Gingerbread

Dear all,

Sometimes we have to accept defeat. Failure can even lead to a liberating feeling of relief.

This year, I have been working hard: I have finished the manuscript for my new book that will be released by HarperCollins India in June 2016. The past week I have spent at the Film Bazaar in Goa, pitching my idea for a TV series to producers and directors.

The Film Bazaar is a yearly event in Goa that happens at the same time as the Film festival. It is a great opportunity to meet people from the film industry but it is also exhausting. Normally I spend my time writing in front of my screen. Meeting people and selling my ideas does not come naturally to me. However, I got to know some people interested in my humble endeavours. Let’s see, if something comes from it.

Still tired, I tried to realise a dream of mine. For years, I have been wanting to make a gingerbread house. I had done my research, cut out a template and yesterday everything went according to plan. My house seemed to hold together until it collapsed and broke. I don’t know what went wrong. Maybe my royal icing was too liquid. In the beginning, it seemed to stick. Then the gingerbread softened and broke into pieces.

There was no way I could fix it. So I tried a piece and decided that the taste is good enough for my newsletter. I cut out some cookies and decorated them with the coloured sugar pieces meant for the house. Honestly, I was quite happy I did not have to fiddle with decorating a full gingerbread house. It was so much easier just to bake some cookies.

That’s why my newsletter for the Christmas season features a recipe for gingerbread. I admit defeat and I don’t know if I will ever try my luck with a gingerbread house again. Maybe in a couple of years…

Wishing you happy cooking, always!

Kornelia Santoro with family

Gingerbread

Ingredients (for three dozen cookies):

• ½ cup brown sugar
• ½ cup raw sugar
• 1 egg
• 100 grams butter
• 2 cups whole-wheat flour
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• 2 tablespoons cacao powder
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves or allspice
• pinch of salt

Royal icing:

• 1 egg white
• 1 ½ cups icing sugar

Method:

Use the butter at room temperature. If you don’t have time to wait, 20 seconds in the microwave will do the trick. Beat the butter together with the sugar. You can do this in a food processor. I use my hand mixer for this job.

Add the eggs and the spices and beat the mixture until you have a creamy substance. I add cacao powder to enhance the colour. Because I like gingerbread spicy, I add a lot of cinnamon and ground ginger. If your taste buds are sensitive, you might want to cut down a bit on the spices.

Work in the flour. In the beginning, I use the hand mixer and then I knead the dough by hand until it is smooth.

Wrap the dough in cling film and let it rest. My recipe for the gingerbread house suggested resting it overnight. However, if you only want to make cookies, the usual half hour in the fridge should be enough.

When you need to roll out dough that tends to crumble like this one, using cling film is the way to go. Place the dough between two sheets of cling film and roll it out. When it flattens, you have to lift off the cling film several times to give space to the dough.

If you want to make a gingerbread house, you need a cardboard template like this. Use three times the amounts given above for the dough.

Lift off the upper sheet of cling film. For a gingerbread house, now is the time to cut out the template pieces. Keep the piece on the cling film and turn it upside down onto a cookie sheet that has been buttered. I use a silicone sheet that works great.
Bake for 15 to 20 minutes in the oven at 190 degrees Celsius. It should brown slightly.

For the royal icing, beat half of the icing sugar with the egg white. Then add the rest of the sugar and beat until stiff peaks form.

When you want to make a gingerbread house, bake all the pieces of the template and then stick them together with royal icing. Use glasses or tins to prop up the pieces until the royal icing has set.

I thought my gingerbread house was quite stable. I removed the props and it seemed to hold. But one minute after it collapsed.

First one part and then the rest.

So I rolled out the rest of the dough – luckily I had some leftovers – and cut out cookies with a cookie cutter. At this point, I did not even feel like attempting to cut out a gingerbread man by hand.

Bake the cookies and then decorate them as you wish. I stuck on the coloured sugar pieces meant for the house with a bit of royal icing.

Please tell me, if anybody of you ever managed to make a gingerbread house.

Enchanting Cinnamon

The enchanting aroma of cinnamon

Nothing equals the scent of cinnamon. It enthralls my kitchen each and every time I use it. From ancient times, cinnamon, the bark of the tree cinnamomum verum, has been held in high esteem. The ancient Egyptians used cinnamon in the embalming process as it destroys fungi and bacteria. The Roman emperor Nero burned a huge amount of cinnamon at his wife’s funeral to show his grief.

