Tag: recipes

No Bake Dessert| Creme au chocolat shots … fudgy, indulgent, deep chocolate creme

“Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.”
Joanne Harris

Crème au chocolatIf the whites find feet, can the yolks be far behind? Each time I make macarons, a bunch of egg yolks call my name. This time was no different with the yolks looking for a home again, and me looking for inspiration. It’s been a long 3 years since I began food blogging. The beginning saw me absolutely egg-phobic, where I couldn’t handle the smell of an egg yolk under any circumstances. Egg yolks and yeast were my two enemies.Gradually they became frenemies, and one day I won the battle of yeast {with my friend Ben from What’s Cooking Mexico}. Recently, on my Yeasted Meringue Coffee cake he commented, “Remember when we were scared of yeast? That looks like another life now, doesn’t it?” How true!! Winning over the yolks was far tougher but the discovery of Madagascar vanilla beans was set to change that forever. Who would have thought that the humble vanilla bean, with its deep flavour could make yolks so delightful?My culinary journey got better with food bloggers becoming friends, a chance meeting in London, and The Cooking Ninja introduced me to her MILs Crème Pâtissière. I do love the French for their beautiful desserts, and Pamela for introducing me to pastry creme. I first used it to make these Orange Patisserie Tartlets with Candied Tangerines. Theres been no looking back. What I’ve conjured up here is in no way traditional baked pots de creme. This is my fast track version of Crème au chocolat which translates simply into my idea of an indulgent chocolate cream! The Thermomix makes pastry creme feel like a cakewalk. Where else can you pop everything into a bowl, turn the timer to 7 minutes and open the bowl to a fudgy, deep, chocolaty, smooth as satin chocolate pastry creme at the other end? Well, you can go the tradional way to pastry creme too, over the stove top and end up with the same delight. A pastry creme, or custard is, IMHO, a most wonderful and indulgent way to use up egg yolks. This chocolate pastry cream is ready to serve in a couple of hours, including chill time. It’s finger licking good too. I reached this consistency after playing around with the quantities of chocolate, milk and cornflour. The basic recipe is quite versatile, and can be easily doubled too. I like it because  it can be made in advance, and of course, desserts in glasses are always eye candy! They make a bold, crisp statement, and allow for contrasting pairing that you can show off.  Serve it with either fresh seasonal fruit and herbs, with amaretti cookies, or paired with macarons. Else spike it with your favourite cherry liqueur and serve with juicy bing cherries, or give it an espresso kick …  the possibilities are endless!A good point to remember is to use a nice quality chocolate. I have been fortunate enough to discover a local source of couverture chocolate from an online gourmet store here, called Delicious Now. I was introduced to it when I attended the Le Cordon Blue Pastry Workshop in Delhi a few months ago, and the single origin cocoa bean 65% dark chocolate has me addicted. With prices of the cocoa bean heading north, I’m now experimenting with a 55% dark chocolate. {Disclaimer: I have not been paid to write this. It’s always nice to share a local source in India as it’s difficult to find a variety of ingredients easily}.These little ‘hot chocolate shots‘ are off to the April Cook-Off hosted by the equally hot and gorgeous Da @ Kitchen Corners. She called this April to make ‘Something delicious with chocolate. Something new and creative. Something a little crazy.’

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Crème au chocolat

Source: Own

A fudgy, satiny, deeply chocolaty pastry creme served as individual desserts in shot glasses offers a nice elegant end to a meal. Serve with seasonal fruit or delicate biscuits.

