Baking

A collection of baking recipes

Miso Brownies

- Michael Leave a comment
Miso Brownie - The Bearded Bakery

We’re living through very strange times. With a pandemic sweeping the globe and entire countries on shut down, everyone’s spending significantly more time indoors. Based on my social feeds this means that people seem to be baking a whole lot more often. I’ve joined the masses in making my own sourdough starter, made vegan cookie dough that’s portioned off into batches and popped in the freezer, even tried making fresh pasta for the first time. All in all, I’ve been spending a significant time in the kitchen. It’s been a good way of escaping from staring at a screen while I’m tried indoors, but also being practical at the same time. It feels like a good time to get a few posts up too.

Miso Brownie - The Bearded Bakery

This is actually a recipe I baked long before all of this kicked off. It’s one I’ve had in the back of my mind, ready to be blogged if I ever got round to getting back writing. After buying the fantastic new Meera Sodha book ‘East’ at the tail end of 2019, I found a recipe for Miso Brownies. Now, hers are a little more involved than these, using flax seeds, but the concept sounded fantastic so it was something I wanted to try.

Miso Brownie - The Bearded Bakery

Using miso for something dense and fudge-y like a brownie is excellent. It adds to that fudge-like texture but also gives an additional caramel-like flavour to the brownie. Miso’s something you may have picked up as an additional long-life extra when you were at a supermarket, or for one individual recipe. This bake should help give you some ideas for other uses too, like miso mac and cheese, or miso caramel.

So what’s everyone been baking lately?

Miso Brownies

Michael
Fudgy brownies with a nutty caramel tang. Perfect for using up any miso you’ve got in the store cupboard.
Print Recipe
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 23 minutes
Total Time 43 minutes
Course Dessert

Ingredients
  

  • 115 g Unsalted butter
  • 115 g Dark chocolate (70%)
  • 2 Eggs large
  • 1 Egg white from a large egg
  • 300 g White granulated sugar
  • 2 tbsp Miso the type doesn’t really matter
  • 1 tsp Vanilla extract
  • 110 g Plain flour

Instructions
 

  • Preheat your oven to 180°C(160°C fan assisted) and line a 9x9inch square tin with baking paper.
  • While the oven’s heating up, melt the chocolate and butter together. Do this by placing a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water. Don’t let the bottom of the bowl touch the water and stir until the butter and chocolate have melted together.
  • Leave this mixture somewhere cool a little while you do the rest.
  • In the bowl of an electric stand mixer, or using an electric whisk, beat together the eggs, egg white and sugar. This will take a while, so a stand mixer will be best. Whisk for 7-10 minutes. The mixture will have gone pale and yellow. If you pick some up on the whisk and dribble it across the top, it should take a couple of seconds for the line to disappear. This step is essential for getting the properly crispy meringue-like top.
  • Stir through the miso and the vanilla.
  • Carefully stir through the chocolate and butter mixture, making sure you don’t knock much air out.
  • Carefully stir through the flour, again making sure you don’t knock the air out.
  • Transfer the mixture to the prepared tin, and place in the middle shelf of your preheated oven.
  • Bake for 17-22 minutes. You want the top to have crisped up and for there to be just a little jiggle when you wobble the tray.
  • Place the tin on a cooling rack and allow to cool completely, and set, before serving.
Keyword Miso Brownies

Cardamom Buns

- Michael Leave a comment
Cardamom Buns - The Bearded Bakery

Well hello there, it’s been a little while hasn’t it. Nearly a year, in fact. A lot has happened in that time. I guess the headlines are that I’ve moved to Brighton, been made redundant and very happily gotten engaged. That’s a lot to take in really. Sometimes life just gets in the way of stuff like this. I have been baking though and late autumn and Christmas is the perfect time to get back blogging about it. I thought I’d kick things off with some cardamom knots I made the other week. They’re absolutely perfect for this cold weather, going great with a hot coffee or mug of tea.

