Tag: quick breads

  • Buttermilk biscuits

    Buttermilk biscuits

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    Buttermilk biscuits

    Adapted from Sally’s Baking Recipes.
    This recipe is a staple in our home for late week-end breakfasts and quick school-night dinners. I love to serve them with bacon and fried eggs, and loads of freshly-sliced vegetables.
    They also make for a perfect afternoon fika, with whipped cream, jam, and fresh berries.
    As with every biscuit recipe, it is fundamental not to overmix the dough. I usually mix in the butter until rather large chunks are left, then add the buttermilk and mix until JUST combined.
    This produces very soft and flaky biscuits, exactly as they should be.
    Author: Fanny Zanotti
    Prep Time30 minutes
    Cook Time20 minutes
    Total Time50 minutes

    Ingredients

    • 310 g plain flour
    • 2 tbsp baking powder
    • 1 tbsp caster sugar
    • 1 tsp flaky sea salt
    • 120 g salted butter very cold and cubed
    • 240 ml cold buttermilk
    • whipping cream to brush

    Instructions

    • Preheat the oven to 220°C / fan 200°C. Line a baking tray with baking paper.
    • Make the dough. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt. Add the cubed butter and rub it into the flour with your fingertips until the mixture resembles rolled oats.
    • Make a well in the centre, and pour in the buttermilk. Gently fold everything together with a spoon or spatula until it just starts to come together. The dough should look rough and slightly crumbly in places.
    • Tip the dough onto a floured surface and bring it together using your hands. Pat into a 2cm thick rectangle and do 3 consecutive letter folds, rotating the dough 90 degrees between each turn.
    • Cut the biscuits. Roll or pat the dough to 2cm thick, then cut into a 3x6cm biscuits. Gather any scraps, reshape, and cut out more until all the dough is used.
    • Bake. Arrange the biscuits close together on the prepared tray, so they support each other as they rise. Brush the tops with whipping cream, and bake for 15–18 minutes or until golden-brown.
  • Kavring, the Swedish summer classic

    Kavring, the Swedish summer classic

    As written on June 20th, 2017:

    I didn’t mean to be gone for so long; from the winter solstice to the summer one. Yes, now a few days shy of midsommar, half a year has gone.

    Can we pretend that winter is barely over?

    In many ways it is. At least for us in the North. Snow has creeped into our sky way into June, and it’s only been a couple of weeks since the birches’ foliage flourished into the lush mantle that now covers every forest. We celebrated the first summer rain a few days ago; and sometimes, I can’t help but wonder how something so mundane can cause such thrill, if it wasn’t for the fact that we almost skipped spring this year, or that our winters are most silent, with the world around us resonating in a felted echo.

    I come to you today with a Swedish summer classic: kavring. A soft, slightly sweet bread, traditionally eaten over Midsommar with sill [pickled herring] or gravlax, and even for Easter and Christmas. Yes, in Sweden, the holiday table stays rather unchanged throughout the annual festivities, with only slight variations, like a stronger focus on meat (köttbullar [meat balls], game, julskinka [Christmas ham]) for Christmas, while Easter and Midsummer are all about herring.

    I would love to delve into kavring‘s origin and history, but then I would probably have to wait for a year or two before I’d be able to share this recipe with you. One that I’ve worked on for the past few weeks as we changed the menu at the café.

    A good starting point, however, is the etymology, which I find especially helpful when it comes to the Nordic countries, where different languages and cultures have inextricably intertwined over the past centuries.

    From Svensk etymologisk ordbok, Elof Hellquist (1922)

    In E. Hellquist’s 1922 Swedish etymology dictionary (Svensk etymologisk ordbok), the origin of the word kavring is a complex one, dating from the early 1500 with the Russian kovríga that became the Danish kavring, which the Swedes embraced with a minor orthographical variation until recent times: kafring.

