Food@RSO

Food@RSO tag:food.rantspace.org,2009-02-10://1 2010-03-01T12:51:15Z Food we eat and make Movable Type 4.23-en Chocolate Babka tag:food.rantspace.org,2010://1.125 2010-03-01T10:03:46Z 2010-03-01T12:51:15Z

I was going to save this recipe for some cooler weather, but it was just nagging at me to make it already, so I decided that I'd make use of the fridge and freezer's ability to slow down the...

Droidy

I was going to save this recipe for some cooler weather, but it was just nagging at me to make it already, so I decided that I'd make use of the fridge and freezer's ability to slow down the activity of the lively yeast that provides the leavening, and give it a crack over a few days. First, I had to come to terms with the sheer AMOUNT of chocolate, butter, and sugar in the recipe. It didn't really hit me until I converted the measurements to metric, and then I was all, 1 kilo of chocolate?! I hit Sweet As to see what kind of chocolate I could pick up in quantity, and ran with the idea of using dark chocolate Toblerone. X was a little bit up and down fevery all day, but he let me wheel him around the shops to gather the rest of the ingredients, and when he was down for his afternoon nap, the dough was made, the chocolate was chopped (yay for the food processor!), and the crumble topping also came together.

My comprehension skills were kind of a bit frazzled, because I ended up chucking in three whole eggs, instead of just two with the two extra yolks, which explained why my dough was so ridiculously sticky and impossible to handle, until I added some extra flour to compensate. Not having had real babka before, I couldn't say whether this drastically altered the desired texture/taste, but it seemed to work out OK, with an appropriately sweet-buttery-eggy bread and insane amounts of chocolate filling! I also have no idea why I've decided to learn about baking with yeast as leavening agent by picking these crazy recipes involving lots of extra stuff (maybe not as much extra work as such, just extra variables to potentially wreak havoc), instead of trying with something nice and easy (and potentially less wasteful if it turns out to be a mess!), but it didn't turn out to be a disaster despite my efforts, and I've still got 8 mini-loaves waiting to be baked! At least, the reviews of many babkas over at Serious Easts at least reassures me that what I baked at least bears a passing resemblance to the real deal - I might well try again when the weather's more appropriate! (AND I'll halve the recipe so I don't end up with babkas everywhere!). Hmmm, better stop rambling and get on with the recipe before I fall asleep on the keyboard!

]]> Chocolate Babka
Adapted from recipe here and here

354ml (1.5 US cups) warm milk (43°C)
14g active dry yeast
400g sugar, divided into 225g, 175g, and an extra pinch to go with the milk and yeast
2 whole eggs, room temperature
2 egg yolks, room temperature
1 egg, for egg wash purposes
750g (6 US cups) plain flour, plus extra for work surface
1 teaspoon salt
400g butter, divided into 225g, 175g, at room temperature, cut into small chunks, plus more if you're greasing bowls and pans *
1kg semisweet chocolate, very finely chopped **
2 1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon milk or cream

Streusel Topping:

375g icing sugar ***
167g (1 2/3 US cup) plain flour
170g butter, room temperature

OK, this is quite LONG and it sounds involved, but if you read and follow (hopefully better than I did at first pass!), it's not super complicated.

Pour the warm milk into a small jug or bowl ****, Sprinkle your yeast and a pinch of sugar over the warm milk, and leave it to sit for about 5 minutes while it gets all foamy.

In another bowl, whisk together 175g sugar, 2 eggs, and 2 egg yolks. Add the egg mixture to the yeast mixture, and whisk to combine.

Get your electric mixer's bowl, and add the flour, and salt. Using the paddle attachment, beat in the egg/yeast mixture on low speed until the flour is almost all incorporated (30 seconds). Change to the dough hook, add 225g cubed butter, and beat until flour mixture and butter are completely incorporated, and you get a smooth, soft dough that's slightly sticky when you squeeze it (about 10 minutes). If you do what I did and add three eggs instead of just two, you might need a little extra flour to bring the dough to the right texture. Easier to just not do what I did, ok? (:

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead for a little bit until smooth. Grease a large bowl, and place the dough in this bowl, then cover with some plastic wrap. Set the bowl aside in a warmish place for about an hour, or until the dough has doubled in size. I took a picture at this point, so I'd remember what it originally looked like.

To make the chocolate filling, place the chopped chocolate, cinnamon, 225g sugar in a large bowl. Add 175g cubed butter, and use two knives or a pastry cutter, cut the butter into the chocolate mix until well combined. Set this aside for when we assemble the loaves.

Grease and line the tins you'll be using. I used one loaf pan, one springform long oval pan, and a tray with 8 mini loaf tins, because I don't actually own three loaf pans.

Prepare the egg wash by beating one egg with one tablespoon of milk or cream.

Prep the proofed dough by punching it back gently, turning it out onto a floured surface, and leaving it alone for about 5 minutes. Cut the dough into three equal portions. Keep the other portions covered while you work with the first piece.

On a generously floured surface, roll one piece of dough out into a 40cm square - it will be pretty thin - about 3mm.

Brush the edges of this square of dough with some egg wash. Crumble about 1/3 of the chocolate filling evenly over the dough, leaving a border about 5mm around. Roll the dough up tightly like a jelly roll. Pinch the ends together to seal. Give the roll about 5 or 6 turns, then brush the top with more egg wash. Crumble about 2 tablespoons of the chocolate filling over the left half (across length, not along length) of the roll, then fold the right half over the left, fold the ends under, and pinch to seal. Twist the roll a couple of times, then fit it into the prepared loaf pan. Repeat this with the remaining pieces, adjusting to suit the tin size you're working with.

Heat oven to 180°C. Brush the top of each loaf with egg wash. Crumble 1/3 of the streusel topping over each loaf. Loosely cover each of the pans with some plastic wrap. Leave the loaves to stand in a warm place for about 20-30 minutes.

If you're wanting to freeze some loaves to bake later, the time to do this is about now. To bake them after being frozen, leave the loaves to defrost at room temperature for about 5 hours prior to baking.

Bake the loaves, rotating halfway through, until golden (about 55 minutes). Lower oven temperature to 165°C, and bake until the loaves are deep golden (about 15-20 minutes more). The internal temperature of the loaves will be heading towards 89-93°C from what my googling tells me. I overshot this temperature by about 10 degrees on one of my loaves, which made it a bit dry (nothing a cup of tea wouldn't fix!), and just about hit the mark on the other loaf (which I thought might've been a bit dry also, but seeing as I didn't have any of this loaf, I can't say!). I'll update this once I get to baking the 8 mini loaves, with approximate times for the minis, as well as suggested internal temperatures.