Cardamom Buns - The Bearded Bakery
Cardamom Buns - The Bearded Bakery

The awkward bit with these buns is the knot itself. As you’ll be able to see from my own knots, it doesn’t always go to plan. The bonus is, that as long as you ball them up pretty well it still looks good, but I’ll run you through the process for knotting them below:

  1. Cut each strip down the centre – making sure it’s still attached at the top.
  2. Pull the two halves away from each other and twist each one away from the centre a couple of times
  3. Tie this into a knot
  4. Tuck the ends underneath

Got that? It’s easier than it sounds, but you will make mistakes. Just don’t beat yourself up about it when you do – cos they’ll still look and taste great.

Cardamom Buns - The Bearded Bakery
Cardamom Bun - The Bearded Baker

Cardamom Buns

Michael
Warming and doughy cardamom buns.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 45 minutes
Cook Time 25 minutes
Proving 2 hours 30 minutes
Total Time 1 hour 10 minutes

Ingredients
  

  • 35 Cardamom pods
  • 350 ml Full fat milk
  • 200 g Butter cubed
  • 500 g Strong white bread flour plus extra for dusting
  • 1/2 tsp Salt
  • 225 g Golden caster sugar
  • 7 g Sachet fast action dried yeast
  • 1/2 tsp Ground cinnamon
  • Vegetable or sunflower oil for greasing
  • 1 Large egg beaten
  • 2 tbsp Pearl sugar optional

Instructions
 

  • Open 10 cardamom pods, crushing the insides with a pestle and mortar and add to a saucepan.
  • Add the milk plus 50g of the butter (leaving the rest of the butter at room temperature until required).
  • Gently warm the milk, stirring so it doesn’t catch, until it’s steaming but not boiling. Remove from the heat and leave to cool until lukewarm, making sure the butter has melted into the mixture.
  • Put the flour, 75g of the sugar, the yeast, cinnamon and 1/2 tsp salt into a large bowl, or the bowl of a freestanding mixer and mix until combined.
  • Pour the cooled milk mixture through a sieve into the flour mixture, this will remove the cardamom.
  • Using a dough hook or wooden spoon mix to form a soft dough, then turn out onto a very lightly floured surface.
  • Knead for 10 minutes until it’s smooth and stretchy. You could do this using the dough hook for 5-7 minutes, but I always find I get better results if I do it by hand.
  • Clean out and lightly oil the mixing bowl, transfer the smooth ball of dough into it and cover with a tea towel before leaving to rise for 2 hours, or until doubled in size (you could leave it in the fridge overnight if you wanted).
  • Crush the remaining cardamom seeds with the mortar and pestle and combine them with the remaining 150g of sugar.
  • Mix the remaining room temperature butter with all but 2tbsp of the cardamom sugar.
  • Line two baking sheets with greaseproof paper in preparation for the buns.
  • Punch the dough down to knock out the air and turn out onto a flat surface.
  • Roll out into a rectangle of 35x45cm with one of the longer edges facing you.
  • Cover the whole thing with the cardamom butter, spreading it as evenly as possible, right up to the edges.
  • Fold the top third down to the middle and the bottom third up over that, so you have one long piece with 3 equal layers of dough.
  • Cut in to 12 equal strips (about 3.5cm wide).
  • Making sure you leave it attached at the top, cut each strip down the centre so it has two tentacles.
  • Now for the tricky bit. Follow the instructions above, but in summary: Twist each strip away from the centre two or three times, then tie the dough in a knot and tuck the ends underneath the bun.
  • Place each finished knot onto the prepared trays when you’re done.
  • Lightly oil some clingfilm and cover the trays, leaving them to prove for another 30 minutes to an hour, until they’ve doubled in size again.
  • Preheat your oven to 190°C (170°C fan assisted).
  • Remove the clingfilm, brush each bun with the beaten egg and sprinkle with the peal sugar.
  • Place in the middle of your preheated oven and bake for 20-25 minutes. You may want to swap the trays around half way through. They should come out golden brown.
  • Once they are out and cooling, tip the remaining cardamom sugar into a saucepan with 50ml of water and bring to the boil.
  • Remove from the heat to cool and brush over the buns 2-3 times while they are cooling.
  • Leave the buns 20 minutes to soak up the sugar syrup and serve warm. They’ll keep a couple of days in a sealed container.
Keyword cardamom, cardamom buns, cardamom knots

Cranberry Pie

- Michael Leave a comment
Cranberry Pie

Aren’t cranberries great? And snowflakes too, actual snow flakes, not the ones that get thrown around by idiots on twitter who think they’re being funny. Cranberries may not be as sweet as many other fruits or berries, but they still make a wonderful pie. It’s a particularly tart one, even with all the sugar but, covered in snowflake pastry and served up with a dollop of cream, you’ve got a perfect dessert for sharing at a festive dinner party.

