I looked at my lovely crop of thriving beetroot growing in the garden and I wondered if I could come up with something slightly different for it. My father planted the seeds and gave me the seedlings when they were about an inch high. Now look at them!

There is always something incredibly satisfying about growing something, harvesting it and then making something delicious with it.

We often have pre-conceived ideas about how certain things taste and how they should be prepared and only if they meet our particular set of criteria will we eat them. Although the idea of beetroot bread was not really something that I’d considered before, I could not help myself .. the thought of making bread which had a hot pink dough was just too much for me to resist. I had to make it.

Look at this - there is no food colouring in there, that’s just how it is! The colour of the dough is really amazing - I could not take my eyes off it when I was kneading it. It was like squishing a giant raspberry marshmallow. I had playdough flashbacks and felt the urge to make all kinds of funny things with it.

I’m really glad I was brave enough to try this bread, because we all loved it. As long as you like beetroot you’ll enjoy the bread. The bread has a slight beetroot taste, but certainly nothing overpowering and in fact quite complementary to sandwhich fillings. I made a second loaf very soon after we devoured the first, to use as sandwich bread for the next day. While beetroot is in season this bread will be made regularly in our house.

There was no recipe which really drew me to it that I could find online or in my books, so I came up with something based around this one here at Travel Flower Children. The bread has a soft crust rather than a crisp one.

Beetroot & Sunflower Seed Bread

Please note: The quantities of water and flour are very much approximate in this recipe, because it will depend on the size of your beetroot and just how juicy it is. Don’t be scared to add a little more flour if you need to. This bread is very forgiving. The sunflower seeds are a wonderful addition, they add some texture to a very soft bread.

Tip: Use rubber gloves to cut and grate your beetroot - or you will have stained hands.

• 1 medium beetroot peeled and grated raw
• 2 tspns of sugar
• 1 Tblspn of olive oil
• 1 tspn of salt
• 300 mls of warm water - just slightly warmer than skin temperature
• 1/2 cup of hulled sunflower seeds or green pumpkin seeds.
• one package of instant yeast (8 grams instant yeast- 25g/0.6 oz compressed yeast- 2 1/4 tspns active dry yeast)
• between 500g/16oz and 700g/1 1/2 lbs  of flour plus more for the work surface
• Milk or water to glaze
• Sesame seeds to sprinkle on the top if wished.

Place your warm water, oil, and sugar in a bowl with your yeast and leave until foamy (about 5 mins). Then add your sunflower seeds, grated beetroot, flour and salt

If you are using instant yeast you can just mix it in with your water, oil and sugar and add your other ingredients adding flour and salt last.

Stir together initially with a spoon (this is so you do not get bright red hands) until your dough starts to come together. Tip out on the work surface and knead together to form an elastic dough - about 10 minutes kneading. If your dough is very sticky do not be afraid to add more flour while you are kneading. Your dough should be slightly sticky, but still be able to be kneaded with relative ease. You can use a Kitchen aid for the kneading if you wish, but you will miss out on the playdough experience if you do that!

Set aside in a warm place in a covered bowl to rise until doubled in size - roughly 40 mins to an hour.

Punch down dough and form into the shape of your choice.

Leave to rise at room temperature for about 30 minutes. When well risen brush with a little milk or water and sprinkle black sesame seeds on the top if wished. 

Bake  in a 200C/392F oven.

If you choose to braid your bread into a long loaf it will take roughly 20 minutes cook time. If you place your dough in a loaf tin it will take closer to 40 minutes to cook through to the centre of the loaf. Your cook time will vary depending on the shape. Test for doneness by tapping on the bottom of the loaf it will sound hollow when cooked.

Leave your bread to cool on a rack and slice when cool. This is a soft-ish  loaf, if you try to cut it when it’s too hot it will be doughy. The sunflower seeds add a fantastic texture to the bread, they were a perfect addition.

This was quite an experience making this, the dough was so wonderfully pink, and each person that came into the kitchen uttered some kind of exclamation depending on their age - ranging from “Cool Mummy!” to “Holy *&^%# how did you get the dough that colour?!”

I love this bread!

Nancy was one of the winners of my giveaway and I said I would make what ever the winners suggested. Nancy suggested croissant. So I made them and of course we ate them on her behalf. They were delicious!

I’m sure you would have enjoyed these Nancy! I know you asked for chocolate and I have some chocolate ones in the making but I wanted to get this post up for you before the weekend. I could not decide on the photos I liked, so there are too many of them in the post. I’m sorry I could not help myself, I liked them all!

