Charcoal Stove Baked Bundt Millet-Choco Doughnut With Mulberries

September 15, 2015September 29, 2015 ~ Sophie ~ 6 Comments

Last year, I made a list of things I wanted to do more of this year in this post. Using yeast was one of them. And since the year is slowly coming to an end, I have exhausted one can of yeast and am thinking of buying another. That translates into a lot of baking (failed and successful) food (especially bread).

Doughnuts have been on my to-make list for as long as I can remember. I wanted to make them so badly because a.) They don’t require baking and that is a win for me because baking does intimidate me sometimes (sometimes) and b.) They still require yeast which means I can put the yeast to good use. So with much excitement, I dived into making doughnuts blindly (Recipe inspiration from here) that by the time the dough was ready, I realized I didn’t have any oil for frying! Panic set in because the thought of throwing away perfectly good dough just because there was no oil for frying was disturbing and downright wrong. The dough was continuing to rise and the sugar was breaking down. The toaster oven came to the rescue. I threw (not literary) the risen doughnuts in the toaster not expecting anything really mind-blowing because I had it in my head that good donuts are fried. After a few minutes (Around 10) the most amazing scent wafted throughout the kitchen. When they were removed from the toaster, they were fully baked (and burnt at the bottom) and they had the most delicate and softest texture ever! You can imagine how floored I was because normally, things I try out for the first time don’t usually work out. These doughnut were eaten in less than 30 minutes even with the burnt crusts. The next try, I was carefully not to burn them (AKA mastering the art of baking in an oven toaster!) and they came out even much better.

After several oven toaster baked doughnut successes, I was curious to use the traditional method (which, by the way, I also included in the above mentioned list) where we bake using a charcoal stove and two aluminum pans. Interestingly, I had a bundt pan that I used only a couple of times. I thought it would be a good idea to put it to use. And voila! This is how this gigantic doughnut came to be. Are you ready to make some doughnut(s)? I am.

What you will need:

3 C. Wheat flour

½ C. Millet flour

½ C. Chocolate powder

1 C. Milk

2 Large eggs

¼ C. Vegetable oil

¼ C. + 2 Tbsp. Sugar

2 ¼ Tsp. Yeast

¼ Tsp. Salt

Method

Doughnut Dough

In a clean bowl, add warm milk (Warm enough for the yeast to rise). Stir in the sugar and mix till it dissolves. Add the yeast and stir well. Cover with a towel and set aside for five minutes. Crack the eggs in a separate bowl and whisk well. While whisking, add in the oil little by little till it becomes thick. In a separate larger bowl, add the wheat flour, millet flour, chocolate powder and salt and mix well. After five minutes (when the milk-sugar-yeast mixture starts becoming frothy) add the oil-egg mixture and mix well. Add the liquid mixture into the flour and use your hands to form a dough. Knead the dough till it stops sticking to your hands. Leave the dough in the bowl and cover with a towel and let it sit for 40 minutes.

Oven Prep

Light a charcoal stove. Get two large aluminum pans (They have to be large enough for the cake/bread pan to fit in). Put ash in one pan (about two inches of ash). Put the pan with ash on the stove and cover than pan with the second pan. This is the ‘preheat’ moment.

Chocolate syrup

½ C. Confectioners/Icing sugar

½ C. Chocolate powder

¼ C. Water

Mix everything together and set aside.

After 40 minutes, the dough will have risen. Punch it and knead for a minute. Divide the dough into 8 equal balls. Get your baking pan and coat it with butter/margarine then lightly dust with flour. Place the dough balls in the pan and cover the pan to let the dough rise for another 25 minutes.

After the dough has risen for 25 minutes, gently place the baking dish in the pan (the one with the ash in it) on the stove. Cover with the second pan. Let the doughnut bake for 20 minutes (don’t open the pan at this stage). After 20 minutes have passed, get hot charcoal from the stove and place it on top of the covering pan making sure they are in the center of the pan. Let the doughnut bake for another 25 minutes before removing it from the stove. After 25 minutes, remove the covered pan from the stove and let it cool down for about 10 minutes. Remove the doughnut from the pan and let it cool down completely. Serve with the chocolate syrup and your favorite drink!

🙂

Sophie

PS: Original recipe from The Pioneer Woman. I added a few changes.

PPS: Don’t burn yourself!

PPPS: (The last one!) If you have any questions about charcoal stove baking, leave them in the comments section below.