    “Kavring (in the southern Sweden folk dialect), a sort of twice-baked sourdough rye bread or an oven-dried loaf. Kafring, in early modern Swedish, dated from 1544, possibly originating from Norwegian, while the word kavring was first encountered in the early 16th century in the Danish language from the Russian kovríga, a round bread, literally ring or circle in old Russian.”
    ー Svensk etymologisk ordbok, Elof Hellquist (1922)

    The etymology tells us more than the origin of the word itself, it tells us the story of a bread that travelled through the Nordic countries. Originally a crisp rye bread (which it still is in Norway), kavring then morphed into the soft, sweet and fragrant loaf in the late 1800, mostly in southern Sweden according to Å. Campbell’s The Swedish bread (Det svenska brödet, 1950), a wonderful read that gives an insight into the cultural contrasts in pre-industrial Sweden through bread traditions in its regions.

    While I’m not surprised to see two spellings that eventually became one, I find it interesting to note that the Norwegian-originated spelling kafring was used in Swedish as late as 1915, like in this issue of the Idun newspaper where “Folket stegade till drängstugan för att öppna sina byttor och korgar och förtära sin enkla måltid, surmjölk, kafring och smör.” The people hurried towards the workman’s hut to open their boxes and baskets before consuming their simple meal made of sour milk, kavring and butter.

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    Kavring

    My recipe makes two loaves of this delicious Swedish classic bread, because trust me, you'll want to have one on your counter and one well-wrapped in clingfilm in your fridge where it will keep for up to two weeks.
    A few ways to eat kavring in the morning: butter and thinly sliced cheese (comté is a favourite). Butter and a seven-minute boiled egg. Butter and orange marmalade. Butter. You get it!

    Notes

    While extremely easy to make, this recipe necessitates a few ingredients specific to the Nordic countries, namely: rågsikt [sifted rye], brödsirap [bread syrup], and filmjölk [sour milk].
    However, I can only think that these can be substituted as follows.
    – Rågsikt is a blend of plain flour and sifted rye flour, usually 60% plain flour and 40% rye flour.
    – Brödsirap is a mix of 80% molasses and 20% malt syrup, with a little salt thrown in. The closest I could think of is to mix 40% golden syrup, 40% black treacle and 20% malt extract.
    Back when I lived in London, my favourite malt extract came from Hollands and Barretts, a small jar with a mustard yellow label.
    – Filmjölk, a cultured milk that is usually eaten for breakfast or mellanmål [literally “a medium meal”, snacks], can be replaced by cultured buttermilk, kefir, or even a runny yoghurt, unsweetened of course.
    I’ll write both recipes down, in case you live as close to the polar circle as we do. If you try the “Anglicised” recipe, please let me know how it turns out <3
    For the spices I decided stayed close to the classic trio of fennel, caraway and anis, only leaving the anis out, although I’ve seen recipes that call for cloves, ground ginger and even bitter orange zest, so it would be interesting to experiment with different flavours. I’m thinking an orange and lingon limpa [loaf] would be wonderful on our Christmas table.
    Author: Fanny Zanotti
    Prep Time20 minutes
    Cook Time1 hour 30 minutes
    Makes 2 loaves.

    Ingredients

    Kavring with Swedish ingredients

    • 25 g fennel seeds
    • 25 g caraway seeds
    • 500 g rågsikt
    • 360 g plain flour
    • 20 g bicarbonate soda
    • 20 g salt
    • 275 g brödsirap
    • 1200 g filmjölk
    • coarse rye flour to sprinkle

    Kavring with English ingredients

    • 25 g fennel seeds
    • 25 g caraway seeds
    • 660 g plain flour
    • 200 g rye flour
    • 20 g bicarbonate soda
    • 24 g salt
    • 110 g treacle
    • 110 g golden syrup
    • 55 g malt extract
    • 1200 g filmjölk subsitute read more above
    • coarse rye flour to sprinkle

