Saturday 14 December - Christmas Chelsea Buns

Some festive ingredients to make some festive Chelsea Buns

I started off by making some bread dough in the bread machine (it's a bit too cold in my kitchen for dough to rise at the moment). I enriched a basic bread dough by adding egg and milk instead of water.
Once risen it was rolled out into a rectangle, and sprinkled with some brown sugar, cinnamon, and the cranberries and pecan nuts. I also dotted a bit of butter of the dry ingredients

The dough was rolled tightly from the long side -

and then cut into nine even slices. I've found the best way to cook this sort of bun is in a square cake tin, but with some reusable silicon liner at the bottom.

The buns were left to rise again, then cooked in a hot oven.

Icing was drizzled over while still warm - I mixed some icing sugar, cinnamon and a dash of maple syrup, then added warm water until it was thin enough to drizzle over the buns.

They need to be eaten the day they are cooked really, as go stale quite quickly.

Friday 13 December - Chicken Makhani (Butter Chicken)

We often like a curry on a Friday night, and this one from the Hairy Bikers book has proved to be a popular choice in this house.
It's similar to a Tikka Massala in that the chicken pieces are cooked separately in a marinade before being added to a cream and tomato sauce.

The spice mix first - whole spices were roasted and then whizzed in our spice grinder - cloves, cumin, coriander, fenugreek, cardamom and black pepper.
 

To this the powdered spices were added - hot chilli powder, paprika, turmeric and salt

Half of this spice mix was stirred into some thick yoghurt along with ginger and garlic paste and the cubed chicken was left to marinate for as long as possible.

Once marinated the chicken was threaded onto skewers and grilled.

For the sauce - onions, garlic and ginger were fried, then the remaining spice powder was added along with tomatoes, tomato puree and some water and it was left to simmer until soft. The sauce was pureed until smooth and a tub of creme fraiche was added, along with the cooked chicken.

We also made some naan bread to serve with the curry, which we cooked on a pizza stone in a very hot oven.

The finished dish went down very well, although there seemed to be rather too much sauce for the meat.