Hot cross buns with boozy raisins

Although I'm not Christian, seven years of living in the UK and going to an Anglican church has left me with a fondness of some of the cultural traditions celebrated there (mostly food related!): Shrove Tuesday (better known as Pancake Day), Christmas (with its lovely roast chicken and bread sauce), and of course, Easter. Easter's not just about chocolate bunnies and Cadbury Creme eggs. It's also about hot cross buns: a lightly spiced, sweet bun with a sticky sugar glaze.

It's not yet Easter (technically it's still Lent so I really shouldn't be indulging with such rich food as butter and spices, but oh well), but I decided to make hot cross buns today.

One of my favorite British recipe websites is Really Nice Recipes, a wonderful and carefully curated selection of recipes. The site design is very user-friendly, and all the recipes that I've tried thus far from this site have worked. Not one dud so far!



I used the hot cross bun recipe from this site, but added in a few tweaks of my own:

1. Instead of 190g strong/bread flour, I used 140g bread flour + 30g rye flour + 20g sourdough starter. 
2. I soaked the raisins overnight in a mixture of dark rum, Cointreau and a splash of Rogue Hazelnut Nectar brown ale before proceeding with the recipe. Very naughty! :)

Dark craft beer chocolate cupcakes with stout

Dark chocolate cupcakes with stout

Aren't these cute? 

I made these mini cupcakes using exactly half the ingredients of the recipe for dark chocolate birthday cake with stout. The instructions are the same, and you should end up with 36 mini cupcakes. (I used three pans similar to the Wilton 12-cup mini muffin pan.) It should also be enough to make 18 normal-sized cupcakes (three 6-muffin pans).

The dark chocolate ganache was quite rich, so I might try using cream cheese frosting next time.

In other news, I will be at the Island East farmers/craft market on March 3, selling all sorts of craft beer from Hop Leaf. I am planning to test-drive some of my baked goods there, too (this means free samples of food!). If you're in Hong Kong, please come and say hi. :)

Barm bread (sourdough)

Poppy seed barm bread during the second rise

I've been busy baking and using my homemade sourdough starter recently. After trying the popular Taiwanese 65C tangzhong/water roux method, I came across a traditional British baking method called "barm" that is very similar, except you use ale instead of water to make the roux. Barm bread usually has a more flavor due to the use of beer, and has a lighter, fluffier crumb (texture) due to the gelatinous roux which allows the gluten in the flour absorb more moisture. The secret to making great bread is to have the dough as wet as possible. 

Making barm bread is a process that can be separated into two distinct parts: first you need to make the barm, then you use the barm to make the bread. 

Barm:

• 250ml (8.5 oz) ale -- while any bottle-conditioned beer works, I used Baird Brewing's Single-Take Session ale as I thought it would give a light, rustic flavor. A stout or porter will give you a darker, maltier barm.
• 50g (1/2 cup) bread flour (sifted)
• 4 tsp white leaven/sourdough starter, or 1 tsp active dry yeast

Baird beer from Numazu, Japan

1. Heat the ale in a saucepan on medium heat until 65C (if you don't have a thermometer, don't worry, you can eyeball it. Wait until you see some bubbles form but don't let the ale boil over!)
2. Remove from heat and whisk in the flour, stirring rapidly to avoid lumps forming. Don't worry if you get lumps, if needed you can strain them out with a sieve later after cooling. It should have a slightly translucent brown (exact darkness will depend on the type of beer you used) and have the consistency of hair gel/pomade.
3. Put the ale-flour mixture into a small bowl and let cool to 20C (room temperature), then stir in the leaven or active dry yeast.
4.  Cover with plastic wrap or a clean cloth, and let the barm sit overnight for up to 48 hours until nice and bubbly.  If it doesn't bubble, your yeast/starter is dead and you'll have to start again.
5. The barm is now ready to use in making bread! It can replace your sourdough starter in most bread recipes.

Sourdough barm bread with poppy seeds:

• 150g barm, from above (I used all of the barm made from the above recipe without measuring it, which turned out fine)
• 250ml (8.5 oz) water
• 500g bread (high-gluten) flour; or 400g bread flour and 100 g wholemeal/rye flour
• 10g (2 tsp) salt
• 2 tbsp poppy seeds (optional)