Remove the pans from the oven, and leave to cool on racks. Un-pan the loaves, and enjoy!

Apparently these loaves can be frozen before or after baking for up to 1 month.

* I went with lining the pans I used with baking paper, and spraying the bowl that the dough proofed in, with some olive oil spray.

** I used a bunch of dark chocolate toblerone, because that's what I could find at a reasonable amount (both quantity and price), and I made use of our food processor to do the chopping. Otherwise this would've taken more than just X's nap to get ready!

*** I actually used caster sugar here instead of icing sugar. It worked ok as far as I could tell!

**** I poured the milk into a microwave-safe container, and nuked it for about 45 seconds on high, then checked the temperature with our yet-to-be-used-for-candy-thermometer. I overshot, then waited too long, so I chucked it in for another 15 seconds and it was about right (:

]]> Lime and Coconut Slice tag:food.rantspace.org,2010://1.124 2010-02-28T12:15:44Z 2010-02-28T12:43:09Z

Droidy

I am not entirely certain what I was looking out for when I stumbled upon this lime and coconut slice recipe, but seeing as I had rather a large amount of lime juice (both frozen, and not yet juiced), compared to the amount of lime zest (in its intact form), *and* I had condensed milk, and everything else that the recipe was asking for - it was kind of like the recipe was daring me not to make it! I did increase the amount of lime filling by another third, because I had one third of a can of condensed milk left from making the week's batch of rice pudding with a reduced quantity of the sweet stuff, but I won't go and list the situation-specific quantity adjustment here, or you'll be left with 2/3 of a can of sweetened condensed milk to use up. Having said that, it would be a really good excuse to make some dulce de leche in the oven... Anyways, the recipe was a doddle to throw together - easy enough that I didn't mind getting it done after X had gone to bed for the night.

]]> Lime and Coconut Slice
Adapted from recipe at Baking Bites

125g butter, softened
200g (1 cup) brown sugar
150g (1 cup) plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
45g (1/2 cup) rolled oats *
45g (1/2 cup) dessicated coconut **
1 can (395g) sweetened condensed milk
125ml (1/2 cup) fresh lime juice
zest of 2 limes

Preheat oven to 175°C. Line a 20cm square baking pan with baking paper.

Cream butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add flour, salt, and baking powder, and mix until it comes together in a crumbly kind of way. Mix in the oats and coconut. The mixture isn't meant to be super smooth - it will be reasonably dry and sandy, but it'll hold together a bit.

In another bowl, whisk together the lime juice, lime zest, and sweetened condensed milk. It should thicken up a bit.

Place 2/3 of the oat mixture into the bottom of the lined baking pan, and press it down to cover the base. You might want to use a second small sheet of baking paper and a flat-bottomed glass to help with getting the base squished enough. Pour the lime mixture over the base, making sure it's levelled out. Crumble the remaining oat mixture over the top of the lime mixture.

Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until golden brown - you'll be able to smell the base being toasty.

Leave it to cool completely before slicing it into squares. This theoretically makes 25 squares - I think I cut 36, but I cut them into X-sized pieces for everyone (:

* Original recipe mentioned you could use either whole or quick cooking oats - I used whatever we had that we were using for ANZAC biscuits

** Original recipe specified shredded coconut, but I had dessicated coconut on hand, so I used that. Shredded coconut would give you bigger coconut bits in the base/topping, so go with that if you're after that sort of thing?
]]> Dinner @ Golden Dragon Palace, February 2010 tag:food.rantspace.org,2010://1.123 2010-02-28T04:41:27Z 2010-02-28T05:57:11Z

We had a kind of last-minute (visiting relos of relos) CNY dinner at Golden Dragon Palace on the first Monday during the Chinese New Year festivities, and we were there again on the middle Sunday, with a mostly different group...

Droidy We had a kind of last-minute (visiting relos of relos) CNY dinner at Golden Dragon Palace on the first Monday during the Chinese New Year festivities, and we were there again on the middle Sunday, with a mostly different group of people. Mum and Dad decided not to go for the CNY-themed dinner again for the Sunday, because they'd had quite a few of these themed dinners in the last week (seeing as they were definitely in CNY dinner mode!), so the pics for this dinner were more from the standard menu at Golden Dragon Palace. Anyways, bunches of pics, after the jump (:
]]> To start with, we had a melon soup, cooked in the melon. Chef dude carved the characters for Gung Hei Fat Choi into the skin of the melon - makes it feel all iron-chef-like!

Gung!

Hei!

Fat!

Choi!

Anyways, soup! It had melon, and pork, and um... some other stuff. Was tasty though, X ate a fair amount of melon!

Crab with Noodles - we got a different sort of noodles this time, instead of the usual skinny egg noodles, we got a flatter sort. X demolished a bunch of noodles. This was good, because we got to enjoy it hot - congealed cornstarch-thickened sauces are not so tasty!

Beef with honey-mustard sauce served on a bed of snow peas. The beef was really tender, with a not too-crazy-sweet honey-mustard sauce, and the snow peas were nice and crisp. This was definitely one that X liked (:

Gai Larn with prawn cakes. We thought X would like the prawn cakes, but he didn't want to try these the other night. I'm sure he'll have more opportunities to give these prawn cakes a go.

Salt-crust baked chicken. I didn't actually have any of this - was pretty full from everything before this came out!

Steamed fish. We almost always have steamed fish when we're out to a Chinese restaurant. It was ok - I'm not generally a fan of this sort of fish, but hey, there were other sauces to drown it in!

Sweet and Sour pork - again, didn't actually have any of this.

Pi Pa tofu with Bak Choy - the tofu is called Pi-Pa because it's shaped like the chinese lute known as a Pi Pa. These had good flavour - not too much of the mix-ins, so that the tofu got lost, but not too much tofu so that it was only tofu.

Green Bean Sweet Dessert Soup. It makes a change from the almost ubiquitous red bean soup that we seem to get everywhere else. I know it looks weird and not particularly green or sweet, but it was nice. Probably an acquired taste though - the Cantonese are good for eating weird stuff?

Overall it was good - only the melon soup was pre-ordered (it requires extra prep time), the rest was from their normal menu.

]]> Rice Cooker Rice Pudding tag:food.rantspace.org,2010://1.122 2010-02-20T04:43:12Z 2010-02-20T11:09:32Z

I wasn't entirely sure how to take a pic of rice pudding and make it look like food, so I decided that having X in the shot would be a useful diversion *grin* This was based on something that...

