Doughnuts

So I am now back from the Greek adventure, and as much as I was hoping to do lots of interesting cooking with Greek food, I only got round to doing one thing. As soon as I got home to my usual kitchen I decided to make some Doughnuts. I would usually go for the regular cupcakes, but I wanted to do something a little more interesting.

So here you have it, really easy doughnut recipe. 

Ingredients

1 tablespoon of yeast

        -I used Easy Bake Yeast.

4 tablespoons of caster sugar

150ml of warmed milk

225g plain flour

1/4 teaspoon of salt

50g melted butter

1 free range egg beaten

500ml vegetable oil - for deep frying

        - I used Flora Pure Sunflower Oil

Jam, Sugar, Nutella

First Step: Mix the tablespoon of yeast with half a teaspoon of the caster sugar and two tablespoons of warm milk. Place in a warm place for 10 minutes or until it has gone frothy.

Second Step: In a separate bowl sift the flour and salt, and stir in one tablespoons of sugar.

Third Step: Make a large well in the flour and once the yeast is fluffy pour it into the well, along with the egg, the milk and the butter. Mix to make a dough, and then knead. At this point I needed to add more flour, as it was too sticky to knead, but add too much and it will be too hard. So add the flour in small amounts. Once kneaded place in a bowl and cover for 45 minutes.

Fourth Step: Split into 12-14 balls and wait for them to double in size, while leaving them in a warm place. 

Fifth Step: Heat up the oil to 190 Degrees Celsius. 

Sixth Step: Carefully place the dough balls into the hot oil. They will cook very quickly, so after about 5 seconds turn it over. Keep doing this until the whole doughnut is golden brown.

Seventh Step: Use a slotted spoon to drain them over sink, pan, or bowl. Leave them in a warm place, until you have cooked them all.

For the filling you can put the donut in a bag of sugar, shake it and it will cover it in sugar.

Alternatively make a slit in the doughnut and put either jam or Nutella in it.

I hope you like them! 

Spinach Rice | Spanakorizo

Hello.

Spanakorizo is a Greek vegetarian dish, and as I am now in Greece it seemed appropriate to attempt a Greek recipe. In all fairness it wasn't my idea, but my mother's, but I took upon my self to create it. I made this for supper, along with a roast chicken - I decided to solely write about the rice as it is slightly more interesting, and I'm sure there will be many a recipe that can quite easily explain the process of roasting a chicken on the internet or in your kitchen at home. This recipe is super delicious, and far more interesting than having bog standard rice.

Ingredients 

Half a Cup of Olive Oil

2 Medium finely chopped onions

Half a teaspoon of chilli pepper

1 and a half cups of long grain rice

3 cups of chicken stock (or 3 cups of water with 1 and a half chicken stock cubes)

2 and a half fresh and chopped Spinach

Some Salt

1/2 a cup chopped, fresh Dill.

(You could, if you wanted, have some yoghurt on the side)

This is the kitchen that I cooked in.

These are the ingredients that I used.

If the spinach has ends take them off.

Cut up the spinach. 

Chop the onions.

Add the half cup of olive oil to a deep, heavy skillet and then sauté the onions until soft and translucent.  Should take about 5-10 minutes.

 Meanwhile put the chopped spinach in a large saucepan, add a third of a cup of olive oil

Cover the saucepan and let it wilt. 5 minutes.

Add the rice and chilli pepper to the onions, stir for a few seconds.

Add the stock to the spinach and let it boil. 

Once it boils, add the rice and onions to the saucepan.

Stir the contents of the pan. Reduce the heat. After 5 minutes add the chopped dill and simmer for another 5 minutes.

Serve immediately.

I hope you enjoy.

Healthy-ish Flapjack

Hello cyberspace. Welcome to my blog. I've attempted a blog before, but I was not writing about things that I really love, and so I have decided to write about baking, and any other creativity that I happen to get up to. 

I will endeavour to give you some background for this first post. Tomorrow I am heading off to Greece with an early morning start of 5:30am. At this point in the morning, I don't know about you, I am certainly not hungry enough for the usual yoghurt and granola. So I decided to bake a sort of breakfast bar. As I would be catering for my parents as well as my younger sisters I had to come up with an idea that was both sweet and healthy at the same time. Queue the Healthy(ish) Flapjack Breakfast Bar.

It turned out pretty delicious, and both my parents and my sisters loved their sample bites. It was quite light and very crumbly (due to the severe lack of Golden Syrup). Hope you like.

Ingredients

100g of spread/ butter. 

(I used Stork, as it said it was good for cooking, but I doubt it was at all 'nutritious')

(Some alternatives could be Flora Pro-Active, Anchor Lighter Spreadable, I Can't Believe Its Not Butter.)

4 generous tablespoons of Agave Nectar.

(This is the sweet yet not so sugary alternative to golden syrup or honey.)

250g of oats

1 quarter of a cup of raisins/ currents

1 quarter of a cup of pumpkin seeds

(I only used pumpkin seeds as they are a personal favourite and we had plenty of them in the house, but any other seeds would work. )

Honey - to drizzle on top at the end to help it all stick together.

Feel free to get creative with the seeds and fruit.

Ideas could be: Dates, Apples, ANY dried fruit, goji berries would be delicious. Even crispy, dried banana all crushed up would give it extra texture. 

Step 1: Cut out a square piece of baking paper and line a 18inch square baking tray. It should be quite thick so that the flapjacks can be a chunky as possible. They are harder to line with paper, however, so I cut the lines into each corner so that it folded in on itself, as shown.

Preheat the oven to 180 degreesC, or 170degrees in a fan oven.

Step 2:  Weigh out the butter/ spread. I use an electric scales but any will do. Its best to weigh it out in the pan that you will use for the whole process, as butter tends to stick to things.

Step 3: Pour the 4 'Generous' tablespoons of Agave Nectar, into the pan with the butter.

Step 5: Stir together on a low heat, until they are both fully mixed together.

Step 6: Pour the oats in to the butter and agave nectar pan.

Step 7: Mix it all together.

Step 8: okay I know I said this was a healthy, golden syrup free recipe. But I found just 1 teaspoon helped the mixture to clump together a bit more. You can definitely leave it out and it will taste just as delicious.

Step 9: Measure out the pumpkin seeds and add them to the mixture.

Step 10: Measure out the currents and add them to mixture. Mix it all together again.

Step 11: Pour into your baking tray.

Step 12: Put in the preheated oven. Set a timer for 15 minutes, and check them after that. If they are not golden/ brown on top then they need a little longer. Keep going until satisfied. Max 25 minutes.

Step 12: Once finished baking, remove from the oven and leave to set in the pan for 5 minutes, while it cools. At this point mine didn't seem to be a sticky as I would have hoped, so I drizzled some honey over the top, I'm not sure if it helped but it improved the taste. To allow it to cool further carefully remove the baking paper from the pan with the flapjack still on it. Leave it for as long as you feel the need to. Slice into squares and serve warm, or let them cool in sealed container. 

Hope you like them.