Easy Brioche

I've been struggling lately with food for the girls.  They are currently incredibly picky about what they eat.  I can't help but feel I did something wrong and it is my fault.  Deep down I know it is just a phase, about them controlling things, and this too shall pass.  They are like me however, and demand variety in their diet.  The other day I made brioche in my bread machine for breakfast, and it was pretty much a universal hit.  I for one, loved it.  Here is the recipe I used.  Brioche with chocolate chips

The modifications I made to the recipe:

 I used my bread machine for the dough.  I used 1/2 plain flour and 1/2 bread flour.  I added everything but the chocolate chips into the bread pan and set it on the white dough cycle. My machine doesn't have a sweet bread cycle, but some do and you could use that.  After it had gone through the first bit of kneading I added the chocolate chips.  They didn't melt, and it worked well this way.

After the cycle was done I took the dough out and divided it into 12 portions.  I put these in a muffin tin (I used a silicone tray and didn't need oil).  Then I allowed them to rise for another 1/2 hour while the oven heated and I got on with other things.  Right before baking I brushed the dough with egg white and sprinkled with demerara sugar.  I baked at 180C for 20 minutes.  Viola!

Making Digestives

One of things we are trying to do is make (or bake) things that we normally buy.  You can have all of the goodness, without all the extra ingredients that keep things fresh almost indefinetely.  I've had some failures (Jaffa Cakes should be bought, at least by me) but this one is a real winner.

Perhaps I shouldn't admit this, but I printed this recipe out back when we were living in Michigan (uhm, 6 years ago) and then never made it.  Sure, I added it to my recipe book, but that's as far as I got.  Today my husband was craving something sweet and this suddenly seemed the perfect time to try making my own digestive biscuits.

If you follow the link and give these a try, you won't be sorry.  The only thing I did differently than the recipe is, being a very lazy cook, I threw all the ingredients into my Cuisinart (dry first, with a quick mix) and mixed them up that way.  From start to finish it took probably 25 minutes, and that includes baking.

My daughter ate three after her dinner, all the while saying, "These are SO GOOD.  I mean, really, really good.  Make more tomorrow."  That is the biggest compliment I can get.  You will see in the picture some of mine are over cooked.  I rolled them unevenly (and a bit too thin if I'm honest) and the 15 minutes the recipe calls for was too long in my oven.  My second tray came out better.  I was going to put a layer of chocolate on the top and we found it wasn't necessary, they are so good on their own.  So simple.  So lovely.