fruit mince scrolls

I rediscovered this recipe last Sunday flicking through some old magazine recipes I've saved.
Its from one of those awesome free seasonal Coles magazines and came out of one of their Christmas editions.

Coles named it 'Christmas pudding scroll', to me scrolls should be enjoyed all year round and let's be honest there's nothing particularly Christmasy about scrolls.

This is how I decided to whip them up -

You will need: 4 cups of plain flour sifted, 1/3 cup of caster sugar, 2x7 gram sachets of dry yeast, 300ml of warm milk, plus a little extra for glazing, 100 grams of melted unsalted butter, 1 lightly whisked free range egg, 410 gram jar of fruit mince, 1/4 cup of flaked almonds and 1/4 cup of fig jam.

Some of your main ingredients

The recipe called for apricot jam but I opted to use fig.

 Firstly the boring but important task of greasing and lining the baking pan.  Next combine flour, sugar and yeast in a large bowl.  Mix milk, butter and egg in a separate bowl or jug and pour over dry ingredients and mix and combine.  Turn the mixture onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 5-10 minutes or until dough is smooth and elastic.  Place dough into a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a clean tea towel and set aside in a warm place, to prove, for about 30 minutes - it should double in size.

mmm dough

Punch down dough, remove from bowl and lightly knead.  Roll dough out into a rectangle and spread fruit mince all over the top.

like so

Roll dough up to enclose filling, then cut into 2cm slices.  Place cut side up in your prepared pan.  Cover again with tea towel to prove fro another 30 minutes.

Preheat oven at 200 degrees C or at 180 degrees C for fan forced.  Brush scrolls lightly with milk and scatter with almonds.  Bake for 20-25 minutes.  Heat jam in microwave for 20 seconds and and while scrolls are still warm brush jam over the top to glaze.

so good

In my opinion these are best served warm and on the day they were baked.  So invite a few friends over for a cuppa and one of your homemade scrolls, so these gems don't go to waste.  Another plus to this recipe is it should make your house smell like a bakery for a good two days after baking.

enjoy!

oh so yummy apple crumble

It's fitting I suppose that the first recipe I blog about be an apple crumble recipe, considering it's the recipe that started by Sunday baking sessions many months ago.
I came across this oh so yummy apple crumble recipe while flicking through a magazine at a cafe in Williamstown.
I sneakily took a few snaps of the recipe with my trustee iPhone and went home that weekend to bake.

The original recipe was actually called a "blueberry, apple and coconut crumple".  But because I believe all crumbles should have coconut, and blueberries are something like $45 a punnet out of season, it's simply an apple crumble to me.

For the filling the recipe calls for: 1/2 cup of superfine caster sugar, 1 vanilla bean split with the seeds scraped out, five granny smith apples peeled and chopped.

For the crumble you'll need: 1/3 cup of superfine caster sugar, 2/3 cup of shredded coconut, 120 grams of butter melted and 1 cup of sifted plain flower.

(what I love about this recipe is, if you're like me you probably already have most of these ingredients in your pantry)

To make the filling add all the 'filling' ingredients in a bowl mix and combine well, whack that into a shallow pie dish and set aside. (Simple right?)

To make the crumble add the sugar, coconut, butter and flour in a bowl and rub with fingertips until it resembles course breadcrumbs.  Spread the crumble evenly over the top of the mixture and pop it in a preheated 180 degree C oven (350 degree F) for 20-25 minutes until golden.

Then enjoy the deliciousness.

If you really want to spend $45 on blueberries you can add 500 grams to the filling mixture.

Serve with cream or ice-cream (I prefer ice-cream).

The recipe says it serves six but if your family is anything like mine it will serve four.

Yep, another food blog

Recently I realised Sunday is my favourite day of the week.  Sunday? You may ask, but it's so close to Monday.  Sunday for me is generally a day when I have the entire house to myself - well not entirely - me and my darling dog Ruby, have the entire house to ourselves.
Because of this solitude I'm able to catch up on housework in a quarter of the time it would normally take me, read the Sunday newspapers at a leisurely pace, drink a pot of tea because I'm in absolutely no hurry and its the one day I can bake with absolutely no interruptions and no time constraints.
You can now be amazed by the fascinating and exciting life I lead.
Forget Saturday nights drinking with friends - they're lots of fun don't get me wrong, but for me nothing beats the solitude and calm of flicking through a Sunday newspaper coming across a recipe and thinking 'hey, I've got nothing to do today, I'm going to try and make an apple crumble'.

And like many have done before me, I now plan to blog about it.