Breadsticks

OK. I know I am totally late with this post but I just wanted to join the list of Kiki's fans! I received my copy of her lovely book "Little kitchen ― breads & doughs" as soon as it came out.


I quickly made the delicious recipe for cinnamon rolls but unfortunately they were so delicious that we ate all of them before we could take a photo.

Kiki's instructions are very clear and easy to understand (for those who don't read Greek you'll just have to email Kiki and ask her to translate a recipe for you) and I only had a minor problem making them, which was nothing to do with the recipe but rather the fact that my house was too cold to rise the dough and I had to put them in the oven on a low temperature. I should have thought of that at the beginning, but I was so excited about trying out a recipe, it didn't occur to me that it was really cold in the house that day!

So finally the other day I got the chance to make another recipe from the book. This time I made some of the breadsticks. I thought it would be a great thing to make with the kids, especially after watching Kiki make them in her TV debut the night before.


We made the feta/beer breadsticks and the poppyseed sticks that she made on the show! The kids had a really good time. They were really fast to make and the kids had a great time rolling them out and twisting them into shapes. Not to mention the fun they had eating them when they were done. They cook quickly, too, which is another reason they're a great thing to make with the kids. Quick results with minimum effort. I deliberately made two recipes so there was no chance we could eat them all before we took some photographs.


We had a little pease pudding left that I'd made for lunch that day so we used it for dipping!


So if you read Greek and haven't already got hold of a copy, I strongly recommend that you do. You won't be sorry. You can find out more about how to get hold of a copy from Kiki's blog - Mikri Kouzina (Greek for "Little Kitchen").

Liz

Gadgets and gifts

Most of my friends and family know that if they are looking for a gift for me they just need to bring me something related to baking cakes, cooking in general, eating or reading about any of the above!

Some of the very thoughtful gifts I've received in the recent past are these from our Danish visitors (hi, J&L!):


They are super cool storage bags. The scandinavians know all about cool design. You can't deny that. The bags can be reversed.


And look at the large one...


It has little magnets inside so you can keep your lovely homemade bread rolls warm in the morning.

I LOVE them!!

They are made by Stelton. When you look at their products page you start forming a list of things you 'need'.

Next up are the gifts that travelled across the ocean... I have to admit here that I did actually drop a rather large hint for these things... actually I outright asked for some of them... but the others were a lovely surprise.

Look at these lovelies!!! I have several baking books which have American recipes in. The measurements are in cups and not metric. It is not impossible to convert, of course, but it is much simpler just to get out these lovely things and use them!!! I've already used them several times.




These measuring spoons are great. They are robust and they have little magnets in the tip so that you can keep them stored together easily.





These cookie cutters are going to come in handy! Heart shapes and snowflake shapes. I'm going to have a lot of fun with these!



Thanks again all concerned. You know how much I love these things!

Now... I love receiving gifts but I enjoy giving them too. I've decided to give a gift. I popped down to Cookshop and found these:


How cute are these? Wondering what they are?


Having a drinks party? Your guests won't have trouble remembering which glass is theirs with these little cuties! They are little characters which stick to the outside of the glass. They even have names. There's 'sneaky', 'cuddly' and 'mysterious', to name a few!


So, if you want to be the one to receive the gift leave a comment below telling me which ingredient you would most like to see in a cupcake. You can leave your comment on either side of the blog, English or Greek but only once please. Make sure I have a way of contacting you. You have until Sunday (31st) evening to leave your comment and I'll pick a winner on Monday morning.

Give-aways will be a regular feature of the blog from now on, so be sure not to miss a post by following the blog or following us on twitter where we we'll keep you posted with new blog posts and give-aways.

Liz

Q&A

The last post raised a few questions (on the greek side of the blog) so I will try my best to answer them (even though I can see from your comments that you're all taking care of it yourselves!)

Xanthi, I think it highly unlikely that you will find the Dairy Book of Home Cookery in any bookshop either in Athens or in the UK. The book was never distributed through book shops to my knowledge but was ordered and delivered by the local milkman (does anyone really remember the milkman?) I am not sure if there are 'Milk men' anymore. Every one seems to buy their milk from the grocery store nowadays. According to wikipedia the Milk Marketing Board was dissolved in 2002.

I was fairly surprised to find the book when I did a google search the other day. I thought that perhaps I might find a second hand one on Ebay. It seems that there must be a few still available at various online bookshops. If your children are staying in the Uk for a while they could certainly order it through one of the amazon sellers that I linked to in the last post and have it delivered to wherever they are staying.

Angeliki asked about getting cupcakes to be level on the top and not to dome.

First of all I'll point out that I always use my fan assisted oven. It makes a difference for baking cakes. My oven has two dials. One for the temperature and the other which has the different settings. With mine you can use the fan alone, the fan and the grill together. Obviously we don't want the grill on :P The fan makes the oven the same temperature all over so that it doesn't matter which level of the oven you put your cakes in (this enabled me to make three trays of cakes at a time for the wedding). Most oven manufacturers suggest lowering the temperature between 10 and 20 degrees when using the fan setting.


This is what I would do if my cakes were turning out domed:

First, I would check the oven temperature and maybe lower it by about 10 degrees. They could be rising too quickly because of the high temperature. So, I would try cooking at a slightly lower temperature for a few minutes longer. That should do the trick.


If that didn't work, I would try a different variety of SR flour. Each brand probably has different quantities of raising agent.

Lastly, I would check the size of eggs that I am using, maybe switch to the next size down or use one less.

If that failed, too, I would get a new recipe :)

Mass produced cakes are made using all sorts of pre-prepared ingredients and the amount of cake dropped into each case is controlled by a machine too! I am not a fan as you can imagine. I think the charm of home-made, baked from scratch is that they are not all exactly the same!

I am sure that the effort you made for your daughters cupcakes made them so much more special! I would have done exactly the same if my cakes had turned out domed. Adjusting the frosting to cover it is the genius solution and who can tell?? Another thing you can do is to slice off the dome and discard the domes or even better, make them into butterfly cakes.