Guide to the best cafés and bakeries in Ciudad Real, Castilla La Mancha- Part 1

Long time, no hear but I´m finally back,this time with a guide to the best cafés and bakeries in Ciudad Real. Although Ciudad Real is a fairly small city, it has its fair share of cafes and bakeries. I´m going to give you a tour of some of my favourites.

La Deliciosa,  located in the Plaza Mayor, or main square, is a cafe and cake shop rolled into one and is one of my favourite places to go for breakfast. I am definitely one of the ¨regulars¨ and even know my name and my order. 

I love the doorstep-sized toast here with butter and jam although they also offer a more Spanish style breakfast with baguette- style bread, olive oil and tomato. In my opinion, it´s also one of the few places where you can get a decent cup of tea (although in any cafe you go to in Ciudad Real, always ask for the milk to be separate, otherwise you get milk with tea rather than tea with milk!) They also serve delicious cakes although I often stick to the toast but can´t resist their Tarta de Santiago (almond cake), when they have it, nor their torrijas although these are not always available. 

La Deliciosa has two seating areas, inside the café and outside on the terrace, weather permitting. The only bad point about this cafe, is that it is often busy, especially at certain times, so finding a seat can sometimes be a bit tricky. 

Pasteleria Mas Cuqui is a fairly new bakery that has opened recently in Ciudad Real. It is a cosy, comfortable bakery and cafe ran by Venezuelans with fresh,homemade food, with one of their specialities being Venezuelan arepas with various fillings and other typical savoury Venezuelan treats such as pan de jamon(ham bread) & tequeños (cheese rolls). 

They sell a variety of cakes, both individual cakes or pieces and whole cakes, cupcakes, doughnuts, cinnamon rolls. They have certain cakes that are always on the menu but each day there are different cakes to try.

 Everything I have tried is delicious and is a reasonable price. Service is very friendly. I have tried Papelón con limon (a sweet lemonade drink) with a small Black Forest cherry cake,which was heavenly..I thoroughly recommend you to try this cake, a Nutella cupcake and an Oreo and passionfruit brigadeiros,which are similar to truffles. The passionfruit brigadeiro was to die for!

Mad Hatter´s Teashop & Patisserie

Another of the foodie places on my bucket list of places to visit while on my recent trip to the UK was Mad Hatter´s Teashop & Patisserie, a lovely café & teashop which I discovered on Facebook.
I booked a table ahead to avoid disappointment,which was lucky as it is a fairly small café and is pretty popular.

Mad Hatter´s is known for it´s afternoon teas and cakes but they also do hot lunches...I think hotpot was on the menu when we went! They also specialise in baby showers and are even expanding and taking over the shop next door in order to be able to cater better for special events, such as baby showers. The cafe is tastefully decorated in soft,pink pastel shades with their yummy cakes displayed on the counters, which you can´t help but drool over!!

 We ordered a savoury and a sweet afternoon tea and there was also the choice of a Christmas afternoon tea. The savoury  afternoon tea consisted of sandwiches with various fillings, soup of the day...which that day was leek & potato, pork pie and quiche and a giant scone with fresh cream & jam. The sweet afternoon tea came with sandwiches with a variety of fillings...cheese & Branston pickle, ham & piccalilli, tuna mayonnaise & Coronation chicken. As I am a bit fussy and don´t like tuna, they didn´t have any problems with changing the tuna mayo sandwiches for extra coronation chicken ones. We also got a vanilla slice,a coffee renoir...I changed my coffee renoir for carrot cake,brownies and  giant scone. The afternoon teas are for a minimum of two people but I think there is enough for 4 people...we couldn´t manage all of it as we were too full so they packed what we couldn´t eat into boxes for us to take with us. Although a little on the expensive side, it was well worth it as everything was delicious and you get your money´s worth...as I said we couldn´t eat it all!! The service was also good and they were very friendly. It definitely didn´t disappoint and I totally reccommend it as a special treat. I´d love to go back again sometime.

Eat More Variety Alphabet Challenge: Avocado: Avocado, Bacon & Poached Egg On Toast

Thought it was about time for another avocado recipe before moving on to the letter B of the Eat More Variety challenge. I´ve seen a lot of avocado on toast recipes popping up everywhere lately so I thought I´d try it as it seems a perfect thing for lunch or in my case, tea or supper  and appears to be quite healthy. Unfortunately, I didn´t manage to persuade my husband & daughter to try this dish so it didn´t suceed in getting them to eat a more varied diet, which is one of the whole points of this challenge!!So, for now the winning dish is the creamed chicken & avocado but I enjoyed this tasty suppertime treat and avocado is going to become if not a staple, a more frequent food in our diets...I just have to figure out how to sneek it into my husband´s and daughter´s meals!!!I´ll be giving some of these avocado recipes a go too.I´d love to hear any of your favourite avocado recipes and hopefully some of you might participate in this month´s letter B challenge.

