The Idyllic Cottage Tea: A Bagful of Crispy Baguettes, a Delicious Chocolate Mousse, and Chewy Sourdough Cookies!
Brushing aside a pile of clumped, clinging snow from my moccasins, I abruptly hung the beige ermine coat and entered the kitchen, wondering what to cook today for a hearty supper, as I had decided to spend the vacations baking away merrily, whilst I enjoyed living leisurely at my centuries’ old snow-capped homestead. The hushed winterberry trees, snow-kissed mountains and the fog-drenched twilights, made me really believe as if every breathe that I would heave is certainly brewed of fairylike magic.
The dreamy air, enchanted as it seemed, was bejeweled with the showering snowflakes, baring the peculiar Alpine sky and crusting the glaring boughs of the dark, cloistering alpine and the inky spruce trees, like the roly-poly icicles of hoary bread crumbs. The crispy feeling of the melted ice and fresh snow had left me yearning for a bag of homemade baguettes, a scrummy chocolate mousse, and a flavorsome batch of chewy sourdough cookies and a heartwarming cup of milky white chocolate, nestled together, tucked cozily in a thick cashmere blanket as I would lie ensconced on my couch, reading the quintessential novel, The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, during the crumbling hours of the nightfall.
I decided to try the delicious recipes one by one, while I rustled through the pages of a withering cookbook written by my favorite person, the lovely Aunt Mabel. Being Danish by birth, she had the most amazing, aesthetic sense when it came to cooking and baking immaculately, she often published a lot of easy recipes on sundry recipe blogs and other famous food websites and indeed, her baking recipes work like the most curious, enticing trinkets one could ever imagine. She loved everything about cooking, even the tiniest details, she hunted the chaotic flea markets far and wide, looking for the daintiest cooking pots that would pompously boast the unique French recipes, splashed with the prized classiness, dripping in a Danish chef’s maestro touch.
I dusted the old, laced food journal, used as her cookbook lying in the garret, as a powdery mist of fairy dust gusted out, bellowing, strewn with the daintiest baking recipes one could ever find, as they lay, withering like the frail dewy petals of a wrinkled English rose, sighing and murmuring to feather away to a faraway land of the ethereal quixotic eternity and illusion
Here are the talismanic recipes, hope you try them, too, one by one.
- The French Baguettes’ Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 cup of water
- 2 1/2 cups of bread flour
- 1 tablespoon of white sugar
- 1 teaspoon of salt
- 1 1/2 teaspoons of bread machine yeast
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 tablespoon of plain water
- A few drops of Kisan cooking oil
Directions:
Put a cup of plain water, bread flour, sugar, salt and yeast into bread machine pan. Select the Dough cycle option and press the Start button.
Once the cycle starts, place the dough in a baking bowl, and grease it with the Kisan cooking oil, turning to coat all the sides of the dough completely. Cover the dough and allow it to rise in a warm place for half an hour, or until it almost doubles in size, becoming a bulky dough. Once the dough is ready, you can always check it by touching, if indentations are made, it is certainly baked well!
Punch down the freshly baked dough by placing it on a light surface sprinkled with the flour and roll it into a 16x12 inch rectangle. Cut the dough in two equal parts, creating two 8x12 inch rectangular dimensional portion of the dough.
Roll up each half of dough firmly, starting at the 12 inch side, pounding out any stored air as it is rolled neatly and gently back and forth, to create tapered ends. Put it on a distance of 3 inches apart on a greased baking sheet of cookies. Make deep diagonal slashes across the loaves at every two inches, or make one slash on each loaf by its length.
Cover, and let it rise in a hot place for almost forty minutes, till it bulks up.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
Mix the egg yolk mixture well, blending it with one tablespoon of water and brush it on top pf each loaf of bread.
Bake the bread in the preheated oven, until it turns crispy, golden brown, for almost twenty five minutes.
Serve it in a small, vintage inspired blue China dishes and if you want to gift them, you can always look out for a charming baking basket! I always do that!
- The Chocolate Mousse
Ingredients
- 4 large egg yolks
- ¼ cup of white granulated sugar
- 2 ½ cups of heavily whipped cream
- 8 oz. of chopped, semi-sweet baking chocolate
- A few drops of Kisan cooking oil, to prevent clumps
- A few exotic berries
Directions
Beat the mixture of the egg yolks in a small baking bowl, using an electric mixer on a rapid speed for about 3 minutes till they thicken well. Slowly, beat in the granulated sugar too.
Heat one cup of finely whipped cream in 2-quart saucepan over medium heat until it boils and simmers. Gradually stir at least half of the warm whipped cream into the mixture of oil and egg yolks, and blend back it into hot cream in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Cook over diminished heat for almost five minutes, stirring over and over again, until the mixture thickens, without boiling it. Stir in chocolate until it dissolves well. Cover and refrigerate for almost two hours, stirring occasionally, just until it become cool and chills well.
Serve it and enjoy!
- The Sourdough Cookies’ Recipe
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup butter
- 5 cups of rapadura or Sucanat
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp. vanilla essence
- 2 Tbsp. of water
- 1 cup of fresh sourdough
- 3 cups of flour
- 1 tsp. of salt
- 1/2 tsp. of baking powder
- 1/2 tsp. of baking soda
Directions:
- Preheat the oven up to 375°F.
- Make a creamy batter of Kisan margarine, sugar, eggs, and vanilla essence. Gently mix in the water and sourdough mixture till they combine well. In a separate bowl, blend together the dry ingredients into the sourdough batter.
- Combine the wet and dry ingredients properly. Allow the dough to swell, for another fifteen minutes.
- Drop the dough onto a sheet of cookies. Sprinkle the cookies with a hint of cinnamon and a bit of sugar, if desired.
- Bake for another twelve to thirteen minutes.
Store the cookies in a retro fashioned sweet cookie barrel and enjoy!