Droidy

I wasn't entirely sure how to take a pic of rice pudding and make it look like food, so I decided that having X in the shot would be a useful diversion *grin*

This was based on something that Decay sent over to me, and the amalgamation of a bunch of google-fueled research, and it was made in the last week because we had a surplus of milk to use up in a short amount of time. And because we decided to make it in the rice cooker, we had a minimum quantity to make as well, so it wouldn't dry out in porridge cooking mode, so we've been eating rice pudding for many breakfasts this week. X of course thinks this is a brilliant idea, given how much he is a fan of rice, but we've both enjoyed it too (: If anything, it could stand to be less sweet than it ended up with a whole can of sweetened condensed milk making up one of the 6 parts of liquid in total.

]]> Rice Pudding in a Rice Cooker
Adapted from many sources - proportions from Joy The Baker

1 cup of short- or medium-grained rice - arborio was what we had on hand
2 cups of water
1 can of sweetened condensed milk
milk to make up 4 cups total including the condensed milk (just under 3 cups)
A splash of vanilla extract

Put the rice and water in your rice cooker, and set it to cook like plain rice.

When the rice is done, add the milk and vanilla extract, stirring to make sure the condensed milk is mixed through. Set the rice cooker to cook again - if your rice cooker has a setting for porridge or congee, use that setting. Check it every 10-15 minutes or so, giving it a bit of a stir til you get to the consistency you're after.

You can have this warm, or cold - we liked it reheated in the microwave (:

Other things you could put in include:

dried fruit
lemon zest
cinnamon
cardamom pods
stewed fruit
coconut milk in place of some or all of the milk
fruit juice in place of some or all of the milk/water

]]> Chicken cooked in Milk tag:food.rantspace.org,2010://1.121 2010-02-19T11:25:56Z 2010-02-19T11:52:55Z

Droidy

This was dinner on Wednesday night, just as it went into the oven for some cooking time. There are no pics of the finished or plated dinner, because we were all too hungry for me to remember to get the camera out and snap some pics before we dug in *grin*

I picked this recipe because we had a bunch of milk to use up - I'd picked up some milk, but didn't notice the use-by date was in only four days til after we got it home. A bunch of milk was used up making rice pudding in the rice cooker, and a bunch more milk was used to make this dish. I quite like dishes where there's a little bit of prep, and then you get to chuck it in the oven and leave it alone to do its stuff - small amount of work for a reasonable payoff. Lumpy was over for dinner as well, so most of the chicken (served with peas, and I guess what could be called a warm potato salad) was had for dinner.

What was left over became dinner with pasta and capers and sundried tomatoes on Friday night, and the cooking liquid (after straining to remove the solids) has been used as stock to go in both Thursday night's savoury mince, and Friday night's pasta. The chicken got a whole bunch of colour and flavour prior to the milk bath in the oven from a shallow fry in a fair amount of butter with a glug of olive oil, which meant that the in-oven shot was rather better looking than it could have been with raw chicken (:

]]> Chicken cooked in Milk
Adapted from recipe from Jamie Oliver

1 whole roasting chicken *
salt and pepper
125g butter
olive oil
1/2 stick cinnamon
1 bunch (about a handful) of fresh sage leaves
zest of 2 lemons
10 cloves of garlic, unpeeled
600ml whole milk **

Preheat the oven to 190°C. Season the chicken generously inside and out with salt and pepper.

In an oven-proof and stove-safe pot that will be a snug fit for the chicken, melt the butter with a glug of olive oil. Fry the chicken in the butter and olive oil until golden brown on all sides. Remove the pot from the heat, take the chicken out of the pot, and drain away the butter, leaving the crusty bits behind. If your pot is like ours (a round cast iron Le Creuset), it will be HOT, so be careful with lifting it up to pour out the hot butter!

Put the chicken back in the pot, and add the cinnamon stick, sage leaves, lemon zest, garlic cloves, and milk. Place the pot in the oven, uncovered for 1.5 hours, basting the chicken when you happen to remember.

You'll end up with a cooking liquid that has what you might consider cheese curds in it. To serve - pull the chicken apart into pieces (you'll get crispy skin for the chicken parts above the level of the milk), spoon some of the cooking liquid over the meat along with some of the curds. We served this with peas and a warm potato salad (dress sliced boiled potatoes with some oilive oil, lemon juice, brown sugar, salt, pepper, and dijon mustard). X demolished a large amount of potatoes and meat, and I think he at least shelled one pea if he didn't eat it (:

You can choose to have some of the cooked garlic if you like - we just strained off all the solids and kept the liquid that remained, for use as stock in the dinners for the next couple of nights (:

* We got a size 14 chicken.
** I have no idea how much milk was in with the chicken - all I know is that it went to about halfway up the chook, and it was probably closer to 700ml, because I really really needed to use up the milk!
]]> Vanilla Bean Sour Cream Pound Cake tag:food.rantspace.org,2010://1.120 2010-02-19T10:40:05Z 2010-02-19T11:23:54Z

Droidy

It had been two weeks since the weather had cooperated enough for me to bake something on a Wednesday; those at work on diets/lifestyle modifications/whatever the current term is, were possibly OK with the removal of one source of temptation. However, I was getting itchy baking fingers, and needed for some baking to go rather more smoothly than the pull-apart loaf that was ok despite my non-attempts at actually following directions! So, Donna Hay got another spin. I went with using a vanilla bean, rather than using extract, because it had been a while since I'd had a go at splitting a bean down the middle and scraping out the seeds with the back of a knife. Cake in the oven also has calming properties to X - he woke up from his nap not long before the cake was due to come out of the oven, and although he was a bit grumpy at having woken up, he was much happier when I showed him what was in the oven!

]]> Vanilla Bean Sour Cream Pound Cake
Adapted from recipe by Donna Hay: Modern Classics Vol 2

250g butter, softened
250g (1.5 cups) caster sugar
1 vanilla bean *
6 eggs
250g (1 cup) sour cream
400g (3 cups) plain flour
1.5 teaspoons baking powder

Preheat oven to 160°C.

Split vanilla bean down the centre, and scrape out the seeds with the back of the knife.

Cream butter, sugar, and vanilla bean seeds until light and fluffy - you'll probably need to scrape the sides down a few times to make sure everything goes pale.

Add eggs one at a time, making sure each one is incorporated before adding the next, then add sour cream and beat well.