Cranberry Pie

Cranberry Pie will be my last recipe of the year, and I’m hoping to get back at things properly again in the new year. It’s been great to get back putting up content regularly again, and with some pretty big news coming up I’m hoping things will be rejuvenated and I’ll be posting recipes more often. So watch this space. In the meantime, I hope everyone has an absolutely wonderful Christmas and New Year, and that their 2018’s have been bearable.

Cranberry Pie

A tart but festive fruit pie that’s the ideal dessert for a Christmas dinner party.
Print Recipe
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 45 minutes
Total Time 55 minutes
Course Dessert
Servings 1 Pie

Ingredients
  

  • 500 g Shortcrust Pastry pre-made is fine
  • 5 tbsps Plain Flour
  • 1/4 tsp Salt
  • 125 ml Water
  • 325 g Fresh Cranberries
  • 4 tbsps Lemon or Orange Juice
  • 1 Pinch Cinnamon make this a good sized pinch
  • 1/2 tbsp Butter

Instructions
 

  • Butter a pie dish, then roll out the pastry to fit the dish. It should be about the thickness of a pound coin.
  • Place the pastry into the dish and trim so it’s still overhanging. It will likely shrink when baked so don’t trim off too much. Crimp the edges and place in the freezer for at least an hour.
  • Preheat oven to 220°C (200°C fan assisted) and place a baking tray in the oven.
  • In a sauce pan, combine the sugar, flour, salt and water. Bring to the boil and stir constantly until it’s thick and smooth.
  • Add the cranberries, juice and cinnamon. Cook for a further 5 minutes until it’s bubbling and the cranberries have started to pop.
  • Remove from the heat and add stir through the butter.
  • Spoon the filling into the prepared pie dish, use any left over pastry to make a lid, this could be a lattice, stars or strips. I made snowflakes to keep it Christmassy.
  • Wash the pastry with milk or egg and place onto the baking tray in the pre-heated oven.
  • Bake for 40 minutes, you may need to cover with foil after about 25-30 if it’s browning too quickly.
  • Remove when the filling has set. Allow to cool completely before serving.

Christmas Morning Maple Cranberry Cinnamon Buns

- Michael Leave a comment

What’s the best way to kick off Christmas morning? It definitely involves a brew, maybe a stocking and probably some form of bucks fizz. But if you want to kick it up a notch, why not serve up cinnamon buns for breakfast? Maple cranberry cinnamon buns sprinkled with chopped pistachios and drizzled with an orange glaze are the perfect way to make Christmas morning even more indulgent, especially as most of the hard work can be done the day before, so they’re ready to just stick in the oven first thing.

maple cranberry cinnamon buns

This is a combination of a couple of my older recipes, it takes the maple cranberries from my Christmas pancake recipe, and the overnight cinnamon buns I made last year, then it adds an orange wash, pistachios and a glaze. The cinnamon buns are delightfully light, especially when they’re fresh, perfect to pull apart. Arranged like a Christmas tree they’re also very visually impressive, ready for hungry and excited people to devour first thing in the morning.

Do you have any Christmas morning traditions?