    Instructions

    • Preheat the oven to 175°C/fan 155°C. Butter and line two 1.5L loaf tins with baking paper.
    • Crush the seeds in a mortar and set aside.
    • In a large bowl, combine the flours, crushed seeds, bicarbonate and salt. Whisk together to combine. In another bowl, mix the syrup(s) and filmjölk; pour over the flour mixture and mix using a silicon spatula until barely smooth.
    • Divide between the two prepared tins and generously sprinkle with coarse rye flour.
    • Bake in the preheated oven for 1h30, at which point the core temperature of the loaf should read 96-98°C.
    • Allow to cool down in its tin for 10 minutes, then unmould onto a rack and leave to cool down completely to room temperature. Wrap in clingfilm.
    • The loaves will keep in the fridge for up to two weeks, or in the freezer for a month or two, although the latter tends to make the crumb slightly drier.
  • Custard-filled cornbread

    Custard-filled cornbread

    Yesterday, two am.

    Tonight, we ate al fresco. In our garden. Who said you’re not allowed to play make-believe anymore?

    I made dessert. One strawberry tart, only it’s so much more. Black olives, vanilla, and olive oil shortbread. White chocolate crémeux. Strawberries from the little patch that somehow resisted the month of May; or perhaps, I should say the month of rain. Strawberry coulis and jam, just so. I topped it with borage flowers, and basil blossoms. And it was pretty amazing. We had a slice each. And then a second.

    By that time, mosquitos began dancing around us. And every star started to rise into the sky, not unlike a slow-motion time-lapse.

    After dinner, I read. A lot. And sometime, between one and two am, I found the following quotation from We Girls: A Home Story about spider cakes:

    “Barbara got up some of her special cookery in these days. Not her very finest, out of Miss Leslie; she said that was too much like the fox and the crane, when Lucilla asked for the receipts. It wasn’t fair to give a taste of things that we ourselves could only have for very best, and send people home to wish for them. She made some of her “griddles trimmed with lace,” as only Barbara’s griddles were trimmed; the brown lightness running out at the edges into crisp filigree. And another time it was the flaky spider-cake, turned just as it blushed golden-tawny over the coals; and then it was breakfast potato, beaten almost frothy with one white-of-egg, a pretty good bit of butter, a few spoonfuls of top-of-the-milk, and seasoned plentifully with salt, and delicately with pepper,—the oven doing the rest, and turning it into a snowy soufflé.”
    Adeline Dutton Train Whitney (1870), We Girls: A Home Story

    A bit of a rabbit-hole, which Jessica Fechtor entered first, and I felt obliged to follow. Looking up the definition of spider cake seemed like an obvious first step, a word of U.S. origin meaning “a cake cooked in a spider pan”.
    Rather unapologetically, I began scouring eBay for spider pans, a sort of frying pan with legs. And delved into its history, a link shared by Jessica. But perhaps, most importantly, I fell asleep thinking about the custard-filled cornbread she’d made following Molly’s adaptation of a Marion Cunningham recipe. Perhaps, the most food-writing hall of fame-ish sentence I have ever written?

    This morning, eight am.

    I woke up with the sun through curtains so light they seemed to glow. And before coffee even begun to run through the maker, I buttered a 24cm-wide cake tin and turned the oven on.

    Coarse polenta got mixed with flour, sugar, and a lot of milk. And cream was poured with no other explanation than this spider cornbread I’d read about yesterday.

    I didn’t grow up on cornbread. But cornbread grew up on me.
    It might have been because of that guy with deep-blue eyes and the cutest American accent ever. He would make me peanut butter and honey sandwiches, and halve strawberries into salads. But that’s another story, one I will possibly never tell, and rather frankly, this cornbread cannot wait.

    While it was in the oven, I rolled puff pastry and made vanilla crème diplomate. I wrote a little too. And after an hour had passed, I took the glorious bubbling cake out from the oven and let it cool while coffee was finally being made.