1. Mix the barm and water together until the barm is completely dissolved. 
2. Add the flour and salt, then mix until you get a wet, shaggy dough. It will be a sticky mess!
3. Put in a bowl, cover and leave at room temperature for 12-18 hours. 
• If your room is warmer than 20C, you might want to put the covered bowl in the fridge to keep the dough temperature down and allow time for the flavors to develop during the long fermentation. 
• You can also split the rise time over two days: I made the dough after dinner one night, then put it in the fridge overnight. I took it out the next morning and left it on the countertop all day. When I came home from work 12 hours later, the dough had finished the first rise. 
4. After the first rise has been completed (dough will be double in size), punch down the dough and scrape it out onto a floured surface.
5. Shape the dough into whatever form you like. I made four oval rolls.
6. If using poppy seeds, sprinkly on top now. 
7. Place the shaped dough onto your baking sheet (I use Silpat to avoid the bread sticking to the metal pan, or you can use baking paper), and let rise in a quiet, dry area until doubled (1-2 hours).
8. Bake in a preheated 220C/425F oven for 30-40 minutes or until golden brown.
9. As with all bread, resist the temptation to eat or slice the bread as soon as you take it out of the oven! Let cool to room temperature before serving.

Golden-brown poppyseed barm rolls 

Dark chocolate craft beer cake with dark chocolate frosting

Birthday cake

An easy way to make sure that your cake is tender and not too dense - whip the egg whites separately to the egg yolks and fold them in at the end. While the extra step is a bit of a pain, the end results are TOTALLY WORTH IT (and worthy of the capitalized letters!). 

Being a shareholder in a start-up beer distributor means that we have a lot of great craft beer around. While I love to drink beer, I can only drink a glass before getting full. My preference is to cook with it. I find that using beer in cooking imparts a certain fullness of flavor to the food but is still subtle enough not to overpower it. I've made Irish beef stew with Tokyo black porter, salted caramel ice cream with Rogue Hazelnut Nectar brown ale. However, one of the recent standouts has been this decadent, rich dark chocolate cake made with Tokyo black porter, but would likely also work well with any other stout, porter or good dark beer. I plan to make it with Rogue Mocha Porter soon. 

This chocolate cake is extremely rich and dense, with a thick chocolate ganache frosting. A small slice would go very well with coffee (or ice cream). Top with your favorite fruit or candy - or leave plain. While you can splurge and use the best dark chocolate to make this cake, I find that the 100g bars of chocolate such as Lindt works fine. (I like to use the cheaper dark chocolate sold in Ikea food mart - it's half the price of Lindt and has a very good texture and taste. I've also used Green & Black chocolate too for special occasions.) I suppose you could also use baking/unsweetened chocolate too, though I can't guarantee the results. Chocolate is the star of this cake, so you want to use the top quality chocolate you're willing to pay for. 

The full amount for this recipe below makes one round 9-inch layer cake (using two 9-inch round pans), or you can halve the ingredients to make a 9-inch square cake. 

Bon Appétit!

Ingredients

Cake: 

• 3 oz (85g) dark chocolate (preferably min. 60% cacao)
• 2 cups all-purpose flour + 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (200 g flour + 50g cocoa powder)*
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 200g (1 3/4 sticks) butter (room temperature)
• 200g (1 cup) + 3 tablespoons caster/granulated white sugar
• 3 large eggs, separated
• 3/4 cup stout, porter or dark beer such as Rogue Mocha porter or Tokyo Black porter
• 1/2 cup espresso or strong coffee (cooled)

* Cocoa powder is optional. If you don't have it, just make up the difference with the flour. 

 Frosting: 

• 450g (1 lb) dark chocolate (50-60% cacao)
• 2 cups heavy whipping cream (I used UHT whipping cream because it's hard to find fresh cream in Hong Kong)

Method:

Cake:  

1. Preheat oven to 350F or 180C. 
2. Butter and use baking paper line your two round 9-inch cake pans (or one pan if using a half-recipe). Set aside. 
3. Melt the chocolate for the cake in a bain-marie (put a metal bowl on top of a saucepan of barely simmering water), or microwave it. See here for a quick guide to melting chocolate. Set aside. 
4. Whisk together the dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt). Set aside. 
5. Using a mixer, beat the egg whites and 3 tablespoons sugar until stiff but not dry. In layman's terms, this means that the egg whites look like meringue and stay in the bowl (they don't slosh about or fall when you tip the bowl sideways or upside down). Here's a good Chowhound thread about beating egg whites. Set aside.
6. Wipe clean your beaters and use another bowl for the butter and sugar. Using a mixer, cream (beat together) the butter and sugar until fluffy and pale yellow. Add egg yolks 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in melted chocolate, then the beer and coffee. Add in flour in 2 additions until incorporated. (If you overmix the batter, your cake crumb may be coarse and tough.)
7. Gently fold in your egg whites in 2 to 3 additions to the batter. Don't overmix the batter to avoid dissolving the egg whites - the air in the beaten egg whites helps to lighten the texture of the cake!
8. Scrape the batter into pan, then bake in oven until cake tester comes out dry (about 30 minutes). 
9. Remove from oven and transfer to cooling racks. 

