Baking

Buttermilk gives these muffins a tender crumb and light texture, and they really need no accompaniment—though they’re even more irresistible topped with butter or one of the delicious flavored butters in the Toppings and Sauces chapter. If you like a fruity muffin, add fresh raspberries or any other berry, and for a cheese flavor, stir in grated sharp white Cheddar (see variations). You can also add a zing by adding black pepper or jalapeño peppers.

These classic muffins are simple to make and taste great with just about any brunch dish. They have a generous proportion of berries to batter, which makes them extra appealing. Use fresh blueberries picked at the peak of the season or frozen ones that you were smart enough to pop into the freezer when they were abundant in the summer. You can also use good-quality store-bought frozen berries. Frozen berries tend to be juicy and very flavorful because they are picked and flash-frozen on the spot. These muffins freeze well and can be rewarmed in a 250°F oven for 15 minutes or so. They are delicious plain or with fresh fruit preserves.

There have been many highly original versions of the straightforward miner’s lunch (if you couldn’t come up to the surface for lunch, you took a warm pasty down with you, holding the thickly crimped edge with your grubby hands, then leaving it behind to appease the spirits of the mine) but I have rarely enjoyed one as much as those I have eaten in Cornwall. My pasty is (categorically) not a Cornish pasty. I precook my filling, you see, which Cornish cooks would never do. I cook the meat and vegetables before wrapping them in the pastry crust purely because it results in a pasty whose filling is especially tender and giving. I also use a proportion of butter in the pastry too. The similarity between my pasty and a Cornish one is purely in the ingredients: beef, potato, onion, and rutabaga. Chaucer was partial to a pasty—they appear in The Canterbury Tales, and in several of Shakespeare’s plays, including The Merry Wives of Windsor, All’s Well That Ends Well, and Titus Andronicus. We shall gloss over the small point that Titus uses Chiron and Demetrius’s bodies rather than the more traditional beef skirt steak. I do suggest you let the finished parcels rest for half an hour before baking, if you get the chance.

Modern pasty recipes, especially those in the more touristy enclaves of Britain’s farthest southern county, stretch the recipe almost as far as Titus, swapping beef for pork, the rutabaga for apple, even daring to crimp the finished turnover on the top instead of at the side. I make one without meat, in which I use goat cheese and thyme along with the usual starchy filling of potato and rutabaga. It is filling, yet somehow soft and gentle, too.

A warm scone is an object of extraordinary comfort, but even more so when it has potato in it. The farl, a slim scone of flour, butter, and mashed potato, is rarely seen nowadays and somehow all the more of a treat when it is. I have taken the idea and run with it, mashing steamed pumpkin into the hand-worked crumbs of flour and butter to make a bread that glows orange when you break it. Soft, warm, and floury, this is more than welcome for a Sunday breakfast in winter or a tea round the kitchen table. Cooked initially in a frying pan and then finished in the oven, I love this with grilled Orkney bacon and slices of Cheddar sharp enough to make my lips smart—a fine contrast for the sweet, floury “scone” and its squishy center.

Onions make an important contribution to the filling of pies, providing a sweet balance for the savoriness of the meat and a necessary change of texture, too. A meat pie with no onions would be hard going. I rarely make a meat pie. It is one of those recipes I reserve for a cold autumn day, when it’s too wet to go out.

There is a point in the year, usually after the Christmas decorations have been put away, when the house gets too cold to sit still in without a wrap around you. I have always kept a cold house; hot rooms make me feel unhealthy. But sometimes the only way of getting warm here is to eat. Carbohydrate-rich meals, such as the tart of leek and cheese and pastry I made on the coldest day of the year, warm you in a way few others are capable of.

