Hotcross Buns

 Today I finally got around to baking my hotcross buns.  I made the dough yesterday and after a couple of rises and punching it down I left it in the fridge overnight for a long cold rise.  This morning I divided the dough into 12 pieces, roughly formed them into balls and baked them.  Oh boy, that smell of baking buns is devine.  They came out soft and spicy and incredibly fluffy.  I know from experience that when they cool down they also become far less fluffy so I just tore one apart and savoured every bite.

I was going to make hot-without-the-cross-buns but had a look at Nigella Lawson's recipe.  She always goes for ease.  Every other recipe says to pipe the cross on to the buns.  She says dribble the mix on with a spoon.  Splendid.  Looks good I think.  

Unfortunately when I took some down for my daughter I was reminded that today, Holy Wednesday, is a day of strict fast and no-one can eat them because they have eggs and butter.  Hadn't considered that.  Never mind.  They're even better toasted and spread with butter and jam.

Yesterday was Holy Tuesday, the tradiontal day to make easter cookies, called koulourakia.  So the kids gathered and they baked about 80 koulourakia.  Enough for 4 families.  

The girls did all the work and cleaned up afterwards.

The big boss made sure that all was done in a ship shape and bristol fashion. 

Rolling out the dough and shaping it into all sorts of braid and snail shapes

The first batch out of the oven

Official tasters hard at work

The cookies passed the test though we may have to make another few batches at the rate they are disappearing

You can't leave our house without eating so the big boss was also frying piles of kalamari and potatoes for the workers

The kalamari was from New Zealand of all places.  I couldn't believe my eyes when K brought them home and I saw the label.  They were cheaper than the local ones and we had a crowd to feed but heavens to Betsy, here we are in Greece eating NZ squid?

NZ Food

 Two more of the dishes I took down to isolating family. Other daughter did their shopping. I might add that they were more or less symptom free and mainly cooked their own meals. 

NZ fish pie.  Photo from Edmunds cookery site

Edmunds wrote and still publish a cookery book with NZ's classic recipes.  I'm sure Edmunds won't mind me showing their wonderful fish pie photo

A NZ  treasure

Kiwi icon

First published in 1908

'Focuses on traditional NZ cuisine'

A 'must have' when you're a kiwi ex-pat

I made a NZ potato topped fish pie for the infected family.  A proper kiwi fish pie calls for smoked fish. The smokiness really gives it that extra flavour. There's no smoked fish around here,  although I did once bring back a smoker in my suitcase . It has been used with great success, on occasion.

I didn't taste-test this pie. I should have, damn it. I usually remove (like the taxman 😅) a corner, or two .  Now it's still squirrelling away inside my brain. I'll have to make another one very soon to satisfy my cravings.

Apple crumble.

My photo

Recipe from 'Stuff', NZ news site

We were given lots of kilos of apples so I've started stewing them and using them in cakes and pies.

Elli loves crumble so I made one for her yesterday. I don't cook crumbles often enough to be sure of the recipe so I googled 'NZ crumble' recipes.

The one I started to make was from Donna Hay, an Australian  food stylist and TV chef. That's the way Wikipedia describes her. I was not impressed. Half way through I'd made a bloody mess, there was far too much butter and I reduced  the sugar by one third. After scraping all the greasy crumble off my hands I googled again and discovered the recipe from 'Stuff'.  Not much I could do by then except do the best I could with what I had.

The end result was fine but next time I'll use the other recipe. 

I did taste-test this one.  The taxman took just enough to satisfy the taste buds.

Marmelade Rock Cakes

Sugar and spice and all things nice

Rock cakes are an economic treat, probably from the war years. Spoonfuls of stiff dough dumped on a baking tray which ressemble little piles of rocks when baked.  They usually have raisins in them.  Raisins are not a staple in this house, though we do use them in stuffed tomatoes and a cake we make when we have lost something and are thanking the saint that found it.  

These have no raisins but are a quick and easy way to get rid of some of that jam that has been standing on the shelves and no-one wants to eat.  I used orange marmelade  because we don't have anymore horrid quince jam or fig jam or grapefruit jam, thank you powers on high.

Here in Greece all jam is called marmelade.  Take your pick.  Marmelade or jam.

2 cups of flour and 2 tsps of baking powder
or
2 cups of self raising flour
1/2 cup of sugar
100 grams of butter
1 tsp cinnamon
1 cup of jam
1 egg
enough milk to make a stiff dough

Put flour and baking powder in a bowl.  Add the butter.  Rub the butter into the flour with your finger tips until it is the texture of bread crumbs.  Add the sugar, cinnamon and the marmelade.  Break in the egg and add about half a cup of milk.

Mix till you get a very stiff dough.  Put teaspoonfuls onto a baking tray and bake about 15 minutes at 180oC.  Till golden brown.

My mix wasn't stiff enough to make piles of rocks.  Mine spread into biscuits.  Fine by me.  Gosh they do taste nice!!!

Bad times need fun things to make you happy!

NZ Lolly Cake

This refrigerator cake  is popular in New Zealand and made with ingredients I recognise by sight and taste.  The cake itself is not one I remember my mother making but it is very similar to one I make with my grandchildren.  We call it 'mosaic' here.

I made a greek/NZ version for grandson Dimitris, commonly known as Jamie (amongst other names!)





The original NZ version is made with eskimo lollies (sweets), a NZ classic.  I ate eskimo lollies when I was a child and I always chew my way through a packet ( biting the head off first) when I'm visiting.  They are like a chewy marshmallow in the shape of a little eskimo (probably not racially-correct sweets today but they are eons old, way before 'correctness' came into fashion).

I used chopped up marshmallow smurfs, or stroumfakia, as they are known here.  

My foolproof mix is -

Melt 120 grams of margarine (or butter)

with a tin of condensed milk

Melt the margarine slowly and stir till the condensed milk is well combined to make a thick sweet gooey mixture

Break up a packet and a half of biscuits.  NZers use malt biscuits.  We normally make it with 'Petite Beurre', a greek classic, but this time I used chocolate biscuits.  Some of them I just break up, some I whizz into crumbs.

Combine the two mixes and add a packet of your children's favourite chopped up lollies.  Maltesers would be good 

Some add walnuts or raisins.  Not popular in this family.

To be NZ-ly correct you should shape this into a log and roll it in coconut.  I just put it into a loaf tin and stuck it in the fridge for a couple of hours.

In a more adult version you would add a good slurp of liqueur or brandy.  Once I made brownies with chopped up mars bars.  You can imagine how sweet and sickly that was.  I didn't actually eat any and I'm not sure my daughter let her kids eat much either.

Although I have been reading recently the theory that sugar makes kids suddenly become hyperactive kangaroos is an urban myth.