3 Easy Weekend Bakes From GBBO’s Nadiya Hussain
Baking is my first love. Although I didn’t quite realise it when as a teenager, I baked a cake for my sister’s pre-wedding party. It was a simple sponge, sandwiched together with sticky jam and groaning under the sheer weight of thick white fondant with a hideous fondant groom on top. I also didn’t see it when I did my GCSE in Food Studies a few years later and designed an entire Pokémon cake, with marbled red-and-white sponge, sandwiched with jam and covered in a coloured fondant.
We had an oven at home, but it was full of pans. It wasn’t used for baking, just for storing greasy deep-frying equipment and I never really saw it any other way. Life happened around all of that – then I got married and we got our own house with our own oven. Still nothing, not an urge, not a spark, not a thought to bake. Until my husband asked me to make a cake, so I gave it a try. It started with a wonky sponge, and he ate the whole thing. So I saved up for an oven thermometer to make sure the oven temperature was regulated. The next cake was less wonky. Still delicious and he ate it again. Then some strawberry and cream muffins. A whole dozen. A little chewy, not very cake-like, tasty though, and he ate them all. I saved a few strawberries out of sight in the back of the fridge and tried again. There was a definite improvement. They were eaten even faster than the ones that came before.
Before I knew it, I was baking bread, enriching doughs, making pastry and laminating. I was baking every day, all because I had someone to eat it. Baking became a part of life, like cooking, like laundry, hoovering and breathing. It was just natural, it was normal. Baking has become such a massive part of who I am that there is no denying it. Baking doesn’t have to be your first love, or indeed anywhere in a long list of loves like mine, but perhaps it’s waiting to become one of yours. The recipes below are just some of the ideas that have flown around in my head and things my family eat over and over again.
Pulled Chicken Doughnuts
These doughnuts are filled with a quick-cooked shredded chicken, then fried and covered in a delicious savoury-sweet dust. If anyone didn’t know these were savoury, they could be fooled. This recipe is worth a try just to see the confusion and delight on people’s faces.
Start by making the dough. Put the flour in a bowl, add the butter and rub in until there are no big butter chunks remaining.
Now add the sugar and salt to one side of the bowl and the yeast to the other side. Mix thoroughly and then make a well in the centre. Mix the eggs and water in a jug, then pour into the well and mix with the dry ingredients until the dough roughly comes together.
If you are kneading the dough by hand, flour the work surface and knead for 10 minutes until the dough is stretchy and shiny. But I prefer to do it using a mixer, as the dough is quite sticky and buttery.
When using a dough hook on a mixer it only needs kneading for 6 minutes on a medium speed.
Leave to prove in a warm place covered with a wet tea towel or greased clingfilm.
Meanwhile, make the filling by boiling the chicken breast in a small pan of water on a medium heat for 15 minutes until the meat is cooked through.
Once cooked, lift the chicken out of the water and leave on a plate until it’s cool enough to handle. Use two forks to shred and pull it apart. Now add flavour to your chicken by adding the barbecue sauce, mayo, chilli flakes and chives and giving it all a good mix around. Cover and set aside in the fridge.
Once the dough has doubled in size, tip out onto a floured work surface. Roll the dough into a sausage shape and cut out 12 equal portions of around 90g each. Making them the same size is important if you want them to fry evenly.
Have a lined and greased baking tray at the ready. Roll out a dough ball to about 12cm diameter. Add a tablespoon of chicken mix, not heaped, into the centre. Gently lift up the edges of the dough from all around the sides and seal the chicken inside, pinching firmly in the centre. Pop it on the tray, pinched side up.
Do this to the rest of them, then pop the tray into the fridge for 1 hour.
In the meantime, make the dust by mixing the garlic, cumin, salt, sugar and coriander.
Just before the hour is up, add the oil to a medium sized pan. Make sure the oil is not higher than halfway up the sides. Heat the oil on a medium heat – if you are using a thermometer you want the oil to reach 150°C. But if not, you can drop a piece of bread into the oil and if it sizzles and rises to the top, the oil is ready.
Prepare a baking tray lined with kitchen paper to drain the doughnuts on.
Gently place a doughnut into the oil, pinched side up. Don’t overcrowd the pan, just do three at a time.
Cook the doughnuts gently for 6 minutes until golden brown all over. You don’t need to turn them, just occasionally push them down into the oil using a slotted spoon. When ready, take out and pop onto the paper to drain, then pop in the oven for 10 minutes to finish cooking through, removing the kitchen paper first. While still piping hot, sprinkle with the savoury dust. Do the same to all of them, frying and sprinkling.