You could measure my life in health-food shops. It is to them I turn for the bulk of my pantry shopping, from parchment-colored figs and organic almonds to sea salt and cubes of fresh yeast. Their shelves are a constant source of inspiration and reassurance. It is also where I first came across organic vegetables, long before the supermarkets saw them as a moneymaker or the organic-box schemes would turn up at your door. It was these pine-clad shops, with their lingering scent of patchouli, that introduced me to the joys of the organic rutabaga. To this day I wouldn’t go anywhere else for my lentils and beans, though I can live without the crystals and self-help manuals. There is something endlessly reassuring about their rows of cellophane-encased dates and haricot beans, their dried nuggets of cranberry, and jars of organic peanut butter. And where else can you get a incense stick when you need one? Health-food shops rarely used to be without a carrot cake on the salad counter, usually next to the black-currant cheesecake and the deep whole-wheat quiche. Good they were, too, with thick cream cheese icing and shot through with walnuts. I never scorned them the way others did, finding much pleasure in the deep, soggy layers of cake and frosting. This was first published in The Observer five or six years ago, and rarely does a week go by without an email asking for a copy to replace one that has fallen apart or stuck to the bottom of a pan. Few things make a cook happier than someone asking for one of your recipes.

I have lost count of the number of appreciative emails and blog mentions about the brownies and the chocolate almond cake in The Kitchen Diaries. They are received gratefully. It is true that I am rarely happier than when making chocolate cake. I especially like baking those that manage to be cakelike on the outside and almost molten within. Keeping a cake’s heart on the verge of oozing is down partly to timing and partly to the ingredients—ground almonds and very good-quality chocolate will help enormously. But there are other ways to moisten a cake, such as introducing grated carrots or, in this case, crushed beets. The beets are subtle here, some might say elusive, but using them is a lot cheaper than ground almonds, and they blend perfectly with dark chocolate. This is a seductive cake, deeply moist and tempting. The serving suggestion of crème fraîche is not just a nod to the sour cream so close to beets’ Eastern European heart, it is an important part of the cake.

This tastes no more of beets than a carrot cake tastes of carrots, yet it has a similar warm earthiness to it. It is less sugary than most cakes, and the scented icing I drizzle over it is purely optional. The first time I made it, I used half sunflower and half Brazil nut oil, but only because the Brazil nut oil was new and I wanted to try it. Very successful it was too, not to mention boosting everyone’s zinc levels.

I retain a soft spot for canned asparagus. Not as something to eat with my fingers (it is considerably softer than fresh asparagus, and rather too giving), but as something with which to flavor a quiche. The canned stuff seems to permeate the custard more effectively than the fresh. This may belong to the law that makes canned apricots better in a frangipane tart than fresh ones, or simply be misplaced nostalgia. I once made a living from making asparagus quiche, it’s something very dear to my heart. Still, fresh is good too.

You can purchase a product called chocolate batons (available at specialty stores and online) that’s specifically designed for rolling into chocolate croissants. But, if you’d like to make your own batons from scratch, here’s a recipe, followed by a method for shaping chocolate croissants. You could also fill these croissants with almond paste, or try savory fillings, like ham and cheese, creamed spinach, or bacon crumbles.

There are dozens of shapes for Danish pastry, far more than I have room to demonstrate, but the shapes below are fundamental and fairly easy to master. (For more shapes, I suggest going to the Web.) The first shape, called Schnecken (German for “snail”), is probably the most common shape; with Schnecken, you have the option of applying cinnamon sugar to the dough before cutting and shaping. The second shape is a simple pinwheel that’s very pretty and popular for serving to guests and on special occasions. I’ve provided a few recipes for fillings, but you can also use commercial pie fillings (just don’t use regular fruit preserves, jams, or jellies because they don’t contain starch and aren’t oven stable, so they’ll melt out of the Danish). I’ve also provided recipes for two glazes for finishing the Danish and recommend you use both: a hot syrup glaze for shine and retaining freshness, and a simple fondant glaze to accentuate the flavor and provide visual appeal.

