Sunday, February 5, 2012

Imbolc Recipes

Sunflower Seed Bread

You'll need:
1 cup warm water (almost, but not quite hot)
1 pkg active dry yeast
1 tsp sugar
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp salt
3 1/4 cup all-purpose flour, plus additional flour as needed
3/4 cup unsalted shelled roasted sunflower seeds*
1Tbs sunflower seeds
1 beaten egg white

Directions:

In a large bowl or mixer, combine warm water, yeast and 1tsp sugar.  Set aside until foamy.
Add remaining sugar, oil, salt, 3 1/4 cup flour and 3/4 cup seeds.  Mix until well blended.  Knead until a smooth, elastic dough is formed.  Place in a greased bowl, turning once to coat both sides. Cover and let rise until doubled in size, 1-2 hours.
Coat a 9x5 bread pan with cooking spray.
Punch dough down and turn onto a lightly floured board.  Knead about a minute to release trapped air, and shape into loaf.
Place in pan, cover, and set in a warm place to rise until doubled, about 30-45 minutes.
Heat oven to 375 degrees.
Brush top of bread with egg white and sprinkle with remaining seeds.
Bake 35-45 minutes or until done.
Remove from oven and immediately turn onto wire rack to cool.

*Notes: I couldn't actually find unsalted seeds, so I used salted ones and it turned out fine.  Also, instead of greasing the bowl, I poured about a little vegetable oil in my hand and rubbed it over the dough.

Homemade Butter and Buttermilk

You'll need:
1-2 pints of heavy cream (aka heavy whipping cream)

Directions:

Leave cream out to warm up 50 degrees or so.  Pour cream into a mixer with whisk attachment.  Cover mixer with a towel to contain splatter.  Begin mixing and gradually increase speed to med-high or so.  Check the cream every so often.  When it starts looking like whipped cream, you will probably want to scrape the sides with a rubber spatula.  Keep mixing until the butter separates from the liquid.  Once it's separated, use a mesh strainer over a bowl to drain the butter.  That liquid is fresh buttermilk (aka sour milk).
Rinse the butter with water, then, using the rubber spatula, press the butter curds together.  If you want to add salt, herbs or honey, you can do it now.
Store butter in a sealed container in the fridge.

The whole process only takes about 15-20 minutes.

Honeycakes

You'll need:
6 cups flour
1 cup butter
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup sugar
1 cup honey
2 Tbs vinegar
1 Tbs cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp mace


Directions:

In a smaller bowl mix dry ingredients, set aside.  In a larger mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar, add egg, beat until light.  Add honey, milk and vinegar.  Add dry ingredients, mix thoroughly.
Chill 1 hour, or longer. 
Roll dough out to 1/4" thickness.  Cut into 2"x3" rectangles (or shapes of your choice) and place on buttered cookie sheet.
Bake at 375 degrees for 6 minutes.  Frost with plain vanilla frosting.

Warning: The dough WILL be sticky!

Notes: Turn out onto generously floured board, coat rolling pin and hands with flour. Otherwise, the dough will stick to the board.  I also had to bake mine for about 14 minutes, so just keep an eye on the cakes checking frequently for doneness.
I omitted the frosting, but did think a cream cheese frosting would be yummy on the cakes.

1 comment:

  1. Yummmmeee I would not know where to start, I think the sunflower seed bread sounds awesome, so do the honey cakes,, and I really thought that butter took longer to make. Thank you for sharing your recipe's Im keeping them in there own file.

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