Fun, but also enriching

Well, this week in UK telly land sees the final of the Great British Bake Off. Not to everybody’s taste, but I have enjoyed this pleasant and rather quaint diversion from all the bad news filling the airwaves.

The GBBO has also nudged me into having a go at baking off-piste shall we say. That is I’ve been experimenting and devising new combinations for old recipes. My latest weekend bake was a version of sticky buns.

Yeast cookery isn’t too difficult it is mostly about not being in a hurry. These sticky buns are made with an enriched dough studded with stem ginger and hazelnuts and baked with a coating of my buttery, caramel sauce. It’s the caramel that gives these buns the glossy, sticky finish.

Enriching a dough means adding butter, sugar and eggs which makes a softer, heavier dough. However, the addition of fat and sugar also slows the action of the yeast and therefore the proving time has to be longer. But the waiting is worth it when you sample the finished sticky buns.

The bite of the stem ginger cuts through the sweetness of the sticky caramel coating.

Not all saved from the rain!

I’m English and therefore ‘the weather’ rules! I have been so fed up with the rain ruining the flowers that as it started to pour again I decided to cut the remaining roses. There will be a second flush from the repeat-flowering varieties and a smattering of blooms from the continuously-flowering, but that’s it for my summer only roses.

Small arrangement for side table.

Large arrangement for mantlepiece.

Sadly, as daylilies (hemerocallis) live up to their name, flowering for just one day, they aren’t really used as a cut flower. It is a case of appreciating them in the rain and taking a quick photo.

I don’t think I’ve noticed the ‘plant’ year so ahead of itself as it is this year in East Anglia. I heard on the radio that in some parts of the country the cobnuts are already forming nearly a month early. I trotted down the garden and sure enough I spotted some beginning to mature on the tree – well that will be until the squirrels find them!

Cobnuts early this year. (type of hazelnut)

Contrary Mary

I notice I’ve gone down the ‘very pretty, pretty’ alley a bit too much recently and I feel I need an antidote. Us, humans – aren’t we a contrary bunch? All the grey winter gloom and then it’s spring and there is green and flowers everywhere. And, I’m looking at skeletons! Also, I find I’ve been reaching for the black dye.

Enough gloom I think it’s time for a little ‘Kaffee und Kuchen’.

Coffee and hazelnut cupcakes.

And a nice cup of coffee.