I felt a bit nervous making these since I really wanted to get it right and the last time I made croissant was in high school in my french class. I seem to recall I failed french, I’m pretty sure it was not because of my croissant making efforts.

I researched and read and watched a billion videos and even attempted to phone a local french trained pastry chef for a few tips and tricks - but he did not return my call, perhaps I sounded somewhat desperate on the phone and scared him off.

I finally settled on a recipe and a method. When you look around online you find there are so many different recipes about and as many methods for making laminated dough as there are recipes. My choice was eventually dictated by the fact that my local supermarket where I normally buy my fresh yeast had the audacity to run out of fresh yeast so I decided to make a recipe that called for active dry yeast instead.

I decided to start even though I was still not one hundred percent sure of what I was doing and hope that it started to make sense as I moved through the recipe.

I think this is definitely one of those things that you have to just take the plunge with and hope for the best your first time, a little like bungy jumping.

Croissant

• dough from Nancy Silverton

• 1 1/2 cups whole milk, heated to warm (110°F/43 C)
  1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
  1 tablespoon plus 1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
  3 3/4 to 4 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
  1 tablespoon salt
  12oz/340 grams cold unsalted butter

You need

• A rolling pin
• a measuring tape or ruler
• a thermometer for your milk (not essential - just test to lukewarm)
• plastic wrap
• a pastry brush
• kitchen towels - I just used paper towels they worked fine.

First you are going to make your dough. It seems more complex  reading through the recipe than it actually is I think. It’s really just time consuming and a few things that seem minor are important to do. I’ve put those things in bold type for you. It just needs a bit of patience really. My apologies to the seasoned bakers if you feel that this is too simplified.- I wanted to make sure that this was in plain language for those learning the technique for the first time.

I made mine over the course of a day, a lot of the time required is just time chillin’. I’m going to try to make this simple, but if there are any questions please don’t hesitate to ask and I will clarify. These are not perfect, but I was really happy with them for a first effort.

For the Dough

Mix your warm milk, brown sugar, and yeast in bowl or in your stand mixer bowl if you are lucky enough to have one and wait for it to foam - that usually takes about 5 minutes.

Add in your flour and salt and mix for about 7 minutes on low speed with the dough hook followed by two minutes hand kneading if you are using a mixer, or knead gently for about 10 minutes if you are working by hand.

You should have a soft and slightly sticky dough. If you need to you can dust a little flour on the work surface to stop it from sticking. Shape it into a rectangle roughly 1 1/2 inches ( 4 cm) thick.

Wrap your dough tightly in plastic film and place in the fridge until cold - roughly an hour.

Prepare your butter

It is important that your butter is cold from the fridge - not hard enough to break, but not soft and greasy. Butter that has been stored in the fridge should be about right. If at any point things seem to be getting warm or greasy - put it back in the fridge to chill for a bit. Work quickly with your butter.

Once your dough is nice and cold you can shape the butter package that gets tucked inside the dough. 

Have your butter in three even portions (if you are in the US it’s 3 sticks of butter). Line up your butter with the sides touching and pound the butter with the flat of a rolling pin to flatten it out into a rectangle that is 5 x 8 inches (13 cm x 20cm). If it’s still nice and cold you should be able to run a knife under it and scrape it up in one piece on to a paper towel, cover with the other paper towel and put in the fridge. It’s very quick.

Leave your butter in the fridge while you roll out your dough for the first time.

Rolling the dough and putting in the butter

Roll the dough on a floured work surface into a 16 x10-inch (40cm x 25cm) rectangle. Lift the dough and sprinkle some flour underneath if you need to, make sure it is not sticking. Place the dough with a short side nearest you.

Put the butter in center of the dough so that the long sides of butter are parallel to the short sides of  the dough. Fold the bottom third of dough over the butter, then top third down over dough.

Brush off any excess flour with a pastry brush. Do this regularly throughout all the folding.

Turn the dough so a short side is nearest you, then flatten dough slightly by pressing down with a rolling pin across dough at regular intervals, making uniform impressions. Roll the dough into a 15-x 10-inch (38cm x 25) rectangle, rolling just to but not over ends. Don’t squish the ends of the dough. This will help to keep your butter where it should be.

Make your first fold

Brush off any excess flour. Fold in thirds, like you did before stretching the corners gently to square off the dough, forming a 10x 5-inch (25cm x 12 cm) rectangle. You just did the first fold! 