Sift the flour and baking powder over the mixture, and stir with a spatula to combine.

Spoon the cake batter into a 25cm diameter springform tin (I lined the tin with baking paper because I'm paranoid like that), and bake for about an hour, or until cake tests clean with a skewer. I found this cake was done at about 52 minutes. It was 52 minutes because that's what my timer decided to start at when I was setting the initial countdown time, and it doesn't go backwards.

* For those interested, this was a madagascar bourbon vanilla bean (: The emptyish pod went into the caster sugar to join the other stripped beans.
]]> CNY Dinner @ Hu Tong, Prahran tag:food.rantspace.org,2010://1.119 2010-02-19T04:54:27Z 2010-02-19T06:17:21Z

Droidy

We were at Hu Tong (at their Prahran location) for Chinese New Year Eve dinner with my parents, and S, G, and E. There had been a lot of talk previously about Hu Tong from B and Em and others, and how delicious their dumplings were, so we were all definitely looking forward to the evening's food! This is a newer location of their two - the other one is in Market Lane in the city. Its all dressed up, sleek wood with decor totally unlike what you'd find at your standard Chinese restaurant, which I guess fits in with its location amongst other possibly hip and happening places. Turns out that X was quite scared of the Lion doing the dancing (a change from last year when he was into all the noise and kerfuffle!), so while he enjoyed the food, he went for a walk with various people while the Lion was doing its thing. I've put the pics after the jump, cos there's a bunch of them!
]]> First up, we had a bunch of cold dishes for starters.

Pickled carrots - these were crisp and refreshing.

Drunken Chicken. This was silky smooth, and X ate a bunch of this.

And here's an action shot!

Spicy Toothpick Beef. X really really wanted to try this one, because everyone else semed to be enjoying it, but it was probably going to be too spicy even for X, so we just shared it around so it was finished before he asked again *grin*

Spicy ... Vegetarian Meat Substitute! I actually don't know what this is, it could be a gluten flour creation (like seitan or something. It was just as spicy as the Toothpick Beef, the texture was kind of like compressed fried tofu. X also wanted to try this one, because we all looked like we were enjoying it (:

Cucumbers with sesame and garlic - I want to say that they're pickled but I'm having a memory blank here!

Smoked fish - tasty and savoury meaty - X accepted this in place of the spicy things we didn't feel game to let him try *grin*

War Tip (or Jiao Zi) - O.M.G - these were the best I've had since when we had Yum Cha breakfast in Vancouver when Decay and I were there back on our honeymoon trip. These were tender, juicy, and nothing like the solid lumpen balls of meat we usually get at Yum Cha at various places. Davids do a reasonable rendition, but I don't think they had the delicate lacy crust that comes from steam-frying the dumplings and not moving them til they're ready to be slid onto a plate for serving.

And here's a shot of one of the dumplings, separated from its pan-mates.

A steamer basket full of cute little Xiao Long Bao ... mmm... delicious ... X would've eaten a whole bunch of these if we'd let him, but we were trying to pace his eating so he wouldn't be all full before the end! These were super-soupy, with the perfect thickness of dumpling skin to be strong enough to hold everything in, but not so thick that it gets all gloopy in your mouth.

Duck Slicing, in preparation for Peking Duck! You can see in the background the window in to see the roasting ducks, and also, the window into the kitchen to watch people churning out trays full of all sorts of dumplings.

Tasty Peking Duck! The duck was definitely not dry, and had heaps of ducky flavour. They asked whether Mum wanted to take the remaining duck carcass home (of course!), which got turned into duck rice porridge. Mum said that the duck was very clean on the inside - no marinating ingredients to be found at all. We reckon that the duck was instead brined to help with the juiciness and flavour, instead of having random spices thrown into the cavity during the roasting.

Lobster and Noodles. Tasty enough, but by the time it was all dished out to us the noodles and lobster were cold. Probably because the server decided to portion the dishes just outside the open door, which was letting in a cool breeze. Still tasty, just not at the right temperature.

Fried fish, with colourful vegies and sweet and sour sauce. I have no idea why we ended up with sweet and sour sauce with fish. I know why we had fish - that's something that's part of standard Chinese New Year menus for all the punny Cantonese reasons.

Spicy Beef with Snow Peas - this was good - tender beef, spicy, but not so much that X couldn't handle it!

Beans with Pork Mince - another tasty dish - we ended up taking the leftovers of this dish home with us, and had it for dinner. It's something that invariably gets ordered when we're out for dinner with my parents (:

Red Bean Pancakes with icecream wedges. I don't know what the drizzle over the icecream is - could be honey, maltose, golden syrup, caramel ... The odd thing about this dessert was that it was just plonked on our table without any serving dishes or additional cutlery. Icecream isn't one of those things you can eat with chopsticks in a bowl with your rice and other dinnery things ...

Overall, I'd say I enjoyed the first half of the Chinese New Year set menu a lot more than the second half - the dumplings and cold starters were definitely the standouts, and what I gather this place is known for. The second half while OK (nothing wrong with it besides some serving temperature issues and teething issues related to being a newish location with newish staff who mightn't know what shoudl be done), we could've had at many other places, just not in the same ambience. I know that my parents are plotting a return to this place just for their dumplings, hopefully we'll be along for the visit too!

]]> Lemon and Lime pull-apart loaf tag:food.rantspace.org,2010://1.118 2010-02-18T11:11:34Z 2010-02-18T12:31:28Z

Droidy

The recipe for this loaf pretty much had 'BAAAAKKKE MEEEEEEE' written all over it when I saw it about a few weeks ago, but it's taken the best part of a month to have weather, time, and availability of citrus fruits in our house to get happening. Despite quite a few recipe mis-steps (forgetting to add the water, not managing to roll out the dough so it was more evenly rectangular, over-baking due to a mis-calculation of conversion from Fahrenheit to Celsius), this was good, and worthy of a retry, when I have enough citrus fruit to zest, and perhaps also used up some of our freezer stash of lemon juice and lime juice. The recipe originally had sugar with lemon and orange zests sandwiched between the layers of dough, but seeing as there was a bit of a special on limes when I went to stock up on lemons, I went with the lemon and lime combo instead.

