Breakfast

Red currants ‘n’ cardamom Muffins

Some time ago in Russia, small cakes-muffins-were called keksi, but since muffins’ popularization many people call them muffins! I think, almost all people like muffins, and may be some of you have a special recipe or ingredient. I do like experiment with flours and spices; I’ve bought soy flour recently and trying to use, I don’t see much difference with it so far.. If you know any good ways or recipes to use it, I would appreciate if you share it with me.

So, about other additions to muffins batter, berries are one of my favorite. Raspberry is best-loved, but what about currants? I’ve seen in a blogosphere couple posts with it, and surprised, that it is not widely-grown and not quite popular. Poor berries, if only they knew how underrated they are. When I lived in Russia, I ate lots of black, red and white currants. There were too many of blackcurrant bushes in parents garden, so I even dislike to pick them up.. Twigs of sour and bright redcurrants were easier to pick – straight away to my mouth! 😀 Blackcurrant in Russia is like blueberry in USA, has similar shape and taste, interchangeable berries.

Today recipe combines Russian and Eastern flavours – red currants and cardamom. Enjoy!

Red currants ‘n’ cardamom Muffins

Servings: 6-7 medium muffins
Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients

70g plain flour/all-purpose

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 baking soda

a pinch of salt

1/2 tsp cardamom, finely crushed seeds

30g soy flour

25g wholemeal flour

30g ground flaxseed

1 egg

2 Tbsp sunflower oil

70g kefir (or sub with yogurt)

80-90g liquid honey (I used dark one)

120-140g red currants, or mix of red and black (or sub with blueberries)

Method

In a large bowl, beat egg and honey, add kefir, oil, and stir. Sift the flours, baking powder and soda, salt, add flaxseed and cardamom into egg mixture. Combine.
Lightly cover berries in a flour, then carefully fold them into the batter. If using frozen currants, don’t defreeze them, add to the batter straight from the freezer.
Fill muffin tins or one cake tin and bake in preheated 180C/350F oven for 20-25 minutes.

Draniki

Draniki – thin and round potato pancakes, are often pan-fried and served with sour cream. The word ‘draniki’ originates from the verb ‘drat’ (soft t), which means grate, rub. It was originally a common breakfast, and today we stick with this tradition, but in some restaurants it’s served all day long. Draniki are so beloved and popular in our country, that not even every Russian knows, that it is Belarus dish.

Potato was brought to Russia in the end of 17th century, when it was served as an exotic dish only at royal banquets, and potatoes were sprinkle with sugar, not salt and pepper as nowadays. At that time in Belarus, potato had been known for 80 years. Today potato became the main vegetable in Belarus, and now over 200 potato dishes are known.

Similar potato pancakes can be found in many countries, like hash browns in the USA, kartoffelpuffer in Germany, Swiss rösti, or Jewish latkes, and etc.

This is a simple recipe that is easy to prepare and produces great results! 🙂 Enjoy!

Draniki - Russian potato pancakes

Servings: 2-3
Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients

4 large potatoes

1 egg

2 Tbsp all-purpose flour

2-3 Tbsp fresh dill, finely chopped (or 1 1/2 tsp dried)

a good pinch of salt

a good pinch of pepper

2-3 Tbsp sunflower oil, for frying

sour cream, for serving

Preparation

Peel potatoes and grate (using medium or large holes of a box grater), transferring to a bowl of water. Soak potatoes for 10-15 minutes, then drain well in a colander, and squeeze grated potatoes with hand, extracting as much liquid as possible.
Transfer potatoes back to a bowl and stir in egg, salt, pepper and dill. Add flour and mix until well-coated. The mixture should be wet and thick (not soupy!).
In a heavy-based or iron skillet heat the oil until hot, but not smoking. Place the large spoonfuls of the mixture into pan, pressing down and spreading into cm/inch rounds with a fork or spoon. Reduce heat to moderate. Brown draniki on one side about 5 minutes, turn over and brown on the other. Let drain on a paper towels.
Serve warm with sour cream or raw.
Draniki are also good with creme fraiche, herb cream cheese and ricotta.

The remaining draniki can be kept in a refrigerator up to one day. Reheat in a 160C/320F oven, about 10 minutes.

Syrniki

Syrniki are fried pancakes, which are made from cottage cheese and traditionally garnished with a sour cream. They are very popular and widely-cooked not only in Russia, also in Ukraine, Belarus and Poland. The word ‘syrniki’ is derived from Russian word ‘syr’ which means cheese.

