The real sausage rolls

I baked these sausage bread rolls for lunch last week.
I was planning to bake bread rolls, cook sausages and salad originally.
Then I thought, why not bake them together?
I would do anything to reduce the amount of washing up : )

The sausages were Germanic smoked type, so they just needed to be reheated while the bread dough around them were being baked.
I don't think you can do this with raw sausages.

My German mother in law liked them very much.

The trick is to roll out the dough in a long triangle shape, then place the sausage on the wide end of the triangle and roll up towards the pointy end.

These were baked in the 180 degrees celsius oven for approximately 20 minutes.

Strawberry and Ganache Tart

My husband was watching Jamie Oliver on TV one night and said to me the next day.

"When are you making that thing with the orange?"

He is not exactly articulate, my hubby.  However, he has trained me to guess what he wants to say and after a quick scan of my brains, I worked out he was talking about the ganache dessert Jamie made with mandarins and biscuits.

If all he wants is just the gooey ganache, I decided that I could make something even better by baking a tart case and pouring the ganache in it to set.

Over the years, I have tried numerous chocolate tart recipes.
I have come to a conclusion that the ganache tart is by far the best and also quicker to make.

Yum. Got to love the srawberry season.

Bithdaycakes

It was my daughter's birthday the other day and I have baked cakes for three separate celebrations.

The one above was the one we took to school.  Of all the chocolate cake recipes I have baked in my life, I would have to say the stout chocolate cake one is the best.  Recently I have revised the recipe which uses treacle dissolved in hot water instead of stout which works just as well if not better.

This is a beautiful moist cake and all it needs is some whipped cream with a little bit of acidity from berries.

The second one I made was for the home celebration.
I made a disc of raspberry mousse which was sandwitched by sponge layers.  
Please don't ask why I'm not showing a close up photo of it.....

This is the joint birthday cake I made on the weekend for my daughter and her friend who has her birthday in two weeks.

I wish I had just a few more strawberries to complete the line of chocolate dipped berries.
Because the chocolate was stuck on the plate, I could not even rearrange them : (


In a couple of days, I will be baking another birthday cake.
This time it will be for my father in law.

Potato, Rosemary and Cheese Bread

On the weekend, I had some families over for an afternoon tea.
Usually, I would bake a couple of cakes as well as biscuits for an occasion like that, but I knew that all the kids were going to attend a birthday party in the late afternoon and that they were most certain to overdose on sugar in those two hours.
That is why I baked only one cake and a couple of snacking bread.

For this one, I cubed and boiled some potatoes till just tender.  Once the potatoes were drained, I drizzled some extra virgin olive oil, garlic, rosemary, and a little salt over the potatoes, mixed them well and set aside.

I rolled out the bread dough, placed the cubed potato in a line at one end, sprinkled grated cheese all over, then rolled the dough from the potato end.  I then placed this roll on a baking tray lined with silicon baking sheet, shaped it into a horseshoe, snipped along it with a pair of kitchen scissors to create vents, and let it proof for 45 minutes or so before baking it in the 180 degrees celsius oven till golden brown. Approximately 30 minutes, but it depends on your oven.  Make sure the cheese is molten and bubbling.