]]> Lemon and Lime pull-apart Loaf
Adapted from recipe at Leite's Culinaria via Recipe Reviews @ The Kitchn

For the sweet yeast dough:

350g (2 3/4 cups) plain flour, divided into 250g (2 cup) and 100g (3/4 cup) portions.
50g (1/4 cup) granulated sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
80ml (1/3 cup) whole milk *
60g unsalted butter
1/4 cup (67.5ml) water
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs, room temperature

For the lemon-lime filling:

100g granulated sugar
zest of 2 lemons
zest of 4 limes
60g unsalted butter, melted

For the cream cheese icing:

80g cream cheese, softened **
40g (1/3 cup) icing sugar
15ml milk
15 ml fresh lime juice

In the bowl for your stand mixer, combine 250g of the flour, sugar, yeast, and salt.

Melt the butter and milk in a saucepan over low heat, then remove from heat, add the water, and set aside until the liquid is warm (about 49-54°C), then add the vanilla extract.

Pour the milk mixture over the flour-yeast mixture, and mix this through the dry stuff with a spatula, until the dry stuff is evenly moistened. Fit the bowl back into the mixer and with the mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (not the dough hook!), beat the eggs in one at a time on low speed.

Stop the mixer, then add about half the remaining flour, and start mixing again until the dough is smooth (30-45 seconds). Add two more tablespoons of flour, and mix on medium speed until the dough is smooth, soft, and slightly sticky (~45 seconds).

Dust your workbench with some flour, and place the dough on the floured bench. Knead gently until the dough is smooth and not sticky (~1 minute). Add extra flour (1-2 tablespoons) only if needed to make the dough less sticky.

Place the kneaded dough in a lightly oiled bowl, then cover with some plastic wrap. Leave the dough to rise in a warmish place (21°C or thereabouts) for about an hour, or until the dough has doubled in size. You can check this by poking the dough - if the indentation stays, the dough is ready for the next step.

Meanwhile, make the filling by mixing together the sugar, and lemon and lime zests in a small bowl. It should feel kind of like wet sand. Set the bowl aside.

When the dough has risen sufficiently, lightly grease a loaf pan (23cm x 13cm x 7.5cm) with butter or non-stick spray, and get your workbench ready with a light dusting of flour. Gently deflate the dough, then place it on your floured workbench and roll it out into a rectangle (50cm x 30 cm).

Brush the rolled out dough generously with the melted butter, then cut the dough into 5 strips (about 10cm x 30cm).

You'll be stacking these strips, with some of the sugar + lemon-lime zest mixture in between - sprinkle about 1.5 tablespoons of the sugary zest mixture on one of the strips, then stack another strip on top, repeating until you've stacked everything up.

Cut the stack to create 6 stacks of rectangles about 10cm x 5cm. Fit these stacks into your prepared loaf, cut edges up, and side-by-side. Loosely cover the pan with some plastic wrap, and let it sit in a warm place to rise for 30-50 minutes, or until puffy and almost doubled in size. You can test this the same way as before - if poking it leaves an indentation, you're ready for baking! While you're waiting, preheat the oven to 175°C.

Bake the loaf for 30-35 minutes, or until the top is golden brown (and if you have a probe thermometer, the inside registers 93°C). Transfer to a wire rack and cool in the pan for 10-15 minutes.

To make the icing, mix the cream cheese and icing sugar with a rubber spatula*** until smooth. Beat in the milk and lime juice with a whisk until the mixture is creamy and smooth.

Un-tin the loaf by running a knife around the edge first, then flipping it over with a plate or wire rack over the top of the cake. Put another rack on the upside down cake, and flip again to get it right way up.

Drizzle the icing over the loaf while still warm.

* Actually, it's probably closer to 78ml, but who's counting? - our replacement digital scales, that's who!

** You can get individually packaged (I think they're 40g) little tubs of cream cheese, which saves you from having to hack up a big block/tub of cream cheese, if you're not one to use heaps of the stuff.

*** This marks the first use of the spatula that came with X's tupperware cooking set - it's not bad, actually! Not better or worse than the Kenwood spatulas I prefer most of the time, but because it's substantially thicker than the Kenwood spatulas, it did a good job beating the cream cheese and icing sugar into submission!

And after all that, here's a shot of the insides! None of this actually made it into the office, because most of it got eaten up by the residents of this household *grin* X approved, despite it being a bit dry from the overbaking it received.

]]> Yum Cha @ Superstars, Australia Day 2010 tag:food.rantspace.org,2010://1.117 2010-02-07T01:49:38Z 2010-02-07T03:51:43Z

Droidy link to a review of a bunch of yum cha places, and when I sent that over to Stirfry while wondering out loud in gchat whether they were up for some yum cha on the public holiday, Mum rang back, Decay answered the phone, and was met with a question - whether we had any specific places in mind for this yum cha. We generally trust Mum and Dad's judgement - they seem to have their ears to the ground on all things related to delicious Chinese food, but after a bit of ringing around of places Mum wanted to try, they either didn't offer yum cha, or weren't open on the Tuesday. Which is a roundabout way of explaining how we ended up at Superstars again. I think X's first experience of yum cha was at Superstars, and he would've been maybe 6 weeks old?

Anyways, pics after the jump - it's only taken me about 4 days since I started typing this, to actually finish it!
]]>

This is Lor Mai Fan, with chicken... so I guess that makes it Lor Mai Gai (: Sticky rice wrapped up in a lotus leaf, with chickeny bits. X demolished at least half of one of these packages.

Scallop and Prawn dumplings. Reasonable prawns, scallops that weren't particularly scallopy but not offensive in any way.

Har Gao - prawn dumplings. X liked the insides, but wasn't so much of a fan of the wrapper. As far as wrappers go these were ok - not too thick. The dumplings were kind of on the big side, but not the biggest we've seen. I kind of prefer the little ones - they're daintier, and also, don't fill you up so quickly so you can try more stuff!

Siu Mai - pork and prawn dumpling, half a bite taken by Decay (with chilli sauce!), pic taken just before he ate the other half. Again, tasty, but kind of big.

X yumming up some dumpling bits. We decided to let him use the bowl provided at the table, by sitting it in his rimmed plate. It meant that even if there was a little bit of sliding about, there was less chance that the bowl would go flying off the table flinging dumpling bits everywhere.

Pai Guat - Pork spare ribs with garlic and soy sauce and probably some other things. Tasty, slippery little morsels of meat. Very garlicky this time!

Beef and coriander meatballs. Tasty but super punch of coriander flavour this time around. Texture was kind of spongy soft, which X didn't seem to mind.

Prawn bits wrapped in beancurd sheets, then fried. Crunchy and bouncy, all at once!

Lai Wong Bao, innards - this is a sweet bun with a custardy inside.