Chill, wrapped tightly in plastic wrap for 1 hour.

Remaining folds

Make 3 more folds in same manner, chilling dough 1 hour after each fold, for a total of 4 folds. (If any butter oozes out while rolling, sprinkle with flour to prevent sticking.)

Wrap dough tightly in plastic wrap and chill at least 8 hours but no more than 18.

You need to mark in some way that you have completed a fold of your pastry. I chose to put a small indent in the corner of my pastry with the blunt end of a skewer, each time I did a fold, adding one more each time. Some people prefer to write the number they are up to on a piece of parchment under the dough. What ever method you choose, do keep track otherwise you are going to find yourself taking the dough out of the fridge and thinking .. “hmm was this fold three or four?”

Rolling and Shaping your Croissant

This is the fun part- at least I thought it was. Turning your pastry dough into croissant. Croissant means crescent, but it’s perfectly acceptable to also have a croissant that is straight. I’ll give a few instructions here, but there are some excellent video resources on this that I strongly suggest you watch if you have not rolled a croissant before. I’ll give you those at the end of the post.

Divide your dough in half - unless you have a very large work surface. Place the remaining half in the fridge while you roll and shape the first half. Roll your dough out to roughly 13 inches (33 cm) height and as wide as needed to obtain 1/8th of an inch (3mm) thickness.

You are going to cut your dough into triangles - like the photo below You’ll notice mine are not that even and some are slightly larger than others. This does matter, different sizes like mine - are not good.

Next time I will take a ruler and mark an even base for the triangles along the length of the dough. I would say roughly between 4 and 5 inches (10.5cm to 13 cm) at the base of the triangle is a good size. The smaller ones cooked a little quicker - but Isaac was pretty happy to eat a pile of them with plum jelly.

Make a small cut - as shown in the base of each triangle, this helps you get a nice roll.

There is no specific size to cut your dough to - but this recipe makes roughly 24 croissant. So aim for roughly 12 triangles for half of the dough. I’ll make these a little larger next time, because we like slightly larger croissant. So I might make 20 out of this batch of dough.

Next you are going to fold the sides of the cut you made,  back - like this.

This is the end you will start rolling from. When you roll this - have the pointed end away from your body and the wide end closest to your body.

When you reach about 2/3 of the way, then turn it around so the pointy bit is pointing at you and pull gently on the pointy bit slightly to hold it slightly taught .. as you continue to roll the croissant with your other hand. This makes more sense when you see it done. Do watch the video here for a great demonstration of cutting and rolling croissant.

You should end up with something that looks like this.

Set them on parchment paper on a baking tray and leave to rise, covered with a cloth in a warm place until triple the size.

Brush with an egg wash made by lightly beating a whole egg and bake at 180C/350F for roughly 15 minutes. They should be dark golden.

Leave to cool before eating. If you eat them hot from the oven they will collapse. If you can resist temptation long enough to let them cool you will have them just as they should be. Crispy and flaky on the outside with little crumbs that shatter when you bite them, soft and buttery on the inside.

If you want you can leave the egg wash off. You’ll still get a lovely croissant, it will just not have the shine. One without the egg wash looks like this one below.

If you have some free time - do give these a try, they are not as difficult as you might think, but they do take a long time.

Thank you Nancy for suggesting these, I really enjoyed making and eating them! I’ll post soon about the chocolate variation.

I know I promised Nancy croissant for the weekend, but I am afraid I just got too busy with an unexpected trip into work and helping some friends move house. Since croissant are time consuming to make I really needed a free weekend to make them. So I’ll keep my fingers crossed that next weekend will be croissant!

So I present to you a fairly typical weekend quick baking project with a twist! Lemonade scones. They are not made with old fashioned lemonade, they are made with soda, like sprite, 7UP or what ever your local brand of clear mostly flavourless soda is.

These are so simple that initial thoughts are that they cannot possibly be good. But they are light and sweet and the cream in them adds the fat that is so important for scones. I doubled the recipe to make a large number for the hungry people that I knew would be lifting furniture and boxes. I had a lovely jar of bright orange home-made apricot jam from my mother that I teamed up with these.

These scones are best eaten on the day they are made, they really do not keep well, but it does not seem to be a problem to get rid of a batch fairly quickly!

