Twelve Things: November's Bread

One of my favourite things about travelling is eating the local cuisine and back in 2011 I got a taste for the delicacies of Israel. One thing I can't get out of my mind is the aubergine starter from Puaa, the vintage-styled cafe in Jaffa flea market. I was so excited to receive Jerusalem by Yotam Ottelenghi from Lauren for my birthday, full of delicious recipes to try and stories about the history of food from this polemic part of the world.

The first thing I wanted to have a go at was the krantz cake or babka. My attempts at bread in the past  haven't been 100% successful but I thought I'd give it a try. The sweet dough was prepared the night before and left to rise in the fridge overnight. To my delight it had risen, so I got on with preparing the chocolate sauce for the middle. After spreading it across the rolled out dough, you roll it up, slice it down the middle (serrated edged knives really help), plait the two pieces over and place in a loaf tin ready to rise some more, before baking. I must admit I was super pleased with how it turned out, and I think those who tasted it were pretty happy too. Definitely one to give a go, and once my Christmas present of a KitchenAid arrives, there'll be no stopping me!

PS. Don't you think Lottie, the local cat who liked to pop by and sleep on our chair, matches the krantz cake?!

Looking back: in January I started to learn to swing.

In February we learned how to make pasta.

In March I sewed some curtains.

In April I planted herbs.

In May I started running.

In June I learnt to knit Fair Isle.

In July I planned a party.

In August I experimented with chocolate.

In September I started a new job.

In October I knitted a cardigan.

Back to Baking

I've been MIA for the last (what!!) 6 weeks!! No excuses, well apart from I had my final ever portfolio deadline for MArch, so I'm back on it. I miss rambling on here and making record of what I get up to. Also I am currently in the making of a website of my work - so watch this space.

Since finishing I have got back into cooking and baking. Dan bought lots of fruit to keep healthy over deadline time, but some of the bananas were left over so nothing is more perfect than to make them into banana cake. I took this Nigella recipe and added rough chunks of dark chocolate. It went down a treat, far too quickly.

Today I decided to try and bake a loaf of bread, of the tiger variety. It was a basic white loaf recipe with a cornflour and milk mix spread on top before baking to create the crackling. I think the oven must have been too hot (the one here at uni is a bit temperamental and you can't see in!) and so left any longer, the crust would have got crustier but the insides needed more time. Maybe I didn't knead the dough properly in the first place? Help?

A more successful dish was the paella I cooked for the girls on Tuesday evening, this time a Jamie recipe. It went down an absolute treat and I will definitely make it again, it was so easy! Here and here are a few more of my culinary experiments.