/or gluten free. I was very taken with these chocolate truffles from Peachy Palate and these cinnamon rolls. Both recipes use ingredients I knew I wouldn’t find in my local Carrefour. So, list in hand, I went to my local bio-planet (which is owned by Colruyt).

I found everything I was looking for. The staff were very friendly and helpful when I couldn’t find a couple of the ingredients. I added a jar of my beloved almond purée and a couple of other things (honey and almond milk). When I’d got everything – almond flour, coconut flour, coconut oil, coconut sugar and cacao powder - I did a quick mental tot-up. And the lot came to nearly €60! Now, I don’t know about you, but this is a significant chunk of my weekly food budget! And this is before I bought the pecan nuts, raisins or the avocados. To be perfectly clear, I wasn’t going to use the whole lot of what I was buying, so for example, the coconut flour was one of the most expensive items at about €10 for 500g, and I’d only need about 30g of it, so I’d have a lot left over to use in something in the future. But I was still looking at very expensive pastries. So, I put all the baking ingredients back on the shelves and stocked up on nuts and cheeses when I did the family grocery shop an hour later. I haven’t had cravings for sweet stuff so far, and cheese can satisfy any post-dinner stomach holes.

And that, my friends, is calorie-free baking.

Christmas is coming! Paul Hollywood's Christmas buns

Christmas is fast approaching and to celebrate the season, I made these Christmas bun’s from Paul Hollywood’s ‘How to Bake’ at the weekend.

Christmas buns

The list of ingredients looks long, but you probably have most of these knocking around your cupboards, or at least some good substitutes.

I ended up making them with wholemeal flour, thanks to some short-sightedness in the supermarket <<must go to Specksavers>>.  The dough was a bit – dense – but this could also be because I baked them in a 20x20cm tin and they didn't have a lot of room to expand in.  They were all eaten pretty quickly.

Dough:

300ml full-fat milk

40g softened butter

500g strong white flour

10g salt

10g instant yeast

1 egg

Filling:

25g melted butter

75g soft brown sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

100g dried cranberries

100g dried apricots (I am not a fan of apricots so I used 100g of raisons AND 100g of pistachios, so I'd 300g of filling in all instead of 200g. Hey, it's Christmas)

Extras:

75g (or 9 half-teaspoons) apricot jam (I used some rhubarb jam I had in the fridge)

100g icing sugar

1 tablespoon of hot water

the fine zest of a lemon

Warm the milk and the butter in a saucepan until the butter melts and the mixture is lukewarm.

If you haven’t already, wash your hands.  Then, in a large bowl, mix the flour and the salt and then add the yeast. Mix in the milk and the egg with your hands until the dough starts coming together. 

Flour your worktop and tip the dough onto it and knead it until it’s smooth and soft. This should take about 5-10 minutes. If you start getting tired, you’re kneading the dough too intensely, so lay off a little ;-)

Oil the bowl and put the kneaded dough back in. Cover it with clingfilm and leave in a warm place to rise until it’s doubled in size, which should take an hour or two.

When you’re ready to start working again, line your baking tray with some baking paper. As I said, I used a tin which is about 20x20cm, which was too small.

On your floured counter top, shape the dough into a rectangle about 30x20cm – your dough should be about 5mm thick (about the thickness of a coin).  The 30cm side should be nearest you. Stick this side down by pushing the dough into your counter top.

Rolled out Christmas buns dough

Brush the dough with the melted butter, then sprinkle this with the brown sugar, cinnamon and then the dried fruits and nuts.  Leave about 1-2cm clear at the side nearest you – as you roll the dough up, the filling will push in front of the sausage and this gap means that you waste as little filling as possible.

With all the filling - and the 1-2cm gap 

Right, time to roll. Take a deep breath and take the edge of the dough furthest away from you and fold it about 2cm in to start the roll. You have to roll pretty tightly, so don’t be afraid. If the roll is too loose, all the filling falls out. Keep going until you’ve got a sausage shape.

When you’ve got your sausage, divide it into 9 pieces. Place these, cut side up, onto your prepared baking tin, cover with a towel and leave to relax for 30 minutes.

Relaxed dough ready to go into the oven

After your 30 minutes, heat your oven up to 190°C. Bake the buns for 20-25 minutes.

When the buns are done take them out of the oven and put them n a cooling rack. While they are still warm, heat the jam slightly in your microwave and brush the tops of the buns with it. Make your icing by mixing the icing sugar with the water in a cup and trickle this over the buns.