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 1 vanilla bean, scraped
  • Pinch of salt
  • 100gm dark couverture chocolate 65%, room temperature
  • 200ml low fat milk, hot
  • 100ml low fat milk, cold
  • 1/8 cup cornflour
  • Fresh strawberries, mint to garnish
  • Vanilla sugar for glass rims

Equipment:

  • Thermomix or heavy bottom pan

Method:

  1. Bring the milk, vanilla sugar and a pinch of salt to a gentle boil in a pot.
  2. In the meantime, whisk the egg yolks and sugar with a wooden spoon in a big bowl until the mixture becomes pale and light. Stir in the flour slowly until it is thoroughly mixed with the egg mixture.
  3. Pour the boiling milk into the mixture a little by little while whisking continuously to avoid curdling. And then stir in the rest of the milk until the mixture is well combined.
  4. Transfer the whole mixture into a pot, with the chocolate and seeds scraped from the vanilla bean, and heat it under low setting. Stir it constantly with the wooden spoon or spatula scraping the sides and bottom until it has thickened.
  5. Once the custard has thickened, take it off the heat, and strain / pour it into a clean bowl. Allow to cool down a bit, then pour or pipe into serving glasses to set.
  6. While the custard is cooling, you can dip the rims of serving glasses into a ‘sliver’ of water and then into vanilla sugar. Allow to stand for 10 minutes until set.
  7. Chill the shots in the fridge for at least 2 hours. Serve with freshly halved strawberries and a sprig of mint.

For the Thermomix:

  1. Whiz the sugar in the TM bowl on Speed 9 for 10 seconds, then add the yolks and run on Speed 5 for 5 seconds
  2. Mix the 1/8 cup cornflour into the cold milk.
  3. Add the chocolate, and warm milk to the TM bowl, and begin cook at 100C / 7 minutes, Speed 4. As soon as the TM begins to run, pour in the cold cornflour mix into the bowl through the shute, and shut.
  4. Check after 7 minutes if the pastry creme is as thick as you like, else run for another few minutes. Immediately transfer to a serving bowl … proceed as above

YIELD: Six servings
Course: Dessert
TIME: 30 minutes, stove top / 7 minutes Thermomix
NOTE: Other flavour possibilities could be a cherry or orange liquor or expresso. Can be made a day in advance.
Copyright Deeba@Passionate About Baking

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Frozen Dessert| Strawberry Fresh Mint & Lime Sorbet … summer’s here & macarons too!

“Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
Those days of soda and pretzels and beer
Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
Dust off the sun and moon and sing a song of cheer”
Nat King Cole

Some songs will never be forgotten, and some voices will live forever. He was singing the song in his rich, deep, baritone voice {in my head of course} as I caught sight of the sorbet in my reader. Nat King Cole had no clue, but I so knew I was going to make it soon. It sounded easy,breezy and beautiful. What I didn’t know was that I would be walking into the kitchen in the next 10 minutes and whizzing it together.If you own a food processor, or better still, a Thermomix, summer will never be better. My herb garden is absolutely thriving for some unknown reason, the first summer that I’ve had great success with growing herbs. Mint I have always had plenty of, and basil too. For the thyme, rosemary, purple basil, chives, parsley, coriander and oregano I must thank the lovely folk from Hometown Seeds, which specializes in high quality garden and herb seeds, for sending me a selection of herb seeds.I have never been so excited at seeing a lush potful of thyme and the beginnings of rosemary. The thyme is thriving, and I used it in these Strawberry Apple Crumbles here. The rosemary is looking good but will take a while to become ‘plant enough‘ to use. If you saw my overflowing patch of mint you’d  turn an envious green! Every neighbour who walks by asks me for some. I often pull it out, roots and all and hand it to them to grow a patch of their own … sharing some mint love! Its a beautiful fresh herb, yet I don’t use it as often as I should.I’ve been hurriedly freezing bags of strawberries this past month as I feared they would disappear with the mercury rising; it’s touching 37C these days.  Yet strangely enough, the prices have come down, and the quality improved! Lush, red strawberries are still flooding the market, so what better way to celebrate than to use my frozen berries and make this beautiful sorbet.This sorbet changed the way I look at mint, and makes me guard my mint patch a little more. The frozen delight tantalizes the palette and is bowl licking good  … oh-so-refreshing!! I made the recipe from what I remembered reading, which in my case meant that ingredients changed along the way. Proves a point that the memory isn’t as good as it used to be!I added juice of a lime instead of the vanilla extract {I could have sworn I read lime and not extract …sigh!}, and I didn’t register the food colour. Just as well that I didn’t because the natural colour in itself is tantalizing… as was the taste. I urge you to go and buy and freeze strawberries, and whip up this fabulous, no fat delight which makes you welcome summer with open arms. Oh the colours and oh the flavours … A D D I C T I V E!!I had a wee bit that I saved up to pair with chocolate macarons I made for this month. Our theme for April at MacTweets is CHOCOLAT! This month of April, the MacKitchen is being devoted to chocolate. Chocolate Macarons are taking over! Jamie & I called for you to create something sensational, surprising, unique, something beautiful, delectable, tantalizing, something worthy of a Mac Attack using chocolate.Pair it with a  novel ingredient which will add texture or flavor or color, something, anything which will accentuate, complement the chocolate flavor and make for one spectacular mac! These chocolate macaron shells paired with a sweet/tart strawberry fresh lime sorbet screamed summer, tantalizing, sensational and delectable.

