Month: May 2020

Caravan’s Jalapeño Cornbread

- Michael Leave a comment
Caravan's Jalapeno Cornbread - The Bearded Bakery

It’s a tough balance at the moment between writing posts that are relatively timeless and acknowledging that the reason we’re cooking and baking so much at the moment is because of a pandemic that’s forcing people all over the world to stay home. One of the things we’ve really been missing is eating out, so we’ve been trying to bring some of our favourite dishes into the home, resorting one weekend to actually having an NYC themed weekend complete with homemade pizza, bagels and a DIY dive bar in the living room.

Jalapeno Cornbread - The Bearded Bakery

One of the dishes that’s been missed, but relatively simply to replicate at home, was the jalapeño cornbread from Caravan in London. It’s a versatile cornbread, perfect as a side, a snack or as we served it, for brunch; fried, covered in chipotle butter, spring onions and fried egg.

A good cornbread recipe shouldn’t be difficult. It’s a simple mixture of polenta/corn flour (not cornflour, that’s a whole different thing), sweetcorn and jalapeño peppers. The main recipe simply calls for spring onions (scallions) mixed through, but if you replace some of that with chopped jalapeño peppers it gives an excellent spicy kick.

Jalapeno Cornbread with Chipotle Butter - The Bearded Bakery

We serve this with a simple chipotle butter, just like the one they do at Caravan. You can find the recipe for both in their cookbook, but we only had chipotle paste to hand rather than chipotle chillis themselves, and it worked just as well with that.

Caravan's Jalapeno Cornbread - The Bearded Bakery

Caravan’s Jalapeño Cornbread

A quick and easy cornbread for a side or brunch.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 25 minutes
Total Time 35 minutes
Course Breakfast
Servings 1 Loaf

Ingredients
  

  • 60 g butter melted
  • 3 eggs
  • 400 ml milk
  • 170 g polenta
  • 80 g strong white bread flour
  • 1 tbsp caster sugar
  • 1 tbsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp fine sea salt
  • 1 spring onion thinly sliced
  • 2 tbsp jalapeño peppers from a jar, chopped*
  • 150 g sweetcorn kernals tinned**

Instructions
 

  • Preheat your oven to 220°C(200°C fan assisted). Grease and line a 23x13x7cm loaf tin with baking paper.
  • Combine the polenta, bread flour, caster sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.
  • Whisk together the eggs and milk then pour in the melted butter and keep whisking until they’re combined.
  • Pour in the wet ingredients and mix until they’re just combine. Be careful not to overmix at this point, but make sure there are no dry patches.
  • Stir through the spring onions, jalapeño peppers and sweetcorn.
  • Pour the mixture into the prepared loaf tin and leave to rest for 10 minutes.
  • Transfer the tin to the middle shelf of your preheated oven and bake for 10 minutes.
  • At this point, lower the temperature to 200°C(180°C fan assisted) and bake for another 20-25 minutes. It should be golden brown on top and a skewer inserted into the middle will come out clean.
  • Place the tin on a wire rack and leave to cool for 5 minutes before turning the loaf out and leaving to cool completely.

Notes

*Use fresh jalapeño peppers if you have them available. We used tinned because it’s all we could get our hands on.
**Use fresh sweetcorn kernels if they are in season
Keyword cornbread, jalapeno cornbread

Coconut & Mixed Nut Granola

- Michael Leave a comment
The Bearded Bakery - Coconut Granola

Lockdown is still going. We’ve stocked up on dried goods but we’re avoiding going to supermarkets, opting mainly for a veg box delivery and buying dried goods like flour, nuts and seeds from specialised online stores or smaller local independent shops. We’ve been finding places like this to be well stocked and quieter. As such, access to normal cereal has been minimal, but access to the components to make granola has been significantly easier. So we finally felt it was time to try and make a homemade granola recipe.

The Bearded Bakery | Homemade Granola

I’ll keep this pretty simple. The key ingredients in this recipe are as follows, and you can mix and match some of the other bits.

  1. Oil – we used butter
  2. Oats
  3. Sugar
  4. Desiccated coconut
  5. Syrup – we used a split of 50/50 split of honey and golden syrup, but different ratios and different syrups will work
  6. Nuts – we used a mixture of different nuts but you can mix and match. Opt for a cheaper nut for the bulk like a walnut unless you’re feeling particularly flush. We also used some seeds.

The key is the oil and sugars as they’ll get the granola nice and crunchy and help it cling together. The types of nuts you use are less essential and more come down to flavour combinations, what you can get hold of and what you can afford to use. For clarity, we used almonds walnuts, pistachios, flaked almonds and pumpkin seeds. The main nuts being almonds and walnuts.

This recipe will make about 1kg of granola, you can multiply it to make more.

The Bearded Bakery - Granola Recipe

Simple Nut Granola Recipe

A simple granola with mixed nuts and desiccated coconut.
Print Recipe
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Total Time 25 minutes
Course Breakfast
Servings 20 portions (around 50g each)

Ingredients
  

  • 110 g unsalted butter
  • 195 g syrup (we used a mixture of honey and golden syrup)
  • 200 g demerara sugar
  • 175 g oats
  • 170 g desiccated coconut
  • 100 g mixed seeds & flaked almonds (we used flaked almonds and pumpkin seeds)
  • 150 g Mixed nuts (we used walnuts, almonds and pistachios)
  • 1/2 Orange, zested (optional)

Instructions
 

  • Preheat your oven to 150°C (130°C fan assisted) and line a couple of large baking trays with greaseproof paper.
  • In a medium sized pan, melt the butter with the sugar, syrup and zest. You want the butter to have melted and combined but you don’t want the mixture to boil.
  • Mix together all of the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
  • Pour the syrup and butter mixture over the dry ingredients, mixing well until all of the dry ingredients are coated.
  • Transfer the mixture to the prepared baking trays, making sure they’re well spread out and in one single layer on each tray.
  • Place the trays in the oven, baking for 10 minutes undisturbed.
  • Remove from the oven and turn the mixture in each tray. Return to the oven and keep checking every 5 minutes.
  • The granola will be done when the mixture has turned a golden brown colour. Be very careful not to overcook. It will likely still seem a bit soggy when you take it out, but it will crisp up as it cools.
  • Allow to cool completely in the trays and transfer to an air-tight container once cooled.
Keyword Granola