Mum's Birthday - Part Two: Croissants

I had always thought that croissants would be extremely difficult to make without years of practice.  But they weren't, and I'm very pleased about it, because they ended up extremely delicious!  The ones from the supermarket are always flat, soggy, and greasy, and they're also about $1 each.  Not worth it at all when you consider how many can be made with this recipe from The Holst's Bread Book.

The most difficult part of the whole process was cutting the triangles of rolled out dough before rolling them up into the little crab claw shapes.  I have made these once again since Mum's birthday, and found it just as difficult this time too.  I have decided that I will draw up a rectangle of greaseproof paper the size that the rolled out dough needs to be, and draw the triangles on it.  That way I can simply lay on top of the dough, and make marks on the dough through the paper with a blunt knife before cutting the dough with a sharp knife.  Believe me, with how dumb I seem to be in this department, it's worth the time.  I had to roll the dough out three times on the weekend, just great when you're keeping guests waiting by the time they're ready for the oven.

This is how they turned out without the egg glaze (from Mum's birthday):

And with the egg glaze (from this weekend, credit to Rachel for the photo!):

The egg glaze is really patchy because Mum threw the pastry brush away (she says I did it, but I know I didn't).  It was one of those ones that leaves bristles everywhere anyway, so I'm glad to see it go.  Just need to get a new one - silicone ftw!

In summary, do try this recipe, it's fabulous, and although it does have a lot of butter in it, they're not greasy pastry like the bought ones.

Butter Measurement Conversions (...sigh)

I'm writing out some (read, all) recipes from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes and am getting quite annoyed with the measurements.  Crazy Americans!  I understand that in America they have a different sized measuring cup (in New Zealand, Australia, and some other countries, we use a cup that is 250mls, while in the States, a cup is 236.588mls or 240mls [way to make it complicated!]) and often use pounds and ounces (because they're stuck in the 19th century?).

But what I don't understand is how you measure butter.  There are sticks of butter, and there are cups/T of butter.  My phone can't (or couldn't until I just created a conversion to do it) convert sticks of butter to grams.  Edmond's Cookbook doesn't have a clue either.  In NZ and Australia, most butter is sold in a block of 500g, and on the paper there are lines that indicate 50g intervals.  You simply run a knife gently along one of these lines on the outside of the paper, then unwrap the butter, and cut along the impression you have made.  I would like to ask any American visitors to my little blog (and I know there have been a few) - how on earth do you measure a cup of butter?  A t or a T is doable, if the butter is very soft, but how on earth do you do the same with a cup?

I have looked up a conversion ratio for sticks of butter to grams of butter and for cups of butter to grams of butter and created new conversion ratios for my phone, so now I can simply look it up each time I write out a recipe.  I can see conversion ratios needing their own post in here soon.  A lot are in the front of Edmond's, but not all that I would want (for example, regular sugar is included, but not icing, caster, or brown, and the damn butter), so I might spend some time when I have nothing to write about making a nice little table.