Mushroom-Spinach Pesto Pizza with No Knead No Yeast Dough

We were going to make a real pizza but I decided to go with a "No Knead No Yeast" dough recipe. G forgot to get tomato sauce as well so we had to use Pesto instead. NEVER UNDERESTIMATE HOW A FEW CHOPPED CHERRY TOMATOES WILL GIVE THE ILLUSION OF PIZZA-NESS!

No Knead / No Yeast "Pizza" Dough Mix

1 3/4 cups self-raising flour
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/4 cup olive oil
2/3 cup boiling water

Pizza Topping

A few tablespoons of Green Pesto
A few handfuls of Mozzarella Cheese
Two handfuls of fresh spinach
1/2 cup of chopped mushrooms
1/2 punnet of Cherry Tomatoes
Italian Seasoning

Make the dough by first mixing the dry ingredients, make a little well in the centre of the bowl and then add the water and olive oil. Stir with a large spoon until it forms a kind of dough. Allow to rest for a little while before rolling out or smushing it out thinly onto a (preferably) greased pan to form a very thin biscuit base for the pizza.



Layer on the pesto, cheese, and whatever else toppings you intend to put on top. Bake in an oven of about 180 deg for about 10-15 minutes or just periodically check once in a while to see what state it is in. By the time you're done it should look like a pizza.



IS IT NOT LIKE A PIZZA?

Onion Quiche

How to make an Onion Quiche

Shortbread pastry dough crust for Quiche

1 1/2 cup self-rising flour
1 stick butter
a little cold water to make it all stick together (approximately 5 tablespoons)

First, resist the urge to go out and buy some instant pie crust dough. Also, the Sainsburys on Stamford Hill doesn't really sell any, and technically this whole baking challenge is about making everything from scratch. So pull yourself together and mix the softened butter and flour together. Roll the unyielding dough with your hands until it becomes a softer dough that you can roll out and flatten on the table. I used a cup to flatten it. Lay the rolled dough over a cake tin with a base which can be easily separated (you'll thank yourself for doing this later) and press it in with your fingers to form a base. Bake at 250 degrees C for about 10 minutes (a blind bake might help the quiche hold its contents better and ensures the crust will be cooked all through). It should just slightly brown and harden so it will hold the wet quiche filling better later. That's what I imagine in my head anyway. Do most people blind bake their pastry shells in advance? I have no idea. Did I mention this was the first time I tried to make a pie/quiche thing? I'm actually surprised it looks pie/quiche-like! Are any of you still reading this stream-of-consciousness-recipe?

Onion Quiche Filling

3 large onions, finely sliced
5 large chestnut mushrooms, sliced
1 green pepper, sliced
2 eggs
Half a courgette
Mozzarella Cheese
Half cup of milk
Salt and Pepper to taste

Fry onions, mushrooms, peppers, and anything else you have in the fridge until soft and caramelized brown. Allow this to cool slightly before you add it to a big bowl of beaten eggs and milk and cheese. I'm just saying that you probably should let it cool because I am imagining that if you added the fried ingredients in while it was super hot you would scramble the eggs. Anyway. Surprisingly, this made just enough filling to fill my quiche. SHOCK! SURPRISE! This recipe is a combination of coincidence (the ingredients i could get) and also a mashup with an onion tart, which I also wanted to make but didn't. So if you are into the more eggy and cheesy sort of quiches then maybe you would reduce the filling and add more of eggs and milk/cream. Finally before it goes into the oven, scatter more mozzarella over the top and decorate with courgette slices.

Throw in a preheated oven of MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE for 15 minutes, then turn it down to about 200 deg for about 30-45 min. You might want to cover it with tin foil or another baking tray in order to prevent the top from burning too quickly as you let the rest of the gooey quiche bits inside cook. I'm not very sure what the correct cooking time should be but you should be fine if you just check it every ten minutes.

Rainbow Cupcake

Despite my overall preference for being outdoors and traveling, over the years I have somehow also cultivated somewhat "domestic" interests such as crocheting/knitting/sewing... and ultimately also the humble pleasures of cooking and baking. I imagine food to be sculptural! Experimental! Exciting! A matter of chemistry! I would love to become a food scientist one day. But the lack of an oven in most of the places I have temporarily resided in has resulted in a dearth of baking experiments until this point, so, here... HERE... finally, with one, NOW THIS IS TIME FOR THE BIG FAT BAKE OFF!

How to make Rainbow Cupcakes

Food coloring! Where have you been all my life? Now I know you are going to say that all the food coloring is bad for you but sometimes its nice to eat rainbows. Its like buying a shoe with an elaborate shoe sole on the inside. I don't know why girls buy boring black flat shoes with colorful insides but I have a theory. Maybe, even though nobody is going to see it when your feet are inside the shoes, its still nice to know that you're stepping on rainbows. Or wearing rainbow underwear. Or eating rainbow cupcakes. So… here be the steps to the cupcakes I baked on the occasion of G-Nasty's birthday…

Cupcake mix

150g unsalted butter
150g caster sugar
175g self-raising flour
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Food coloring (red, blue, green, yellow)


This recipe is a variation on some white cake mix that uses self-raising flour rather than baking powder because, well, that's what I happened to pick up at the store. After I got back I realized I had forgotten to write out a proper recipe and I couldn't find the original recipe anymore, so I had to backwards engineer this recipe into a semblance of a cake mix. Some liberties may have been taken.

Let the butter soften on the counter for about half an hour, then put it in a bowl with all the caster sugar. Rub it into the butter until well-mixed, then add the flour, eggs, and vanilla extract. You might also want to add some water to make it more like a gloopy paste rather than thick dough. Stir and divide into 6 glasses.



You'll need to colour them in this order:

Red
Orange
Yellow
Green
Blue
Purple

Obviously, Orange is made from Red+Yellow and Purple is made from Blue+Red. The rest are "as is". You might need around 4-5 drops of food coloring for each cup. Add more if you want the colour to be more intense.



In this picture you might see the white flecks in the cupcake mix. This is the result of the butter not melting because the kitchen is frozen and I think its actually colder outside in the kitchen than in the fridge itself. I can't even tell if the fridge is actually working. The insides of the fridge are certainly warmer than the air outside in the kitchen. Oh why doesn't the kitchen have a working heater? Anyway, if the butter flecks disturb you then you could also try to microwave the butter. That's assuming your kitchen is also at subzero temperatures like this one. Guess you can't have it all... Oven... Freezing.... Oven.... Freezing... well, at least there's an oven.

Put about one tablespoon of each color mix into each cupcake. Do not stir, only drip/pour each layer in. You can shake the pan to help it settle into all the corners. This will make exactly 12 cupcakes if you have calculated everything correctly. The cupcake should be about 1/2 to 2/3 full before you stick it in the over.



Ready for the Oven now!

Preheat the oven to about 180 deg C then throw the whole lot in the oven for approximately 12-15 minutes. Meanswhile you can make some icing, which could go something like this:

Cupcake Icing

150g unsalted butter
250g icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons hot water

This seemed really dry and difficult to work with hence the final picture shows the point where i got fed up rolling the icing into sheets and just smeared it on vigorously. The icing is almost pure sugar and butter so if that kind of sweet icing is not your thing then… DON'T DO IT. The cupcake will be slightly sweet already although could be complimented by jam and a moderate application of icing (not an immoderate amount as in the above photos…