Sweet Milk Loaf Fonott Tejes Kalács

As I was toasting the last of the sweet milk loaf I made this Easter, it reminded me how much I wanted to share this recipe. Sweet milk loaves or Kalács you can buy in Hungary all year round, but has a particular significance around Easter. It's perfect with the smoked cured ham for Easter Sunday breakfast but also freezes really well and ready to eat later on with butter and jam, like we did. Braiding the many strands of this loaf can be daunting but I found some excellent video tutorials on YouTube and will include in the recipe below. There are choices of how many strands you want to braid, less is a bit easier, but this one is made with 6 strands and was not too complicated to do at all. Also I think this is a great dough to use for braiding, it keeps its shape and beautiful shiny strands while baking. This is a lovely breakfast bread to make all year round, if you like a brioche, you will love this kalács too! I used refined spelt flour in this recipe as I have been using it for most of my baking recently, but plain white flour is also fine to use.

250ml double cream
50g butter

1 egg

1 egg white

500g refined spelt flour (or plain flour)

pinch of salt

3 tbsp caster sugar

1 packet of dried yeast (7g)

1 egg yolk for glazing

Warm the cream and butter until completely melted and allow to cool to room temperature.

Sift the flour, sugar, salt, yeast into a bowl. Add the beaten egg and the egg white and mix well. 

Add the warm milk and butter mix and knead for about 10 minutes or until you get a smooth, elastic dough that comes away from the sides of the bowl.  Cover and let it prove in a warm place for 1 to 2 hrs or until doubles in size. When ready to braid, divide the dough into 6 and roll them into a 40cm long strand each. Bunch them at the top, arrange them into a fan shape and start braiding. Study this tutorial from YouTube before you have a go. This is what mine looked like after braiding:

 

When ready, let it prove in a warm place until you warm the oven to 180C. Glaze the loaf with the beaten egg yolk and bake for about 30 minutes or until golden and cooked through.

Delicious eaten fresh, but also freezes well and it is perfect toasted for breakfast.

Seville Orange Marmalade Narancs lekvár

January and February are the best months to buy really good Seville oranges which are the best suited for making marmalade. This has been a craze for many over the past few years and I have made far too many bottles which often become presents to give away. Can't beat a really good home made marmalade though and this recipe is the best one I used so far, it's based on the one from Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook. Not too sweet and I cut mine quite fine as nobody in my family likes a chunky cut.

2kg Seville oranges

4kg granulated sugar

tsp salt

juice of 2 lemons

Wash the oranges and put them whole into a large pan with 3 litres of water and the salt. Bring to the boil and gently simmer until the oranges are very soft, this takes at least about an hour. Reserve the liquid, half the oranges, scooping out the pith and pips into a saucepan. Add 300ml water to this and simmer for another 10 minutes. This releases more setting agents from the pips. Slice the orange skin as thin or as chunky as you like to eat it and add to the reserved liquid, together with the strained liquid from the pith and pips. Add lemon juice, sugar and gently warm up and stir until dissolves. Bring to a rapid boil and keep it there until setting point is reached. You can check this by putting a teaspoon of jam on a fridge cold plate and if it wrinkles and jam like, it is ready. If not, carry on boiling it for a bit longer. I find this can very quite a lot. When ready, take it off the heat and rest for 15-20 minutes to let the fruit bits settle, this will stop everything floating straight to the top of the filled jars. Skim the scum from the surface while cooling, although this is only air bubbles created during boiling, so not essential. Give it a stir and fill up your warm, sterilised jars.

Cinnamon pancakes with blueberry compote

If you are a bit like me and you can't get your head around savoury pancakes, maybe it's best to stick with the tried and tested. I made these thick, American style pancakes yesterday for Shrove Tuesday when I had a friend around for lunch. The batter recipe is broadly adapted from Scandilicious cinnamon spelt pancakes, but as I had the main ingredient spelt flour missing, I had to use ordinary plain flour instead. The cinnamon gives it a delicious taste and a darker colour you would get from the spelt flour. Will definitely want to try spelt next time, it is meant to be much more digestable and healthy which is not a bad thing. Served it with Greek yoghurt and home made blueberry compote, which was perfect, really easy and quick to make. A good way of making tasteless winter blueberries more than edible. The leftover compote can be used on porridge in the morning. 

