Anyway, I thought it was time to post some of the things I've been up to in the past few weeks. I now am trying to bake at least once a week (if not more), usually on Saturdays when I'm not working.
A couple of months ago I bought this tiny little book titled "Muffin" and I have been making/baking some very nice recipes, which I am now sharing with you.
Here in Italy, muffins have started to become quite popular in the last few years and it is now very easy to find muffin pans, muffin cups and so on. I have bought my first set of non-stick muffin pans about two years ago, but then realized they were narrow at the bottom, getting wider and wider at the top. The muffins I baked directly in those pans had quite a strange "enlarged" shape, so distant from the perfect cupcake one I was admiring in books and cooking magazines. Therefore, I started scouting all of the cookware shops for another kind of pan and came across a silicone one which I thought was worth trying out: I love it, however I am not too confident in cooking stuff directly on the silicone and usually put the muffin cups in the holes.
Ok... enough with the talking!
Here is my first endeavour:
WELSH MINI-CAKES
Ingredients:
225 gr self-raising flour
a pinch of salt
55 gr of lard (I didn't have lard, so I used 110 gr of butter instead)
55 gr unsalted butter
85 gr brown sugar
85 gr sultanas
1 egg, beaten
1 tbsp milk, if needed
[1 extra cup of plain flour, if needed]
Sift the flour and the pinch of salt in a large bowl. Add the lard and the butter and work them with your fingers until you have a grainy dough. Incorporate the sugar, the sultanas (I have let them soak in lukewarm water for about 20 minutes) and the egg. Mix everything really well with a spoon and, if the dough is too dry, you might want to add a tbsp milk.
Transfer the dough on a floured surface. At this point I noticed that the dough was way too soft and would stick on both my hands and the surface I was using. I then decided to add a little less than a cup of plai flour, up until I was able to knead the dough into a ball.
With a rolling pin, spread the dough out until it's about 5 mm thick and cut little discs out with a glass or a round cookie cutter.
Put very little butter on a non-stick pan and heat it up. When the pan is nice and hot, turn the heat down and place the discs in. Cook them for about 3 minutes on each side, or until they get golden, crispy and firm to the touch. Transfer on a plate and sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving.
Here is what they looked like:
Enjoy!!! Love, Alice
