Hot Cross Bun Recipe

For buns
250g Strong white flour
250g Plain flour
125ml Milk
125ml Boiling water
5g Quick yeast
50g Castor Sugar
50g Butter
1 egg
100g Dried fruit (eg sultanas and mixed peel)
1tsp mixed spice
10g Salt
Any jam (1tsp) and a little hot water to glaze

For crosses

1 table spoon plain flour
a little cold water

Method
Put flour, salt, yeast and sugar in a bowl
Mix the milk and water and add to bowl and mix well (stiff mixture)
Melt butter gently until soft (not fully liquid - although doesn't matter if it is) and add to bowl with the egg.
Now mix, the mixture will become quite sticky, you can do with food mixer and dough hook or continue by hand until the mixture is smooth and silky.

Cover and leave to raise until doubled in size (perhaps an hour)
Knock back and divide in to 8 (or 10 if you want smaller buns) and shape each bun.
Place on baking sheet and cover (clingfilm perhaps)
Leave to raise until doubled in size (approx 30 mins)

Mix the plain flour for the crosses with a little water so it makes a paste (you can make it stiff and shape the crosses by hand and stick on or make it runnier and pipe on with icing bag or plastic bag with corner cut off)
Preheat oven to 200 C
Once the buns have risen add the crosses and put in oven for 15 to 20 mins

Mix together the jam and hot water and when the buns are cooked glaze top by brushing with the mixture (avoid putting any lumps on).

Eat straight away or later toasted with loads of butter.

Before baking

I couldn't believe how good they look (and taste)!!

The Crochues-Bérard tour

Spring has been in the Chamonix valley for some time now (with a brief dip back in to winter last week when it snowed). This means that touring is a nice change from the ski areas which have got a bit mogully.
It isn't very easy to illustrate where we went. The tour goes from Chamonix (off the bottom of the map) to Le Buet (off the top of the map) which is on the Swiss border.

Map

There is a description of the tour here

On the way to Flégère

On the first climb (Red on map)

Top of the climb (v hot now)

Recovered enough to smile

View down first ski (Green on map)

Left tiny dot is Rhoda with miles to go on second climb (Blue on map)

Setting off on the second ski (Purple on map)

Getting close to the bottom of the valley

Bit tiring!!

Nous brassons (we brew)

We have been making home brew for a while and with great effort we brought our barrel with us on the plane (packed really shonkily in a cardboard box) and I brought a kit back with me from London.

Sterilise everything

Put the concentrate in the barrel

Add water and stir well

Add yeast

Now we leave it for a few days before bottling. Initial tasting suggests it should come out well.

Rhoda back in London (and Doug skiing)

I popped back to London last week to visit Lorna and clear out the flat so we could rent it.
I haven't missed this at all (honest !!)

Or this (the City)

Of course it snowed while I was away - I think Doug had fun
He skied the Crochue Berard valley with Rob and SJ

 This is where we camped last June (it was a bit less snowy then)

Madeliene Recipe

When we were in the huge supermarket down in Sallanches a while ago we bought a tin of marron glace (Crème de Marrons de l'Ardèche) and a little recipe book that went with it. We finally got round to buying a Madeleine tin, some vanilla and some carrots so we could make the Madeleine recipe.

Ingredients
150g Plain flour
125g Softened butter
150g Cane sugar (or soft brown sugar)
2 Eggs
2 tblsp milk
1 tsp baking powder
100g fine grated carrots
2 tblsp creme de marron
Additional creme de marron for the filling (perhaps 50g)
1 tsp vanilla extract
All spice or ground cinnamon
Salt
A Madeleine tin (or perhaps a cup cake tin would work fine too - they just wouldn't be the authentic shape - but don't fill full)

Method
Beat the eggs and sugar together in a bowl until the mixture is fluffy and light in colour
Gently fold in the salt, baking powder and flour
Gently fold in all the other ingredients
Fill each shape in the Madeleine tin nearly to the top
Put a blob on Creme de Marron at the thickest point of each shape
Cover with a little bit more of the mixture (so you will end up with blobs of Creme de Marron embedded in the finished Madeleines)
Cook for 12 minutes at 180 C

Fill each shape and put blobs of Creme de Marron and cover with more mixture

Sprinkle with sugar and serve warm

Scoff them all while hot because they are SOOOO yummy

Feel a bit ashamed because you ate SOOO many...

Skiing in Brévent and Flegère

We often skiing the Brévent ski area as it is so close to the flat - as you can see here
From there it is easy to get to Flegère as there is a cable car between the two areas.