The buns are quite deep – about 5-6cm high, so if you prefer a more Danish pastry sized treat, cut the sausage into more pieces and use a bigger baking tray.

Photos were all taken with my phone, so apologies for the bad quality!

The Great British Bake Off / How to Bake

I know that a lot of people are glued to their TV screens every Tuesday evening for the Great British Bake Off. Some are there for the baking, some are there for the competitive element; some are even there for James (no, I don’t get what all the fuss is about either…) but I reckon that most of us are there for the delectable Paul Hollywood. And the cake, of course. Oh, Mr H, you can squeeze my muffins any time!

We are now at episode 6 of series three, and the competition is heating up. You can see that the contestants are still friendly with each other, but there is a certain fatigue and sense of competition seeping in. Ooooh I love this part of a competition. Muahahahahahhahahaaa.

Anyway, aside from my lusting after Mr H, I’m also lusting after all the goodies they bake on the show. This week was a complete disaster for my diet saw my cooking fantasy list explode, with sticky toffee pudding, steamed apple pudding and a host of others all joining it, in the hope of being made (again) soon.

I bought Mr H’s book ‘How to bake’ and had time this weekend to make a couple of his recipes. It was almost like having him in the kitchen. I tried his fougasse and scones (sc-own-s please, not sc-on-s. I’m Irish).

Me and my own homemade scones are not a success story. They always end up like biscuits. Would the lovely Paul’s recipe be The One that would actually work?

In a word, yes.

450g strong flour (I’m working my way though a bag of 'pain blanc' from Delhaize at the moment. So far, so good).

80g unsalted butter

80g castor sugar

2 eggs, lightly beaten

5 teaspoons baking powder

250 ml milk (he says full fat, I used semi…)

I also added 100g of dried cranberries and a few drops of vanilla essence with the milk

Heat your oven to 220°.  Prepare your baking tray.

Put the flour into a large bowl and rub in the butter until it looks like breadcrumbs.

Add the sugar, baking powder and the cranberries and mix well. Mix in the beaten eggs. Pour in about half the milk and mix well. Keep adding more of the milk until the mixture comes together – you might not need all of the milk for this.  I didn’t need the last 50-60 mls, but that was just the flour I used.

Sprinkle some flour onto your counter top and tip the dough onto it. Bring it together with your hands until it is smooth, but try to handle it as little as possible.  Pat your dough down to about 2.5cm thick and using a glass about 7cm wide, cut circles from it. Put the scones onto your prepared baking sheets and leave them to rest for a few minutes. Before you put them in the oven, brush the tops with a little beaten egg. Bake for 15 minutes, until golden. Serve with jam and cream.

Cranberry scones

As mentioned, I also made fougasse, a type of focaccia from southern France. If you are interested in making both the scones and the fougasse, start the fougasse as it needs to rise. It can be flavoured with many things, such as different dried herbs, cheese and meats, but I stuck to Paul’s oregano.

250g strong white flour

5g salt (that’s a teaspoon)

5g yeast (there are 7grams in a packet, so I used 7)

1 tablespoon of olive oil

190ml cool water

semolina or extra flour

dried oregano and a little extra oil

Mr H starts off by oiling a plastic container. I like recipes that tell you what you need to do in advance and saves you from lots of unnecessary hand-washing. I rarely read a recipe through so I’m always having to wash doughy hands a few times. So annoying.

Put the flour, salt and yeast into your mixer bowl (what! no kneading by hand!!!)  and add the olive oil and ¾ of the water. Pop your dough hook on the mixer and mix slowly until the dough starts coming together. Add the rest of the water slowly. Continue mixing for another 6-8 minutes, until the dough is elastic. Tip the dough into the oiled container and cover for about an hour until it has doubled in size.

Line your baking sheet with baking paper.

Now, Mr H says to dust your counter top with flour and/or semolina, tip your dough onto this and transfer it to the baking sheet. So, he actually doesn’t seem to do anything with the dough once it’s on the counter top.  So, I reckon that you can just transfer your dough from the plastic container to the prepared baking sheet.

Push it out into an oval shape and make some cuts in it. I made a rather nice modern art take on a leaf… Make sure your cuts are well separated from each other – I mean, once you cut, move the dough away from its other side of the cut – the dough will rise, and the gaps are the attractive part of this bread. Cover it with cling film and leave for 20 minutes.

I dusted the dough with some semolina and then poured about a tablespoon of oil over it all before sprinkling on about a teaspoon of dried oregano. As I said, you can flavour this with lots of things, so do as you wish.

Bake for 15-20 minutes and eat warm.

Fougasse with dried oregano