Char Siu Bao, innards - steamed bbq pork buns, yum! X used to LOOOOVE these buns, but he seems to have gone off them lately...

Black Sesame bun.

Black Sesame bun, innards. The inside filling was nice, but there wasn't enough of it to make up for the tough bun - it felt like these had been nuked in the microwave to reheat, and they hadn't survived the treatment well.

We also had Dou Fu Fa (Bean curds in sweet gingery syrup) as part of dessert, but no pic, because taking a pic of some white tofu in a white bowl, with a white spoon, on a white tablecloth, doesn't make for a particularly interesting pic.

Overall, Superstars is reasonable for yum cha as a local. There are better places in Melbourne, but they're a longer drive away from where we are.

]]> Braised Beef with Carrots tag:food.rantspace.org,2010://1.116 2010-01-31T03:52:06Z 2010-01-31T05:02:24Z

This was dinner on Wednesday night, because I was looking for something that I could prep and then leave to cook for the afternoon so that X and I could get out of the house for a bit of...

Droidy

This was dinner on Wednesday night, because I was looking for something that I could prep and then leave to cook for the afternoon so that X and I could get out of the house for a bit of a shuffle around the suburbs. We had chuck steak in the freezer, and most of the ingredients in the house, and I improvised the herbs and flavourings. It smelled mighty tasty while it was cooking, but it needed a little adjustment once it was out of the oven - a little bit of a flavour boost from some of Decay's not particularly secret ingredients, which might've made some French dudes turn in their graves, but it did let us get dinner on the table not too long after Decay was home from work!

]]> Braised Beef with Carrots
Adapted from recipe at Serious Eats

1kg beef chuck steak, or gravy beef *
Olive Oil
8 carrots - 4 peeled and chopped into thirds, 4 peeled and chopped into disks
2-3 onions **
2 cloves of garlic, smashed
3 bay leaves
3 allspice berries
some dried mixed herbs
1/2 cup red wine
2-3 cups chicken stock ***

Sweet Potato and Carrot mash

A couple of sweet potatoes
some milk
some butter
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 135°C.

Heat some olive oil (enough to coat the bottom of the oven-safe and stovetop-safe pot you're using) on medium-high heat. Season the meat with lots of salt and pepper, then brown the meat in batches, making sure you don't overcrowd the pan. Make sure you brown the meat enough to get some crusty bits. Remove the meat from the pan once it's sufficiently browned, and continue until all the meat is done.

Add a little more oil to the pan, reduce the heat to medium-low, and add the carrots that had been cut into thirds, onions, and garlic. The disked carrots will be added once most of the cooking is done. Add the bay leaves and allspice berries, and saute gently until you can smell the garlic (about 5 minutes).

Add the red wine, and use it to deglaze the bottom of the pan. Let it simmer for a bit (til it doesn't smell so much of the alcohol) - about 2-3 minutes.

Place the meat inbetween all the carrots and onions. Add the chicken stock, and bring to a boil. Put this pot, covered, in the oven for 2.5 hours. This will need to cook for a total of 3 hours.

At the 2.5 hour mark, add in the disked carrots. Put the pot back into the oven for another half an hour.

For the mash, peel and chop the sweet potato, and boil them in some salted water until tender (about 20 minutes). Drain the water, then add some butter, and a bit of milk, and mash.

After 3 hours, take the pot out of the oven. Take out the big chunks of carrot, and any bay leaves/berries/etc you can find. You can do what we did and mash the big chunks of carrot into the sweet potato. Add salt and pepper to the sweet potato (and carrot) mash to taste.

You might need to do a bit of either reduction of the liquid that the beef has been braising in (if you have time!), or add some worcestershire sauce and/or tomato sauce, before thickening (if required) with some beurre manie (equal amounts - a tablespoon or so - of butter and plain flour, mashed together to form a paste), or some cornflour slurry (a spoonful of cornflour mixed with enough cold water to form a drippable paste).

This happily serves one Decay, one Droidy, and one (21 month old) X for two dinners, and lunch for one Droidy. I think at the original proportions this was meant to feed 4.

* I used chuck steak. I would otherwise have used gravy beef. I guess, if I was needing to go to the butcher I'd have gotten short ribs, but anything that counts as long cooking beef for stews will work here.

** I didn't have any pearl onions, so I just used about 4 of our decidedly smaller than usual yellow onions

*** Original recipe asked for beef stock. Now that I've made this I think I'd go with half beef stock and half chicken stock. I went with all chicken stock (home made stuff!) because that's what I had in a quantity that would work.
]]> Lime and Sour Cream Cookies tag:food.rantspace.org,2010://1.115 2010-01-31T03:24:01Z 2010-01-31T03:46:47Z

Droidy

Indulgence Cookies: A Fine Selection of Sweet Treats

This was one of the books I received in my birthday gift from B & C, Em and M, and Jul (I think I need to update my in-FAQ cast and crew!), and I've been flipping through it to see what I was going to try as my first recipe. It's an important step, as it quite often sets the bar as to whether you think any other recipe afterwards from a book will give you a similar experience as what you had from the first recipe you tried. I decided over breakfast on Wednesday morning that the Lime and Sour Cream cookies looked interesting for a simple list of starting ingredients, and when had a moment (while X was playing with Duplo and watching Iggle Piggle and Upsy Daisy), the cookie dough came together and then had some time to chill in the fridge.

Straight out of the oven, they were a tender kind of cookie; the next day, they were crisper, but still with a bit of chew. Both straight out of the oven and once they'd done their cool-down, the citrus flavour was there.

]]> Lime and Sour Cream Cookies
Adapted from recipe in Indulgence Cookies: A fine selection of sweet treats

125g unsalted butter, softened
225g (1 cup) caster sgar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
zest of 2 limes *
90g (1/3 cup) sour cream
250g (2 cups) plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Cream butter, sugar, and vanilla extract until pale and fluffy. You might need to scrape down the sides a couple of times, to make sure everything gets beaten.

Add the sour cream and lime zest, and beat until just combined. Add the flour and baking powder, and stir through with a spatula or wooden spoon to form a soft dough.

At this point, I stuck the dough in a bowl, covered it with glad wrap and put it in the fridge for a while.

When you're ready to work with the dough, preheat oven to 180°C.

Shape teaspoonfuls of the dough into balls, placing them about 2-3cm apart on a tray lined with baking paper. Flatten the balls slightly with the tines of a fork. I decided to flash-freeze the pre-formed cookies.

