Tag Archives: DIY

Vanillekipferl

Winter holidays is my favorite time of the year (after birthday)! It seems like people smiling more often, and enjoying cold weather and upcoming festival! We putting up the Christmas tree and decorating it with beautiful toys, buying and wrapping gifts. It’s the right time to plan the holiday menu, whether to roast chicken or prepare the fish pie, make cherry strudel or chocolate cake..
The December would be incomplete without baking! Nothing says it’s holidays quite like Xmas cookies! There is something special about a tray filled with delicious vanilla or cinnamon-flavored cookies.
Baking cookies is such a fun and wonderful event! You can even organize a cookie party, call your kids or friends to help you, to share a holiday mood, and of course to enjoy eating all those treats you’ve made.
I bet you’ve seen crescent-shaped cookies somewhere or may be tried it. These biscuits are very popular in Europe, and especially in Germany, where they’re traditionally baked for Christmas, even though they originate from Vienna, Austria.

Make this season merry and delightful with irresistible vanilla biscuits, that just melt in your mouth! 🙂

Vanillekipferl - German Christmas Biscuits

Servings: 6-8
Difficulty: easy to moderate
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Ingredients

200g butter, cold and cut into small cubes

60g icing sugar

a pinch of salt

seeds from 1 vanilla bean, or 1 tsp vanilla extract, or vanilla sugar

1 large egg yolk

100g ground almonds

270g plain flour

+vanilla icing sugar*, for dusting

Preparation

*First, prepare your own vanilla icing sugar. Split vanilla pod lengthwise into two halves, and put it in a jar with icing sugar, close tightly. After 1-2 days you will get amazing naturally-flavoured vanilla icing sugar!
For the dough quickly mix butter with sugar, salt and vanilla. Mix in egg yolk. Sift flour and add it to the dough along with almonds. Qucikly knead the smooth dough. Cover with cling wrap and refrigerate for 1-2 hours.
Divide the dough and form rolls 1.5-2.5cm in diameter. Cut each roll into 5-6cm length slices, and form the crescent shape biscuits.
Put biscuits on a baking tray lined with parchment. Bake in preheated 200C oven for 10-15 minutes.
Put vanilla icing sugar in a plate, and roll still warm biscuits in it.
Let the biscuits cool on a rack.

Enjoy!

Cherry Strudel with nuts

First time I have tried strudel at home. It was a frosty winter day, I was at home finishing a homework after school, when my mother came and told me she’d got a new dessert recipe! I was so excited, because it has been a habit in our family, almost every evening we had a tea with some freshly-baked pies, buns or danishes whether it were homemade or store-bought.. Easy to guess, it was a strudel recipe. At that time of the year we could make only apple-raisin filling; compare to today it was impossible to buy even frozen cherries, only if you hadn’t froze it by yourself last summer. So, we had some nice apples, which were picked from garden and kept in a cellar, raisins and walnuts; the recipe worked so good, the pastry turned thin and smooth.. and we liked the result – new, mysterious and so delicious strudel! 🙂 Believe me or not, since then I’m using exactly the same pastry recipe and it works! 🙂

Certainly, you can cheat and use filo pastry, though you should try to make the pastry from scratch at least once, it only sounds complicated. Most of you know, that nothing could beat the homemade pastry! 😉

Do you know, that first strudel recipe is dating back to 1696; strudel legend says that the Austrian Emperor’s chef was perfectionist, he even made an order that strudel pastry should be so thin that you could read a love letter through it!

Cherry Strudel with nuts

Servings: 6-8
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Ingredients

Pastry:

250g all-purpose white flour

1 egg

50g melted butter

125ml warm water

a pinch of salt

Filling:

700-900g pitted cherries

3-5 Tbsp caster sugar

4 Tbsp finely crushed almonds or breadcrumbs

3 Tbsp walnuts, coarsely chopped

3 Tbsp hazelnuts, coarsely chopped

40g currants (black)