Cinnamon belonged to the spices, which were extremely costly. The tree used to grow only in Ceylon. Until 1833, European nations struggled for the control of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and its profitable cinnamon industry. Then other countries started growing cinnamon. Today the spice plantations of Goa produce excellent cinnamon that you can buy everywhere in pieces or as ground powder.

Cinnamon gets its scent and flavour from a chemical compound called cinnamaldehyde. Smelling cinnamon boosts the memory. Imagine how powerful the effect of cinnamon can be when you eat it. Studies show people with Type 2 diabetes can decrease blood sugar and cholesterol levels by consuming one gram of cinnamon a day. Cinnamon can also stop medication-resistant yeast infections. Half a teaspoon cinnamon with one tablespoon honey taken every day before breakfast eases arthritic pain. Cinnamon is also a good source of manganese, iron and calcium.

Fibre content of different foods
- Oat bran 16.7 g of fibre per 100 g
- Brown Rice 1.8 g of fibre per 100 g
- Whole Grain Bread 6.3 g of fibre per 100 g
- Whole Grain Spaghetti 8.4 g of fibre per 100 g
- Apples 1.8 g of fibre per 100 g
- Orange 1.7 g of fibre per 100 g
- Mushrooms 1.5 g of fibre per 100 g
- Peas 3.4 g of fibre per 100 g
- Onions 1.4 g of fibre per 100 g

More about fibre in food 

Bran muffins for healthy motions

Oat bran for healthy motions   Bran, the husk of grains, does not promise a tasty dish. Already the name sounds slightly off-putting, at least to my ears. I recall the first time I made contact with this stuff. It was in the late seventies, when research about nutrition was far less advanced than today. In these days, women magazines praised bran as the ultimate source for fibre and – as a natural consequence – a flat stomach. I bought a packet of wheat bran and – blissful ignorance – tried to make muesli with it. I still can feel the taste of cardboard spreading in my mouth. Although I had soaked the bran with plenty of milk, it seemed to absorb every bit of humidity after it had passed my lips. One of my friends used to sprinkle the stuff over fruit salad, but I did not like this any better. It took me years to try my hand in using bran again. Actually, during holidays in the USA I had noticed that bran muffins are sold everywhere. However, they are so sweet I don’t consider them healthy. When you look at the ingredients, you see that sugar and white flour is mixed with a bit of bran to justify the name. Some years ago, I discovered oat bran at my local supermarket. I bought a packet and decided to develop my own kind of bran muffins – with a lot of bran. The following recipe is from my upcoming book about cooking for allergic persons. It does not include allergens like raisins, nuts or chocolate chips and is dairy free. These oat bran muffins may not incorporate the peak of culinary accomplishment. But thanks to their really serious amount of fibre they take care of your intestines like few other foods – healthy motions guaranteed. Plain as they are, these muffins make a great start in the morning. I personally love the flavour of cinnamon and clove which infuses these muffins. Eat them with a bit of butter and some marmalade and they can make you happy.   Dairy free Bran Muffins Ingredients (for 12 muffins):    2 ½ cups oat bran   1 ½ cup whole wheat flour   1 cup ghee or coconut oil   2 eggs   1 ½ cups coconut milk   1 cup sugar   1 tablespoon vanilla essence   1 tablespoon cinnamon   1 teaspoon ground clove   2 tablespoons baking powder Method: Grease your muffin moulds and line them with paper. I use silicone muffin moulds from an Italian company, which don’t need greasing and are very convenient. Preheat your oven to 190 degrees Celsius. Break the egg into a mixing bowl and add sugar, the cinnamon, the cloves and/or the cardamom. Stir well together. Add the coconut milk (also normal milk will do if you can eat dairy). Stir again. Add the oat bran and mix. Let it sit for ten minutes. Even overnight would not hurt, if you want to make your muffins fresh in the morning and don’t feel like slaving away early. The oat bran will start to absorb most of the liquid. If the dough turns very thick, add ¼ cup more liquid. Mix the flour with the baking powder and stir into the dough. Fill the muffin moulds immediately and bake them in the oven for around 25 minutes. A toothpick inserted in the middle should come out clean. Let them rest for ten minutes at least before removing them from the moulds. http://www.mediterraneancooking.in/nutritional-values/ingred-fiber More recipes at Kornelia's Kitchen Sign up for my monthly newsletter