Do you want to join Jamie and me making MACARONS??

If you do, you are most welcome to join the ‘Attack’. You can find all the information at our dedicated macaron blog MacTweets. The rules for can be found here. You can always join this month, or the next if you like. Just drop us a mail or tweet.

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Strawberries, fresh mint and lime sorbet

Source: Adapted from the Nourished Kitchen

What better way to welcome the dreaded HOT days of summer. This is a natural and sensational sorbet to beat the heat. It is fresh and exciting, and a wonderful way to use summers bounty. My mint patch is overflowing and I loved that I could add fresh mint to the strawberries.

Ingredients:

  • 450gms frozen strawberries, thawed at room temperature for twenty minutes {for TM, use straight from the freezer}
  • 1/4 cup minced mint leaves {for TM, no need to mince}
  • 2/3 cup sugar or honey {reduce if the strawberries are sweet. Mine were tart}
  • Juice of 1 lime

Equipment:

  • Thermomix or food processor

Method:

  1. Combine all ingredients in the bowl of the Thermomix {speed 10 / 20seconds, use spatula to stir} or a food processor and process until smooth.
  2. Transfer to the freezer, if necessary, to harden, or serve immediately. Garnish with sprigs of fresh mint.

YIELD: about 1 pint.
TIME: about 5 minutes.
NOTE: Depending on the sweetness of your berries, you may wish to adjust the sweetener or omit it entirely.
Copyright Deeba@Passionate About Baking

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Baking | Roasted Garlic Foccacia … & a salute to the ‘Fukushima 50’!

“All sorrows are  less with bread.”
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Is it just me, or does time really seem to crawl when you want life to get back to normal? Japan is still battling its worse ever crisis, the world looks on with fingers crossed, living in hope that things will get better. Hope rests on unlikely heroes, a band of brothers who work tirelessly round the clock with strength and resilience, reflecting the true spirit of the nation they belong to. The Fukushima 50, the bravest of the brave, put their lives on hold while they battle radiation risks to save impending disaster. The world salutes your spirit!As my mind is overtaken by thoughts of Japan, the bread I post today is simple yet comforting,  a good classic bread with deep taste.  A few days ago, I had this obsessive desire to bake bread. The weather here is changing, warming up rather quickly, an indication that bread baking days are back again.Often I forget to begin the bread process the previous evening; just don’t plan right. It’s such a bother! I’d had focaccia on my mind for a few days. That morning, leafing through my cookbooks and recipes {including Ottolenghi & Peter Reinhart}, figured I was late for the poolish again. Poolish is like a starter, a mother dough, and is also referred to as a pre-ferment or biga. Yet, bread I HAD to bake! The insane idea didn’t want to leave my head, so it was back to the net,  proving for the  infinite time that net dependency is something that isn’t easy to shake off! One of the first matches for ‘same day focaccia ‘ led me to Pease-Pudding! What’s not to love about the name? One step into the delicious blog and it was time to bookmark. Pease-Pudding is hosted by a North English lass who lives in New Zealand. She loves peas and she loves pudding, has a passion for desserts, hence the name.Of the bread she said on her post, “I have made the bread three times now and each time it turns out perfect. The difference with this dough is that it is more like a wet ‘poolish‘ and not one you knead.”  We absolutely loved the focaccia. The crust and texture of both the inside and the outside were addictive. It was obvious why she had made it thrice in a week. I would too!! A handsome splash of extra virgin olive oil, a couple of heads of roasted garlic in the dough, a sprinkling of fresh oregano, sea salt & more garlic on top. I couldn’t have asked for better, more  comforting bread! It’s simple, is ready to bake in a couple of hours, and the olive oil lavished on top gives it a beautiful crust. Not sure if the addition of vital gluten had anything to do with it, but the insides were airy, light and delightfully chewy. 

