Sticky No Egg Cinnamon Swirls

Ah, this title sounds like if I was a very very conscious lacto-vegetarian, but I think it's no surprise that I'm actually not. 

I just simply forgot to put eggs in my cinnamon rolls.

Lucky me, it worked! Good news for the egg-avoiders, and to me in case I want to bake something and happen to be out of eggs.

I'd like to start with a very important thing: I have no idea what makes a difference between a cinnamon roll and a cinnamon swirl.

So from now on I'm gonna use the word we use in Hungarian: cinnamon snail. yep.

Please don't say it's gross, it's such a cute name! Just think about it as the sweetest animal out of all.

Ehw, sorry...

So the story this time is not that long: there is this bakery on my corner.

The cutest, nicest, warmest little place ever.

With cinnamon snails that just too pretty to eat.

What I especially love about their version is that they don't put any icing on top. To be honest, I started to make these snails because I had some leftover cream cheese in the fridge for the icing, but after trying one straight out of the oven, I learned that it's absolutely unnecessary. It's pretty sweet on it's own.

So obviously my little cinnamon snails are not as pretty as those in the bakery, but tastewise I got pretty close! Give it a try.

Ingredients

Dough:

350 g all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

1 tsp ground cinnamon

50 g caster sugar

100 g butter

200 ml milk

(add two egg yolks if you feel like it. I didn't.)

In a large bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Melt the butter in the microwave, then beat for a minute with the sugar. Add the milk, and combine the two mixtures.

Knead a smooth dough (it should be like gingerbread) with your own hands, Add more flour if it's too sticky, or more milk if it's too dry.

Filling and topping:

50 g butter 

60 g caster sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

a handful of raisins (leave them out if you hate them)

a splash of milk.

Melt the butter in th microwave, and mix with sugar and cinnamon.

Assembly:

On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough into a centimeter thick rectangle. Spread the 3/4 of the filling on the rectangle and sprinkle the raisins on top. Roll up the rectangle, starting from the longer side if you want mini rolls (like mines on the pictures) or start from the shorter side if you want bigger ones. Cut the roll into 1,5-2 cm wide slices. 

Place the snails on a cookie tray, greased, or lined with baking paper. Brush gently with some milk. Bake until golden brown (it was 20 minutes for me). Three minutes before you would take them out from the oven, open the oven door and quickly brush the snails with the reheated remaining of the filling. This way it will just have time to fully dissolve and stick to the rolls, which will make a deliciously crunchy-glazey top.

Start eating when it's not steaming hot anymore.

Our Secret Family Gingerbread Recipe - Countdown for Christmas Part 1

Hey Everyone! Good news: I'm going to make a series of three posts before Christmas: two cookies you can make days or weeks before the holidays (this is the first) and the perfect Christmas morning breakfast. Here we go with number one - Our Secret Family Gingerbread Recipe!

Not a secret anymore I guess.

This recipe has a cute story - our kitchen at home (and mine here in Scotland as well) is tidy and clean - but not organised at all. I mean the recipes - despite that I bind books myself and we have so many pretty recipe books and planners, the most important recipes are just circling around - 'it's on a piece of paper in the big red cookbook'; 'I've seen it in the wooden spoon drawer' ; 'I saved it in a draft on one of the computers' and so on. However, we never had problems with that - except maybe an additional half an hour looking for the recipes. But a couple of years ago, we lost the gingerbread recipe. It was gone.

It was literaly nowhere, so we decided to go back to the bottom. Where was it from? A back of a gingerbread spice mixture. Ten years ago. Great.

We tried every gingerbread recipe from every single brand of gingerbread spice mixtures - but ended up disappointed all the time. We had an entire Christmas period with a kitchen full of hope and half-decent cookies.

And then my mom found it. 

It was indeed on the back of a spice mixture, and it was the same. The same old, lovely perfection. 

Obviously we copied it to every single book and electronic device we have. And now I share it with you guys - so if it gets lost again, you can save me.

This recipe is the best gingerbread for me, ever ever. The only thing I changed from the original one is that back home we don't use separate spices, just buy the readymade gingerbread spice mixture. For some reason, I could not find any of that in Glasgow, so I made my own. 

The baking part of the gingerbread takes time because of the amount of cookies - I find it the best to do it together with someone - one is handling the oven and the other is cutting the cookies. For example, it is a brilliant kitchen activity for kids. When I was little I spent most of my december evenings cutting little angels and Christmas trees.

Ingredients
25 dkg honey
10 dkg butter
10 dkg sugar
0,5 kg flour
0.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda
0.5 tbsp ground nutmeg
0.5 tbsp ground cloves
0.5 tbsp ground cinnamon
0.5 tbsp ground ginger
1 egg
2 egg yolks

Method

Melt the butter in a saucepan with the sugar and honey. Set aside and let it cool (I normally put it outside for some minutes). Mix the flour with the bicarbonate of soda and the spices. Whisk the egg and the egg yolks for a minute and add it to the flour. Mix it together, then add the sugar, butter and honey. Knead together with your hand until the dough is smooth. If it is still a bit warm, let it cool completely then put it in the fridge for overnight (this part is crucial - otherwise it won't be soft). 

Flour a bigger surface and roll 1/4 of the dough each time. Roll it to any shape, it should be around 4-5 mm thin. Cut the cookies out with gingerbread cutters - if you don't have these, you can use a cup as well. 

Put them in a tray (you can put baking paper but it won't stick without it either) and bake on 180 degrees for 5-7 minutes. Keep checking on them - the best is when the edges are crunchy and the middle is still soft. Let it stand for 5 minutes before putting them into a box. 