The main ingredients are cottage cheese, flour, eggs, sugar, sometimes raisins and vanilla. Commonly syrniki are eaten for freakfast, but could be served as a dessert.

You can find a great variety of syrniki recipes, in one you should add one egg, in another three, in third just few spoons of flour or semolina flour, and etc. Finally, it doesn’t matter which recipe you’re using, just adjust it to suit your own taste.

TIPS:

Flour and sugar. One adds only few tablespoons of flour, in such option, might be difficult to shape syrniki and turn them over during frying, as they will be soft, but at the same time tender and creamy. Amount of sugar is totally depends on your preferences.

Filling. Raisins and vanilla are most popular ingredients for the syrniki filling, but you can go further – add cinnamon, dried apricots, plums or cherries, lemon or orange zest.

Dressing. Sour cream, jam and sweet condensed milk are the most favourite toppings for syrniki. If you neither like the one nor the other, make berry or chocolate sauce, or just dust it with icing sugar, or pour over some honey, add dulce de leche…

You can fry syrniki on a moderate heat in a frying pan for 5 minutes on each site or until golden-brown (using few tablespoons of sunflower oil). I propose you the recipe of an oven-baked syrniki, which is much better and healthier, as you don’t need to use oil.

Russian Syrniki

Servings: 3-4
Time: 30-40min
Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients:

Cottage cheese, 500g

Eggs, 2

Sugar, 2-4 Tbsp

Flour, 50-80g

a pinch of salt

Semolina, 2 Tbsp

Vanilla sugar or extract, 1 tsp, optional

Raisins/sultanas, 50g

Preparation:

In a small bowl or mug, put raisins, cover with warm water and let it soak, meanwhile you do all below steps. Optionally, you can add a tablespoon of cognac, brandy or rum along with water for an extra flavor. Then pour the water out and wipe raisins.
In a large bowl, combine eggs, sugar and vanilla together and beat well until pale color (use hand whisk or electric mixer).
Add flour, semolina, salt, raisins, and combine well.
Shape beautiful syrniki -about 5cm/2inch in diameter and 1cm/0.5inch wide.
Arrange syrniki on a greased baking tray and bake in preheated 200C/400F oven for 20-25 minutes or until nice golden color.
Serve warm with a dollop of sour cream.
You can keep all remaining syrniki in a fridge, and reheat them next morning.

Syrniki are so delicious that I could eat them every other morning. Cooking of syrniki is highly recommended as alternative to regular pancakes! 🙂

Enjoy! ❤

Onion cookies with cheese and chilli

The springs has finally come bringing more sunny days, birds sing their songs, flowers are blossoming and days are becoming longer. Sun is shining and my living room now is full of light, all nature is preparing for the hot summer. I love this time of the year when it’s still comfortable to sit and walk outside in the evening, when it’s not cool but not hot yet.

I’be been busy last days and I’m sorry for being away, days were full of life or laziness; my dearest friends came from Russia and despite they brought a huge bag of sweets, I made meringues with coconut and nuts, which were eaten immediately.

And I almost missed the awesome party, on Fridays as usual, at Angie’s place with such amazing co-hostesses as Jhuls and Selma. But ‘it’s better late than never’, isn’t it?

So, I want to serve these hot and delish onion cookies to y’all! 😀

I’m pretty sure you will be absolutely amazed how well they go for a breakfast! Delicious and flavoured with chillies, which are super boosters, they will help you to wake up quicker than regular mug of coffee!

This is a very simple recipe to make and you just have to mix the ingredients and form cookies in the round shape right on a baking sheet. Bake the onion cookies for about 20 minutes and they will be gooey, firm and bursting with incredible flavour.

The recipe itself has undergone a number of changes since I made cookies for the first time, because there is always no limit to perfection. And the result is beautifully browned and great tasted cookies!

I’m using whether spring onion or leek, whatever is available at the moment of cooking, both are suitable and pretty good for this recipe.

Onion cookies with cheese and chilli

Servings: 3-4
Difficulty: easy
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Cookies should be served piping hot!