 

Now another great thing about this pancake batter is that you can make too much and keep it in the fridge for a couple of days, which takes you to Valentine's Day. I made some mini pancakes today using little heart shaped cookie cutters and dusted them with icing sugar. This recipe is a definite keeper and will be well used for nice lazy Sunday morning brunches in the future.    

Batter:

400g plain flour

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

1tsp salt

2tbsp caster sugar

2tsp cinnamon

350ml whole milk

50ml plain yoghurt

50g melted butter

2 eggs

oil for frying

Blueberry compote:

500g fresh blueberries

4tbsp caster sugar

Mix together the dry ingredients for the batter. Add the wet ingredients and mix well until smooth. It should be a thick cream consistency. Let it rest for at least 30 minutes.

Make the blueberry compote, put all the blueberries and sugar in a pan and bring it to the boil. Cook for a few minutes until the berries pop then simmer for a few more minutes to thicken the sauce a little. You can add less or more sugar to taste, depending on the sweetness of the blueberries. If you like it with a lemony taste, squeeze a bit of lemon juice into the sauce.

Heat a pancake pan or frying pan to medium, add little drop of oil to the pan and fry a small ladleful of batter at a time and not too thick, they will rise while cooking. Give it a couple of minutes each side and serve warm with Greek yoghurt and the blueberry compote.

Cardamom and saffron poached pears

 

We eat a lot of poached pears, apples and plums in winter and try to ignore the tasteless imported berries and other summer fruit. Seasonal winter fruit such as pears tend to be rather under ripe on supermarket shelves but they lend themselves to poaching perfectly. In fact you can poach any slightly unripe fruit with a bit of sugar and warming spices. They transform our winter breakfast porridge into something really special. I make this saffron poached pear every week, it's quick with a delicious scent of cardamom and a fabulous deep yellow colour from the saffron, great with breakfast or add it to vanilla ice cream. I adapted the original recipe from Darina Allen, she makes it with tons more sugar to make it a scented syrup. For us that would just be too ridiculously puddingy for breakfast, so I only add a tablespoon of sugar to the poaching juices. This is perfectly enough as the pears also give it a natural sweetness. How does it fit in with the Hungarian theme? Poached or preserved fruit has always been part of our diet back home, there was little choice of fresh fruit in winter. Poached fruit has always had a bit of a plain and boring quality about them, mainly in the form of overcooked apple compote. But I discovered spices like cardamom, star anise, cloves, cinnamon bark, saffron can make a huge difference to flavour and colour. Adding red plums to any poaching fruit will transform the whole dish to a beautiful claret red. As you can tell I am a big fan of poached fruit and there will be more to come in this topic :-)

6 pears

500ml water

1 tbsp caster sugar

lemon rind and some juice

small pinch of saffron

6 cardamom pods, crushed

Bring the water, sugar, cardamom, few strips of lemon rind, tbsp of lemon juice and pinch of saffron gently to the boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Peel the pears with a potato peeler, cut them in half length ways, core them, leaving the stalks on. Place them into the poaching liquid cut side down and gently simmer for 10-15 minutes then turn over and simmer for the same time. The poaching time depends on the ripeness of the fruit. If the pears are softer and more ripe, they will take less time to poach. If you can easily insert a knife into the pears, they are ready. By this time the juices have also reduced to a sweeter more syrupy liquid and the pears taken on a deep golden colour. If the fruit takes longer to poach, keep an eye on the syrup ad top it up with a little boiling water if need to. When ready, cool it down and keep it in the fridge. Serve it with porridge, birchers muesli, yoghurt, chopped nuts or as a dessert with  ice cream and drizzle with chocolate.

