Curried Pumpkin Samosas | GBBO Bakealong Week 6

Happy Monday all!

Apologies for this post coming out a day late. I was shattered this weekend and any sentence I attempted to string together sounded like the confused babbles of an old drunk man. I thought it best to save you from that trauma. Nevertheless, after completing an endless list of errands I managed to complete the signature bake for pastry week. I actually made homemade samosas. Before bake-off I would have never attempted these but it came out pretty well!

I used a recipe from the BBC Good Food website after searching the web for variations on the dough. It turns out the only real difference is the type of fat used – ghee, oil, clarified butter – and the majority recommend plain flour. Like most of the new things I’ve baked during bakealong, I had no reference to judge whether my dough was any good so when dough came out  like this (see below) I just chugged along.

It’s impossible to tell in the photo but the dough was really hard to roll. Like really hard. I felt bad as I watched my carer use all of her strength to get the mass to move. It turns out the dough was under-hydrated, probably because my scales were broken and guessed what 225g flour looked like. Thing is, I knew my ratios were off but was scared of over-hydrating my dough like Dan did thus resulting in a doughy samosa that would cause Prue to look at me with deep disappointment. I could never bare Prue’s disappointment. However, I sensed a losing battle and added the extra water which the made the dough a lot better.

After that, everything ran pretty smoothly. The dough was rolled out to the size of a saucer and shaped into dainty cones before filling. The filling was made with roasted pumpkin which was fried with caramelised onions, spices and black onion seeds. (It was my first time using black onion seeds and I’m not sure about them. I couldn’t taste them over the other spices so I might try them in a bread of some sort next time.) Once filled, they were deep fried and I got a plateful of hot samosas! Some were underdone because my oil got too hot but honestly, the weather has been crazy and these triangles of joy were what I needed to warm my soul. I mean, that and an endless supply of tea but mainly the samosas.

I hoped this post is somewhat coherent - I'm still pretty sleepy! Comment down below with your pastry week experiences or just to say ‘hi!’

See you Sunday

Mary xx