Chocolate Hot Cross Buns

Happy Easter everyone!

Today I have a final Easter recipe for you - chocolate hot cross buns. This recipe is technically a throwback to last year, but I am reposting it with better pictures.

I'm now off to spend the weekend with my family (brother, parents and Dad's parents) but will be back next week for my uni break. Hope everyone is well!

So, about these chocolate hot cross buns. They are a perfect Easter treat - for your kids, for you, for brunch, for breakfast, for a snack; hell, for anytime and anyone. So, while they are not healthy, I promise you the taste makes up for it. Besides, a little bit of chocolate never hurt anyone.

This is a brilliant recipe for Easter. We had ours with cold orange juice, which was amazing, and some Carmello and Malteser eggs. Obviously, as this is an Easter themed treat, you can serve it with anything you want – but we loved having ours as a mini-brunch.

Recipe adapted from: Achieve Success

Makes 12 hot cross buns.

You will need:

-          1 ½ cups warm milk (I warmed mine in the microwave for about 45 seconds)

-          2 sachets of dried yeast (mine were 7g each)

-          ½ tsp salt

-          ½ tsp sugar

-          4 cups self raising flour

-          1 tbsp cocoa

-          1 tsp cinnamon

-          2 tbsp sugar

-          55 g butter, melted

-          1 egg

-          1 cup chocolate chips (I used ¼ cup dark (bittersweet) chips, ¾ cup milk chocolate chips)

-          1/4 cup water

-          1 tbsp sugar

-          Nutella / chocolate ganache (Recipes of mine which include ganache are: Malteser Brownies and Roasted Cherry Brownies with Roasted Cherry Ganache

What to do:

In a large bowl combine milk, yeast, salt and ½ tsp sugar in a large bowl. You have to mix this together well – I prefer to use a wooden spoon. Make sure the yeast is well mixed in. Cover loosely with plastic and leave bowl in a warm spot for 10 minutes or until the mixture is slightly bubbled on top. Mine was not very frothy/bubbly, but I left it for around 12 minutes and there were bubbles on the top of the mixture.

In another large bowl, sift flour, cocoa and cinnamon together. Add the 2 tbsp of sugar, frothy yeast mixture, butter and egg. Stir until the mixture comes together. It will be a thick, shaggy dough and very sticky. Turn the mixture out onto a well floured bench. Make sure your hands are well floured. Knead the dough until it is smooth. I had to knead mine for 10-15 minutes. It actually wasn’t working for a while, so if this happens for you, just do what I did – leave the dough for a minute or two and let it breathe. Then, retry. My dough wasn’t perfectly smooth, it was still a little sticky but it stuck together.

Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl (I simply sprayed mine heavily with coconut oil). Cover the bowl with a plastic wrap. Leave the dough in a warm place so the dough will rise. I left mine for about 1 hour 10 minutes, but leave for up to 1 hour 30 minutes if the dough has not doubled in size. Mine doubled very quickly – in fact it rose over the bowl and stuck to the plastic. There is nothing wrong with this, it means you’ve done a good job. I went for a run while my dough was rising.

Once the dough has doubled in size, punch it down to its original size with your fist. This is the best bit of the recipe – it’s so much fun.

Turn down on to a floured surface and add the chocolate chips slowly, kneading the bread until the chips are evenly spread throughout the mixture. 

On a tray or in a large, deep pan, divide the mixture into twelve equal portions to make twelve balls of dough. Mine were not perfectly circular – not at all. But it doesn’t really matter, it still looks good. Make sure you place the balls about 1 cm apart, as the dough has to rise one more time.

Cover the balls with plastic wrap and leave the pan in a warm place until the dough has doubled in size. This takes about 30 minutes. I left mine for a good 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Bake the buns for 15 – 20 minutes. The top of the buns will be a golden brown and when a skewer is inserted into the dough it should come out clean. This may take less time depending on your oven – keep a good eye on it.

If you want to glaze the muffins, simply boil the water with the remaining 1 tbsp of sugar for about 3 minutes. Then brush the sugar mixture over the warm muffins.