Ingredients:

130g flour, self-raising

50-60g butter, cold and cut into small cubes

3 tbsp corn flour

a good pinch of salt

1/3 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1/2 tsp crushed chilli flakes

70g grated cheese (Red Cheddar or Red Leicester)

180ml single cream or laban

1 tbsp cream cheese

2 tbsp parsley, finely chopped

1 leek or 4-5 spring onions

1/2 tbsp butter for frying

Sour cream, creme fraiche or yoghurt for garnish

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F.
Chop the leek or spring onions, stir fry very lightly in butter for 3-4 minutes.
Combine the butter with flours, salt and peppers.
Stir in parsley, onion and cheese.
Pour the cream or laban into the batter and mix well.
Spoon out heaping tablespoon of batter and lay on the ungreased cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
Sprinkle with some extra chilli flakes, if desired.
Bake for 17-20 minutes until golden-brown.
Serve the cookies hot and optionally with sour cream.
Enjoy!

Sunny peachy-nutty cake

Days go by and summer is slowly coming to Dubai, winter doesn’t want to give up though, giving us some cloudy days sometimes but its days are counted…

One lovely morning I was at home, and looking at the dull skies, I decided to make something special for the afternoon tea, something sunny, sweet-smelling and new, a cake that I’ve not tried before, and it should be fruity.

I have to say that I do not normally know what I’m going to cook this or next day, I’ve never have a master plan for a week ahead, and prefer to be inspired by details around me, whatever I see, read about food or trying something myself, rather than be organized in the proper food-blogger way 🙂

So, I went to a grocery to look for an inspiration. One important and remarkable thing about buying food in Dubai is that large groceries and markets here do always and really inspire me; we have no such variety of fruits in Russia, and every time I go for a shopping, whether it is some oranges for a morning juice or avocados, I never know from which part of the world these fruits or veggies would come from. And that day was not an exception. Without even roaming between fruit rows I remarked some nice peaches shortly after I entered the shop, and once I came closer and took a couple of them in my hand, I already decided that it’s going to be a beautiful peach cake!

Peaches always remind me of summer, they share the same bright and yellowish colour of the pulp with the sun, giving the cozy feeling of warm and sunny days.

At home I cut one fruit and tried it. I was slightly disappointed that the peaches weren’t as juicy as I expected, but that turned into fantastic peach cake in the end… 😉

Ingredients for the cake:

Peaches* – 4 big

Eggs, at room temperature – 3

Yoghurt -150g or 0.6cup

Sugar* -100g or 0.5cup

Butter, cut into small cubes – 130g or 0.6cup

Self-raising flour – 150g or 1cup (or 1 cup plain flour + 1 tsp baking powder)

Cornmeal – 2 Tbsp

Whole walnuts – 130g or ~1cup

A pinch of salt

Lemon zest – 2tsp

Orange zest – 1tsp

Ingredients for the mandarin sauce:

3 big mandarins*

2 Tbsp lemon juice

3 Tbsp water

2-3 Tbsp icing sugar

1 Tbsp cognac (or brandy, or Grand Marnier) – optionally

*Really good substitution for peaches are nectarines!

*I used only 100g of sugar and that means the cake won’t be sweet,

I suggest sweeten it with 150g or 3/4cup of sugar.

*I used mandarins, just because :D; oranges go well here too, as you already guess.

The cake preparation:

In a bowl beat the butter and sugar together;
Stir in one by one eggs;
Add yoghurt and citrus zest, combine;
Ground the walnuts, add to the batter and mix;
Sift the flours and salt into the batter mixture;
Grease the baking dish with butter or oil. Pour the cake batter into it;
Cut the peaches into wedges and stick into batter;
Bake in preheated oven 210C/400F for 45-60 minute;.**
Meanwhile prepare the mandarin sauce for the cake;
Let the cake cool a bit. Pour the mandarin sauce over it.

Mandarin sauce preparation:

First of all, squeeze the juice out of mandarins;
Combine citrus juices, water and sugar in a small saucepan; bring to boil;
Reduce heat to low, add cognac and simmer for 10-12 minutes;
Remove from the heat and cool.

**When I’m using a glass dish for the cake, it takes me little bit longer to bake it.

Thus after 40 minutes, pls check the cake is done or not yet.

To check the cake’s readiness – tuck into a toothpick, if it comes out dry – the cake is ready.

The final result overcame all my expectations – the cake tasted fantastically! The peaches became tender and even more sweeter, and because they were not so juicy they kept their integrity. Needless to say about aromatic mandarin sauce.. I’ll definitely be making it again!

I also suggest to sprinkle some icing sugar on the top along with the citrus sauce.

P.S. Several days back I didn’t even know that there is such type of flour as ‘cake’, thanks to dear fellow-blogger Suzanne, now I know about it and adding cornmeal everywhere…Haha

Hey, are you still here? 🙂 Go and bake the cake!

Have a sunny and bright day, guys!

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