So this was how my Sunday morning played out:
I watched it tonight with Chef, the inlaws and all the boys and didn’t wince once. In fact, I was quite pleased. And how hot are my new specs.
Meet The Press
Kim Berry’s appearance on Meet The Press
Month: March 2013
Traditional hot cross buns & no knead hot cross buns
Two recipes for hot cross buns, one traditional and one using a no knead bread approach. Take your pick!
My beautiful friend, fellow breeder of boys and blogger Ruth (of Gourmet Girlfriend fame) has been responsible for a renaissance of no knead bread making. Seriously, check out #ggbreadrevolution on instagram to see all the bready goodness.
Of course this is doing nothing for my current carb binging due to life stress but at least it’s homemade I guess.
Anyway, I’ve been using my fail-safe no knead bread recipe from the esteemed Joe and have been experimenting.
Because hot cross buns involve fruit and spices, which inhibit rising agents in dough, most hot cross buns are in a bread base more like a brioche using milk and butter in the dough.
I’ve given you two recipes here – a fantastic traditional one and the no knead, so knock yourselves out!
Traditional hot cross buns
Traditional hot cross buns
Traditional hot cross buns recipe
Author: allconsuming
Serves: 12 buns
Ingredients
For the buns
- 2 tblsp dry yeast
- ¼ cup caster sugar
- 1½ cups warm milk
- 4 cups plain flour
- 2 tsp mixed spice
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 85 g butter, melted
- 1 egg
- ⅓ cup caster sugar
- 1½ cups sultanas (or 1 cup sultanas, ½ cup raisins and/or currants)
- ⅓ cup candied peel (or finely grated rind of an orange and a lemon)
For the crosses
- ½ cup plain flour
- ⅓ cup water
For the glaze
- 2 tblsp sugar
- 1 tsp gelatine
- 2 tblsp water
Instructions
For the buns
- Combine the yeast, sugar and milk until bubbles form
- Add everything else
- Mix with a palate knife to combine, then knead for 5-10 minutes
- Place dough in an oiled boil and set aside for 30 mins
- Knock back, divide into 12 (or 24 to make mini-buns)
- Place in a greased 23cm square tin (or place close together on a baking tray for freer form), cover and let rise until doubled
- Top with cross paste and bake at 200C for 20 mins
For the crosses
- Mix together into a paste
- Put into a bag of some description (I use a snaplock bag, then cut off one corner)
- Draw crosses over the top
For the glaze
- Combine over heat and cook until the gelatine dissolves
- Brush over warm buns
No knead hot cross buns
No knead hot cross buns
No knead hot cross buns
Author: allconsuming
Serves: 12 buns
Ingredients
For the buns
- 3 cups bread flour
- ½ tsp yeast
- 1½ tsp salt
- ¾ cup water + 2tbsp
- ¼ cup beer + 2tbsp
- 1 tbsp vinegar
- ¾ cup sultanas
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- ½ tsp mixed spice
For the crosses
- ½ cup plain flour
- ⅓ cup water
Instructions
- Combine the flour, yeast, salt, water, beer and vinegar until it's a shaggy mess, cover and let sit somewhere warm for 8-18 hours
- Turn out onto a floured benchtop and push into a rectangular shape - sprinkle over the sultanas and spices
- Fold the two long sides of the rectangle into the middle and then do a couple of folds until the sultanas are spread through the dough - it took me about 10-15 folds.
- Divide into 12 buns - they're about 85 grams each if you're a stickler for regularity. You can do them individually or make a round starting with one bun in the middle and working outwards.
For the crosses
- Mix the ½ cup flour and ⅓ cup water together and then drop into a snap lock bag.
- Clip the corner off one side of the snap lock back and pipe the paste across the buns to form the crosses.
- Leave to rise for 2 hours.
- Bake at 220C for 20-25 minutes.
- Best served on the day of baking and ideally warm, slathered in butter.
Onward.
Lamingtons
A fail safe and delicious recipe for the Australian icon, the lamington.
There was a time in high school we did a lamington drive to raise money for some charity. The organisation we were helping has long left my head but the memory of buying six dozen lamingtons under false names and eating them all myself has not. (See also: bulimia.)
I have banned myself from buying the Woolworths lamington fingers purely because I KNOW I could eat the entire packet. In one sitting. I never have, but the knowledge that I COULD is enough.