After this, while the muffins are warm, make the crosses. I used a knife and Nutella to simply spread the nutella over the buns to make a cross. I also used, for these pictures, homemade ganache, which I simply placed in a zip lock bag, pushed down to one corner, cut the corner of the zip lock bag off, and squeezed out the ganache to make the crosses.

Serve warm. You can serve them at warm temperature, but warm, when the chocolate chips melt out into your mouth, is so much better. These buns can be reheated easily. I don’t know how long they last in the fridge, because we ate them all.

Chocolate Banana Bread

It is now less than a month until Christmas! And, just over a month until I go to America. I'm pretty excited about it all - and like I've said before, if anyone has any suggestions on where to go in Boston/MA and NY and the east coast, please let me know!

As for Christmas, I think I can now officially start singing carols without people getting annoyed. I absolutely love this time of year - it's summer, it's hot, you can swim all day, it's uni/school holiday time, it is my birthday, my Mum's birthday, one of my best friend's birthday, my cousins birthday and there are several large family parties going on. A hot Christmas is what it is all about. I've only ever had one cold/snowy Christmas, when I was in Italy. Granted it was one of the best Christmas's ever; we went ice skating in the town square, had a seafood lunch, got to play in the snow, and do all those things I've only ever seen in the movies. So this year, while Christmas itself will be hot as usual, I'm hoping for snow in America so I get a cold New Years.

Now, enough about Christmas for now.

I love this bread. It is so incredibly moist (as awful as that word is) with soft chunks of fresh banana and a delicious chocolate kick. There is a definite banana flavour to this bread, but I would not go as far as to say it is exactly like banana bread. You could probably eat this bread at any time of the day – its light enough for breakfast. The chocolate is not heavy or thick and the bread itself is more cake-like then bread like.

Level of Difficulty: Relatively easy

Average Cost: Not expensive at all

Main Ingredients: banana, cacao powder and raw honey

Occasion: Any damn time – even breakfast

Menu Options: Remember, raw cacao powder and raw honey have a much stronger taste than regular cocoa powder and honey, so you may have to alter measurements if you don’t have these ingredients. I do not believe Greek yoghurt is necessary, but I am not sure if the batter will be as thick or fluffy if you use normal yoghurt. You could always add a variety of nuts and dried fruit to this, swirl through peanut butter, nutella or melted chocolate, or glaze the top of the bread with cream cheese frosting. However, in an effort to keep this healthy, I’ve stuck with the basics.

Inspired by: Full Measure of Happiness and PB & Peppers. Just so you know what I mean when I say this – I decided I wanted to make a healthy chocolate and banana bread, so I went about researching ingredient substitutes and looking at some recipes online. These two recipes were my favourite and so by looking at these two recipes and ingredient substitutions and from my own knowledge of baking (which is limited) I came up with my recipe. In no way is my recipe barely adapted or just altered from these two amazing recipes, it is entirely its own. However if you are looking for two other great recipes, these would be my suggestions.

Makes 12 slices – nutritional values are for one slice.

Please read the note at the end of this recipe.

What you need:

1 ½ cups whole wheat flour

½ cup raw cacao powder

½ tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

2 large bananas, mashed

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

¼ cup raw honey

170 g Greek yoghurt (1 tub of plain Chobani was what I used)

½ cup dark chocolate chips (or your choice of chips)

What to do:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease a bread pan well (I use oil spray and make sure the pan is liberally covered in it)

In a medium sized bowl combine the dry ingredients (the first six). Stir well.

In a large bowl, beat together the bananas, eggs, vanilla, honey and yoghurt. Use a stand or handheld mixer. Make sure you mix these ingredients together well, though if little chunks of banana remain that is fine.

Slowly combine the dry ingredients with the wet, using the mixer to mix together the ingredients. Be very careful not to overmix here – make sure a few little specks of flour remain in the batter.

Add the chocolate chips and stir in with a wooden spoon. This is when the last of the flour should disappear.

Pour the batter into a regular bread pan and bake in the oven for 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the batter comes out clean. ***

As the bread is soft, allow to cool for a little bit before slicing. I would allow to cool completely, because if the bread is too hot when you cut it, it will fall apart.

* This is a great trick = Cover the bread with foil for the first 30 minutes of baking. This will prevent the bread from browning too quickly, as is what happens when honey is used instead of sugar in baking. Then remove the foil for the final 15 minutes of baking and keep an eye on the bread to make sure it does not burn. If you do not do this, your baking time will vary and I am not sure how long it will take.