Lemonade Scones

• 3 cups of self raising flour
• 1 cup of cream
• 1 cup of lemonade soda (Sprite/7UP etc)

If you measure your cream first, then your soda and use the same measuring cup - beware .. this is what you’ll get! Personally I think this is quite fun and like to do it this way- but be ready for it! Isaac was most amused by the soda mushroom.

Mix all ingredients together gently to make a soft dough, either add more liquid or flour a little at a time if your dough is too dry or too wet.

Shape into a rectangle roughly an inch to an inch and a half thick and cut into circles with a 3 inch cookie cutter or the rim of a glass. I’ve even been known to use the rim of a vase or jar rims if that’s all I can find. Really most things can be improvised and there is not a lot of need to have fancy stuff in the kitchen.

Place on a lightly floured tray, brush the tops with a little milk and bake at 220C/428F for 10-15 minutes. You can put them fairly close together - this will help them rise up and give good height to your scones.

Yep that is all there is to it!

This recipe makes roughly 12-14 light and sweet scones.

Snuggle your scones up in a clean tea towel or cloth and serve them with some butter and jam. Scones are always best slightly warm, but not straight out of the oven.

I promise I’ll get to the croissant next weekend - although I suspect I might have to get another lot of chocolate for them, it seems to have mysteriously vanished….

I’ve been busy this week making pastry and cream patisserie so I had a lot of egg whites left sitting in my fridge. So I did what every good Kiwi would do, I made our favourite antipodean dessert - Pavlova. There was a bit of a errr shall we say incident with the Pavlova I made for this post .. and it has to do with a very fuzzy little cat called Rafale who lives with us…..

Look at him.. all innocent and cute …. but I tell you all, don’t be fooled by the fluffiness .. he’s trouble! More about Rafale later and the Pavlova incident.

There has always been a little contention over this being an Australian dessert or a New Zealand dessert. If you would like to read over the entire debate you can have a look here at the History and Origins of Pavlova and make a decision for yourself based on the evidence.

Honestly? I don’t really care who invented it, it’s a beautiful dessert and I can see why it was named after a ballerina. Light and airy it literally dances across your tongue. The crackle of the meringue on the outside gives way to a billowy sweetness that starts you thinking about having another piece before you have even finished your first. Because it’s so light you can indeed fit in that second piece without any trouble at all!

I’m not sure why this is often left to special occasions, it’s really very simple to make and if you throw it in the oven at the end of the day you can forget about it till morning. My mother used to make one almost every Sunday to take to Sunday lunch at my grandmothers when I was little. It was smothered in whirls of whipped cream and grated chocolate, sometimes with strawberries dotting the top. “I just need to cream the Pav!” Mum would be calling out just as we were about to leave for Grandmas.

This is not my mothers Pavlova recipe, this one belongs to Michelle from my workplace. Thanks Michelle! Not that there is anything wrong with my mothers recipe, I just needed to use more egg whites.

• 8 large egg whites
• 2 cups of caster sugar/superfine
• 1 dessert-spoon of Vanilla extract
• 1 dessert-spoon of Malt Vinegar

Topping

• 500 mls/2 cups of heavy cream
• 1 tspn of vanilla
• 2 Tblspns of icing sugar/powdered sugar
• fresh fruit of the season.

This is easiest with a hand held electric beater or stand mixer with the whisk attachment. If you’re really hardcore you can use a whisk, but you better have some serious stamina if you are going to whisk it by hand. I like to use the hand held beater so I can have a good sense of how stiff the meringue is.

Preheat your oven to 150C/300F

Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form.

Add in caster sugar 2 Tblspns at a time gradually, making sure they are completely incorporated before adding the next 2 Tblspns. Continue like this until you have used all your sugar.

When you have added in all the sugar beat in the vanilla and the vinegar.

You should have a stiff smooth meringue that is not grainy at all.

Place a piece of baking parchment on a tray and gently spoon your meringue into the centre of the sheet. Spread out into an even circle that is roughly 3 inches/8cm in height, you need to leave a little room for your meringue to spread ever so slightly. This particular pavlova does not spread a lot.

Note the split baking temperatures and times carefully

Bake at 150C/300F for 30 minutes

Turn oven temperature down and bake at 100C/210F for one hour

Turn oven off and leave the Pavlova overnight in the oven. Do not open the door until morning.

To remove your Pavlova from the tray, run an offset spatula under it or a sharp knife level with the tray and then carefully slide your Pavlova on to the plate you are going to decorate and serve it on.

