Cronuts and Croissants

YUM.

Cronut fever has died down a bit, but I made these at the height of the media frenzy just to see if I could. You know what, they were bloomin' yummy. Super chuffed, you should all try at home. I picked up some great tips from the wonderful Jo Wheatley (Winner of GBB2011) at her blog Jo's Blue Aga, although I will confess hers look far more yummy than mine.

Definition: A cronut is a deep fried donut shaped croissant. BUT BETTER

The reason I have coupled a range of other pastries into this post is that the pastry dough used in all is the same. Make up a batch and have a beautifully butter heavy day with friends and family. I can tell you they did not last long at all in my house.

CRONUTS

• Decide how much of your dough (see recipe here) you want to allocate to Cronuts. I went with 1/3^rd for cronuts, 1/3^rd for pain au chocolat/raisin and 1/3^rd for plain croissants. Cut this amount off the main block of dough with a bread knife, and put the rest back in the fridge.

• Decide on how you want your cronuts- sugar coated? Glazed? Drizzled in chocolate and filled with cream? You can have a real mixture, and have great fun playing around with flavours. I went for cinnamon sugar coated cronuts filled with vanilla cream. The world is your baking oyster- go for flavour combinations you love.

• Roll the dough out to around 3.5 cm thick, and then use a round cutter to cut out your donuts. To create the hole in the middle, find something that is at smaller than half the width of the original cutter you used- Jo suggested the larger end of a piping bag nozzle which worked a treat for my mini circles. Put these in the fridge/freezer for at least an hour so they are super cold.

• If you have a deep fat fryer, great- use it. I do not, however, and so I shallow fried them in a deep frying pan, a ton of oil and some guess work on temperature. Use your worst looking cronut to test- they should turn golden brown after a few minutes on each side, and the pastry inside should be flaky and buttery. Burnt on the outside and raw on the inside? The temperature is too high. Once fried, toss them in your sugar to coat- I mixed caster sugar with cinnamon for a twist. Fill with cream if desired- best eaten warm!
  

  

         

CROISSANTS

This is just a different way of shaping the dough - how you flavour them is up to you. I am going to try some savoury croissants next for Brunch, but for this blog I have just coated them in a touch of apricot jam to get that lovely shiny look.

Roll the dough out to about 1 cm thick, and cut out a large circle - I used a large dinner plate. Divide the circle into 8 ( like you would a pizza) and seperate the slices. Roll each one out a bit wider with your rolling pin, and then proceed to roll them up from the outside (the crust of the pizza) to the inside, tucking in the pointy end.

Leave in a warm place to prove for 30-40 minutes, whilst pre-heating the oven to 200C. Cover with an egg wash and bake on a baking tray for 20-25 minutes. Immediately wash with a small amount of melted apricot jam. BEAUTIFUL.

Rachel x



Easy Peasy Paprika Pepper Quesadilla...

......wiiiiithhomemadechilliandlimeguacamole.
Holy Guacamole! Try saying all that after a few tequilas. I DARE YA.

Its only 10am on a Saturday morning and about, roughly, i'd say, 100 degrees outside (weather girl career plan B sorted). If you eat a fry up right now, i will think you a) must be so hungover you can't tell its sunny and scorchio or b) you're one of those people who eats fry ups on holidays in spain and therefore get out of my kitchen right now.
SO.
Ditch the bacon grease and ketchup on hot summer mornings and head straight for a mexican brunch.
Fresh, spicy, light, bright ingredients (except the cheese but who doesn't love cheese on all the foods OK?) make for the best type of breakfast. These are so quick and easy and 10000% tequila hangover proof. Rachel loves tequila more than me. Im sure she could manage 20 of these after that night we had in exeter...
The homemade guacamole is also so, soooo easy and takes just a few minutes. Don't worry if you don't have a blender an electric mixer, just going at it with a spoon pretending its someone you hate will work just as ok and offer some free therapy at the same time.

Just promise promise me you WILL use lots of lime, chilli and paprika and bright red crunchy peppers and we're sorted.
These also make for a healthy pizza alternative if you can't quite bring yourself to eat this much cheese in the AM and want it with beer (who am i kidding. really).