The cake can be made ahead 1 day before frosting and assembly. (Cover and store and room temperature. Or, if you're really busy, make it ahead up to 1 week in advance and freeze the cake layers individually. Defrost it before adding frosting.)

Frosting: 

1. Placed chopped chocolate in a metal bowl.   
2. Heat cream in a saucepan until simmering. 
3. Pour hot cream over the chocolate. 
4. Wait one minute, then whisk together until mixture is smooth.
5. Chill in fridge until thickened and spreadable (2 hours in fridge or 30 minutes in freezer). 

The frosting can also be made ahead separately and stored in the fridge up to 3 days before assembling your cake. 

Assembly:

1. Frost your cake, then top with your favorite toppings (white or other colorful toppings are a good contrast for the dark chocolate). For this winter birthday cake, I used white chocolate bark, white chocolate Maltesers, fresh pomegranate seeds, and diced fresh red pear.
2. For layer cake, you may need to use a serrated knife to level off the top of the cake in order to get flat even layers. 
3. For single-layer sheet cakes, you can stick the entire cake (wrapped/covered in plastic wrap) in the freezer for up to two weeks. I highly doubt it would last that long, though!

The last slice...

Checking in (and a tuna Niçoise recipe)

I'm alive! *dusts off blog* Whew, it's been a while since I've posted, hasn't it?

Fried cheese curds at Bastille Days in Milwaukee

Work and a lot of travel has kept me crazy-busy. Since my last post, I went to New York for a week and a half, Vancouver for a few days (including a crazy YVR-San Francisco - Tokyo - HK return flight due to the Fly America Act and missing my flight because of delays), Bangkok again in June, and Jon and I just returned a few days ago from three weeks in the US. (It looks like there's going to be another New York trip as well as Shanghai trip in early September too -- I like NY, but I'm at the point where I just want to stay home for now and don't want to travel for work!)

We went on a pilgrimage to New Glarus Brewing Co in New Glarus, Wisconsin (which is a mock-Swiss chalet town)

But let me think about happier things - like the great vacation I just had :). We spent three weeks visiting Jon's family and friends in Madison & Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (or, to be more accurate, Jon was the one who drove), where we eat a lot of good fresh food and drank even more fantastic craft beer (we squeezed in trips to two breweries - New Glarus and Lakefront). We also went to the Packers Hall of Fame at Lambeau Field in Green Bay (it's an NFL American football thing, but it was pretty neat to see the Lombardi Trophy and Aaron Rodger's Superbowl ring).

It's funny, because I used to be such a geographical snob -- growing up, my family lived in Vancouver (Pacific Northwest) and I went to college in upstate New York, or having a transfer flight at O'hare airport, I didn't know much about the mid-West ("the fly-over" states?!) The only time I had been in the Mid-West was during a crazy 3-week road trip from Vancouver to Prince Edward Island and back (West to East Coast was through Canada; East to West was through the US on the I-90), where we ate Chinese food almost every night, thanks to my dad's need to eat rice with every meal. But that's another story for another time.

Cattle prices on the Agricultural reports on the TV news

What I want to say was I found myself really, really liking Wisconsin and the U.P. -- the commitment to sustainable local produce, the appreciation for the good things in life (cheese curds, sausages, beers, frozen custard!) and the friendliness and lack of pretentiousness that people had. It's very different from big-city Hong Kong or New York city, where I get tired about all the prattling about brand names and money and showing off. 

Jesse works for Alterra Coffee, which has awesome coffee and baked yummies. Their graphic designer is really talented - I love my Alterra T-shirts! :)

Here's one meal that Jon's sister Jesse and I made one sweaty evening in Milwaukee during that heat wave where it was in the 90s (Fahrenheit, which is about 32 C or so -- but in a place where they don't have air cons!).

Tuna Niçoise

Jesse bought the tuna steak from Trader Joe's. The fingerling potatoes and green beans we bought from the local farmer's market (not really a market, more like a cluster of stands on a street corner) in the Riverwest neighborhood of Milwaukee where she lives. The lettuce were grown by Jesse in planter pots on her deck.  It was one of the best meals I've had in a long time -- the potatoes were fresh and sweet, and the beans were crisp and tasted of sunshine and good things.

Eating out in Taipei

Jon and I visited Taipei this past weekend for a quick pre-Christmas getaway. The last time I visited Taipei, I was less than a year old, so this trip was essentially the first visit not only for Jon but for me as well.