    I had a slice, still warm, with plenty of runny honey. And trust me, I think all mornings should be like this.

    Custard-filled cornbread
    Adapted from Molly Wizenberg’s A Homemade Life.

    I did not know what to expect from this cake. Sure, knowing both Molly and Jessica, I knew it’d be good. Even with a picture in front of my very eyes, I couldn’t help but feel like magic is always involved when a batter separates into layers.
    When it was just baked, I could barely wait to slice it. And the cream was still on the slightly runny gooey side. Not that there is anything wrong with it. Now, a few hours later, it’s firmed up into a silky custard (yes, I totally had a pre-lunch slice).

    The edges remind me of canelés. The bottom is rich with corn. And the top feels like a pillow of creamy custard.

    Custard-filled cornbread

    Makes one 24cm cornbread.

    50 g butter
    140 g flour
    120 g coarse polenta or cornmeal
    1 1/2 tsp baking powder
    a fat pinch salt
    2 eggs
    45 g caster sugar
    480 g whole milk
    50 g butter, melted
    1 tbsp vinegar
    1 tbsp vanilla extract
    240 g double cream

    Butter a 24cm-wide cake tin, preheat the oven to 150°C/fan 170°C, and place the tin in the oven to warm up.

    In a large bowl, combine the flour, polenta, baking powder and salt. In a jug, whisk the eggs and sugar, add the milk, butter, vinegar and vanilla extract.
    Slowly pour the wet ingredients over the flour, and mix until just combined.

    Scrape the batter in the hot tin, then slowly pour the cream in the centre of the batter. Bake for one hour. Allow to cool for 30 minutes or longer, and serve in thick slices with maple syrup or honey.

  • Cornbread, comme à Caravan

    Cornbread, comme à Caravan

    [Cornbread, just like at Caravan]

    Sometimes, all I want is to put my warmest boots on, and escape to a place outside of time. I would drive there for hours. To the sound of wind and the smell of rain through the open windows.

    I would wake up too early in the morning. And have a coffee; or two. With a side of freshly-churned butter and a piece of toast. It would be cold. And foggy. Perhaps so much I wouldn’t be able to see the coast.

    I would spend my days at a small bakery. Or on a farm. And at night, I would leave the curtains open to watch the stars.

    Cake au maïs, comme à Caravan
    Adapted from Miles Kirby.

    As soon as I came home from brunch Caravan, I knew that the cornbread we’d just had was bound to happen again in my kitchen. And after a quick search, I was lucky enough to find the recipe. And a simple one too.

    In less than 10 minutes, you can have a cornbread in the oven. Which makes it even more perfect for breakfast or brunch.

    At Caravan, it was served with a chipotle butter, but I went for the easy way and just served it with a knob of butter topped with freshly-sliced red chili.
    Make sure you have a wedge of lime ready!

    Cornbread, comme à Caravan

    Makes one loaf cake.

    400g milk
    3 eggs
    60g butter    , melted
    250g corn kernels (from approx. 2 corn cobs)
    a bunch of spring onions, finely sliced
    170g polenta
    60g bread flour
    1 tbsp baking powder
    1 tbsp caster sugar
    1 tbsp flaky sea salt

    butter, chili peppers, limes, coriander; extra, to serve

    Preheat the oven to 180˚C and generously butter a loaf tin.
    In a bowl, mix the mix the milk, eggs, and melted butter. In another bowl, combine the polenta, flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar. Add the wet ingredients and mix until smooth. Add the corn kernels and the sliced spring onions.

    Transfer to the prepared loaf tin and bake for 20 to 30 minutes. Or until golden brown and the tip of a knife inserted in the centre comes out clean.
    Unmould and allow to cool for a few minutes before slicing into fat slices, using a serrated knife.

    Serve – toasted opr not – with butter and sliced chili. With a side of limes and perhaps a few sprigs of coriander.