This is not a small family sized Pavlova, this one will feed quite a crowd. It’s best eaten the day you take it out of the oven. You may see a few cracks in your Pavlova, don’t worry this is completely normal. It should look something like this.

There is divided opinion on putting cream on your Pavlova in advance or putting it on just before serving. I will leave it up to you. If you put it on in advance it will soften the outside a little - many people like it this way. If you put the cream on just before serving the outside will retain it’s crispness a little longer.

So I guess you are wondering what Rafale has to do with any of this?

I took the Pavlova out of the oven and put it on the bench - took a couple of photos of it without the cream on, to show all you fine people and then proceeded to get ready for work.

I came into the kitchen about 10 minutes later and looked at a little piece of Pavlova on the bench .. a very tiny piece.. ” Oh I thought, I must have knocked a little bit off.” Then I looked a little further and saw some blobs of Pavlova around the edge of the bench ….. the plot thickened.

Then I looked at the Pavlova, and this was what I saw

Two nice indents in the Pavlova.. then I realised that the little blobs of Pavlova on the bench were cat paw shaped. I turned around to see Raf sitting on the floor.. with Pavlova covered paws, shaking them around to get the Pavlova off … which of course only spread it further, including all over his back.

He’d jumped on to the bench and jumped up and into the Pavlova!….. Needless to say the Pavlova required some major surgery after it’s brush with Rafale, but fortunately just about anything can be rectified with a sharp knife, piles of whipped Chantilly cream and fresh summer fruit.

To make the Chantilly cream, put the icing sugar and vanilla into a large bowl with the cream, whip to soft peaks. Don’t over whip your cream.

Distribute your fruit over the top of the pavlova, leave for no more than 15 minutes before serving.

Have a little look at the Kiwifruit on the Pavlova, they are not your usual Kiwifruit. They are Kiwiberries which are about the size of a gooseberry. They belong to the same family as a Kiwifruit - sometimes they are called Baby Kiwis - which I find somewhat disturbing; since a baby kiwi is a little bird or a young New Zealander in these parts of the world.

They make an interesting topping on a Pavlova mixed with other fruits and add a verdant spot of colour. That is a smallish apple you can see in the background.

Your pavlova is best eaten the day you take it out of the oven. But it will keep in a sealed bag in a sealed container in a cool place for a few days if needed. Don’t keep in the fridge.

Keep out of reach of cats!

Today I have a guest blog from my beautiful and feisty oldest child, Leah. She’s moved back home to live with us after a period flatting and now I get to benefit from all her fabulous baking and cooking skills. Although in this case the cookies were made for another reason entirely. I’ll let her do the explanation.

This is Leah with her little brother Isaac - he has chocolate on his face from consuming a rather large amount of these cookies - mostly when he thought I was not looking.

Without further ado - a guest blog from Leah.

It’s the infamous Leah (devourer of Tangelo cake), and this is my go-to cookie recipe. These Chocolate Chip Cookies are also known as…. ‘Sorry I Spilled Red Wine on Your Carpet Cookies’.

I made these cookies this time around because, as you probably gathered from the beginning of this post, I had a rather shall we say ‘clumsy’ night at my boyfriend’s flat the other night. The spillage of one glass was acceptable, albeit all over the back of my dress (I don’t know how it happened either!), and all over the carpet, but spilled glasses #2 and #3 were just plain ridiculous! Feeling rather seedy and headachey the following day, I sought out this recipe, and got baking!

Sorry I Spilled Red Wine on Your Carpet Cookies

It makes about 60 cookies, is flexible with quantities (especially chocolate), and the cookies turn out delicious every time!

• 2 cups of white flour
• 2 cups of rolled oats
• 1 cup of dessicated coconut
• 200g/7oz butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup of soft brown sugar
• 1 cup of white sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• Chocolate chopped. Quantities optional!

Cream the butter and sugars together

Beat in the eggs

Add all the other ingredients, and mix.

Place teaspoon-fulls of cookie dough onto a tray

Bake at 180/350 for 8-12 minutes - adjust for your oven and if you like a crispy or chewy cookie.

These cookies are fantastic with the addition of nuts or raisins, mix up your chocolate types, use dark, milk, white or a combination of all three. This particular batch had the coconut omitted.

A really great basic recipe and perfect when you want to say “sorry”. A whiff of these warm chocolate chip cookies will melt anyone’s steely gaze.

How can you stay mad with someone in the face of such an honest and delicious cookie?

Next time you need to say you’re sorry - say it with cookies.