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Recipe:Roasted Garlic Focaccia


By Deeba @ PAB
Published: 2011/03/19

One of the best breads I’ve made recently. I found the recipe at yet another wonderful blog from Down Under, NZ actually, while searching for for a ‘same day focaccia recipe‘.

Minimally adapted from Pease-Pudding

Cooking time: 30minutes | Diet Type: Vegetarian | Yield: 4-6 | Culinary Tradition: Italian

Ingredients
500g plain flour
3 tbsp vital gluten
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 ½ teaspoon dry yeast
1 head roasted garlic, mashed with a fork
1 ½tsp teaspoon salt
500 ml luke warm water
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Topping:
Extra virgin olive oil
Sea salt
2-3 cloves garlic, sliced fine
Fresh oregano leaves

Instructions
Pre-heat oven to 200C. In a large bowl mix with your hands flour, sugar and yeast.
Pour in the water. Add salt, roasted ,if using, and knead in the bowl for 5 minutes. Eventually add more water.
{Thermomix: Place flour, sugar and yeast in TM bowl. Run at speed 10 for 6-7 seconds. Add remaining ingredients, including the olive oil, other than the toppings and run on interval speed for 2 minutes {Don’t leave the machine unattended in interval mode}. Proceed…
Pour in about 3 tbsps of extra virgin olive oil and mix it so the oil covers the dough and goes down the side of the dough.
Allow to rise covered with plastic wrap for about 1 hour or until it doubles.
Preheat the oven to 200C.
Grease with plenty of olive oil a shallow oven dish or a baking tray with edges. Pour the dough into this without kneading any further. {I used 2 round 8″ Victoria sandwich tins}
Generously pour extra virgin olive oil onto the focaccia and press with your fingers to create multiple wells. Add toppings.
The focaccia does not need rising at this stage {but it does not harm it. It will just make it thicker}.
Bake for about 20 – 30 minutes until risen and light golden brown.
Notes: I added vital gluten because we don’t get strong bread flour in India.
Copyright © Deeba @ Passionate About Baking

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Cooking| Sriracha Style Sweet-Red Chili Dipping Sauce … some like it hot!

“The time has come the walrus said to talk of other things,
of sauce and chips and sealing jars,
red chilies and their sting!”

