Tag Archives: dessert

Chocolate Cake with mascarpone cream

I do like sponge cakes, they are easy, simple and scrumptious! 😀 This one is absolutely worth making, the base is flavoured with coffee and chocolate, which can be your favourite – dark, milk or cherry-flavoured, for en extra twist add vanilla. You can use only mascarpone for the cream, add cherries or some ganache into the filling. The possibilities are endless!
What can I say about the cake. A light, moist sponge bursting with juicy strawberries and a creamy filling – a perfect teatime treat! 😉

Chocolate cake with mascarpone cream

Servings: 10-12
Print

If you’re not coffee-lover just leave it out, and replace with water or juice.

Ingredients for 20cm/8inch round cake pan

CAKE:

4 eggs, yolks and whites separated, at room temperature

100g white sugar (you can add 150-200g to suit your taste)

150g self-raising flour

pinch of salt

2 Tbsp non-sweeten cacao

3 Tbsp dark chocolate, chopped finely-almost powdered

40ml/2 Tbsp coffee, brewed and chilled (or coffee/chocolate liquor/amaretto)

1 tsp vanilla extract, optionally

50ml olive or sunflower oil

30ml/ 1 1/2 Tbsp water, cold

1/2 tsp lemon juice

CREAM:

120g whipping cream

50g icing sugar

80g mascarpone

50g hazelnuts or/and almonds, chopped finely

30-50g chocolate, strawberry-flavoured/dark or milk

100g strawberries, chopped, optionally

GANACHE:

100g dark chocolate, chopped coarsely

80-100ml cream, double or 20-30%

Preheat oven to 355°F / 180°C. Butter cake pan, line it with baking paper and set aside.
In a large bowl, combine all the dry ingredients except for the sugar.
In a small bowl, beat egg yolks with sugar until the mixture is pale. Add oil, coffee, water and stir well. Set aside.
Incorporate the wet ingredients into the dry.
Beat egg whites with a pinch of salt and lemon juice until soft peaks form.
Slowly incorporate egg whites into batter until just combined.
Pour into your greased dish and bake for 34-45 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean when inserted. Coll completely. Cut cake into two layers.
To make the cream, whip the cream and icing sugar for 3-4 minutes or until foamy (Be careful! Don’t overbeat!). Add mascarpone, chocolate and nuts, and combine. Optionally, you can stir in some fresh berries.
Spread the cream evenly over one cake layer, top with the second one.
To make the chocolate ganache, bring cream to the boil in small saucepan. Remove from the heat. Add the chocolate and stir until smooth.
Spread the ganache over the cake, decorate with berries or chocolate.
Refrigerate cake 3-4 hours or overnight before serving.

Enjoy the cake! 🙂

The ruby-red treat

Who doesn’t like a glorious cherry pie? 🙂

One of the good thing about this pie is that you can use different types of pastry crusts and cherries. I like to use fresh sour cherries, but here such cherries are nowhere to be found, I’ve seen only sweet and they are overpriced. So I quiet often use frozen or canned.

I made it a couple of times during the winter and I wish I would have made several more! The pie is quite easy to make and it came out amazing! Moreover, the fact that you can make the pastry ahead of time, makes the pie perfect for company or holiday parties.

Don’t forget that cherries should be pitted! The sugar amount for the filling varies depending on how sweet your cherries, adjust it to suit your personal preferences.

The ruby-red Cherry Pie

Servings: 1-2
Print

Ingredients (for 13 cm/5 inch pie pan):

Short crust pastry:

190g plain flour

100g butter, chilled and cut into small cubes

1/2 tbsp white sugar

a pinch of salt

30-40 ml cold water

Cherry filling:

300-400ml pitted fresh or canned cherries

1-2 tbsp white sugar, if needed

1 tsp corn starch

1 tbsp lemon juice

1/2 tbsp cherry liquor or brandy (optionally)

1/2 tbsp fine semolina

Glazing:

1 egg yolk+ 1tsp milk

1/2 Tbsp granulated white or brown sugar

Preparation:

Place all ingredients for the filling in a bowl, and gently combine. If you’re using fresh cherries, let them stand for 20 minutes, then toss it again.
Combine the flour, butter, sugar and salt until coarse meal. Pour water slowly and incorporate gently until the dough begins to hold together. Roll into two ball, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to use (at least 30 minutes). The short crust pastry can be kept in the fridge for a week! I suggest to double the quantity of pastry and make it ahead, thus you can prepare a big pie for the family or several individual pies during the week.
Roll one portion of dough into 22 cm circle and transfer to the pie pan. Keep it in the fridge, covered with plastic wrap, while you roll out the top of the pie crust.
Roll the second pastry ball into smaller circle – 18-19 cm. Use a knife to cut vents into the top crust, so the steam has a place to escape while the pie is cooking. Refrigerate until ready to use.
Preheat oven to 180C/360F.
Remove the crusts from the fridge and let it sit at room temperature for 5-7 minutes so they have time to soften.
Sprinkle the bottom pastry with semolina, and fill the pie.
Lightly brush the rim with egg wash. Top it with second crust.
Brush the entire surface with egg wash, sprinkle with granulated sugar.
Bake the pie for about 35-40 minutes until the crust is golden brown and the cherry juices are beginning to bubble. Let the pie cool on a rack for sometime.
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!

Khvorost

Khvorost is a traditional Russian crispy sweet which made out of dough, shaped into twisted ribbons and deep-fried. The name means ‘brushwood’, it was given because of similar look to a real brushwood and a sound ‘crack-crack’ when you bite the crunchy sweet khvorost. 🙂

Khvorost was very popular in the 18-19th centuries and commonly eaten among petty bourgeois, shopkeepers, clerks and students, who could gather and spend a little amount of money on this crunchy treat.

When pastry and confectionery industry progressed after 1930-50th, bringing more sweet products such as caramel candies and variety of cookies the khvorost itself became less popular.

Ingredients

3 egg yolks

1 Tbsp sour cream

100 ml full-fat milk

2 Tbsp cognac (or vodka)

pinch of salt

500g flour (white, all-purpose)

icing sugar for dusting

sunflower oil for deep-drying

Method

Whisk well egg yolks with sour cream, milk, cognac and salt. Adding the flour gradually to the egg mixture, knead a dough until soft, cohesive and no longer sticky (thus don’t add all the flour at once, or even add some if needed).

Place the dough in a bowl, cover with a towel or plastic wrap, let it rest for 20-30 minutes.

Roll the dough out on a floured surface to 1cm/0.4″ thick. Cut strips (2-3cm/1″ width and 8-10cm/3-4″ length), make a small cut in each strip and fold one edge into it.

Heat the oil in a large pan and cook khvorost on both sides until golden (1-2 minutes). Ready ones set on a paper towel to get rid of fat excess.

Sprinkle with a good quantity of icing sugar.

Sugar is not added into genuine classic khvorost dough , that helps to make it more fluffy; thus sprinkle lots of icing sugar or pour some honey over ready ‘ribbons’ .

Enjoy with a cup of black tea or milk, or leave some for the morning coffee! 😉

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Linzer cookies

I do love shortcrust pastries! It’s versatile, great choice of fillings allows your imagination run wild. 😀 Thus, is easy to guess that I’ve made so many shortbreads as well, some of them were not good and too crumbly for me, but I keep on.

Linzer cookie is two nut-flavored cookies are sandwiched together with a jam, originally it was a torte, named after the city of Linz, Austrian. Do you know that such round-shaped cookies are called “Linzer eyes”. What a pretty name! 🙂