Dried fruit and chocolate milk loaf

This milk loaf is basically another version of this recipe, so I will write the recipe down now, which I didn't do the first time I uploaded it on the blog. It's a bit time consuming but definitely worth the effort.

 Ingredients:

• 350 grams of  plain flour
• 100 grams of whole wheat spelt flour
• 50 grams of fresh yeast
• 70 grams of butter
• 100 grams of caster sugar
• 1 egg for the dough
• 1 egg for wash 
• 200 mls of lukewarm milk
• all kinds of dried fruit
• 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
• half a teaspoon of ground nutmeg
• zest of one lemon
• zest of one orange
• 2 tablespoons of rum
• 100 grams of dark chocolate 

Measure the two types of flour for the dough and then mix it with the sugar. Then you can add the butter and the yeast, cut into pieces, and crumble it into the flour. Add the cinnamon, the nutmeg, the egg and the milk. Give it a good stir with a wooden spoon and when it starts to combine well, keep kneading it with your hands. It has to become this soft but not sticky dough, so you can add a bit more flour, if needed. Place it in a bowl, cover it and let it rise for about an hour. 

In the meantime mix the dried fruit with the rum, so they can soak it up and be even more delicious ;) Also, line a middle sized cake ring with parchment paper. When the dough is double its original size, give it another round of kneading, and then cut the dough into 8 pieces. What you need to to with each of them is stretch them out with a rolling pin so they are more or less 10 cms wide and  25 cms long and have a rectangular shape. Then fill the pieces with the dried fruit and the chopped up chocolate. Then roll it up starting from the longer side of the rectangle, and roll the whole thing up so it's shaped like a bun. 

 

 

Place each of these in the cake ring, next to each other so that there's not space in between the buns. When you have all of them inside the cake ring, give the whole thing a good egg wash. Bake it in the oven at 180 C for about 45 minutes. When done, take it out of the ring, let it cool down and ice it with icing sugar dissolved in a bit of cold water.

 

Grilled mozzarella wrapped in Black Forest ham

Not having access to Parma ham and buffalo mozzarella, I had to re-design and make this amazingly delicious dish with regular mozzarella that you can buy in any store and Black Forest ham. Ruccola and balsamic vinegar lovers will appreciate this recipe, I hope :)

 

Ingredients, serves 2: 

• 3 mozzarella balls 
• fresh ruccola, the amount depends on how much you like it... :)
• 9 slices of Black Forest ham
• dark balsamic vinegar 

Cut each mozzarella ball into three pieces and wrap each of them in one slice of ham. If it wants to fall apart,  you can stick a toothpick in each piece. Heat up a tiny bit of oil in a pan and grill both sides of the ham, and when that's done, pour in the vinegar. Let the acid boil away, so that it thickens and becomes very sticky. 

Pile the ruccole up on a plate, and place the hot pieces of wrapped mozzarella right on top of it. Pour the remaining "dressing" all over it, so it can mix with the ruccola too.