We skied with Rob today starting in Brévent and then going over to Flegère.
We had a snack of some Cricket Club cake - Rob was very impressed with how moist and tasty the cake was - unfortunately it is all finished now - but we will make some more very soon.

A couple of little gullies in Flegère

Rob skiing the one shown in Red (for once something looks vaguely steep in a photo)

Doug skiing the one shown in Red

Nous faison le yoga

We are always bad about stretching after skiing and feel it would be beneficial. So we bought a yoga dvd and we started off trying to do it everyday - but we just don't have the energy what with the skiing and learning french and baking so we probably manage 2 or 3 times a week at the moment.
The guy on the dvd has some slightly scary pictures of some of the poses (as he is wearing v tiny pants) but apart from that he is very good and there is a choice of different length sequences (15 mins, 30 mins and 45 mins).
It is quite tricky fitting both of us in and we have to be careful...
This is the DVD

Doug the warrior

Cricket club cake

Thanks for this recipe Janet!

Apparently we haven't quite got it right yet because it should be less risen, more solid and more fruity (so we are planning on take two next week with more fruit which could possibly solve both these issues... maybe a but less levure chimique). It is very tasty though and we are planning on taking slices skiing with us.

I find if I put in a full full cup of tea the cake rises a little more because the mixture is runnier. Little bit of experimentation required to find what you like best...

Ingredients

12 oz (340g) (dried fruit (sultanas, raisins, dates, nuts or whatever you fancy)

1 breakfast cup (230ml) cold tea 

1 breakfast cup (190g) sugar

2 breakfast cups (250g) self raising flour (or plain with 1 tsp baking powder)

2 eggs

Spice if you want (eg all spice)

Some salt

Cake tin (we used 500g bread tin)

Method

Soak the fruit in the tea with the sugar overnight

Stir in the flour, spice, salt and eggs

Put in to cake tin

Bake for 1 1/4 hours at 175 C

The cake will keep well wrapped in foil and we are considering putting whisky or brandy in to the next one (or the one after) if we don't eat it too quickly...

Galette recipe

A few days ago we had galette at l'Arret Bougnette in Valorcine, we have been there quite a few times because we love the galettes with an egg on. We decided to see if we could make our own.

Ingredients
For the galettes
200g Buckwheat flour (blé sarricin in France)
1 egg
Approx 400ml water/milk mix

For the filling
Anything you like really but we tried 

1. Ham, cheese and egg 
2. >Saucisson and cheese
3. Nutella and banana
4. Lemon and sugar (better on normal pancakes we thought as the lemon comes out the little holes in the galette and the flavour of the buckwheat is a bit strong and needs something 'meatier' with it)

Method
Mix the flour with the egg and enough of the water/milk mix to make a mixture with a similar consistency to double cream (probably slightly thicker if anything - better to start too thick and add a bit of water if the first one comes out too think and rubbery)
Leave for a few hours before using ideally.

Heat a non stick frying pan and then add a little butter, put in a ladle full of the mixture and swirl quickly to cover the pan. I found that the first one didn't get little holes in it like they should be subsequent ones did.
Flip the galette like you would a pancake (I use a spatula)
Depending on the filling you can add it now or when it is on the plate. If you are doing one with an egg crack it over the galette while still in that pan and spread the white out as much as you can so it cooks quicker.

Active day

We went up skiing quite early in the morning (blasting made us think there might be fresh snow like yesterday - but there wasn't) and skied a number of things including the Hotel Face

For lunch we took quiche up the Aiguille du Midi. It was really really cold at the top, minus 17 with some wind. Amazing views though.

Chez Nous

Chamonix

Apartment - Small but perfectly formed

As seen from Brévent (nearest ski area)

As seen from Aiguille du Midi (with Brévent ski area above)

New snow

It has been like Spring for a couple of weeks, which has been lovely. But it has been getting a bit worrying that all the snow is melting so we were pleased to have some new snow overnight.
It wasn't enough to cover the giant moguls that have formed in a lot of places (and turned to giant ice moguls with the colder weather) but on some more remote places was lovely.

A bit of cloud makes everything look more scenic too!!

Visitors

We had several visitors this week, timed to coincide with my birthday.
Iain and Hilary weren't skiing with them, but we had lunch at l'Arret Bougnette in Valorcine which does amazing galettes (savory pancakes made with buckwheat flour). We went for a short walk afterwards at the Col des Montets. Nice view or what?

Aidan was here a week and did plenty of skiing (despite evil torture implement ski boots)