Bread will last for three-five days. After that, I’d be wary – it goes very soft.

Mushroom Crostini

Today is my Dad’s birthday.

Want to know something pretty weird? My parents are born in the exact same year. Because of this, I always thought that everyone’s parents were the exact same age. This was mostly untrue.

But, in another weird twist, my roommate Marnie’s parents are also both born in the same year. In fact, the same year as my parents. Her dad is also a few months older then her mum. And I am only one month older than her (not even a month).

So, there’s some random information you guys don’t care about.

As for these crostini’s – they’re for my Dad. When I was in high school and incredibly stressed, or whenever I complained about being hungry and that there was nothing in the house (which was A LOT), he would offer to make me toast with cheese and soft mushrooms. It was, and remains, one of the best things he can make.

These crostini’s, in my opinion, are not like my Dad’s. They comes close, but they’re not quite the same. He made his on toast or sourdough, with buttery fried mushrooms and different cheese – not necessarily ricotta all the time.

Having said that, please do try this dish. I’m not trying to scare you away. This is a really good, quick entree or light meal. I would totally make these as canapés for a party (served warm from the oven), or as an entree at a dinner party or for a light lunch or snack. You don’t have to make them baguette style – you can always make them on regular bread (though I’d recommend some kind of yummy, thick, doughy, bread like sourdough).

I would not recommend changing the cheese on these – the flavours of the ricotta, mushrooms and parmesan just work so well together. The mushrooms are soft and tangy, while the bread is dense and chewy. The ricotta is much heavier tasting the parmesan, but the sharp kick from the sprinkle of parmesan definitely adds something to this dish.

So, Dad, this is for you. Thanks for making sure I survived high school and that awful first year of university. Thanks for making sure Mum and I didn’t kill each other. Thanks for making sure I didn’t kill my brother (which as we all know, may still happen). Thanks for teaching me the value of kindness. Thanks for believing in me.

Level of Difficulty: Easy – oh, so easy

Average Cost: $$ - depends on the mushrooms and the bread you buy

Main Ingredients: mushrooms, parmesan and ricotta

Menu Options: I really wouldn’t recommend changing too much about this recipe. It is pretty simple, very easy to make and does not require a lot of time or attention. You can change the cheeses around – goats cheese or fetta might work, but you would have to play with flavours as I don’t think parmesan would suit either goats cheese or fetta. You can obviously use your favourite type of mushrooms – mine just happens to be swiss brown mushrooms.

Makes 8 crostinis- nutritional value is approximate here, as it is difficult to calculate how much bread, parmesan, lemon juice and thyme is used.

What you need:

-          Large wholemeal baguette or sourdough loaf

-          4 large swiss brown mushrooms (or other type, these are just my favourite)

-          2 tbsp butter

-          1 crushed garlic clove

-          2 tbsp ricotta cheese

-          Parmesan, to serve

-          Lemon juice, to serve,

-          Dried thyme, to serve

What to do:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. While the oven is heating up, cut the baguette into 8 thick slices. You don’t want the bread too thick, and most times I can cut my baguette into 16 slices. If you wish to make 16 crostinis do so, just remember to double the recipe.

Slice the mushrooms finely. Over medium-high heat, melt the butter in a frypan. Add the garlic to the butter when it is just starting to melt, so the flavours combine. Add the mushrooms to the frypan and the bread to the oven at the same time.

Bake the bread for five minutes, turning halfway.

Fry the mushrooms for five minutes, constantly stirring to ensure they are coated in garlic and butter.

When the bread is a golden brown (which may take longer than 5 minutes depending on your oven) remove from the oven and play on a tray.

Leave the mushrooms over heat.

Divide the ricotta evenly among the baguette rounds, using a knife to spread the cheese over the surface of each round.

Add the sautéed mushrooms to the top of each baguette, dividing the number of mushrooms evenly among the baguette rounds.

Top each crostini with a sprinkle of parmesan cheese, a tsp or so of lemon juice (simply squirting the juice unscientifically from the bottle is fine), and dried thyme.

Serve while warm.