In Greece and Turkey, this bread is called Christopsomo or tsoureki (also known as lambpropsomo during Easter). It differs from stollen in that it’s proofed before baking, but the proofing time is shorter than for panettone. Mastic gum, also called mastica, is an aromatic gum resin derived from the bark of a Mediterranean shrub tree in the pistachio family. It can be found at stores that specialize in Greek and Middle Eastern ingredients. It adds a subtle and......breath-freshening flavor and aroma (no surprise, it has long been used as a natural breath freshener).

Hot cross buns are a traditional Good Friday bread, but they can be made anytime (in Elizabethan England they could only be baked during Easter week or during Christmas, but times have changed). There are, of course, many similar commemorative breads throughout Europe, each with their own twist. Currants and spices such as allspice, mace, nutmeg, and cinnamon are commonly used in the English version. Much folklore and many recipe variations for hot cross buns are available on the Internet (and they’re worth reading), but I prefer the following additions to the basic holiday bread recipe. However, feel free to use your own favorite spice and fruit combinations, or simply bake the buns without any additions, as the buns are wonderful with or without the fruit, spices, and glazed cross.

The dough for croissants, Danish, and certain other pastries is made by a method known as lamination, which involves folding layers of dough and butter (or another fat) to create many thin layers that puff when baked. Puff pastry, the classic unyeasted version of this dough, is used to make many pastries. In this book, I’ll stick with a yeasted formula that can be used to make both croissants and Danish pastry. There are many versions of laminated dough and many systems of rolling to create a specific number of layers. The system I’m presenting here certainly isn’t the only one that works, but I like it because it’s easy and also incorporates overnight fermentation to create a superb product. Feel free to modify it if you prefer more or fewer layers. The most common error home bakers make when laminating is to apply too much pressure to the dough, which breaks the paper-thin layers of dough and fat. To help with this, the formula here creates a very soft, pliable dough, and the method calls for a fair amount of dusting with flour to prevent sticking. There are two parts to the final dough: the détrempe and the butter block. The détrempe is the plain dough before the butter is rolled in. The butter block is the fat that will be laminated between layers of dough. There are many ways to incorporate the fat into the détrempe, including spreading it by hand in dabs over the rolled-out dough, which is sometimes called spotting. The method here is more systematic, using a series of letter folds (in thirds) to produce 81 layers of dough and fat—more than enough for a great accordion-style expansion of the layers (one of the recipe testers called it a concertina effect). Should you decide to experiment and try making more layers, just keep in mind that the layers are more vulnerable to rupturing as they get thinner, which defeats the purpose of laminating. I always suggest getting good at 81 layers before adding a fourth letter fold, which will increase the number of layers to 243. You can use either unbleached bread flour or all-purpose flour for the dough. Bread flour provides more structure, while all-purpose flour, being slightly softer, makes a more tender product.

I’ve set myself up by staking a claim to the best biscuits ever. But when I made these biscuits, I was so astonished by their flavor and texture that I decided there couldn’t possibly be a more perfect biscuit—at least not any that I’ve ever tasted. Be forewarned, a generous amount of butter is a key ingredient here, so these biscuits are not for those who are squeamish about fat! That said, if you find these biscuits to be too rich, feel free to use low-fat buttermilk instead of cream for the liquid. Some people insist that only shortening has enough pure fat in it to make a flaky biscuit. While lard and shortening do contain 100 percent fat to butter’s mere 85 percent, there’s nothing to match butter when it comes to flavor. Also, I find that biscuits made with shortening sometimes have a waxy aftertaste. If you insist on using shortening, chill it for 1 hour before cutting it into the dough, and reduce the amount by about 15 percent, to 7 tablespoons (3.5 oz / 99 g). I have heard it said that there are two types of people in the world, those who like tender biscuits and those who like flaky biscuits. (I’m usually in the flaky camp.) In this recipe, I’ve replaced the traditional buttermilk with cream, which essentially makes this both a cream biscuit (and therefore tender) and a flaky biscuit. If you wonder how I arrived at this idea, it was one of those aha/duh moments, in this case brought about because I had forgotten to buy buttermilk. Discovering that I had some heavy cream on hand, I realized that there was no rule prohibiting me from trying to bring the best of both worlds together. I learned a new trick for incorporating the butter into the flour from a few of my excellent recipe testers: Freeze the butter, then use the large holes on a cheese grater to grate it directly into the dry ingredients (or use the grater attachment on a food processor, with the dry ingredients in the bowl below). Not only does this method save time, but it creates the perfect size butter pieces for the biscuits. You can use this method when making pie dough too!

