Bread! The smell of bread baking in the oven in the morning is a glorious thing! Today I followed Ruby’s Everyday Bread and it used olive oil. Now, I’ve made bread multiple times before: cheese and chilly bread, olive bread, spiced bread, plain bread, but never have I made bread from olive oil!

The ingredients are simple: 500g flour, 7g dried yeast, 1 1/2 tsp salt, 310ml warm water and 2 tbsp olive oil. Mix the dry ingredients then add the wet, knead for 10-15 minutes, leave for  1 hour then shape it and leave it for another 1 – 1 1/2 hours.  Then bake at 200 fan,  and after 15 minutes lower the temperature to 170 degrees fan.

It’s a simple recipe to follow, but my mind blew away when I realised that the bread will contain olive oil! The oil gives the bread a very pleasant taste and makes the bread a little green after baking, which is normal…I think!

 I love baking bread! The smell makes me happy, the taste makes be jump with joy and the process of constantly checking if it is rising, is exciting. I have been baking bread since I was about 7 years old and I absolutely loved and love it! I was always the family bread baker! We used to have Friday Family nights, which consisted of me baking bread and my dad making chilli! Delicious!!!

I definitely think that, if you enjoy baking bread, but might be a bit bored of constantly making the same thing every day or once a week, add spices, be creative. The more creative you are, the more pleased you will be with the end result! I never thought cheese and chilli would go together in bread, but wow I was wrong! The stringy-ness of the cheese with that kick from the chillies really makes your mouth melt!

Today I baked Lemon and Marzipan Muffins, and I have always thought that I don’t like marzipan, because I don’t like English Christmas Cake. I was wrong. The sourness of the lemon drizzle goes extremely well with the dry-ish  muffins, with chunks of marzipan.

I didn’t end up having muffin cases, so I thoroughly buttered the inside of the muffin tin, so the muffins wouldn’t fall apart, lifting them out. The butter created a really nice crunch to the outside, and hardly any of them fell apart!

Like I said earlier, growing up I never liked marzipan. If it was marzipan on Christmas Cake or marzipan from the packet, I never liked the taste or the texture.However, since this was the first recipe in the book, I could not have just skipped it. So this morning I woke up came down stairs and got on with baking. The process of making the batter, didn’t amuse me (like it normally does). My eyes weren’t shining, looking at the bowl, whilst mixing all the ingredients. I just mixed and mixed, keeping my mind on other, more important things.  

I was hugely wrong. The taste of the sour lemon, mixed with ground almonds and the chunks of marzipan are a great combination. I highly recommend adding the lemon drizzle, because I tried half with and half without, and you could really taste a difference. The muffins with it had a kick to them. I would also just break all of the marzipan, instead of grating half and break the other half up into chunks. The marzipan melts in the oven, so having chunks, reduces the amount of how much it will melt and then when you bit into this glorious muffin, your mouth is filled with a big chunk of marzipan as well as the almondy – lemon muffin mix.

If you have always thought you hated marzipan, like I did, or you have never tried it, I highly recommend this recipe. You aren’t overwhelmed with marzipan, but from time to time you have a nice little surprise of it in your mouth!