After looking at various avocado on toast recipes and a trial avocado on toast recipe, which was a bit of an epic fail, I came up with this recipe as I had some leftover bacon bits, or lardons, that needed using up and based on a recipe for Avocado & Onion sandwich in The Dairy Book of Home Cookery, came up with the following:

Ingredients: (1 person)
2 slices of wholemeal(or white,according to preference) bread
1 small-medium ripe avocado
leftover bacon bits or lardons
2 eggs
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp sweet paprika
2 tbsp cream or milk (optional)
Olive oil


1.Mash the avocado with lemon juice, cream and paprika.
2. Poach egg in some boiling water and a splash of malt vinegar
3..Fry the bacon or lardons in some olive oil
4. While bacon is frying, toast the slices of bread
5. Place mashed avocado on top of toasted bread, then the poached egg and place the bacon on top.

I actually only made 1 egg as you can see in the photo and just grated some cheese on top of the avocado & bacon on my second slice of bread but I much prefered the avocado on toast with the poached egg...it just seemed to have more flavour with the runny egg yolk merged with the bacon

Cooking England County By County: Berkshire: Poor Knights Of Windsor

Before coming to Spain, I´d never tried French toast or Eggy bread or the Spanish equivalent torrijas, but once I tried torrijas there was no going back and they are now a firm favourite of mine. So when to my surprise, I discovered that there was a British version that was typical in the Berkshire region, I couldn´t wait to try it. The British version goes by the name of the Poor Knights Of Windsor. Pardon? Poor Knights of Windsor? What´s that? I ´d never heard of it before either!!

The origins of this dish are a bit unclear but apparently many similar dishes are referred to as"poor knights" throughout Northern Europe. It is also thought that it could refer to the "Poor Knights", who were military gentlemen who were financially ruined by having to ransom themselves after the battle of Crecy, and were given pensions and lodgings in Windsor Castle by Edward III.Whatever its origins, Poor Knights of Windsor is a tasty yet simple dish that does not disappoint, and which is great for a weekend breakfast treat.

I used the following recipe from the lovely Lavender & Lovage blog which is well worth visiting. The only thing I would note is that I used normal bread and it got quite soggy after dipping it in the milk mixture and egg and was very difficult to turn over without it breaking so I would reccommend using thickly sliced bread or baguette style bread to prevent this from happening. Jammy, eggy fried bread with a slightly boozy touch to it and a sprinkling of sugar and cinnamon...bring it on! What more do you want? I love discovering all these regional British dishes that I´d never heard of or tried before!

Cooking England County By County:Bedfordshire:Catherine Cakes (Kattern Cakes or Catterning Cakes)

Well, it´s that time of year again...finally even though it seemed like it would never arrive, that time when all teachers breathe a deep sign of relief as now the start of the holidays has begun. However, with the holidays comes the hot weather and baking loses a little of it´s appeal due to the sweltering heat. I, on the other hand, decided to brave the heat and attempt these Catherine Cakes, another Bedfordshire staple, I´ve never heard of or tried before. I didn´t know much about them and even after Googling them, wasn´t much the wiser as I´m not sure if they are meant to be a sweet bread or bread or even if they should be baked as a whole cake or as little buns...I opted for the little buns as I think they are easier to share round and keep as a big slab of cake would probably go stale more quickly. The only other thing I found about these cakes is they are named after Catherine of Aragon and were made for her and they are normally made and eaten on the 25th November, St.Catherine´s Day.

I used the following recipe from Recipewise but as I was unsure what quantity it would make, I only made a quarter of the recipe and also decided  to divide them into small buns. If you follow the recipe sticking to it fairly strictly, they are fairly simple to make, even for inexperienced bread makers such as me. I added slightly too much egg,making the dough a very sticky mess but this was soon corrected by adding a little more flour. The smell of these baking was divine and was soon wafting through the house...it´s worth making these for the smell alone. I have to say that they were pretty tasty too although I was a little disappointed as I expected them to be sweeter and more cakey, a little bit like a scone but they were actually more bready than a scone. They were quite a big hit with my husband and friends though, although I think I´d  have prefered them with a bit of jam and butter! Go on, give them a go and let me know what you think! So that´s all for Bedfordshire although I am sure there are more recipes from this county...the next county we´re heading off to is Berkshire. I wonder what kind of regional recipes we will find there!

