mutteringhousewife

Full house today. School holidays (private school) and a sunny day mean a pool full of kids. Nothing I bake is ever going to fill them up, but they can have fruit toast for afternoon tea.

Place in a bowl eight grams of fresh yeast and a cup and a half of warm water. Squish that yeast around with your fingers until it has all dissolved. Add a quarter of a cup of white sugar, three teaspoons of mixed spice, a pinch of salt and three cups of flour. Mix it until it’s a sticky dough. Turn it out onto a floured kitchen bench and work that extra flour in until it’s still a fairly soft dough and knead it until it’s smooth. Bung it back in the bowl with a damp tea towel over it and leave it somewhere warm for an hour or two. My current favourite place is in the oven with the light on.

You can leave it in the bowl as you work in a half a cup of currants and half a cup of sultanas. They’ll keep trying to escape, but force those little rascals back in. Line a loaf pan with baking paper and squash the fruit dough in. Put it back in the oven with the light on and leave it until the loaf has risen to at least the edges of the pan. Or until you’re so hungry you can’t leave it alone any more. Brush the top with a little milk and sprinkle liberally with cinnamon sugar. Turn the oven up to 220 degrees C and bake it for fifteen minutes. Turn the oven down to 180 degrees and bake for a further half an hour, or until it’s nice and brown and crispy on top and sounds a bit hollow when you knock on it to find out who’s home.

Even the Moose likes it. Fortunately the others haven’t found it yet, so I was able to photograph the remains.