Star shaped bread
I always love a good challenge so when I saw this fancy looking recipe pop-up on my Pinterest, I decided to try it out. The intricate design of the bread intrigued me and the joy of achieving such beautifully shaped bread made it worth the risk of failure.
I’ve heard my friends share their not so successful stories on bread making, especially in terms of proofing and shaping. I personally have had one epic fail when I used old yeast to bake bread for visitors. I was devastated serving it to them the next morning as it was flat and didn't rise, but let's put that behind us. Hopefully this recipe works as well for you as it did for me. #QuarantineRecipes
What you will need:
- 3 cups of all purpose flour *can be replaced by whole grain flour/blended oat flour as healthier alternatives
- 2 teaspoons instant yeast
- 2 tablespoons of sugar
- ½ teaspoon of salt
- 1/3 cup melted butter or margarine
- 1 cup warm milk
- 1/2 cup fruit jam of choice *mine was homemade berry jam- a pretty simple recipe of blueberries, raspberries, water and sugar
Steps:
- In a bowl, pour in the milk and sugar. Mix until the sugar partly dissolves. (The milk should be warm to the touch, such that you don’t feel any temperature difference if you dip your finger into it.)
- Sprinkle the yeast over the milk. (If using active dry yeast, let it rest for 10 minutes for the yeast to bloom. If you’re using instant yeast, no need for the rest time. It’s okay to use as it is.)
- Add the melted butter and mix. Add in the flour and salt a little at a time , using a spatula/wooden spoon to combine together into a sticky mass.
- Transfer to a lightly floured surface and knead for approx. 10 minutes , until the dough is soft and elastic.
- Lightly oil a bowl (to prevent the dough from sticking and drying out), cover with cling film or a clean kitchen towel and let the dough proof/rise for 1 hour or until doubled in size.
- After proofing, divide the dough into 4 equal parts. Roll each portion into a circle. If rolling dough into a perfect round shape is an issue, just ensure the circles are relatively the same size to prevent a lot of overlap. (Otherwise, ‘tumbo haitambui shape’ is my motto. Hehe! :) That is Kiswahili loosely translated to ‘the stomach doesn’t recognize the shape anyway’ for my international readers.)
- Take a little bit of the jam and spread it out over the first circle. Roll the next portion and lay it over the jam layer .Repeat the steps until you have the 4 layers of circles with jam layers in between.
- Take a cup/cookie cutter and make a slight indentation at the center of the dough (make sure you don’t cut through the dough). This will form the center of the star. Make 16 slits through the dough from the edge of that indentation (as shown in the video)
- Twist adjacent sections next to each other and join the edges at the end. Do this all around and slowly see the star shape come together.
- Cover with cling film or a clean kitchen towel and let the dough proof/rise for a second time- 30mins or until doubled in size. (Sometimes I make this at night and let it second proof overnight. It works for me but may not be as per professional bread making standards hehe! Apparently there’s something like over-proofing dough)
- Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius and lightly brush the bread with milk/egg/honey for a golden brown finish. Bake for 20-25 minutes. The smell of fresh bread is one of my favorites!
Doesn’t it look lovely? A beautiful intricate star to remind you to hold onto hope in this pandemic season. You can dust the bread with icing sugar for some extra fancy jazz or also enjoy as is.
Share this recipe and tag me @muenimuli when you try it. Grace and peace! #TasteandSee
“If you’ll hold on to me for dear life,” says God, “I’ll get you out of any trouble. I’ll give you the best of care if you only get to know and trust me.” Psalm 91:14-16(MSG)
Triple C: Carrot Cake and Custard
Carrot cake! It’s among my favorites since I love spices. Especially when it’s moist and the blend of cinnamon and nutmeg is just right. For this Taste and See episode, I baked with my aunt Bilha and Njeri, our amazing photographer.
Teamwork makes the dream work. Bilha grated the carrots as I prepared the other ingredients.
Quick tip: While beating the eggs into the sugar and oil (I prefer using vegetable oil), make sure you give it a good beating until the mixture gets a bit firm and foamy. Without an electric beater, this may be quite hard but you could consider it arm day for your biceps! Hehe…I kid.
Speaking of teamwork…relationships-marriage…marriage-submission-respect….all these seem to come up while talking about marriage, some perceived in a not so positive light. We agreed that we’d definitely need some more enlightenment on what submission really is, for we had so many definitions and ideas of it, yet we weren’t really sure what the Biblical intention is.
I remarked that Sarah did call Abraham ‘master’ at some point and to be honest, I don’t know if I can imagine calling my future husband that. Or is it that we have become too opinionated as women to be submissive wives? On that note, is there anything as being TOO opinionated as a Christian woman? (Please share your responses in the comments as we’d love to know!)
One thing to note is that instead of using buttermilk or normal milk, we used Sour milk (Maziwa mala). I’ve found that each time I use it, the cakes turn out really moist. I honestly don’t know the science behind it but trust me, it works!
Here’s a link to the recipe we used. https://www.gimmesomeoven.com/best-carrot-cake/ Though honestly, I have a habit of not following measurements or ingredients to the letter. Or rather, I’m among those who pour something in and wait for the ancestors to whisper when I should stop. Hehe! :)
That reminds me, just the way a recipe is a set of standards and rules that dictate the steps one should take to get a great outcome, what do you think about parents’ dictating which religion their children follow? Should parents let their children explore different religions while young? Or should parents actively influence the religion that their children should embrace? This came up after we were chatting about inter-religion marriages and how these could bring great confusion to a child’s life, as well as to the marriage in terms of submission principles etc.
Until we buy baking tins and parchment paper, we shall use the trusted aluminium pans (ie. sufuria.) To avoid the cake from sticking to the sides, apply some margarine evenly inside the sufuria then dust it with a coat of flour. Though we had a slight mishap with our cake…hehe... I turned over the sufuria and it didn’t fall out. I had to bang the bottom severally for it to get unstuck.
We made some custard to accompany the cake using store-bought custard powder.
How to make custard? Very simple!
- Combine custard powder and milk in a small jug. Stir until smooth.
- Place custard mixture, sugar and milk in a small saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring constantly until custard comes to the boil and thickens.
The cake turned out great! (Though our custard was a bit lumpy.) One recipe down, many more to go. Hope you're motivated to try it out. If you do, share it with the hashtag #TasteandSee.
Watch this timelapse video of the entire process, as you jam to Taste and See by Travis Greene.
“Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.”
Psalm 34:8 (NIV)