Healthy Banana & Oat Muffins

I´m on a bit of a healthy eating mission at the moment and when I saw these muffins, I knew they´d be perfect as they are very healthy and full of goodness. Even more to the point, I thought they might tempt my daughter to eat some breakfast as she has become rather picky at breakfast. These muffins are an ideal wholesome breakfast and a great way to get some fruit and cereal down your children and what´s more they don´t even contain any sugar....although I have to say, it didn´t quite work with my daughter. She nibbled at them but didn´t tuck into them in quite the way I was expecting and hoping!!!

 I got the recipe from "365 Recetas para bebés y niños en edad preescolar" and I pretty much followed the recipe to the letter. Unfortunately, I myself don´t like banana so I don´t know how they actually turned out but both my husband and a friend seemed to enjoy them, even if my daughter didn´t.

Here is the recipe for about 8-10 small muffins:

Ingredients:

25g unsalted butter
3 tsp of clear honey
2 large,ripe bananas
100g flour
50g rolled oats/porridge oats
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
75ml milk
Method:
1.Preheat the oven to 190ºC and fill a muffin/cupcake tray with muffin or cupcake cases.
2. Heat the butter and honey on a low heat till melted.
3. Mix all the dry ingredients together.
4. Mash the banana up with a fork and add to the honey mixture, then add this and the milk to the dry ingredients.
5. When well-combined, pour the muffin batter into the cases and bake for 25 mins (Note: temperature and time may vary depending on your oven....I baked mine at 180º for 15-20 mins) or until muffins are a golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean when inserted.

Quick & Easy Lemon Curd

Despite the lack of recent posts, I have been baking and cooking as usual.I made a Number One first birthday cake with chocolate buttercream for my friend´s daughter but my husband said it looked like a certain part of the male anatomy so didn´t post it as it wasn´t my best cake. However, it tasted good and my friend´s nephew declared it the best cake he´d eaten, which was very sweet of him!

Anyway, after Pancake Day I had quite a few lemons which needed using up and as I haven´t tried my hand at many preserves,I decided to make a British classic, lemon curd. Lemon curd is great on toast for breakfast or as a snack and is a great filling for desserts and cakes. I´ll be making some cakes using the lemon curd I made. I´ve made lemon curd a couple of times and usually I make it using a bain marie method, which does take quite awhile so I decided to adopt Ruth from The Pink Whisk´s method, and is a much quicker method, great if you´re a busy mother!!This recipe is a bit of a mish-mash of The Pink Whisk´s recipe and a recipe from The Dairy Book of Home Cookery:



Ingredients:
Juice of 3 lemons and zest of 2 of the lemons
3 eggs plus 1 extra egg yolk,beaten
200g sugar
100g butter

Method

1. Grate and squeeze the juice out of the lemons.
2. Place juice and zest in a pan with the butter and sugar and heat until the sugar has dissolved and the butter has melted.
3. Add this mixture to the eggs gradually,stirring after each addition.
4. Pour back into the pan and place on medium heat again.
5.Heat the lemon curd while stirring continuously until lemon curd thickens.
6. When lemon curd coats the back of wooden spoon,it is thick enough so it is ready,place in jars and leave to cool. As it cools, it will also appear to thicken up even more.

Torrijas (Spanish Style French Toast) & 6 weeks to go!

I don´t know whether Torrijas is classed as a cake or a dessert but it´s definitely one of my favourite Spanish cakes or desserts and they are very typical and traditional at Easter time, so I also decided to enter it in the Easter Cake Bake blog event over at A Slice of Cherry Pie (if you click on the above link you will find out all the details about this event and how to enter).

I had a bash at making Torrijas once before and wasn´t very successful.I think it´s because I didn´t buy the right kind of bread (apparently this is the main secret to making perfect Torrijas)and also I put too much bread to soak in not enough milk, so they didn´t get wet enough so this year I thought I´d give it another try. I used Mil Postres recipe for torrijas as a basis for making my torrijas and this time they turned out perfectly and were absolutely delicious (even if I do say so myself!). My mum did the frying though as she didn´t want any hot oil to spit out onto my pregnant belly!