Christmas cinnamon buns
Orange glazed cinnamon buns

Maple Cranberry Cinnamon Buns

Soft cinnamon buns filled with maple cranberries, drizzled with orange glaze and dusted with pistachios.
Print Recipe
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Overnight Proving 8 hours
Total Time 35 minutes
Servings 12

Ingredients
  

For the Dough

  • 235 ml warm milk not hot
  • ½ tbsp fast acting dried yeast
  • 4 tbsp granulated sugar
  • 385 g + 2-4tbsp all-purpose flour divided
  • 1 large egg room temperature
  • 1 tbsp unsalted butter melted
  • ½ tsp salt

For the filling

  • 90 g unsalted butter softened
  • 20 g granulated sugar
  • 1 tbsp ground cinnamon
  • 75 g fresh cranberries
  • 1/2 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 tbsp maple syrup
  • 1 tbsp water

For the toppings

  • 2 tbsp caster sugar
  • 1 tbsp water
  • Zest of one orange
  • 150 g icing sugar
  • 1 tbsp orange juice
  • 20 g pistachios chopped

Instructions
 

  • In the bowl of an electric mixer, sprinkle the yeast into the flour. Leave for a few minutes then whisk in 65g of the flour and 2tbsp sugar until combined. Cover with cling film and leave to rise at room temperature for 35-40minutes so it puffs up.
  • Whisk in the remaining sugar, egg, melted butter and salt.
  • Using a dough hook attachment, set to low and add in 320g of flour, 60g at a time, making sure the flour has incorporated well after each addition. Add flour a tablespoon at a time after this until the dough is no longer sticking to a fingertip. Set to knead for 10 minutes. It should be coming away from the sides of the bowl at the end.
  • Cover and allow to rise at room temperature for 2 hours (1 hour in an oven set to 35°C), until it’s doubled in size.
  • In a small saucepan heat the water with the cranberries for a few minutes until the water starts cooking off. Add the maple and cinnamon and cook over a low heat until it starts turning syrupy. 
  • Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and roll out the dough into a 17″x10″ rectangle. Spread the softened butter over the top.
  • Whisk together the cinnamon and sugar, sprinkle the buttered dough generously all over. You’ll use all of it. Then, sprinkle over the prepared cranberries as evenly as you can.
  • Roll tightly, away from you along one of the long edges, to make a long a log.
  • Pinch the very ends together slightly, then cut them off to neaten. Divide into 12 even cinnamon rolls.
  • Place them cut side down in a prepared tin, spacing evenly to allow some space to rise, or else in a 2, 4, 3, 2, 1 formation to form a Christmas tree.
  • Cover with cling film and place in the fridge for at least 7 hours. Overnight is preferable.
  • Remove from the fridge an hour before you want to cook them so they can return to room temperature. They’ll be puffy.
  • Pre-heat the oven to 180°C(160°C fan assisted).
  • Remove the cling film, transfer to the center of the pre-heated oven and bake for 22-24 minutes, until the tops have gone golden.
  • While they are baking, combine the caster sugar in a small pan with the water and orange zest, whisking until the sugar has dissolved. Heat until it just starts to boil.
  • As soon as you’ve removed the cinnamon buns from the oven, brush them generously with the sugar syrup.
  • Leave to cool for a few more minutes before sprinkling with the pistachios.
  • Whisk the orange juice with the icing sugar until you’ve got a thick icing that should dribble off the whisk when lifted. Transfer to a piping bag and pipe over the buns in whatever pattern you desire.
  • Best served fresh.

Chocolate Profiteroles (W/ Optional Crème Patissiere)

- Michael Leave a comment

Chocolate Profiteroles with Creme Pat

Hi there, I know I’ve been quiet this year, but you didn’t think I’d stay quiet over the Christmas period, right? Christmas is the best time for baking; when everyone’s having get-togethers, bringing in biscuit boxes to work or just generally hiding from the cold dark evenings. I’ve still been baking, and I’ve even managed to photograph some of the things I’ve baked. This mean I’ve managed to get a bit of a backlog of recipes to post, and what better time than Christmas to post them? I’ve been trying to push myself with my baking recently, teaching myself new things, or baking things that are outside of my usual comfort zone. One of the things that’s been on my list for years, that I’ve never plucked up the courage to try and make, has been choux pastry. It’s always been intimidating, from bake off to recipe books to many places talk about how hard it is to get right. After a few mistakes with my baking in recent months I was even more worried, but decided that now was the time to try and make some simple Profiteroles, and that it was also time to try my hand at making Crème Patissiere for the first time too. Read more