It’s the end of a cold blistery winter on the plains of North India, and now is the best part of the year. Spring is in the air, albeit for just a clutch of days, and is a celebration of flower beds bursting with colour, birds, butterflies, vibrant fresh produce, making the atmosphere ideal for all things creative. This is the time to make the most of the few good days before the searing summer heat descends on us. The bazaars are bursting with farm fresh vegetables and the overladen baskets of ripe red tomatoes {prices at ridiculous as Rs 4 a kilo in Hyderabad, 1$=Rs44}, bell peppers and red chilies tempt you to do something with them. For long I’ve wanted to make a Sriracha  style sauce posted on White on Rice’s beautiful blog. Have searched high and low for tiny hot Thai red chillies, but  it’s proved futile as they remain elusive here … Then one day, to my rescue came my knight in shining armour – as always, good old Twitter! A tweet for ‘an alternative to Thai red chilies’ had the super talented & lovely Leela @ She Simmers suggest I could use red jalapeños. Now why did I never think of that? A quick check of the red chilies at the local vendor gave me hope, lots of it. Cross checking with a few vendors I was able to confirm that the heat element in the local red chili peppers is far greater than that in the green ones. I was soon back armed with 250gms of the prettiest red chilies priced at a ridiculous Rs 15 {30cents}.This post is written with Sana in mind, a sweet reader of my blog, who writes to me often for advice, with feedback, with appreciation and makes me believe that I have made a difference to her culinary happiness. She asked me the other day if I could post something with the local red chilies that are flooding the market, something other than red chili pickle she asked! This dipping sauce is for her, and she’s offered to send me her MILs stuffed red chili pickle recipe. Who would ever imagine that life can be so fulfilling & delicious. Who was to know that a few red chilies can make a difference!!IMHO, you can live with Sriracha, but you can’t live without it!! I had  longed to make this delicious dipping sauce, a sauce which works well with seafood of course, but also beautifully with other batter fried foods, Indian pakoras/fritters, batter fried onion rings {my son’s fave}, olive oil crackers {the daughters fave}, fried fish/chicken, buttermilk breaded chicken, to give mayonnaise or a marinade a chili kick, in a sandwich, with burgers, lavished in a chicken/cottage cheese roll. It offers Asian fusion at its best!! Though an Asian sauce, it works beautifully with most cuisines; after all what’s not to love about chili-garlic-sweet? Did I forget French fries with sweet chili spiked tomato sauce?With thanks to Todd & Diane for the several inspired posts of Asian foods and sauces, I stopped on the recipe page of sweet chili dipping sauce in my Thermomix recipe book. With basic ingredients that can be found on shelves in every home, this is a great accompaniment to spice up your platter. Use the recipe as a guide and play around with quantities to suit your palette.

Sriracha is the name for a Thai hot sauce named after the coastal city of Si Racha, in the Chonburi Province of central Thailand, where it was first produced for dishes served at local seafood restaurants. It is a paste of chili peppers, distilled vinegar, garlic, sugar and salt. Sriracha is a common condiment in many Asian restaurants and increasingly found in American and European homes. Traditional Thai Sriracha tends to be tangier, sweeter, and thicker in texture (higher viscosity) than non-Thai. In Thailand, Sriracha is frequently used as a dipping sauce.

Keep the seeds in if you like it hot, or deseed the red chili peppers to make the sauce milder. Taste as you go seems to be the mantra as with most sauces. I’ve made this a couple of times. The first time I found it to be a little runny, so I thickened it with some cornflour mixed in water, and cooked it till it got to the right consistency. Not sure if this was the right or the purists way of doing it, but it worked fine for me. The next time I just simmered it over low heat till it looked right. I do love the pretty colour it has, vibrant and exciting.

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Baking| Strawberry & Lemon Curd Shortbread

“Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate.”
G.K. Chesterton

Desperate times call for desperate measures! Even though the magnitude of my troubles was minuscule, 3 days of no internet reduced me to tears. Silly how addicted and dependent we can be on the internet. Sometime back, sweet Joy from Gourmeted tweeted about Lemon Curd & Shortbread Bars. I had a small jar of left over lemon curd in the freezer and this recipe called my name. Saved the link as the net is just a heartbeat away; well almost always… Little did I know!! We have massive roadworks being carried out for rain harvesting which have meant underground telephone cables being cut pretty often. The cable company always has them up and running the same day; not this time though as the damage was extensive. Oh the untold anguish and the feeling of being cut-off…These wedges were something born out of desperation as I finally gave up and decided to bake ‘anything shortbread’ with the lemon curd and strawberries. Cookbooks yielded nothing, so I eventually put together a basic shortbread recipe for the base, topped it with the lemon curd, and then threw on some strawberries to add colour and taste. Slivered almonds on top  for crunch seemed to crown these well. My love for fruit in baking continues unabated. I managed to get a neat stash of strawberries the other day at a really good price. The challenge of course was to use them judiciously and deliciously so they wouldn’t disappoint! Froze some, made some strawberry muffins {recipe to be blogged}, and then made this shortbread.’twas soon time to tempt the teen out of her diet, and these had her eating out of my hand, no fuss, nothing! Ah the power of food, always A M A Z I N G!! I enjoyed making these. Loved the different textures, the colours, and the burst of flavours from the rather buttery unsweetened shortbread to the sweet tart lemon curd, the strawberries lending their ever promising magic to the wedges. Bye bye diet, hello happiness!!It’s always handy to have lemon curd on hand. Have you tried making your own? I use a simple home made lemon curd recipe from Ju @ Little Teochew. It freezes beautifully too, and am contemplating doing a batch of orange lemon curd once before the season bids us adieu.