For the Guacamole:

2 ripe avacados

1 lime squeezed

Chilli powder to taste- fresh chillis even better if you can face it in the am!

Paprika powder to taste

Put all the ingredients in a food processor or blender and blitz. Season with the spices to taste!

For the Quesadilla:

2 tortilla wraps per person

Grated cheese

Fresh peppers, chopped

Paprika to taste

Head your griddle or pan on a high heat, grease pan, lay down one tortilla and load on the cheese and peppers and sprinkle with pepper and paprika to taste, place the second tortilla on the top and press down- i used a bacon press because god knows why but there's on in this house- flip over when the cheese starts to melt inside and the side of the tortilla starts to brown. The edges should go nice and crispy! This works well with cajun chicken also!

Plus you can add sweetcorn, chorizo etc etc into your quesadilla. To be honest i haven't eaten pizza in weeks, it was friday, i love making fresh guacamole and i wanted to play with my new camera. Do what ever the bloody hell you like with these ha!

p.s first brunch recipe post on this blog yay! 

Holly x

My Kind of Coffee in Crouch End

So merry christmas and a happy new year! Myself and Rachel have been very lazy with this blog over christmas, its not because we haven't been baking and brunching our faces off festive style, which of course we have, but it is always a busy time! Over christmas i made mince pies but sadly didn't have time for much else! However a week before Christmas (and before tree buying and present wrapping panic set in) me and Chris visited this little place in crouch end for a late sunday brunch.

I suppose i didn't rush to review this place on here because in all honesty it wasn't something to go shouting off the rooftops of north london about, but after a few weeks of constant turkey, ham, carbs, alcohol, choccies and more carbs this calm and simple place with its light eggs benedict is actually sounding quite refreshing right about now!
Me and Chris both had the same- just simple eggs benedict with ham, it came with a simple side salad and the hollandaise was nice but not the most amazing i've had.
We washed it down with good quality coffee served in small glasses (coffee always tastes better like this, non? its like the age old coke and ketchup in glass or plastic argument) i personally prefer a latte in small glass rather than a mug, especially when its good strong coffee and the milk is done just right. Again the coffee wasn't anything to shout about, although looking back i recall buying another to take away with me whilst we walked round the shops. So i guess at the time it was pretty good!
I feel slightly bad saying this as they state on their twitter that coffee is the main game for this local roasters.

The interior was pretty cool- comfy union jack chairs, simple white walls, cakes and an interesting range of flavoured teas and bags of coffee displayed in the window. Not sure why the sign outside is a very-easy-to-walk-past brown colour but theres not an inch of bunting, cupcakes or cath kitdson in sight so if those types of places give you a headache escape here.
Oh and no one ran over my foot with a pram. Get in.

Best for: brunch if your go to crouch end fave is full, good quality coffee
Best day: afternoons when its less busy

My Kind of Coffee


Holly x

Bel Green Cafe

For the second instalment from our efforts at eating our way through Devon for my regional special piece we have Bel Green Cafe. The lovely Bel Green is situated on Magdalen Road, a leafy quiet street just on the edge of the main centre of Exeter.
This is not a hungover builders cafe pit stop. Okay, so you can go there hungover, (we might have bin, just a bit, ok, a lot. I blame Rachel) but try not to be as it will spoil the doughy sourdough and the freshest, richest sausages i have had in such a long time. Who knew pork could be described as rich? Well they were! But it is not for the days when you are feeling the after affects of too many tequilas. Definitely more suited for brunch with the family or the boyfriend or for a chilled coffee and a book session alone. The poached eggs were cooked to perfection and so were we after sitting in the baking autumn sunshine that flooded through the big windows into this little cafe. I could have spent all morning there drinking tea. It also serves as a vintage shop filled with kitschy household goodies like rolling pins and aprons which suit the cafe's rustic, slightly new england feel. The breakfast menu alone left us spoiled for choice and i believe they serve pizzas in the evenings too.

Best for: fresh, local hearty brunches in a calm setting with post brekkie browsing
Best day: saturday mornings before a walk into town
Bel Green Cafe Twitter
Bel Green Cafe

Holly x