Bake for 8-10 minutes (thawed)/10-12 minutes (from frozen), or until the edges are lightly golden. Allow the cookies to cool on the tray for a few minutes, then transfer to wire cooling racks.

This batch of dough made 62 cookies.
]]> Lamb Koftas (Shish Kifte), from Moorish - Greg and Lucy Malouf tag:food.rantspace.org,2010://1.114 2010-01-26T11:29:48Z 2010-01-26T12:02:26Z

Droidy

One of the books I received for my recent birthday was from DKtE - Moorish, by Greg and Lucy Malouf. It has a heap of recipes that sound like they'd be delicious even before they're made, and the narrative amongst the recipes serves to give context to the methods and ingredients utilised. I've been flicking through and mentally bookmarking which recipes I'd like to have a go at making too ... that honey and cinnamon cheesecake near the end of the book is telling me I need to make it at some point!

We've been getting lamb koftas from various butchers around here, as a quick dinner idea, so when we saw a recipe for shish kifte in this book, we figured it would be worth a go. The first time we made these, we got the butcher to mince some extra fat through with the diced lamb being turned into mince for us. They were tasty, but we thought they could've done with even more of a flavour burst. The second time we made these, the butcher misunderstood Decay's request for lamb mince, and instead gave us lean (beef) mince. They were tasty, but didn't taste like lamb, and didn't have the fat content to give them the right texture. Third time, and we got minced lamb, no extra fat, we forgot about any green leafy content in the mix, but they were still yum! I like how this particular recipe has basically given us a general method to work with, and Decay's pretty much just run with it and tweaked things to suit what he's aiming for. Anyways, Decay's preferred mix is still in the works, but this is what dinner looked like on Monday night:

]]> Lemon and Passionfruit Slice tag:food.rantspace.org,2010://1.113 2010-01-26T04:50:40Z 2010-01-26T05:53:31Z

Droidy

There has been a bit of reciprocal baking offering happening in the office recently - I'd mentioned to a couple of the people in finance (previously call-centre people like me), that if they were popping by, there might be some cake or biscuit or something for their trip back to their desks, and recently, they've been popping over and offering a slice or biscuit in return too (: One of these offerings was a lemon slice, which had a reputation already as being something worth savouring, since one of the guys in my team used to be in the same team as the person offering said slice. I didn't get much of a taste of this slice, seeing as I'd saved it for X to have a little bite after daycare, and judging from his reaction, it was indeed as tasty as my little corner bite led me to believe.

So this afternoon on Australia day, I went looking for something to bake while X was having his nap for the day. The electronic scales had an altercation with our cast iron grill plate last night, and kind of don't really want to measure anything anymore, so I'm back to the analog scales and measuring by volume. I had lemons, and also a couple of passionfruit about, so this recipe fit the bill nicely. The above picture is actually of the slice pretty much straight out of the oven, need to let it cool before I go slicing it up! Hopefully I'll remember to take a picture once we've sliced it up and had a taste (:

]]> Lemon and Passionfruit Slice
Adapted from recipe at allrecipes.com.au

100g butter, softened slightly
50g (1/4 cup) icing sugar *
150g (1 cup) plain flour
A teeny dash of almond extract **

For topping:

2 eggs
zest of one lemon ***
1 tablespoon lemon juice
A teeny dash of lemon essence ****
200g (just under 1 cup) caster sugar *****
50g (2.5 tablespoons) plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
pulp of 2 passionfruit ******

Preheat oven to 180°C. Line a slice pan (about 19cm x 29cm x 5cm *****) with baking paper. Cream butter and icing sugar until pale and fluffy, then stir in the flour. Press the mixture into the prepared pan.

Bake the base for about 20 minutes, or until lightly browned.

When the base is almost ready, make the topping - lightly beat the eggs with the lemon zest, then add the liquid ingredients, then the dry ingredients and stir until combined.

Take the base out of the oven, and pour the topping over the base. Return the pan to the oven and bake for another 25 minutes, or until top is crisp.

Let the slice cool in the pan, then cut into squares, dusting with icing sugar if desired. Hre's a pic of some slices:

And here's one showing evidence of passionfruit:

* I measured with a 1/4 cup scoop, and then weighed what the scoop picked up. It's closer to 40g than 50g if you were wanting to go by weight.

** I had half an idea to replace some of the plain flour with some almond meal but I'd already measured out the flour, so I put in a teeny tiny dash of almond extract instead.

*** Original recipe asked for a teaspoon's worth of zest. I was zesting the lemon anyways, and it looked to be about one lemon's worth of zest so I went with it.

**** I also went with a teeny dash of lemon essence, because it was there? I'm thinking it couldn't have been more than 1/8 teaspoon.

***** Original recipe asked for 1 cup, which is really 220g. Measuring 220g on analog scales isn't easy, and I've been reducing most of the 1 cup to 200g in the recipes I've been trying. We'll see how this goes with the lemon and passionfruit and how tart it is - at least I've still got the icing sugar dusting up my sleeve for adjustments!

****** Original recipe asked for pulp of just one passionfruit, but the passionfruit we had didn't look like they had much pulp so I put two in.

]]> Dinner @ Jimmy Leung's Kitchen, January 2010 tag:food.rantspace.org,2010://1.112 2010-01-25T05:32:07Z 2010-01-25T11:52:07Z

Droidy Jimmy Leung's Kitchen in Doncaster East. I think the reason for going out to dinner was that my parents hadn't worked out what they were going to do for dinner, and they'd rung us anyways to ask about something completely unrelated to dinner. We're generally up for some dinnery action together!
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This is Dad, and Mum - Dad with a rare smile in a photo! You can see the backlit picture of a waterfall (it's a picture overlaid on top of an opaque plastic with a lightbox behind it or something).

This is my brother Stirfry Ninja looking reasonably bemused that I pointed the camera in his direction. You can see the bowls lined up in front of him, awaiting the arrival of some soupy goodness, as well as the ever-present pot of Chinese tea. Behind is the frosted glass window dividing the dining area from the kitchen - it's a one chef place, I'd be surprised if it seated much more than 30 at a time. When we were there, there was a larger table of 9 or 10 up the front, a couple of tables with 2-4 people, and our table of 5 plus X.

This would be Decay looking a bit resigned that the camera was pointed his way. And yeah, the camera got him with his eyes closed, oops (:

X got stuck into some prawn crackers once we were all seated - lately, he's not been too happy with sitting at the table if the wait for food gets a bit long. I can see his point - why would you want to be sitting down when there's cars and trucks and vans and stuff outside to point and look at ?