Allow to cool down, then eat them lukewarm, or even totally cooled.
Chocolate Caramel Flan
This clever pudding starts with caramel in the base of the tin, then a simple chocolate sponge batter and finally a crème caramel mixture. As it sits and bakes in a water bath, the crème caramel seeps down to meet the caramel and creates a beautiful soft layer, which becomes the top once the cake is turned out.
Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan 160°C/gas 4. Grease and lightly flour the inside of a 23cm bundt tin. Find a roasting tin big enough to hold the bundt tin comfortably and deep enough for water to come two-thirds of the way up the side of the bundt tin. Pop a tea towel into the base of the roasting tin.
Put the salted caramel in a microwaveable dish and warm for just long enough to make it runny, about 20 seconds. Pour into the base of the tin, avoiding drips on the sides. Tap on the worktop to level off.
Make the cake by whisking the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl until you have a really light and fluffy mixture. Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix in.
To a separate bowl, add the flour, cocoa, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder and mix really well.
Now, spoon the coffee into a small bowl, add a few tablespoons of the milk and heat for a few seconds in the microwave until the coffee has dissolved. Mix, pour into the remaining milk and stir through.
Sift a third of the flour mixture onto the butter, sugar and egg mixture and fold in with a large metal spoon. Fold in a third of the milk, then repeat until all the flour and milk has been mixed in.
When you have a smooth batter, spoon over the salted caramel, tap the tin on the worktop to remove any bubbles and make sure you have a level top. Put the bundt tin into the centre of the roasting tin.
Make the crème caramel mixture by mixing the evaporated milk, condensed milk, eggs, vanilla and salt in a food processor until smooth and even. Pour on top of the cake batter and level the top.
Have a jug of hot water ready. Put the roasting tin with the bundt tin into the oven. Before you close the door, pour the water straight onto the tea towel in the roasting tin, making sure the water reaches at least two-thirds of the way up. Bake for 1 hour and don’t be tempted to open the oven. Once cooked, take out and leave to cool in the tin for another hour, then flip over onto a serving dish and it is ready to eat.
Money Can’t Buy You Happiness Brownies
I am always in search of the best brownie, and I figure if you can’t find it, make it. So here it is: a triple chocolate brownie, with a layer of toasted chopped nuts encased in dulce de leche, then topped with a zesty cheesecake mixture and baked again.
Put the butter and chocolate in a small pan and melt gently, stirring occasionally until the mixture is liquid. Set aside to cool.
Line the base and sides of a 20 x 30 x 5cm brownie tin with some baking paper so that it comes 1cm above the top of the tin, and lightly grease.
Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan 60°C/gas 4.
Add the eggs, sugar and cooled coffee to a large mixing bowl and whisk until the mixture is light, thick and fluffy. This should take 5 minutes with an electric hand whisk. (Adding the coffee really enhances the flavour of the cocoa and you won’t even be able to taste the coffee itself.)
Pour in the cooled melted chocolate and whisk until the mixture no longer has any streaks in it.
Then add the sifted flour, cocoa and salt and mix until you have a glossy batter.
Mix the teaspoon of flour with the chocolate chips in a bowl before mixing them into the batter until they’re well dispersed – this trick will stop them sinking to the bottom when you bake the brownies. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and level off the top. Bake for 25 minutes.
While it is baking, toast the nuts in a large non-stick pan, stirring until they are a deep golden brown.
Put the dulce de leche in a bowl along with the toasted nuts and the salt, mix and set aside.
As soon as the brownies are baked, take them out of the oven and leave to cool completely in the tin. As soon as they have cooled, spread the sticky nut mixture over the top and pop the whole thing in the freezer for 30 minutes.
Adjust the oven to 170°C/fan 150°C/gas 3½.
Make the cheesecake top by mixing the cream cheese, sugar, egg, almond extract, orange zest and flour together really well.
Spoon and spread into an even layer over the nut mixture and pop into the oven for 30 minutes.
As soon as the cheesecake is set in the centre, allow to cool totally and leave in the fridge overnight. The wait will be worth it!
Dust with the cocoa, take out of the tin and cut into squares.
Recipes taken from Nadiya Bakes by Nadiya Hussain out now (£22, Michael Joseph). Nadiya Bakes is on Wednesdays at 8:30pm on BBC Two.
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