Ingredients (makes 8 to serve 4 people)

8 slices of special bread for torrijas (if you can´t get this bread, you could use brioche, milk bread, French baguette or even normal sandwich bread, however it is important that it is thickly sliced)
1/2 litre (just over 3/4 pt) of milk
100g sugar
1/2 cinnamon stick
peel of 1/2 lemon
2 eggs, beaten
abundant sunflower oil for frying
extra sugar & ground cinnamon (for dusting)

Method

1. Place milk, sugar, cinnamon stick and lemon peel in a pan and heat until warm and milk becomes infused with the flavours. Do not allow milk to boil.
2. When milk has cooled, strain the milk through a sieve and put bread in milk and leave for some minutes (about 10-15) until bread has soaked up the majority of the milk. (as pictured below)


3. Dip bread in beaten eggs and then fry in abundant sunflower oil until golden on both sides.



4. Drain torrijas on kitchen roll to get rid of excess oil.
5. Mix sugar and cinnamon (I eyeballed the amount but there was definitely more cinnamon than sugar as I love cinnamon!)together and then dip the torrijas in sugar & cinnamon mix to coat them on both sides.




We put them in the fridge and ate them the following morning for breakfast.Yummy!

Anyway, the weeks are flying by and I am counting them down...there are only 6 more weeks (well 5 after this week finishes) till I give birth, which I´m looking forward to,well, maybe not the actual birth! ; ) and it´s all very exciting. I´m not sure how consistent my blogging will be up to and after the birth but hopefully will find some time to blog & bake or cook!

Hot Cross Buns (one a penny, two a penny....)

As Easter is drawing nearer, I fancied having a bash at making some Hot Cross Buns as I really enjoy them and I can´t buy them where I live. My plan is to make them now and freeze 8 of them until Easter to have for breakfast when my parents come to visit. Hot Cross Buns are traditionally eaten hot (hence the name!) or toasted on Good Friday and the cross symbolizes the cross on which Jesus was crucified.

As I´ve only made bread- type recipes 3 times before and the last recipe I made was current teacakes, which are very similar to Hot Cross Buns, didn´t turn out as well as I´d have liked, I was a bit apprehensive as to how they would come out. However, not to worry, the recipe was fairly straightforward and I am quite proud of how they turned out (even if I do say so myself!). The recipe is an amalgamation between Delia Smith´s recipe in the Complete Cookery Course and a recipe I´d saved from Hello or Ok as is as follows:

Ingredients (makes 12)

1 tbsp dried yeast

450g plain flour

2 tsp caster sugar

2 tsp mixed spice (the smell as they were baking was heavenly!)

2 large eggs

Grated zest of 1 lemon 150 ml /1/4 pt warm milk

25g/1 oz butter, melted

75g/3oz currants (I actually used about 90g as didn´t have mixed peel and wasn´t adding the cherries or walnuts as recipe stated-I wanted a more traditional hot cross bun!)

4 tsp plain flour

2 tbsp honey (optional)

milk to glaze

1 tsp salt

Method

1. Sieve plain flour and salt into large mixing bowl, then add caster sugar, mixed spice, dried yeast, currants and lemon zest and stir till combined.

2. Whisk warm milk and eggs in a measuring jug and add warm water till 300 ml/1/2 pt level is reached.

3. Add melted butter and gradually add milk and egg mixture, stirring until all the flour is well incorporated (see below) and forms a dough.

4. Knead until smooth & elastic (I found that my dough was pretty sticky so had to add a little more flour and a tiny bit of milk which I eyeballed until I had the "right" consistency!) 5. Leave for 5 mins, then knead again for 2 mins and divide into 12 equal(ish) flat "cakes". 6. Mix 4 tbsp plain flour with 3 tbsp cold water and pipe crosses on top of the buns (yes sir, I had my piping bag out again this week...I´m going to be a piping expert in no time..I wish!!!!) 7. Place on greased baking tray, brush with a little milk and cut a cross in the centre of each "cake", then cover with plastic wrap and leave to rise for 25 mins (be careful as although I tried a trick of spraying baking spray over the plastic wrap which I´d seen on a baking programme, it didn´t work and the plastic wrap stuck to the buns a little...maybe she used oil!)

8. Bake in a preheated oven at 220º C (425ºF) for 20-25 mins until golden brown and when you tap the bottom of the bun, you hear a hollow sound ( this time may vary depending on your oven..I had to turn my oven down to about 200ºC and only baked them for about 15mins!) 9. If you want, you can then brush them with a little honey which gives them a lovely shininess. Voíla! The finished product-great eaten hot or toasted and smothered in butter!