Strawberry & Lemon Curd Shortbread
Delicious and light, the crisp buttery shortbread base is complimented beautifully by simple homemade lemon curd – the flavours tart & sweet.  Strawberries add a unique dimension to this indulgent dessert.
~
Cooking time: 45 mins | Servings: 6 | Meal type: High tea / Dessert
Biscuit Crust:
100g butter, chilled, cut into cubes
3/4 cup plain flour
Topping:
2/3 cup easy homemade lemon curd
100g fresh strawberries, diced
1/4 cup slivered almonds
Method:
Preheat the oven to 180C. Lightly grease a loose bottomed 7″ round tart pan.
Run the flour and butter in blender until you get a breadcrumb like mix. Press into the bottom of a removable base 7″ round tart pan.
Bake at 180C for 10-15 minutes, until light brown Take out of oven, top with lemon curd followed by strawberries. Sprinkle the slivered almonds over.
Return to oven and continue to bake at 180C for 25-30 minutes till the edges begin to get light brown.
Cool on rack, cut into wedges and refrigerate until ready to serve. Serve with unsweetened whipped cream.
Variations
You can use other seasonal fruit like blueberries, raspberries etc.
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Copyright © Deeba @ Passionate About Baking

~

I have a winner for the CSN giveaway… It’s Michelle @ Big Black Dog who said, “I know exactly what I want at CNS, a pizelle maker!”. Congrats Michelle. Mailing you soon!!

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Baking| New York Style Bagels – One Day Bagels! Spice Up Your Life!

“A bagel is a doughnut with the sin removed.”
George Rosenbaum

Today, I write with passion about bagels, one of my all time favourite savoury bites, yet something I’ve never tried making at home. I have a very strange connect with bagels, NY and a song called Winds of Change by the Scorpions, the lyrics celebrate the political changes in Eastern Europe around 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall etc. Have you heard the song? {The current pro-democratic Jasmine Revolution might inspire similar haunting melodies…}

I follow the Moskva
Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change

The whistling and  lyrics of the song have been a favourite for years.  Each time I hear the words ‘Gorky Park‘, for some insane reason I get transported to the streets of NY, sitting in a cafe munching a savoury bagel! It’s a very strange connect, maybe a reminder of  Central Park in NY … hmmm!

When I got a mail the other day from the Bagel Spice folk asking if I’d be interested in reviewing one of their spice blends, my heart skipped a beat. Did they know that bagels had been on my list of things to make forever and ever? Yes please! Soon we had our old drunk postie flinging a parcel over the gate. The spice blends were here!Bagel Spice, a scrumptious blend of premium spices inspired by the “Everything Bagel”. It’s a delicious accompaniment to a variety of savory dishes. sprinkle it on spreads like butter, cream cheese and hummus. Shake it over fried eggs, lox and tuna, or mix it with mashed potatoes, egg and potato salads for a delightful flavour”. Everything I tried with their spice blend came out excellent and full of flavour. My first attempt was bagels of course, next as part of a marinade, a broccoli stir fry and even olive oil crackers!

A bagel is a bread product, traditionally shaped by hand into the form of a ring from yeasted wheat dough, roughly hand-sized, which is first boiled for a short time in water and then baked.The result is a dense, chewy, doughy interior with a browned and sometimes crisp exterior. Bagels are often topped with seeds baked on the outer crust, with the traditional ones being poppy or sesame seeds. Some also may have salt sprinkled on their surface, and there are also a number of different dough types such as whole-grain or rye.

