2015 of Monster-dough & Pie

2014 ended beautifully and 2015 started with live fireworks, a long trip home, and...

From fooood

... a visit to my all-time favourite location in Sydney- the shipwreck, before catching the first sunset of the year at Little Bay. I haven't been back to the shipwreck in over 2 years... maybe 3. Didn't manage to watch the sunrise because the trip home from watching the fireworks was so draining, I just had to go home and sleep.

The first baking/cooking session of the year went smoothly too. ST and I have brought multi-tasking to a whole new level.

From baKEE

First we made a mini batch of the Monster dough. 

Mix: 

2 eggs; 1/3 cup sugar; 1.5 tsp salt

Melt ~1/2 cup butter and add 2 cups milk till luke warm. Whisk into the egg mixture.

Add in 1.5 tbsp yeast and sit for a few minutes to activate, then add in 3 cups flour, stir till it forms a smooth batter before adding another 2-3 cups of flour till you get a sticky dough. Knead till you're happy and then leave to rise till doubled in size- about an hour or so. Roll dough out and do whatever you want with it. We managed to make 3 different things with the dough:

From baKEE

Chilli cheese and honey ring; original recipe cinnamon sugar twists, and pizza scrolls.

The dough is so versatile and it's not overly sweet so it worked well as savory too. The site we used recommended:

1/4 cup butter melted; 1/4 cup sugar; 1 tbsp cinnamon

Glaze

1/4 cup sugar + 1/8 cup water + 0.5 tbsp honey

Sugar glaze

1 cup confectionary sugar + 2 tbsp water

We simply chopped the dough into half and made cinnamon sugar twists without the glaze (omitted due to laziness, no other reasons), made pizza scrolls with a quarter of the dough (chopped black olives, semi dried tomato, bacon and lotsa cheese) and a honey chilli cheese ring out of the remaining quarter (paprika powder, honey and lotsa cheese).

And that's not all.

We also made, simultaneously, a pulled pork pie with caramelized onions and apple.

From baKEE

ST has this pressure cooker that can also be a slow cooker, and while the recipe we used required 6 hours of cooking time to make the pulled pork, we got it done in.... 1 hour.

Amazing stuff.

We basically poured 3 bottles of 354ml apple cider with 1/4 cup brown sugar into the pressure cooker, browned 1kg pork tenderloin (we used shoulder), and chucked the whole thing into the cooker to do its thing on high at 15 minute intervals. We checked it 4 times before deciding it's done. The cider which the pork cooked in was not to be wasted and it was reduced and thickened with corn flour to form a gravy which we drenched the pulled pork in, with extra to drizzle over our pies.

From baKEE

For the onions and apple. In a pan, we melted 1/2 cup butter (ST was none too pleased with the amount of butter in the pan, I thought she was was probably fine about it, but she outwardly protested over the extensive use of it... I saw no problem at all, the more butter used, the better it'll taste. No one has proven this wrong yet.) Chucked in 3 thinly sliced onions and browned that in the pan before adding 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 tsp onion powder and 2 large Granny smith apples (peeled and diced). Cook covered till everything caramelizes and becomes this awesome glop of sweet smelling brown mess.

The pie dough itself was simply a basic pie crust recipe: 1.25 cups flour, pinch of salt, 1/2 butter, ice water. Combine without overworking the dough, fridge it for 4 hours or until you're happy (hey, cooking and baking is all about being happy~), roll out and do as you like with it.

From baKEE

 We had some problems with the pie maker, but I reckon it probably shouldn't be preheated before we put the pastry on, otherwise it shrinks. I. Hate. Pastries. That. Shrinks. Damn. It. Continues to be my nemesis in 2015, yet I really cannot be bothered to master pastry because I don't make it nearly enough to trial and error the possible reasons for shrinking. Too lazy =___=

From baKEE

PS don't forget to season the pulled pork. The recipe has no salt so season until you're happy.

High 5 to ST (I managed to blog this!! Are you proud of me??) for everything- thanks for putting up with me and my lack of measurements, my inability to reach up your freaking shelves, plus my messiness. Happy (extremely belated) birthday to BW, here's your pie finally, enjoy, and let's dig that pie maker out again when your birthday comes around again for PIE ROUND 2.