In a box, they could be kept forever.

Okay, not forever, but for a long time - so you can make it in advance for Christmas.

From this amount of dough, a normal metal cookie box will be full. 

For the icing, you may use the egg whites remained from using the egg yolks in the gingerbread - or if you freak out from eating raw eggs, you may use water. Start adding icing sugar, constantly mixing. It will be ready if it's thick but still spreadable - like the consistency of nutella or mustard (great examples huh). Put it in a small plastic bag and make a tiny hole on it - and you can start icing. 

If you want to make colourful icing, you can add food colouring at any point.

We also made a gingerbread house. We made our own templates and of course that I forgot to write down the measurements (food blogger...?). However, we used the gingerbread house of Kara as an inspiration, and I realised she actually put some templates on her blog. You can find it in the link with her instructions.

From my recipe, there was only a little bit of dough left after the house - so if you want to make it, my advice is to double the measurements - but it this cake, have plenty of time for it!

Celebrating Autumn - Caramel Apple Tart

I had to live 21 years to decide which season was my favourite. Autumn won. Lot of people go for spring, but that's the season I particularly don't like. It's the end of the winter, but still SO cold for several weeks, then you just can't tell whether it's gonna be hot or chilly that day. With Autumn, it's different - it's cold. Maybe there is a little bit of sunshine, but still cold. Festive season is coming, or is already here, the colours are amazing, and there is rain. My favourite type of weather. I just adore the smell of wet fallen leaves in the park, when it's still not freezing, but you already got red cheeks. Oh my.

And as a baker, this is the best season EVER. Baking over the summer is such a pain, with heating up the already hot house and all that. During winter it is really lovely, but the rage of ingredients are wider during the autumn, so it is the best. And all these fruits and veggies - apples, pears, grapes, squash, nuts etc - are the best to combine with spices like cinnamon, nutmeg or ginger.

This tart is very simple but yet has a special kick with the bottom caramel layer. You can't exactly feel the caramer cracking, as it melts in the oven and merges with the apples, but it still has that lovely flavour what makes this tart stand out.
It takes quite a long time to grate the apples - if you don't have much time, just cut into small pieces.

Ingredients
Crust:
300 g all purpose flour
200 g butter
100 g icing sugar

Filling:
100 + 30 g caster sugar
5 middle size apples, peeled and grated
10 g butter
1 tsp cinnamon



Method
Mix the flour with the icing sugar. Cut the butter into tiny cubes, and add it to the flour mixture. Crumble the butter into the flour using your fingertips. Add some cold water to form a dough. Put it in the fridge for a little while.
Melt the butter in a pan, and add grated apple, cinammon and 30 g sugar. Cook until it losts half of its size,
Grease a normal tart form, and preheat the oven for 175 C. Separate the dough into two parts; it should be 1/3 and 2/3. Roll the bigger one and place it in the form. Place baking paper on the dough, then some baking beans or rice (these could not be used as beans or rice anymore so I suggest to keep them after baking for another time!). Bake for 10 minutes, then remove the beans and bake for an other 5 minutes.
While the crust is in the oven, separate the smaller dough, roll them and cut them into stripes.
When the crust is ready, put 100 g caster sugar into a pan and let it melt on medium heat. Do not mix until it all melted. When it is all melted, as quick as possible pour it onto the crust. It hardens very fast! Spread it as much as you can. Place the cooked apples on the caramel, then finish it with the dough stripes. Put it back into the oven for 15-20 minutes.

Spicy squash pie

I made this pie for Thanksgiving but forgot that I actually made photos too. (...) Reviewing them I remember how good this pie was, so I will redo it very soon. During the autumn, I made many versions of squash pies but this one turned out to be the best. This is one of the variations of the classic pie I bake very often - it is kinda impossible to forget the recipe as it follows the 3:2:1 rule; 30 dkg flour, 20 dkg butter and 10 dkg sugar. Well, these amounts apply for a classic, big ceramic pie chart - which I do not have at the moment, so I used a small one, halving everything The pastry was still a bit more than I needed, you can see on the pictures how tall it is.

Happy baking!

Spicy squash pie (for a 30 cm pie chart)
30 dkg flour
20 dkg butter
10 dkg icing sugar
1 egg

1 small butternut squash
2 eggs
1 tbsp fresh ginger
1/2 tbsp cinnamon
1 dl cream

Mix the icing sugar with the flour. Chop the butter into tiny cubes and using your fingers, mix it together with the flour-sugar mixture. Add the egg and knead until smooth. Wrap in plastic foil and put in the fridge until the batter is ready.
If you have time, simply put the whole squash in the oven and bake on 180 C for about an hour or until it's soft. Then cut it into half, remove the seeds and simply spoon the inside into a bowl. You may cut the squash into half and remove the seeds, then cut into pieces before putting into the oven - in that case it will be ready quicker. Leave the oven on 180 C.
Once the soft, baked squash is a bit chilled, mix it with an electric food blender until smooth (I don't have one, and a fork worked as well). Add the cream, spices and eggs and mix with and electric hand mixer until smooth. 
Grease the pie chart, and using the 2/3 of the chilled dough, roll a circle and place it to the bottom. Use the remain of the dough for the sides. Gently squeeze the dough together everywhere. Place baking paper and baking beans/rice on the dough and bake for 10 minutes. Remove the paper and beans and bake for another 5 minutes. Pour the squash mixture into the dough and bake on 180 C for 35-40 minutes or until the middle is set. Serve it hot or cold.