I had a recipe in mind, one bookmarked off The Sophisticated Gourmet, which had me making imaginary New York style bagels as I read the post. To quote the young and very talented Kamran, “ Heck, this bagel recipe is so good that you’ll be bowing down to the bagel god after you take a nice bite out of one of these freshly made bagels. This recipe is a same day recipe and doesn’t require two days of dedication. You hear that impatient bakers? ONE DAY bagels!“Man these bagels were good. One bite into these beauties and we were transported to bagel heaven. Bow to the bagel god!! I was slightly underconfident making them, coz it was a first for me and I found the boiling etc a little daunting. But fear not. This is as easy a process as it can possibly be. I think most of the hard work is in the kneading, that’s been taken over by the Thermomix now, and the shaping. I did try the 9″ rope shaping, but found TSG’s way of rolling into a ball, pushing a hole through the centre and shaping them much easier and better looking.Used some of the bagel spices as part of an olive oil marinade for fish fingers and for a char grilled broccoli side. Excellent!! As if I hadn’t had my savoury fill, it was once again time for my weekly rolling out of Ottolenghi’s Olive Oil Crackers {I use some whole wheat in mine too, recipe here}. This afternoon, I sprinkled some bagel spices on top of these delightful crisp low fat crackers … YUM!! So many wonderful ways to use these great blends! Check out some more exciting recipes on the Bagel Spice blog!


NY Bagel Recipe
adapted minimally from The Sophisticated Gourmet
Recipe modified from Ultimate Bread by Eric Treuille & Ursula Ferrigno
Makes 8-9 medium-sized bagels
2 teaspoons of active dry yeast
1 ½ tablespoons of granulated sugar
1 ¼ cups of warm water {you may need ± ¼ cup more}
450g plain flour {will need extra for kneading}
50g  vital wheat gluten
1 ½ teaspoons of salt
Toppings: Bagel spices from bagelspice.com
Method:
In ½ cup of the warm water, pour in the sugar and yeast. Do not stir. Let it sit for five minutes, and then stir the yeast and sugar mixture, until it all dissolves in the water.
Mix the flour, vital gluten and salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the middle and pour in the yeast and sugar mixture.
Pour half of the remaining warm water into the well. Mix and stir in the rest of the water as needed. Depending on where you live, you may need to add anywhere from a couple tablespoons to about ¼ cup of water. You want to result in a moist and firm dough after you have mixed it.
On a floured countertop, knead the dough for about 10 minutes until it is smooth and elastic. Try working in as much flour as possible to form a firm and stiff dough.
{Thermomix Recipe
Place all ingredients in TM Bowl, and run on speed 5  for 7-8 seconds.
Put knob to closed position, and run on interval speed for 2 minutes. {Do not leave TM unattended in interval mode.}
Turn out dough, knead briefly to bring into a neat ball for 30 seconds and proceed…}
Lightly brush a large bowl with oil and turn the dough to coat. Cover the bowl with a damp dish towel. Let rise in a warm place for 1 hour, until the dough has doubled in size. Punch the dough down, and let it rest for another 10 minutes.
Carefully divide the dough into 8-9 pieces. Shape each piece into a round. Now, take a dough ball, and press it gently against the countertop moving your hand and the ball in a circular motion pulling the dough into itself while reducing the pressure on top of the dough slightly until a perfect dough ball forms. Repeat with the other dough rounds.
Coat a finger in flour, and gently press your finger into the center of each dough ball to form a ring. Stretch the ring to about ⅓ the diameter of the bagel and place on a lightly oiled cookie sheet. Repeat the same step with the remaining dough.
After shaping the dough rounds and placing them on the cookie sheet, cover with a damp kitchen towel and allow to rest for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 220ºC.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Reduce the heat. Use a slotted spoon or skimmer to lower the bagels into the water. Boil as many as you are comfortable with boiling. Once the bagels are in, it shouldn’t take too long for them to float to the top {a couple seconds}. Let them sit there for 1 minute, and them flip them over to boil for another minute. Extend the boiling times to 2 minutes each, if you’d prefer a chewier bagel {results will give you a more New York Style bagel with this option}.
After the bagels have come out of the boiling water, place them face down onto the seeds, and then place the seed side up onto the baking tray.
Once all the bagels have boiled and have been topped with the bagel spice, transfer them to a lightly oiled baking sheet.
Bake for 20 minutes, until golden brown.
Cool on a wire rack

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