We only had two and a half days, so we mainly wandered around the city, snacking and eating nonstop. Our hotel was in Ximending (West Gate), the main shopping and hangout spot for young people; the area reminded us of Shibuya in Tokyo. We also visited some other parts of the city, including Yongkang Street, Shilin Night Market, and Xinyi (for the giant Eslite 24-hr bookstore).


Overall, I enjoyed Taipei. I would definitely go back for the great food (especially local Taiwanese, eastern Chinese [i.e. Shanghai, Fujian, Chiuchow] and Japanese) and the relaxed café/coffee culture (local family-run cafés, not Starbucks, dominate). Shopping-wise, I can see why people love to go crazy in Taipei, but many of the home goods, tchotchkes, clothes and accessories can also be bought in Hong Kong for pretty much the same price. Chinese-language books are a bargain for Chinese readers (not me, unfortunately) while English-language books are at the same unfavourable rate Hong Kong bookstores use.

Souvenir shopping tip: Taiwan pineapple pastries (fenglisu/鳳梨酥) are famous and crazy-good. The best place (recommended by bloggers and guidebooks alike) to buy these super-yummy little shortcakes is at Kong Kee in Ximending (opposite the East Dragon hotel). Staff here are friendly and speak English, Cantonese, Mandarin and Japanese. You can try before you buy, i.e. free samples. The fenglisu's shortcake-like crust is crumbly, buttery-rich but not too sweet, while the inside pineapple filling is light and slightly sticky. It's like a lighter, airier version of Fig Newtons. I never really liked pineapple pastry as the ones I had before were very dense and brick-like, so authentic Taiwanese fenglisu was a revelation. Beware though, good pineapple pastries are very addictive...

Some of our stops included:

Jolly Brewery and Restaurant - A Taiwan microbrewery (not brewed on site due to municipal restrictions) that doubles as a sports bar and Thai eatery. Their home-brewed beer are respectable and reasonably priced (a 6 x 100ml sampler of their six home brews was NT$240 [US$8] if I recall correctly). I liked the sweet malt of the Scotch Ale (7.2% a.c.) while Jon preferred the lighter Weizen and the Pale Ale. Worth a visit for beer-lovers: don't expect amazing beer but it's not bad compared to all the Heineken, Carlsberg, and other supermarket beers that are served almost everywhere else.



Shilin Night Market - The mother of all Asian night-markets. A must-visit for foodies and everyone else. The temporary market building opposite the Jiantan metro station mostly contains some food and a few desultory amusement stands/games such as shrimp fishing, balloon shooting, etc. Oyster omelettes are one of Taiwan's classic dishes but Jon and I much preferred the Chiuchow version - the Taiwanese version had some transparent gooey stuff which was a bit too slimy in texture for our liking. (I later found out that it was tapioca starch.)

While the Taiwanese share the same intense foodie mania with most of the rest of Asia, they really up the stakes in craziness. Famous street dishes included the small sausage in big sausage, small bun in big bun and giant fried chicken steak (a gargantuan breaded fried chicken meat steak that's famous for being bigger than one's face and ridiculously cheap at NT$50/US$1.50).



The "big sausage" is actually a delicious mixture of garlicky, spicy glutinous rice stuffed into a sausage casing. The "small sausage" is a sweet, porky Taiwanese sausage. A relish of Chinese pickles, cucumber and a spicy soy-based sauce combines to create an AMAZING street snack.

Delicious sausages...mmm...the neon sign says "Small sausage wrapped in big sausage"



A bunch of victorious food maniacs who have lined up to buy the Giant Chicken Steak! (Seriously, Jon and I wanted to get this but we were stuffed from Din Tai Fung and the line for this was at least 30 people long.)


Din Tai Fung @ Yongkang Street - While I've never been that impressed by Din Tai Fung's food (especially after being served a drunken-chicken dish that had actually gone bad/rotten at their Shanghai Xintiandi branch a few years back - an unpardonable offense that I have neither forgiven nor forgotten!), the restaurant's xiaolongbao does have a cult following throughout Asia (particularly China, Korea and Japan). So I was willing to give DTF another chance, especially as all reviews indicated that the original branch at Yongkang Street in Taipei was much better than the other. Verdict? The xiaolongbao was good, but nothing special. I've had way better xiaolongbao in Hong Kong at Faye's Nouvelle Cuisine (aka Xiaonanguo/小南國) and amazing xiaolongbao in Shanghai (particularly at the xlb ground zero aka Nanxiang Mantoudian/南翔饅頭店 where these buns were invented). Anyway, I guess the food there is OK but not worth the 30-minute wait (Japanese tours bring huge groups here a LOT so be prepared for a long wait and very antsy crowds)

Crowds at Din Tai Fung.

OMG! Buns! Xiaolongbao! Steaming pork juice spurting into your mouth!