Disclaimer: This post is part of the monthly link up party Our Growing Edge. This event aims to connect food bloggers and inspire us to try new things. This month is hosted by Hannah from Love The Little Bakery

Stir-Fried Black Bean Sprouts

September 1, 2015August 31, 2015 ~ Sophie ~ 15 Comments

Happy September! I have a feeling this month will be filled with blessings because I am happy to announce that we made and ate overly grown bean sprouts (insert a hundred exclamation marks). In fact they weren’t bean sprouts at all. They were actual plants that had sprung up from the ground. Thinking back I realize the insanity of it all. If I told a random person this, they would be absolutely surprised, would not believe me at all or would think there is something missing in my head. That is why I wanted to blog about it first because this is what this blog is about! It all started when we were overly hyped to plant beans because, well, it is planting season in some parts of the country and we wanted to feel that ecstatic moment of harvesting fresh beans…again. So we got planting with absolutely no clue on how to space the beans. The information we got from one source was wrong although at the time, we didn’t know that. We planted and half way through, beautiful bean plants started sprouting from the ground and we were excited (because I have tried planting many things but a few have actually gotten out of the ground). As we were basking in the glory of being planters (is this a word?), someone with a history of planting told us “those beans will not grow! They are too close to each other!” You can imagine the disappointment we felt. We did as advised and uprooted the excess little plants with heavy hearts. They were so young, and so tender and we wondered if they could be edible because we could not imagine throwing them away. Our Dad said there is no way those grown beans would be edible. Either they would be bitter or poisonous. We gave up. In the meantime, we put then in a container with water and then next day, the conviction to cook these bean sprouts and eat them was even stronger because we just couldn’t see them going to waste. And we did without looking back. OK it was mostly my sister who, by the way, makes great stir-fries. Amazing is an understatement because we made these stir-fried bean sprouts three times in a row. We are even contemplating the idea of just planting beans only to uproot them five days later just for cooking. Sounds legit? It is moments like this that make food experimenting fun and fulfilling. I have asked her to share the recipe with us all.

What you will need:

4 handfuls of bean sprouts

1 Large onion, finely sliced (lengthwise)

2 Carrots, thinly sliced (lengthwise)

1 Tsp. Finely chopped ginger

2 Garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 Tbsp. Vinegar

3 Tbsp. Water

1 Tsp. Sugar

oil

1 Tsp. Salt

Roasted simsim (sesame) for garnish

Method

Clean the bean sprouts in cold water to get rid of the dirt and tiny stones. Remove the roots and the cotyledons (the beans on the sides) and set aside.

For the sweet sauce:

Put a pan on fire, wait for it to become hot. Put the sugar in the pan. Wait for it to become a light brown. Pour 3 tablespoons of water and let the browned sugar dissolve. Remove from fire immediately and pour she sauce in a small bowl.

In the same pan, on high heat, add 2 tablespoons of oil and wait for it to become really hot. Add garlic and ginger and onions and just before they become brown, add half of the sweet sauce which will change the color of the onions. Add the salt and carrots and stir constantly. Add the vinegar and keep stirring. Next add the bean sprouts and keep stirring till they become a bright green color and make sure the heat is evenly distributed so they can cook. Get the rest of the sweet sauce and keep adding bit by bit till it is finished while stirring. Once the sweet sauce is dissolved in the pan, remove it from fire. This will take 5-6 minutes. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve hot. They go well with rice.

The sprouts and carrots should have a crunchy bite to them but at the same time still retain all the flavor from the garlic, ginger, vinegar, salt and sugar.
In as much as we were excited to plant beans, the disappointment ended up being a fun discovery.

What fun thing have you discovered lately?

🙂

Sophie

Sautéed Fresh From The Garden Maize (Corn)

August 25, 2015 ~ Sophie ~ 8 Comments

I have found out that there are a million and one ways to make maize(corn). We have maize growing in the backyard and boiled maize has been on the menu a lot these days(A LOT!) that I realized I haven’t shared a recipe here. This is my father’s signature recipe (among many others). It is a special one really because it only happens when ever there is an abundance of fresh maize! The fresh kernels have a slight sweetness to them and when they are sautéed in oil and other spices, the flavor intensifies while at the same time leaving the maize soft. It even has a natural meaty taste. Seriously! The next time you find yourself with more than enough fresh maize, try this.

What you will need

10 Fresh ears of maize/ 3 C. Maize kernels

2 Tomatoes, finely chopped

2 Green pepper, finely diced

2 Carrots, finely diced

1 Large onion, finely diced

A handful of green onions, finely chopped

2 Cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped

Ginger, crushed and chopped

Cooking oil

Salt to taste

Black pepper (optional)

Method
Using a sharp Knife, cut the kernels off the cob and set aside. On medium fire, Add oil and wait for it to get hot. Add the Garlic, ginger and onions. Let them brown a little. Add salt and tomatoes. Let the tomatoes soften. Add the maize kernels and stir. Add the green peppers and carrots and stir well. Keep stirring. Add the black pepper and keep stirring. Once all the kernels are translucent, and a savory flavor is wafting in the air, remove from fire. This might take 20-30 minutes. Add the chopped green onions and serve hot.

Observations

The size of maize and kernels vary. On some ingredients, I did not put any specific measurements because everyone has personal preferences.