Although this is made from the same dough as the panettone, the final proofing time is very different: none! Stollen’s origins are attributed to Dresden, Germany, but it is made in many forms and variations throughout Europe. The name refers to baby Jesus’ blanket and it is filled with fruit to signify the gifts of the Magi. It can be folded and formed into a crescent shape or simply rolled up into a log. It is usually finished with a brushing of melted butter and heavily dusted with either confectioners’ sugar or granulated sugar. My German friends like to age their stollen for weeks before eating it, but I like it best as soon as it cools—it never lasts more than a day, let alone weeks. Almond paste is a sweet confection made with sugar and ground bitter almonds; when flavored with rose water or treated with other flavorings and food colors it is also known as marzipan. I find it amazingly delicious. It can easily be rolled into a cigar-shaped bead and used as a center core for stollen; the amount is up to you but about 4 ounces (113 g) per small loaf is probably enough.

Panettone is the famous Christmas bread of Milan, though it is now made and consumed year round. Pandoro, or “golden bread,” originated in Verona and is traditionally baked in starshaped molds, but otherwise bears strong similarities to its more well-known Milanese counterpart. Although this dough can be mixed by hand, it’s very hard to do so because of the long mixing time required, so I recommend using a stand mixer. (You could also use a food processor if you pulse, rather than processing for extended periods.) At first, the dough will be more like a batter, but as you scrape down the mixing bowl, it will eventually form a very supple, delicate dough that feels wonderful to the touch. It can be formed into a ball or other bread shapes, but if you squeeze too hard it will become loose and sticky again. You may want to purchase paper or metal panettone or pandoro molds, which are available at specialty cookware stores. Keep in mind that smaller loaves bake more quickly and are softer and less crusty than larger loaves. Muffin and popover pans, as well as small brioche cups, make nice molds for mini loaves, as do small cans. You’ll end up with a better loaf if you let the dough rise slowly at room temperature rather than force the rise (for example, by placing the dough in a pilot-lit oven, which is a tempting way to speed up the rising time for many doughs). It may take up to 12 hours for the dough to rise and fill the form, but it’s worth the wait. Warmer proofing risks melting the butter in the dough, so the finished product will have the structure of a kugelhopf coffee cake—which isn’t bad, but it doesn’t have the unique peel-apart qualities of the slower-rising panettone or pandoro.

Babka is a rich, yeasted cross between bread and coffee cake with an equally rich Russian and Polish culinary heritage. The name is derived from the Russian baba, which means grandmother, an appropriate name for this wonderful comfort food. While it is mostly known as a popular Jewish bread filled with some combination of chocolate, cinnamon, almonds, even poppy seeds and sometimes topped with streusel, it can also be filled with raisins or soaked with rum, as in baba au rhum. The dough is rich enough that it can also be used for brioche and kugelhopf. In American bakeries, babka is most often formed as a twisted loaf with veins of the sweet filling running throughout, baked either in a loaf pan or freestanding. However, the Israeli version, known as kranz cake, uses a dramatic shaping technique that many of my recipe testers found appealing. This recipe is my favorite version, with both cinnamon and chocolate in the filling. Of course, you can leave out the chocolate and make a cinnamon sugar version, or leave out the cinnamon and make just a chocolate version, but I say, why leave out either? It’s easier to grind the chocolate chips or chunks if they’re frozen. After you grind them, you can add the cinnamon and butter and continue to process them all together. The streusel topping is also optional, but I highly recommend using it on the freestanding versions.