This recipe comes from my kitchen bible – Allan Campion & Michele Curtis’s In The Kitchen. I refer to this cookbook more than any other and every single thing I’ve made from it has always worked and been delicious. I’m not sure it’s still in print but if you find a copy grab it.
This is fiddly and messy but totally worth it.
Lamingtons
An iconic Australian cake with sponge rolled in chocolate and coconut.
Author: allconsuming via The Cook's Kitchen
Ingredients
For the cake
- 4 eggs
- ½ cup caster sugar
- ⅔ cup plain flour
For the icing
- 3 cups icing sugar
- ½ cup cocoa
- ¾ cup water
- 4 cups desiccated coconut
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 180C and line a lamington tin with greaseproof paper and then grease it and dust with flour
- Beat the eggs and caster sugar together until very thick and really pale in colour then gently fold in the flour (this is a sponge so go lightly, you don't want to knock out all that air you whipped into the eggs and sugar
- Pour into tin, smooth the batter and bake for about 10 minutes or until golden on top
- Cool in the tin for a few minutes then lift out and peel off the baking paper. Cool completely
For the icing
- Put the icing sugar, cocoa and water in a saucepan and bring to the boil, whisking well
- Reduce heat and simmer for a couple of minutes then remove from the heat and cool a little
- Now get ready to get messy.
- Set up a workstation with the cake cut into squares, then the chocolate sauce, then a wire rack and then a shallow dish holding the coconut and then another wire rack
- Dip the sponge in the chocolate until all covered - I use to forks to turn the cake over in the mixture - then put onto the wire rack to let any excess drip off
- Roll the pieces in the coconut then onto the final wire rack to dry
- Eat them all.
Onward!
Quite something
Today the Australian Parliament passed a bill that turns on its head the way this country has treated people with a disability. The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) turns our current system on its head, from one of ‘please Sir, can I have some more’ welfare to one which recognises them for what they are, people. It makes a vital change in the whole mentality around disability services by turning it to one of support being an investment not charity.
It will be a medicare type scheme providing a secure and consistent pool of funds for services and support to people with a disability.
Many people think that already exists.
No, what exists is a yearly allocation of funds. Those funds run out half way through the year? No matter, go onto the waiting list. But oh, yes there’s quite a few before you so you might not be successful next year either. But maybe the year after that!
That scenario was told to me at an early information session on the NDIS by a mother trying to secure an automated bed for her profoundly disabled adult son. Those beds cost several thousands of dollars. When she queried what she was meant to do the service suggested she approach a charity or maybe hold a fund-raiser. For her son’s bed.
The NDIS has been a concept kicked around our hallowed halls for 40 years. Something people have given lip service to but not much more.
I do not care what your political leaning, I do.not.care. but this Government is the first to actually action it. The first to say this is important, to say to the four million or so Australians who have a disability that they matter.
To grasp the scale of that, those four million people equates roughly to the population of Melbourne. Then consider the 2.6 million Australians who care for family members with a disability. Now you’ve got the population of Victoria.
As soon as you hear someone start to say how great it is but gee, how we can fund this, how we can pay for it I want you to tell them you’re talking about the population of Victoria. You’re going to turn your back on an entire State?
I want you to tell them that ALMOST HALF of people living with a disability in Australia live in poverty or very close to it.
Tell them the median income of someone with a disability is HALF that of someone without a disability and that even though the number of people with a disability grows, participation in the workforce for the sector has remained unchanged since 2003.
I want you to tell them that they are witnessing something of magnitude, something other countries will look to, a true moment in time for our political and social history.
It is the sign of a civilised society.
If we need to make some hard calls to make it work then that is what will be done.
Not because it’s nice, not because it makes us feel good, but because this is about ensuring no one gets left behind. That no matter what dodgy chromosome you were born with, or whether you can hear, or see, or walk or talk, YOU MATTER.
Now the scheme won’t cover all of us. It is designed to support the most severely disabled among us. I actually wonder if Oscar will be eligible but that is of little concern because there are so so many who do.
At the end of last year I spoke at length with Senator Jan McLucas, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and for Disability and Carers. She’s been working on disability matters since 2004 when a raft of recommendations were made after a Senate Enquiry into disability services but even then she said they knew they were “tinkering at the edges”.
