Indonesian Street Food Breakfast

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Apple, Cinnamon, Raisin & Almond Swirls with Honey Glaze

'Playing' with puff pastry is always an exciting moment for me. Not only baking, but I do enjoy eating all the food that using the puff pastry as one of the ingredients. The combination characters; crisp, buttery, flaky and light make me really love it.

Honestly, I didn't prepare the puff pastry from the scratch, as I always have a stock of ready-to-use puff pastry in my freezer. Regularly, at least once a week, the puff pastry is served from our kitchen. So far there is no fancy one I have baked. I just fill it with cheedar cheese, or chocolate, or chicken/tuna ragout and let them working together with the puff pastry for about 20 minutes in the oven. It's always good either for breakfast or afternoon snack.

Finding another puff recipe in a magazine, make me want to explore more about this kind of pastry. In Delicious Magazine March 2012, Katie Quinn Davies shared one of her pastry recipes for brunch dessert.

On my first trial, I just carefully followed the recipe, step by step, including to roll the 3 layers puff pastry with the filling to form a Swiss roll shape. When it came out of the oven; the outer part of the rolls were baked perfectly; ...golden and cooked, but unfortunately the pastry on the inner part of the rolls were still wet. If I had to bake it a bit longer, it would be overbaked. Eventhough not 100% successful with the first trial, we do love the perfect combination of the filling; almond, apple, cinnamon, and honey. The flavor is like cinnamon rolls. It finished in 2 days only :)

I was thinking by minimizing the size of the rolls I could have fixed this failure. So then I started to bake the second batch last Thursday. I decided to follow the recipe and put additional raisin on the topping. Since I had no enough flaked almond, I subsituted some of the almond with chopped peanut. And instead of the form of Swiss rolls, I changed it became a shape of palmier, where I rolled both edges of the pastry to create butterfly shape/elephant ears shape.

This time... it was a big victory for me! It turned out excellent! I got the perfect texture of puff pastry; buttery, crisps, flaky and the harmony of the filling is amazingly good!
Hhmmm, now I'm thinking to use only 2 layers of puff pastry; to create smaller shape that probably is more comfortable for our tummy size. ha..ha..ha..

Apple, Cinnamon, Raisin & Almond Swirls with Honey Glaze
Adapted from Delicious Magazine, March 2012. Recipe by Katie Quinn Davies.
The recipe below was edited by me, not the original recipe.
Makes 9
2 tsp ground cinnamon
3 tbsp brown sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tsp milk
3 sheets butter puff-pastry (I used 22x22cm)
50 gr unsalted butter, melted
1 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored
1 cup (80 gr) flake almonds
1/3 cup raisins

Honey Glaze
2 tbsp runny honey
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp caster sugar

Preheat the oven 170 C and line a large baking tray with baking paper.
In small bowl, stir the cinnamon into the brown sugar until well combined. Reserve 1 tbsp cinnamon sugar and set aside.

Combine egg yolk and milk in a small bowl and whisk to combine. Set aside.

Lay 1 pastry sheet on a clean board, brush liberally with melted butter and scatter with one-third on the cinnamon sugar. Lay the second pastry sheet on ttop and repeat process to vreate 3 layers, finishing with a layer of melted butter and cinnamon sugar. Cut the apple into very small cubes and scatter over the sugared pastry along with most of the flaked almonds (or chopped peanuts).

Tightly roll up the pastry to form a 'palmier' roll shape. Brush with the egg yolk mixture, reserving some of the mixture.

Using a sharp knive, cut the roll into about 2.5 cm thick slices and carefully transfer to the lined baking tray. Brush with any remaining egg yolk mixture and scatter with the reserved 1 tbsp cinnamon sugar and remaining flake almonds. Bake in the oven for 35 minutes or until the pastry is golden and cooked.

Meanwhile, for the glaze, gently warm the honey and vanilla in a small saucepan over medium-low heat for 1 minutes. take care as honey can boil very quickly and easily if you have the heat too high.

Remove the cinnamon swirls from the oven and liberally brush the tops with the warm vanilla and honey mixture. Sprinkle the tops of the swirls with caster sugar, then return to the oven for a further 5-10 minutes until pastry is golden, sticky and crisp.

Serve pastries warm or at room temperature.

Tips :
*Start with a baking paper/wax paper and sprinkle it with some flour under the first layer of puff pastry. It'll help you to roll the pastry easier.

Irish Coffee Bar

Wow, we have just passed mid of March. Time really flies quickly ....
There's no special story for now. We're still here, in Jakarta, I mean we're not moving anywhere. The whole family really focus to give support for our daughter who is facing final exam and National Exam for all 6th graders in this country.

Mellow Yellow March. Cloudy and windy still accompany our daily activities.

Last week, our children were so excited to remind me that last Saturday was St. Patrick's Day. Honestly, we never celebrate that day. The reason why the children were excited about it is because of their names are related with it. That's all.

So, to be responsible for my husband and my decision to give the names ('Patricia' and 'Patrick'), I decided to bake something to make a fun day at home. It was a cloudy day after I got back from my 'tiring' swimming routine, both of our kids were on one day school break, our son was not well (got mild fever), when I chose to bake the Irish Coffee Blondies from Martha Stewart Living Magazine.

It's an easy baking with good result. I just baked 1/2 recipe, and used 8 inch square pan instead of 9x13 inch pan. The plan was to produce 'chewy' blondies. Unfortunately I baked a bit too long so we got normal blondies, I mean not chewy one.

I substituted the Irish whisky for the glaze with Irish Coffee Cream, so the color of the glace became darker; it's light brown instead of white.

I'm happy for the result, I do love the harmony combination of the brown sugar, coffee flavor, almonds, baileys, and ...soon it's gone very quick. And the most important one was my son got back his eating appetite after finished some slice of this blondies with extra glaze.

Happy St. Patty's Day.

Chewy Irish Coffee Blondies
Source : Martha Stewart Living Magazine, March 2012.
Skip the green food coloring. We've raised the bar for Saint Patty's Day desserts. These blondies are enriched with Irish coffee-inspired flavors -- ground coffee in the batter, whiskey in the sugar glaze. And you don't have to pull out the heavy stand mixer: A bowl and a wooden spoon will do.

Ingredients
For the Blondies
2 sticks unsalted butter, plus more for pan
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups packed light-brown sugar
3 tablespoons freshly ground coffee (I used Nescafe Protect)
Salt
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup sliced almonds, skin on

For the Glaze
1 tablespoon melted butter, warm
2 tablespoons Irish whiskey (I used Irish Coffee Cream)
3/4 cup confectioners' sugar, sifted

Directions
1. Make the blondies: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9-by-13-inch baking pan, and line with parchment so that it overhangs on all sides. Butter parchment. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and baking soda.

2. Melt butter, and pour into a mixing bowl with brown sugar, ground coffee, and 1 teaspoon salt. Stir to combine. Stir in eggs and vanilla extract. Stir in flour mixture until just combined. Pour batter into pan, and sprinkle with almonds. Bake 27 to 30 minutes, depending on how chewy you like your blondies (a shorter baking time results in a chewier blondie). Let cool completely.

3. Make the glaze: Whisk together butter and whiskey. Gradually whisk in confectioners' sugar until glaze is thick but pourable (you may not need all the sugar). Using a spoon or a pastry bag fitted with a plain round tip, drizzle glaze over blondies in a rough crosshatch pattern. Let glaze dry 1 hour. Cut blondies into 2-inch squares.

Cook's Note
* Blondies can be stored at room temperature up to 2 days.
* 350 F ~ 177 C.