We got a special soup - normally, a soup comes as part of a set menu, and it happens to be the house soup of the day. Tasty, but nothing remarkable. Mum decided to order one of the different soups they had - this one had young coconut meat, and Goji/Wolf berries , dried dates, and lots of tender and still tasty chicken pieces. It was very savoury, and I know it looks 'thin', but it was actually a big hit of rich, but still clean in mouthfeel. X really enjoyed the chicken pieces, but didn't want to try the soup. I reckon he would've really liked the soup, but there's no point in forcing him into anything - it's not worth the angst it causes!

Here's a pic of the soup, close-up. You can see that the broth isn't cloudy - it's dark in colour, but you can still see the stuff that's in the bowl. Normally when you get the meat from a chicken-based soup, it's been boiled to death and is all stringy and doesn't have flavour anymore. Here, I think they would've added more chicken pieces to cook through after the soup was made with some chicken that was strained out of the presentation bowl. That, or the cooking was so gentle that the chicken never got to the stringy stage.

The szechuan pepper sizzling crab is one of the specialties of this place - the crab gets the sizzling plate treatment with szechuan pepper and spring onion and ginger. It was delicious - X had a fair amount of the crab meat that we picked out for him, asking for more! from all of us!

The crab came with some noodles with a crab-based broth. These noodles were bouncy and gently infused with the savoury-sweet crab broth.

X had noodles, long and short, and he drank the crab broth and asked for more!

Next up were the main course dishes:

Steamed chicken with lup cheong, spring onion, mushrooms (reconstituted dried shiitake, I think), and soy sauce - the leafy thing is a lotus leaf, I think? This chicken was also tender and full of flavour.

Spicy beef over egg custard. Mum and Dad chose this because it was something they hadn't heard of being put together. The custard was all egg white and possibly some chicken stock, quite (I want to say bland, but that's not quite the right word) in contrast to the peppery sauce that the pieces of beef were draped in. The beef chunks were tender, but still needed some teeth work that X was sometimes unwilling to deal with - there were a few mini chunks just chewed out of all their flavour (:

Fried then braised fish with bitter melon, black bean, and fried beancurd. Bitter melon is kind of an acquired taste. It seems to get cooked with stuff a lot because it adds a mellowness and depth to the flavour of a dish. Cooked right, the melon won't rip your mouth lining out from the bitterness, but make the flavours fill out your mouth. Even if you don't eat the melon itself, it kind of imparts this flavour rounding on the rest of the elements in the dish. I have no idea what this fish was, but it was meaty and textured enough to stand up to the strong flavours. I don't think X tried any of this, but the rest of us enjoyed the fish.

Snowpea shoots with mushrooms. The mushrooms were the usual reconstituted dried mushrooms that have appeared in a lot of dishes I've had. I don't remember actually getting any of the snowpea shoots - I was pretty full from everything else! We did have an interloper in a patch of the snowpea shoots in the way of extra protein from a caterpillar in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that probably didn't affect how much of this dish was eaten - it came quite late in our procession of main course dishes, so we were all nearing our limits by the time it was on the table.

For dessert, we had orange slices ....

slices of watermelon ...

... and a cold dessert soup with sago, coconut, and taro. Kind of hard to take a picture of a white bowl, with white soup, and clear bubbley bits, and chunks of purpley-white taro ... It was cool and kind of refreshing. I think they made this in anticipation of warmer weather expected for the weekend that we went, but it wasn't as warm on Sunday when we went as it was the day before.

We all really enjoyed this dinner - you wouldn't know from seeing this place from the side of the road that this wasn't really an ordinary suburban Chinese restaurant. Then again I think both Decay and I are a wee bit picky when it comes to trying out Chinese restaurants because neither of us want to have anything to do with the Aussie-fied 'Chinese' food that's out there. We've had the real deal, so that's what we go looking for!

]]> Cinnamon Bun Cake tag:food.rantspace.org,2010://1.111 2010-01-15T11:57:50Z 2010-01-22T05:22:36Z

Droidy

So, my hankering to bake something wasn't appeased by the crunchy chickpeas, and I'd found this recipe earlier in the week (back when it was 40°C outside and the air-conditioning at work was trying its hardest to keel over). It looked like it would be something nice quick to throw together, which, for a Friday night after a day where I felt like I needed more sleep before I started the day, was definitely something in its favour.

]]> Cinnamon Bun Cake (thing!)
Adapted from recipe at Framed

200g plain flour
70g caster sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon instant dried yeast
166ml (2/3 cup) warm milk (37.5°C or thereabouts)
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg

For cinnamon topping:

45g butter, softened
150g (3/4 cup) dark brown sugar *
1 heaped teaspoon ground cinnamon

For icing:

65g icing sugar
2-3 teaspoons milk or cream **

Grease or line a 20cm square tin.

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, and salt.

In a jug, dissolve the yeast in the warm milk, then add the milk mixture, along with the oil, vanilla extract, and egg to the flour mixture. Mix this with a spatula until very smooth, then pour this into the prepared tin. Leave the dough to rest for about 15 minutes or so.

While the dough is resting, prepare the topping - using a spoon, mix together the butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon in a medium-sized bowl until all the butter has been incorporated. It'll be a bit crumbly-clumpy.

Scatter the topping over the rested dough; poke some of the clumps down into the dough with your finger. It looks like heaps of topping, more than required to cover the top surface of the dough, but a bit of prodding and poking will sort it all out.

Place the tin into a cold oven, then set the oven to 175°C. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until cake is lightly browned at the edges, and the centre of the cake springs back when you poke at it. You might still have some bubbling melted sugar.

Leave the cake to cool for about 30 minutes.

Make up the icing by mixing together the icing sugar and the milk/cream, then drizzle this over the cake. Serve warm. Apparently this reheats well in the microwave. I'd say, due to the dairy content of the icing, store any leftovers in the fridge.

* Original recipe didn't specify dark or light brown sugar, and when I'm given a choice most of the time I'll go for dark

** I used cream, I also only made up half of the original amount of icing. Despite this, I only used up just over half of the quantity of icing I made.

Here's a look at the cake, pre-icing:

You can see all the divots and craters my poking and prodding did to the top of the cake - looks a bit like a scorched alien planet surface ... except for the tell-tale cooling rack underneath the cake, and the kitchen sink in the background ... (:

And here's a bonus pic of X enjoying some cinnamon bun cake (for breakfast ... !):

]]>