Császármorzsa

One of my favourite treats from my childhood is Császármorzsa. It has to be the quickest after school nibble to make when you happen to have lots of children in the house. 

The name comes from the time of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy where it was called Kaiserschmarrn (The Emperor's Crumble) and it was first made by the royal patissier for the Emperor Franz Josef I and his wife Sissi. It is a type of pancake batter and usually served with raspberry syrup(or cordial), fruit compote or jam in Hungary. In Austria we tried it in ski resorts where it's served with apple puree and is a delicious midday treat with a cup of hot chocolate. Traditionally it's cooked in a large pancake pan and made with plain flour. In Hungary it can also be made with semolina instead of flour and baked in the oven in a large baking tray.

I find it similar to drop scones or scotch pancakes but less fiddly as it's either baked whole in the oven or you just make 3 or 4 large pancakes in one go saving a lot of time standing around waiting for lots of mini pancakes to get done. In both cases the end result is roughly chopped up into small pieces, sprinkled with caster sugar and drizzled with runny jam or dunked into apple puree. It would make an excellent quick breakfast treat too. This quantity serves 4 people.

4 eggs

80g caster sugar

400ml milk

250g plain flour (you could use self raising flour to make the batter more fluffy) 

30g melted butter

flavourless oil for shallow frying

apple puree, runny jam, and more caster sugar for serving

Separate the eggs. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Mix the egg yolks with the sugar until smooth. Add the flour and milk, little at a time to make sure it's all well mixed without any lumps. Add the melted butter and mix well. Spoon and carefully mix the beaten egg whites into the batter. 

Heat a tablespoon of oil in a large pancake pan or frying pan, pour enough batter into the pan so that it will be enough for 3 or 4 thick pancakes, depending on the size of your pan. Fry it until golden on one side then turn it over with a spatula and fry the other side. When it's done, chop it up roughly with a wooden spoon put it on a plate and sprinkle with caster sugar. If you are baking it in the oven, preheat the oven to 200C. Heat up enough oil in a large baking dish that the bottom is generously coated. Pour all the batter into the dish and bake until golden colour and cooked through. Chop it up roughly into small pieces and sprinkle with caster sugar.

Apfelküchli - Apple Drop Scones

My Aunty gave me this recipe, she lives in Germany where they love these little cakes and eat them warm for breakfast or cold the next day with tea or coffee. The batter mix resembles drop scones or Scotch pancakes we have in Britain but less runny. In fact it should be able to hold its mound shape  when dropped into the hot oil. For this you would need to use a lot of oil, which I tried to avoid, and flat drop scones cook perfectly in very little oil, so I added a bit more milk to the batter. This recipe makes about 12 Apfelküchli. Delicious autumn breakfast treat and very quick to make. For grown ups you could add some Calvados to the mix. Serve it warm with a dust of vanilla sugar, softly whipped cream or Cornish clotted cream, like we did - luckily the boys brought a big tub back from their trip to Sennen last week!

400g dessert apples

1 egg
2 tbsp caster sugar

100g plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

pinch of cinnamon 

splash of milk 

oil for frying (flavourless groundnut oil or vegetable oil)

Peel and grate the apples. Mix with the egg yolk, splash of milk, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder and flour until combined. Beat the egg white until firm and fold into the batter gently. Let it rest for 10-15 minutes. Heat a teaspoon of oil in a frying pan and using a tablespoon scoop, drop, slightly shape and flatten the batter. Fry it on both sides until nicely coloured and cooked through. Drain them on kitchen towel and sprinkle with vanilla sugar or icing sugar.

