Easter Baking - Hot Cross Buns #cbias

Although the weather is making it feel more like Christmas, believe or not Easter will be here in just a few days time. To make it feel a bit more like the Easter holidays I decided to do some baking. As you may know I have been trying to challenge myself with recipes recently, experimenting with things I've never tried before, so off I went to Aldi in search of the ingredients for a yummy Easter treat that I was going to bake myself....

                                                                   hot cross buns!

You can check out my shopping experience in this Google+ album...

Shopping for Easter baking Ingredients at Aldi

I love a nice toasted hot cross bun, warm and dripping with butter, it really is the perfect comfort food and what better to warm us all up in this nasty cold weather?

My 5 year old Ben is a really keen cook and usually helps me with baking but on this occasion I wanted to try it out myself first so I waited until the children were tucked up in bed then out came the ingredients...

Can you spot the error in this picture?!

I was really pleased with what I had got for my money in Aldi, as although I regularly visit for a top up shop of fruit, veg, bread and milk, it's not the first place I would have gone for home baking ingredients. Well now I know about the great selection and prices it will be in the future!

So I had my ingredients ready all I needed to do was start baking. After mixing the flour, salt, cinnamon and mixed spice together in a large bowl, I rubbed in the butter then added the currents, mixed peel and yeast.

I now had a dry lumpy mixture and created a well in the centre to add the water, milk and egg, (this is always Ben's favourite part of baking, adding eggs!)

After mixing in, I was ready to knead. There is something incredibly relaxing about kneading dough, maybe I am taking all my daily frustrations out on this fruity mixture, while I pound it against the floury surface, whatever it is, I find it really therapeutic!

Once it's fairly smooth and elastic I pop it back into the bowl and cover with a damp tea towel for an hour while I go off to watch Don't tell the Bride, it's my wedding anniversary this week and it all takes me back to the preparations for my big day, thank goodness I planned it and not my other half though, I'd have been wearing a bin bag if it was down to him!

After a  giggle and a brew it was back to the kitchen to find my dough had risen nicely, now to press the air out and knead again before dividing up into buns and leaving again for 30 minutes to continue to rise.

I have always wondered how the cross was made on the top of hot cross buns and now I knew, it was pastry! Rather than making my own pastry just for this, I had bought a pack of ready to roll with my earlier shopping, so I opening this up and started cutting it into strips, I barely glanced at the packaging.

It was soon time to pop the buns in the oven, so after brushing with beaten egg and placing the strips of pastry on top of each ball of dough in they went at 200c for 15 minutes.

It was only when I went to take them out of the oven that I noticed that something wasn't right, not wrong as such, they still looked (and smelt) delicious, but I was sure the cross wasn't meant to rise that much? It was only then that I glanced across to the packaging of the pastry to find I had bought Puff Pastry and not shortcrust! Silly me! (Did you notice my error in the photo?)

Oh well, they still tasted amazing (I had to try one straight away, just to make sure!) and I now know for next time, Although my hubby did say that he quite liked the crunchiness of the puff pastry so you never know I could be on to something!

Apart from my school girl error, these were a great success and I will be making them again with Ben's help very soon. Why not have a go and let me know what you think? 

Happy Easter!


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Gingerbread cookies for Teacher...

I always struggle at the end of term or Christmas with what to buy for Ben's teachers and Elizabeth's nursery staff. With four nursery staff in E's room at nursery and other staff that she sees daily too as well as a Teacher Two teaching assistants, a SENCO and after school club staff for Ben the costs of even token gifts mount up. So this year we decided to make something instead. Not only is this a way of saving money, it also means that the gift is more personal and we get to have do a fun activity too!

So on Tuesday after school we got out the children's baking set we were kindly sent from Aldi along with some Christmas themed cookie cutters and got to making some gingerbread cookies. We used this simple recipe from the BBC website:

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/gingerbread_men_99096

It was really easy to make and both Ben and Elizabeth enjoyed helping. The great thing about gingerbread dough is it's really forgiving so great for children to 'play' with.

So we needed....

• 350g plain flour 
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 125g butter
• 175g light soft brown sugar
• 1 free-range egg
• 4 tbsp golden syrup
  
  
  (we actually doubled this recipe as we needed quite a lot!)
  
  
  The Preparation was nice and simple, we started off by sifting together the flour, bicarb of soda and cinnamon before pouring into the food processor. We then added the butter and continued until the mixture was the consistency of breadcrumbs. Then stirred in the sugar (Elizabeth was in charge of stirring!)
  While we were doing this I had helped Ben crack the eggs in another bowl and added the golden syrup, which he was beating together. We added this to the processor and continued until the mixture became doughy. Mummy then kneaded the dough and we then wrapped it in some clingfilm and popped in the fridge for a short time, while we had a tidy up... (How had we made so much mess already?!)
  After 1 minutes I turned the oven to 180c (30F / Gas mark 4) and got the baking trays ready.
  
  
  Now for the fun bit!! We rolled out the dough to around 1cm thick and cut out lots of fun shapes from stars to gingerbread men and Christmas Trees! 
  
  
  After baking for 15 minutes, we let them cool for another 15 (while the next batch went in ) and started decorating! We had writing, icing mini dazzles and colourful sugar stars, Ben may have got a little excited with these!
  
  
  So we had great fun decorating and now it was time for the little ones to get sorted for bathtime with Daddy while I divided up the cookies into four boxes (these were cupcake boxes I had bought a while ago for 50p a pack!)
  
  
  We sent a box of a dozen cookies in to school, after school club and nursery and  took the left overs to work to give to my colleagues as an alternative to Christmas cards!
  
  
  

  

  
  
  Boxes of Festive Gingerbread cookies - A great budget gift that shows a lot of thought and is really fun to prepare!
  
  
  Ben wants to know when we are baking them again!