Traditional Pancakes for Pancake Day

This year Pancake Day fell on the 8th March and this year my mum happened to be visiting so we also invited my Spanish in-laws so they could experience this British tradition. Pancake Day, also known as Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday in other countries, is celebrated in Britain by eating pancakes as a way of finishing off all the fats such as eggs, milk and sugar before the 40 days fasting period of Lent. In some cities and towns pancake races are held!

Although the pancake batter is fairly easy to make, it takes a little practice to perfect them (or at least it did with me!). I usually use Delia Smith´s recipe taken from the Complete Cookery Course which always turn out delicious. The secret to making a perfect pancake is to have a good frying pan (preferably non-stick). Heat the fat (I usually use lard) till it´s smoking hot, then drain off the excess fat, then pour in the batter as thinly as possible, tilting the pan till the batter covers all the bottom of the pan. If you have any gaps you can fill them in with extra batter. It´s important to have the pan and the fat very hot otherwise the pancake will stick. After a few seconds flip the pancake over either traditionally tossing the pancake up in the air (v.difficult especially if you don´t want to end up cleaning bits of pancake that have stuck to the ceiling!)or with a wooden spatula and cook the other side till the pancake is a pale golden colour! The traditional way is to squeeze lemon juice and sprinkle sugar over the pancake and then roll it up but you can serve them with golden syrup, maple syrup, raspberry or chocolate sauce, Nutella..the choice is yours!

English Muffins

As I can´t buy English muffins where I live I thought I´d have a go at making them myself, plus I was also dying to try out making some homemade bread. I´ve only attempted making bread once before, which turned out quite successfully.I´m not a big bread fan, however there is something about fresh homemade bread which definitely beats mass-produced bread. Believe it or not, I first tried English muffins as part of Eggs Benedict in a breakfast buffet in a restaurant in Niagra Falls and they became one of my staple breakfast foods during my stay in the States!



As this was my first attempt at making English muffins, I followed Delia Smith´s recipe (I took the recipe from her Complete Cookery Course book but this is almost exactly the same)to the dot. The only difference is that I used normal sugar as I´d run out of caster sugar and I didn´t use 2 0z of lard...I only used the tiniest amount just to grease the frying pan. The recipe turned out to be a great success (as you can see in the photo below!) so I will definitely be making them again!

1. Milk, water, sugar and yeast mixed to form frothy head

2. Forming the dough



3. After kneading (top-left
hand corner) 4. Risen dough (top-right
hand corner) 5. Muffins covered in clingfilm to rise
(bottom left)



The finished muffins after light frying! Delicious!

Scotch Pancakes (25th Feb '09)

Yesterday was Pancake Day, or to be more precise Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Karnival/carnivales...whatever you want to call it. Shrove Tuesday is traditionally the day you make pancakes to use up all the eggs and milk before Lent(a fasting period). Pancakes are traditionally served with lemon juice and sugar in Britain.

Another strange tradition is the Pancake Race. Woman compete against each other wearing an apron, high heels, and carrying a frying pan and tossing pancakes at the same time. This wierd custom started when a woman in Olney ran out of her house with her frying pan and forgetting her apron when she heard the church bells for the service.

This year I decided to do something a bit different than the normal pancakes and made Scotch pancakes. They differ only slightly to pancakes in that they are smaller and thicker. They have a light, fluffy texture although can be slightly filling. They are very similar to American pancakes. I followed this recipe from Scottish Teatime Recipes and found it doesn´t need any tweaking. The trickest part was flipping them over (as it usually is). I served them with strawberries and cream and they were delicious- even if I do say so myself! As you can see, I need to improve on my presentation....I´d never win Masterchef!

Ingredients (makes about 6)

4oz (1 cup) self- raising flour
pinch of salt
1oz (2 tbsp) caster(superfine) sugar
1 egg
1/4 pt( 140ml) milk

Method

1. Whisk egg and milk together.
2.Sift flour and salt into a bowl and add the sugar.
3. Add the egg and milk mixture gradually and combine with wooden spoon
4. Once all ingredients are combined, melt a small amount of butter in small frying pan or girdle.
5. When hot (you can test by adding a tiny amount of batter and if the bottom turns brown in less than a minute, then it is ready), add tablespoons of the batter.
6. When bottom is golden brown, use a slice to flip the pancake over and cook the other side for a minute.
7. Serve immediately and enjoy!