Vajas kifli - Butter half moons

Half moon shaped pastries are another staple in Hungarian bakeries. They can be sweet or savory, with or without fillings, but the best known is a plain butter kifli you would get with your continental breakfast, hot chocolate or morning coffee. The half moon shape is said to originate from the 16th century Turk's invasion of Central and Eastern Europe, when often the bakers working their night shifts would ring the bells and alert the people of Turkish troops aproaching the city. It became popular in many countries and of course the French have their own version the croissant! This kifli is made with a yeasty dough and is slightly on the sweet side, very light yet buttery. It's also very quick to make and you could add a piece of chocolate before rolling it to make it more of a sweet bite. But I also like it with a bit of butter and morello cherry jam. These are smaller bite size half moons, keep for quite sometime in an airtight container and perfect warmed up in the oven with a cup of coffee or tea for elevenses :-)

600g plain flour

400 ml milk

30g fresh yeast or 7g dried 

50g melted butter

1 tbsp caster sugar

1 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 220C. Warm the milk a little, dissolve the sugar and crumble the yeast into it, then leave to activate for 10-15 minutes in a warm place. Dried yeast can be added straight to the flour. Mix the flour, salt, yeasty milk until combined then gradually add the melted butter. Knead it for 5 minutes. This is best done in a mixer with a dough hook for quickest results. Cover with tea towel and rest in a warm place if you have time, but this is not necessary if you are in a hurry. 

Devide the dough into six pieces. Roll each one into a 25cm diameter circle and cut each circle into 8 slices. Roll each slice up from the flat end to the pointy end, create a half moon shape and lay on the baking sheet. Glaze them with a beaten egg before baking in the oven for 10 minutes.

Túrós batyu - Sweet ricotta parcels

This is a delicious breakfast pastry to go with your morning coffee. Available in all patisseries and pastry stalls wherever you are in Hungary. The filling is traditionally made of the creamy cow's curd cheese that is used in so many Hungarian desserts. This is not available in the UK so I used a mixture of ricotta and strained natural cottage cheese instead, which worked really nicely. 

This recipe makes about 25 parcels. It freezes well or keeps in the fridge for a few days. Warm it up in the oven before serving and sprinkle with icing sugar.

For the pastry:

600 g plain flour

320 ml milk

1 egg, beaten

pinch of salt

2 tbsp caster sugar

80 g melted butter

2,5 g fresh yeast or 1 packet (7g) dried yeast

Dissolve the yeast in luke warm milk and leave it for 10-15 minutes until it melts and starts to activate. If using dried yeast, you can add this straight to the flour. Sift the flour, salt, sugar in a mixing bowl, mix well. Add the egg, milk and yeasty milk to the flour mix and knead it for a good 10 minutes with a dough hook or by hand until you get a sticky dough. Add the melted butter and knead it for another 5 minutes or until the butter is well mixed in and the pastry has a nice, smooth, elastic texture. Cover it with a wet tea towel or clingfilm and leave it in a warm place for about an hour until it has doubled in size.

In the meantime make the filling.

For the filling:

200g ricotta cheese

200g natural cottage cheese (strain through a sieve if too watery)

4 tbsp semolina

3 tbsp caster sugar

few drops of vanilla essence

grated zest of 1 lemon

3 tbsp sultanas

1 egg, separated

Mix the ricotta, cottage cheese, semolina, sugar, vanilla essence, lemon zest and sultanas and the egg yolk in a bowl. Beat the egg white until firm peaks form then gently fold into the ricotta mix. If it feels too runny, add a bit more semolina. It should have a creamy but not runny texture.

Tip the dough on to a floured work surface and punch once or twice to knock it back. Roll it out with a rolling pin to about 3mm thick and cut into 10cmx10cm squares. Put a tablespoon of ricotta mix on the centre of each one, pinch all 4 corners together and give it a twist to close the parcel. Carefully place them on some parchment paper on a large baking tray, cover with a damp cloth and leave it in a warm place to rest and prove again (20-30 minutes). While you are waiting for the parcels to prove, preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 6. Once they have risen, lightly glaze each parcel with a little beaten egg and bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes.

Allow to cool on a wire rack then dust with some icing sugar.