In the Kitchen: Beer bread with a side of Cannelini soup

 

Over the summer my friend Erin invited us round for an American BBQ feast, which included an amazing beer bread loaf. She had just returned from a US road trip and had picked up a specialty beer bread mix in New Orleans. It was so good, but packed with really naughty ingredients. I had more than I should have and of course, what I loved the most was the underlying sweetness to it. So I decided to modify the recipe and create a healthier and more wholesome version.

Beer Bread 

Makes one small loaf 

• 1.5 cups of spelt flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 cup brown rice syrup
• 3/4 can beer  
• olive oil butter for tin and for brushing

Beer bread is a yeast bread that is sweet with a subtle beer flavor. It's usually made with white flour, beer and sugar. For this recipe, I exchanged refined sugar with brown rice syrup, which I discovered in a recent wholefoods course. It's more natural and low GI. Beer bread is supposed to be light and fluffy because of the yeast. So I swapped the white flour with spelt flour; an ancient grain that is different from modern wheat but still contains both wheat and gluten. It is still heavier than white flour, but tends to bake lighter than traditional wholemeal flours. Mix in all the dry ingredients, then add the beer. Poor the sticky, liquidity batter into a buttered tin. Bake in a per-heated 200C oven for about 25-30 minutes.

Hearty Cannelini Bean Soup

I decided to pair my beer bread with a hearty bean soup and a side of burrata; the protein and fat found in the beans and cheese balanced the sugar in the bread. As mentioned before, things that slow down the release of sugar into the blood are protein and fat so it's so important for me to have a balance of these at every meal. Although I do find it difficult sometimes and just fail.

• 1 can cannelini beans or any white bean really
• 1 red onion
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1 vegetarian bouillon cube
• 2 cups of water
• 2 bay leaves
• dried rosemary, oregano and paprika
• salt & pepper to taste

First sweat the onions and garlic in a little bit of olive oil until nice and soft. Then add two cups of hot water and the bouillon cube. Bring that to a boil and then throw in the remaining ingredients. I don't really measure my herbs, but best to start with small dashes. Then just add as you taste along. Once it's heated through, you are ready to grub. I like to puree half of my soup in a blender then mix it back in with the rest. I find that blending the soup releases more flavor from the onions and garlic, but I also like to retain a bit of chunk.

And voila! The beer bread turned out really nice and the subtle sweetness worked well with the savoriness of the soup. The burrata was absolutely divine and a nice added touch, it's a fresh mozzarella cheese with cream inside. Funny story is that burrata was given as a peace offering from our noisy neighbors. They sell cheese by day and throw house parties by night. A few days earlier they had kept us up AGAIN and after telling them off, they gave us two batches of this cheese. SCORE.

Interesting reads for this post:
What about Spelt?
Thorough brief on Spelt
The skinny on brown rice syrup

Naughty Oreo Cake

I'll come up with any excuse to make a naughty treat and inviting our sister-in-law Bulelwa and her three boys Sabelo, Siyanda and Sesethu from South Africa was as good as any. Remember baby Sese, of course you do, who can forget the best lip tremble ever?

I must have been craving Oreo cookies, because all I wanted to make was a layered Oreo cookie cake that I read on Londoner once. I also wanted to practice my amateur baking skills and needed to rid my pantry of white flour and sugar. I don't know how I've accumulated so much white flour! I have like 5 bags of it of varying kinds, but I hate throwing out food. So I've been holding onto it for occasions such as these where I can put it to good use. Feeding others.

 

I used this recipe from Add a Pinch and created an Oreo cookie icing with whipped double cream, sugar and crushed Oreo. I'm not a big fan of really sugary icing or butter icing, I much prefer whipping cream. It's more silky and not too sweet. Also, I can control how much sugar is added and I let the Oreo do the rest. I whipped up 2 tubs of 400ml double cream and then divided it into two batches.

 

I halved some of the Oreo cookies so I had only dark chocolate cookies and smashed these up finely for the icing to go on the outside of the cake. The remaining halves and whole Oreo cookies were smashed into chunky bits and mixed with the second batch of icing.

This was used in between my two layers of chocolate cake. I sweeten the icing slightly, adding a couple tablespoons of sugar. 

 

Voila! Everyone loved the cake and Hub dubbed me a feeder that evening. It was fun letting the eldest Sabelo cut the cake and I was pleased with my creation. But don't worry I didn't have any apart from a few cheeky nibbles I sneaked off from the kids' plates. I was like Uma in the Truth About Cats and Dogs, but instead of ordering a cake I wasn't going to eat. I made it!

 


 

Helpful things I learned:

Always, always line your baking tray with baking paper if your bakin' a cake. Even if the recipe says to just butter the hell out of your cake tin, line it after buttering anyways. Otherwise your cake will stick and you won't be able to get it out and you'll have to grab someone like Hub and have him hammer it out with one of your hand weights. Doh!

If you are preparing your cakes in advance and icing just before serving, wrap them in cling film after they've cooled down and whack em' into the fridge. If you leave them out on the stove all day while you're at work, they will dry out a little especially around the edge and not be as moist.

If you are making a layered cake and your bottom layers have a slight dome from rising, level that off with a bread knife. Don't, um, lay the cake dome side down and hope that it just magically flattens. It won't and your cake will crack over the dome. But don't worry if you want to try anyway, cuz that's what icing is for. Covering up the mistakes!

before

after