This is how cheese differs around the world 🌎

#IsolationBaking recipe for #Christmas is a scrumptious

Apple-Cranberry Coffee Cake Wreath

I’m not an expert at shaping dough into wreaths or much of anything else but this is a wonderfully delicious & rather festive wintry coffee cake.

A great weekend baking project.

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1/

INGREDIENTS for dough

¾ cup (200 ml) milk
¼ cup (50 ml) water
2 ¼ teaspoons (8 grams) active dry yeast
¼ cup (50 grams) sugar
¼ cup (60 grams) unsalted butter, softened to room temp
1 egg
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
½ teaspoon salt
3 ¼ - 3 ½ cups (485 – 520 grams) flour

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2/

INGREDIENTS for the filling *
4 pie apples, like Reine de Reinette or Golden, peeled, cored & cubed
1 cup fresh cranberries
2 tablespoons (30 grams) unsalted butter
6 tablespoons brown sugar
½ tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground cardamom

MORE

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1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp finely grated orange zest

Egg wash: I egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water

You can increase the filling by using 5 apples and 1-½ cups cranberries; just be careful rolling it up to keep the filling inside the dough.

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4/

Make the dough:

Mix the water & milk together in a small saucepan & heat gently until warm, not hot. It should be the temperature of your hand when you test it.

Put the yeast in a large mixing bowl. Pour about ¼ cup (65 ml) of the warm liquid over the yeast and stir

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Mini Hungarian language lesson: the secret dish.

"What's a dish universally known and eaten in your country but virtually unheard of outside it?" is a question that makes the rounds on Twitter every few months but I can't be bothered waiting for the next one.

It's "főzelék".

The word itself looks as simple as the dish: "főz" is "to cook" and "-elék" is a suffix roughly meaning "the result of", so "the result of cooking".

Thanks for nothing.

The official definition is "any kind of boiled or parboiled vegetable"; closer, but still a load of bollocks.

So here's mine: "főzelék is made of vegetables and it has a thick sauce".

What kind of vegetables?

Practically any: potato, cabbage, bean, pea, chickpea, spinach, squash, carrot, but usually only one veg at a time.

There is a mixed abomination called "finomfőzelék" but we don't talk about it.

Most of us have been scarred for life by school dinners featuring the pallid little harbingers of death suspended in a beige gel of doom.

In all honesty though, főzelék in general doesn't look very appetising: it has its roots in that old peasant staple of gruel and it has a serious image problem as a result.

Which is why, even in Hungary, you won't see many on restaurant menus, except in specialist outlets.