As part of a new series of ‘fabulous living’ blogs, I will be posting about some inspiring topics covering lifestyle, recipes, homestyle, growing your own, fabulous destinations and much more.

The first is about baking and I’m delighted to introduce you to my friend, Claire, who is quite the Domestic Goddess.  Claire has a fab blog called Things We Make which is definitely worth a click!  Claire has kindly offered to donate some of her recipes to the FP blog for you to enjoy.  To get things started, here’s a recipe which will help you use up some left over chocolate!

Kringel
An Estorian celebration bread…I think you’ll agree, it looks delicious!

Recipe

The Dough
300g Bread Flour
200g Plain Flour
2 packs (14g) of dried yeast
1tbsp sugar
250ml luke warm milk
2 egg yolks
50g butter, melted but not hot

The Filling
100g softened butter
3 handfuls of sultanas
10 tsp sugar (mixed with 1/2 tsp of cinnamon for the cinnamon version)

The Topping
100g good chocolate plus 50g butter
or 4oz of icing sugar and water for the cinnamon version.

• Mix the yeast, sugar, lukewarm milk, melted butter and egg yolks in a bowl.
• Mix this into the flour then knead for 10 minutes. Add a little extra water or flour if the dough is not easy to work.
• Shape the dough into a ball, cover the bowl with a plate or cling film and leave to rise in a warm place for an hour or so.
• Dust your work surface with flour. Take the dough out of the bowl, knock it back and roll out so that you have a rectangle about 60cm x 40cm.
• Spread the softened butter evenly over the dough, then sprinkle with sultanas and sugar (or sugar/cinnamon mix)
• Roll up the dough like a swiss roll (so that you keep the length) and cut it in half down the centre of the length with a sharp knife leaving a little bit uncut at the end.
• Twist the 2 strands of dough, lifting each half over the other in turn making sure the cut edges stay uppermost as these are what will open up and look pretty.
• Pull the plait into a ring and squidge the ends together. Transfer to a buttered or ‘non stick foiled’ baking tray.

• Leave the loaf to prove and puff up a little more, perhaps 1/2 an hour, then preheat your oven to 200°c/Gas 6.
• Bake for about 10 minutes at  200°c and then turn down to 190°c and carry on cooking until golden for around another 15 minutes.
• If you want to top with chocolate: melt the chocolate and butter in a bowl over gently boiling water.
• Allow the the bread cool down a bit, place on a serving plate and drizzle with chocolate sauce.

For the cinnamon bun version mix 4oz of icing sugar with a little water then drizzle this over the bread.

To visit Claire’s blog please click here.  This recipe was part of the Fresh From The Oven Group.