Wednesday 11 August 2010

Paper Chef #55

Its been a while since I've had the time & motivation to post a recipe, but I forced myself to do this month's Paper Chef Challenge.
As soon as I saw the ingredients that had been posted by Alessio from Recipe Taster I knew what I wanted to make - some type of fruit buns. With the random ingredients of Dried Dates, Cranberries, Flour, & Candied Orange Peel it was just a matter of what type sweet bun to make.
I settled on a type scroll, something I hadn't done before to give me a bit of a challenge. With this recipe you can change the types & proportions of dried fruits that you use. As I'm not a fan of the candied orange peel, there was significantly less of it....


Spiced Fruit Scrolls
Contents
2 cups self-raising flour
pinch salt
90g butter
2/3 cup milk
filling
60g butter
3 tbls brown sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
200g finely chopped dried fruit (in this case dried cranberries, dates & orange peel)
Glaze
1/2 cup icing sugar
2 tbls hot water

Structure
Preheat oven to 210c.
Sift flour & salt into a bowl.
Rub the butter into the flour using your fingertips.
Add most of the milk mixing lightly, to form a soft dough, add more milk if needed.
Knead the dough lightly & roll out into a rectangle 25x40cm.
Filling
Beat the butter, sugar & spices until light & fluffy.
Spread evenly over the rolled out dough.
Scatter the dried fruits evenly over the butter mixture.
Firmly roll up the pastry from the long side.
Cut into 3cm slices and place cut side up on a lightly greased tray. Be careful not to put them too close together (like I did) or they will turn into one solid pastry.
Bake for about 12min or until golden brown.
Glaze
Mix the icing sugar & water to form a runny syrup.
When the scrolls are ready remove from the oven & place on a rack to cool.
As they are cooling brush with the glaze.

Thursday 5 August 2010

Mace

The good thing about a multi-cultural society is that you have access to a wide variety of produce & spices. European, Asian, Indian, Native Australian, & to a lesser extent Central & Southern American goods are now readily available, relatively affordable & of a high standard. Take this Mace for example. A large bag of it bought from our local Indian store just around the corner. Not some crushed up dried out leftover husks, but full pungent shells begging to be used. Love it :)