Fudge Brownies

Adapted from Alice Medrich's Cocoa Brownies

Ingredients:
210g butter
250g sugar
100g cocoa powder
100g liquid fudge
3/8 tsp salt
coffee extract
3 large eggs -- cold
100g flour

Melt butter, sugar and cocoa. Stir until completely melted, and then take off heat.

Stir in the liquid fudge, salt and coffee extract.

Beat in eggs one at a time, followed by flour.

Bake at 160C until a skewer comes out nearly clean.

Notes:

You can remove it from the oven a little earlier, but it will be more squishy and difficult to slice cleanly.

The original Medrich cocoa brownie recipe is my go-to standard brownie recipe. I do usually make it with a little more cocoa powder, and often throw in different extracts and spices, but it is very good as it is. The main thing is that it needs a day to rest so the cocoa flavor matures.

The recipe with fudge is a little denser and chewier, and stays moist for longer. It has a stronger, more chocolatey taste right out of the oven, and despite the additional liquid, slices more cleanly (without freezing or any shenanigans).

Scalded Dough Flat Bread

Ingredients: 
200g strong wholemeal flour
200g all purpose flour
5g active dry yeast
2g sugar -- optional
1tsp salt
1tbsp vegetable oil -- optional
Chopped spring onion -- green bits only -- optional

Mix wholemeal flour with all purpose flour to get your flour mix.

Dissolve yeast and sugar into 60g of water.

Weigh out 200g flour mix. Pour 300g of boiling water and stir. There will be dry patches, but this is fine. Cover, and let sit for about 30 minutes. This is your scalded dough.

Pour yeast mixture, salt and vegetable oil over the scalded dough, and start kneading. Add flour mix by the spoonful until the dough becomes tacky but still kneads into a ball. I had about 60g left over, which you should use to dust your kneading board when rolling out the dough later.

Tuck into a ball, and cover with cling wrap. Let it sit on the counter for 1 hour, and then into the fridge over night.

Divide into 8 portions.

With your hands or a rolling pin, roll each portion out to roughly 10cm in diameter, and then scatter spring onion over it. Roll it up like you would a cinnamon roll, pinching the ends and edges closed. Then roll it into a ball.

At this stage, you can cook it right away or cover and put it back into the fridge.

To cook, simply roll out each ball until about 2-3mm thick and flip it onto a very hot pan -- the pan should sizzle when a few droplets of water is sprinkled onto it. Cook each side until it is speckled with light brown spots. It should puff a little in the center.

Notes: 
Scalding the dough cooks the starch, so that the bread is both softer and less likely to be uncooked in the center.

I read a whole bunch of flat bread recipes before coming up with this one. Some of them include instant mashed potato or dried potato flakes for softness, but I do not keep that in the house.

This recipe probably works with just all-purpose flour, or wholemeal all-purpose flour, but for the same amount of water, you will need more flour -- strong flour absorbs more water. You should increase the salt in this case because you will end up with more dough.

The sugar is optional. I only used it because I was concerned that my yeast was rather old and I needed to quickly find out whether it was still alive.

If meant to be eaten plain or with fairly bland accompaniments, I would up the salt to at least 2tsp.

I cooked it stove top because I have a nice, large frying pan that is flat. If using the oven, I think 3-5 minutes on the hottest setting should do the trick.

If you are not using the spring onion, I think it might be quite tasting to pan fry the dough with a bit of butter and sugar and cinnamon. Or to add ground cinnamon and more sugar to the dough for a sweeter treat.

Cider and Caramelized Balsamic Vinegar Pickled Ginger

Ingredients: 

255g thinly sliced young ginger

60g boiled cider

60g sugar 

120g water 

120g caramelized balsamic vinegar 

Umeshu -- optional 

Put everything but the ginger into a pot and bring to a simmer. Turn off when the sugar is completely dissolved, and let cool slightly.

Prepare the container(s) you will use to store the ginger by rinsing out with the umeshu. Rinse off the covers too.

Divide the ginger into the container(s).

Divide the vinegar liquid into the container(s). 

Seal, and store in fridge. 

Notes: 

The pickled ginger will be more tender and less sharp if you use young ginger. 

The boiled cider is just something I bought in New York. It is simply apple juice reduced to a syrup. You can substitute water, and perhaps some sugar if you like it sweet. 

I used my Weck jars -- straight sides, with a volume of 370ml. I split the ginger up because I could not fit it all into one, but there is no reason why you could not just dump it all into one container. 

I think this batch will be too sweet to be eaten with sushi, but that was never my intention anyway. 

The umeshu rinse is not necessary at all. I just could not find the sterilising liquid in the house, and since I will be storing it in the fridge for just a few days, I think it does not matter.