Mango Chutney Almond Milk Rolls マンゴーチャツネとアーモンドミルクロール

This is another example of my wife’s major morphing of a recipe into her own version. She saw the sweet roll recipe in Washington Post which used almond milk, marmalade filling, orange juice and  orange zest for glaze. Since we did not have Almond milk we ended up making it, although in retrospect, we are not sure why the recipe even calls for Almond milk. We had marmalade but did not have orange zest or orange juice. So my wife used Major grey’s mango chutney instead of marmalade and omitted the orange juice. Since she had some sweetened condensed milk left over from making milk bread she decided to use that in the filling too. This is quite different from the original recipe but when substitution of ingredients is needed, my wife is very inventive. The mango chutney worked very well. In any case, this roll is very tender and slightly sweet and perfect for breakfast.

Ingredients:
For the dough
3 1/2 cups flour, plus more as needed for rolling the dough
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp. Salt
2 1/4 yeast
2 1/2 cups almond milk (not sure why almond milk is required next time I’ll just use regular milk)
4 Tbs. Salted butter
1 egg

For the filling:
30-50 grams sweetened condensed milk
30 grams butter softened
2 tsp sugar
3 Tbs. Major Grey’s mango chutney

Directions:
Add the dry ingredients; flour through yeast to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook. Add the wet ingredients; almond milk through egg. Mix until smooth dough forms. Knead for 10 minutes. Turn out onto floured surface and shape into a loaf. Put in a bowl, coat the surface with vegetable oil. Cover and put in the dough proofer at 78 degrees until doubled in size. Punch down the dough. Cover and let rest for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile make the filling by mixing together the ingredients for the filling. Roll out the dough into a large rectangle (#1). Cover the rectangle with the filling then roll it up as tightly as possible without squeezing out the filling (#2). Cut the roll into 14 to 16 equal slices. Put the slices cut edge down in a greased pyrex cooking dish. (Note: it is rather hard to cut the slices; they tend to squish. Out of frustration I just made the last part of the dough into a loaf and cooked it on a small cookie sheet. (I did not take a picture of this.) The loaf turned out just fine and could be cut into slices after it was baked. I might do this in the future instead of trying to make the rolls. ) Bake in a 375 degree oven for 20 to 25 minutes until golden brown (#3, #4).

These muffins were quite good. The dough had a crunchy crust but a soft interior. The filling formed a light custard like texture which was slightly sweet but with a lovely hint of spice from the chutney. Several large pieces of mango from the chutney provide a moist surprise burst of flavor. These were perfect flavorful pastries to have for breakfast with coffee.

Almond Milk アーモンドミルク

This is an offshoot from my wife’s baking project. We never took interest in non-dairy milk except for soy milk (to make tofu). While she was pondering what to bake (not because we need more baked goods but just because she likes baking), she came across a sweet rolls recipe in the Washington Post but the ingredients included “Almond milk” and “orange juice and zest” (in the glaze), both of which we did not have. So, using her inventive mind, my wife decided to “make” almond milk (since we had almonds in the freezer) and “substitute” other ingredients for the orange juice and zest and omit the orange juice. We never had or even tasted almond milk but quickly found several recipes for home-made almond milk on the internet. We deviated a bit but in the end, we came up with a white liquid that was completely tasteless. (It didn’t even taste of almonds.) We could not figure out why the recipe called for almond milk instead of cow’s milk. The recipe also called for butter and eggs so it was not a vegan recipe. In any case, the below is the almond milk we made. If you are to drink this, certainly, some sweetener such as honey and a flavoring such vanilla may be needed…otherwise drink water. Thinking that  maybe our homemade version was lacking while the commercial version might be better, we subsequently got a commercial unsweetened Almond milk. Although it was indeed unsweetened as advertised, some vanilla flavoring had clearly been added to this product. If not for the vanilla, it too would have been totally flavorless. So our home-made almond milk was not off the target. I wondered if besides avoiding cow’s milk for a lactose intolerance or some other reason, there is any advantage using Almond milk in bakiing.

This is based on many recipes available on line. The basic recipe is to soak the almonds in water overnight. Drain, add more water and grind it in a high-speed blender and strain/press it to remove the pulp. It appears there are two types of recipes; one is grind the almond with skin on another is removing the skin after soaking over-night and then grinding it. The latter produces a minimum amount of plup residue. Since we had skin removed and slivered almond in the freezer, we decided to use this.

Ingredients:
1 cup almond, skin less and slivered (picture below)
2 cups water

Directions:
Soak the almond overnight in water
Drain the water
Place the almond and the water in a blender (we used Vitamix on the highest speed) for 2-3 minutes

This produced a rather thick almond milk with a good amount of pulp which was creamy. The recipe we saw added 2 more cups of water and blended it again.  Many recipes call for a pinch of salt. Since we were going to use it for baking we did not add more water or salt.

As metioned before, this is rather tasteless. Beside keeping the dishes vegan, we just did not see the point of Almond milk.