The NDIS looks at the individual and their needs over a lifetime. It gives families one point of contact and while it doesn’t sound like much it means families only need to provide the history once. It’s about investing in the individual. “We want families to stay strong, stay together and be supported as they want to be supported,” she said.
Some states – WA and Tasmania – actually have a model along those lines. Jog it in WA and Tas!
For the rest of us it will take some time with pilot programs starting in five states to get it underway. One of the most exciting aspects Jan told me about the scheme is that the system will be one that looks at the individual’s needs at that point in time. At the moment you have to re-invent the wheel at every milestone.
“If you’re a 6 month old child with Downs Syndrome the support is essentially to the mum and dad. Totally different to a 16 year old with Downs and then extrapolate that to when they’re 26. The focus on the person will be much more acute but we’ll also be viewing the person in their environment,” she said.
I hope people not impacted by a disability grasp the gravity of that.
ABC story here.
ONWARD!
smile and wave boys, smile and wave
Well last week was quite a week. The media storm following dinner with the PM was quite something. Is there really that much anger and hate in people over something so inane? Really?
It occurred to me that perhaps more people would be swinging by for a look see so if you have, hi!
Of course, the next thought in my head after “smile and wave boys, smile and wave” was don’t fuck it up. I mean, it’d be nice if you did swing by that you’d like to come back again.
So naturally I have the most spectacular case of performance anxiety. In fact, my inability to think of anything erudite to write has only been outdone by my ability to scoff hot cross buns with lashings of butter as compensation. What, it’s a symbiotic relationship. Clearly.
My brain is now in that awkward place normally reserved for parties at which you know no one and join a conversation just as it ends and a painful silence ensures. Just.say.something.
Behold a bigger crisis than a busted back:
The oven door has been “clicking” when it opens for a few weeks. I totally busted it on Sunday night and then broke it some more on Monday night just for good measure.
Someone’s getting pretty plum tuckered with this five days a week of school:
Felix has confirmed that playing rugby professionally is something he wants to do. He’s also mentioned heart surgeon so you know, he’s keeping his options open. This announcement and wanting to play rep footy means I now have somewhere to unleash the Show Mum in me. Part 1 of this involved this:
Oh yes I did. Chef and I attended a 3.5hr evening learning the ins and outs of being an assistant referee (an AR if you don’t mind) for rugby union.
Safe to say, I will never EVER be an AR. Not without at least 20mg of valium under my belt.
God FORBID if I had to try and comprehend whether a ball was “in touch” when the player was in the air/on the field/off the field/in the dressing room/running straight for me while the ball was moving/not moving/had touched someone or someTHING.
OR grasp what constitutes foul play (note for fellow rugby lovers – rucking, you know, where you ram your studs into an opponent, is TOTALLY legal so long as you are clearly looking to “progress the ball”. Stomping however is not. So get your leg action right to get away with it.) AND how to report it to the referee.
Seriously, I’d be lying down playing dead within ten minutes of the first whistle if I had to fulfil AR duties. That or yelling at the crowd for someone to find an adult.
Do NOT get me started on the arm gestures or USE OF A FLAG.
Apart from the stress of it, I now proudly own my limitations and well, give me a list of rules and I will implement them to the letter. Handy if the world’s ending and we need to keep order for the survivors camp upstate but probably not ideal in a game where the whole purpose is to keep the ball in play.
This tendency to love a rule and carry it out no.matter.what was no better illustrated than my role as a School Monitress and then as a Prefect. Yes, I capped those two titles. I attended an exclusive private girls school in Sydney and would, by today’s funding model, be the aberration that allows an exclusive private girls school on many many acres on Sydney’s Leafy North Shore to claim it was educating children from family’s suffering financial hardship. That’s right, my presence at that school was doing them a favour and I said thank you by carrying out the rules to.the.letter. Let’s just say part of the school uniform was wearing a hat and well, if you didn’t have that hat on I would write you a blue slip quicker than you could say what a dork. No matter your year or social standing. I was stupid dedicated ruthless.
So yeah. I have realised my limitations and accepted my ideal role is that of Field Marshall.
I just ate an entire packet of SAOs with butter and vegemite in the space of two days. Note to self: do not buy what you can not control.
