• Baking Recipes,  Bread-making,  Christmas & holidays,  Experiments & experiences,  Living traditions,  Yeasted breads

    Ye odd hot cross buns

    Lenten Season comes rather early this year. We don’t really make anything in particular for Lent, I just thought these were a good place to start. There is just something about Hot Cross Buns that are so fitting for the occasion. Aside from the cross on top of course, they look so unassuming. They remind me of the Christian teachings about learning how to appreciate simplicity in our lives, rather than the material, more ornamental things. It is said that Hot Cross Buns baked on a Good Friday never became moldy, and so keeping one bun until next year’s batch for the Lenten Season would supposedly bring good luck. And while…

  • Experiments & experiences,  Recipe Round-Up

    {Kitchen Diaries} Fruity Comfort Food

    What’s your favourite kind of comfort food? For a lot of people that is probably a tough question. I know I’ve got quite a few at the top of my mind, but one of them happens to be Apple Crisps or Apple Crumble. I just love the cinnamony scent and taste of the tender apples contrasting with the deliberate grittiness of the topping. I love how its simplicity, and the fact that it can be so easily and quickly thrown together, essentially epitomizes a lazy day at home in your pyjamas; hair unkempt, kicking back with a nice warm mug of coffee– no pretentions, no embellishments. Nothing else except plainly…

  • Baking Recipes,  Bread-making,  Yeasted breads

    Simple Cinnamon Rolls [a little something for Lala]

    I’ve been thinking about what would constitute a perfect cinnamon bun for me. I’ve never been much of a Cinnabon girl, because I find the bread part of their buns a bit too thin, with their filling and glaze just a tad too sweet. I like breads that have a fuller chewy body, not too sugary, not too frilly, and definitely not drowned with glazes or toppings that are too sticky they make a mess when you attempt a bite. To make a long story short, I suppose I’m looking for the kind that you would probably find fresh from a home-baker’s oven. It wasn’t even particularly difficult to find…

  • Baking Recipes,  Bread-making,  My favourite things,  Yeasted breads

    The Best Sausage Buns. Period.

    There are a lot of five-letter words that would make any newbie baker squeamish. Things like ‘knead’, or ‘stiff’ and ‘peaks’, and of course, there is this little thing called ‘yeast’. I may have mentioned before that my initial experience with yeast wasn’t a very pleasant one, but certainly it was memorable and a lesson learned for me. I could not let one mistaken recipe stop me from making yeast breads forever, could I? There’s just something about home-baked bread that draws me in and leaves me with such a desire to make them. I don’t know if it’s the challenge of making breads with the magic of yeast, or…