40g golden raisins

3 Tbsp cognac/brandy/rum

40g melted butter, for glazing

1-2 Tbsp icing sugar, for serving

Preparation

The pastry. Sift flour on to a clean surface, add salt, and make a well in the middle. Slightly beat an egg with water and butter, add the mixture into flour. Knead the dough for 10 minutes, time to time punch it down and throw until it becomes elastic and smooth. Wrap it in clingfilm and leave it at room temperature for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven 200C/400F. Line the baking tray with baking paper, grease it with some melted butter or oil.
The filling. In a cup or small bowl, put all washed raisins and cover with cognac; soak for 15 minutes, then pour out remaining cognac. Cut cherries into halves, you may keep some whole.
The pastry. Dust a workspace with flour and roll out the pastry into rectangle as thinly as possible. You can place wet and floured tea-towel, and do it on it. When you can’t roll the pastry any more, begin stretching it using your hands – place back side of your hands under the pastry and stretch it. Keep on going until it is very thin or you can see pattern of the tea-towle through it.
Brush the rolled dough with melted butter. Sprinkle with crushed almonds, leave en edge 3cm uncovered. If using breadcrumbs, brown them in some butter until golden-brown.
Spread cherries, and sprinkle with sugar. Adjust amount of sugar, depending on your taste.
Scatter raisins and remaining nuts on top.
Fold uncovered edges in, then roll up the pastry into a sausage shape.
Gently put the strudel on the baking tray, brush with melted butter. Bake for 35-45 minutes until the pastry is golden.
Allow to cool slightly before serving, dust with icing sugar. Serve while it’s still warm with vanilla ice cream or sauce.

For the vanilla sauce, in a medium pan warm 125ml milk and vanilla bean (don’t allow to boil); add 1 beaten egg yolk along with 1Tbsp caster sugar and 1 tsp cornmeal into pan; stirring constantly, cook on a medium heat for 9-12 minutes, until the sauce thickens a bit. Let it slightly cool and serve with strudel.

Let’s party, lovely bloggers! Let’s drink (ha, only lemonade so far..) and eat all those tasty dishes, that we’ve brought at FF! 🙂

Cabbage casserole with farmer cheese

White cabbage is widely used vegetable in Russia, it’s eaten raw in salads, pickled to eat during the winter and braised in various stews.

Nowadays it’s pretty popular to eat healthy dishes, such as cauliflower soup, sautéed Brussels sprout, fish with broccoli and etc. It seems like everybody forgets about this simple beauty – the white cabbage.

Even Greek philosopher Pythagoras said: “It is a vegetable, that helps to have a courage and cheerful mood”. In ancient Russia it was a belief, that if one has a headache, they should cover their temples with cabbage leaves to release the pain.

The below recipe is a very simple dish with a modern twist, using fresh ricotta and your favorite cheese. It could be eaten alone or as a nice side dish. A must try! 🙂

Cabbage casserole with farmer cheese

Servings: 4
Time: ~2h
Difficulty: not too tricky
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Adapted from Russian magazine ‘The school of gastronomy’

Ingredients:

400-500g white cabbage, thinly sliced

1 small onion, sliced

100-150g fresh homemade ricotta/cottage cheese/farmer cheese

60g any grated cheese + 1Tbsp for the top (Emmental/Gouda/Red Cheddar)

1Tbsp Parmesan cheese for the top, optionally

2 big or 3 small eggs, whites and yolks separated

40g butter

50g flour

400ml milk (preferably low fat)

2Tbsp bread crumbs, homemade

pinch of nutmeg, cumin

1Tbsp fresh chopped dill or 1tsp dried

salt, white pepper to taste

1Tbsp olive oil+1Tbsp butter for frying

Preparation:

1) First, make the sauce. Melt the butter in a small saucepan and turn the heat to low. Sift the flour into the butter, stirring continuously to combine them. Add the milk a little at a time. Cook for 8 minutes more, stirring continuously until the sauce becomes thicker. Remove the saucepan from the stove and let it cool.

2) Meanwhile, put olive oil, butter and onion in a pan, and fry for 4 minutes. Add cumin and fry for 1 minute more.

Add the cabbage, sprinkle with dill and stir fry for 10-15 minutes. Transfer the cabbage into big bowl.

3) Add egg yolks into the sauce, one at a time, nutmeg and combine thoroughly.

4) Pour the sauce into the cabbage, add cheese, ricotta, salt, white pepper and give it a good stir.

5) Beat egg whites with a pinch of salt until foamy, then carefully combine with cabbage mixture.

6) Grease the baking pan with butter, sprinkle with bread crumbs, add the cabbage mixture and sprinkle with cheese. Bake in preheated oven 180C/360F for 40 minutes.

7) Serve warm. Enjoy!

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
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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! 😀

Vareniki

Almost everybody in Russia knows and adores vareniki! So do I. 😀

Vareniki – are dumplings, stuffed with savoury or sweet filling.

It’s considered that vareniki is a traditional Ukrainian dish, but originally it came from Turkey. It was a dish made from boiled unleavened dough with meat and vegetables filling. When “Vareniki” appeared in Ukraine for the first time, they were called ‘diush-var’. The Ukrainian people liked this dish so much that these dumplings quickly spread over the Ukraine and beyond, and became widely-popular, turned into traditional Ukrainian cuisine and began to call as ‘vareniki, and this name simply means – boiled.

Ukrainian savoury vareniki are usually topped with shkvarki – fried salted pork fat, and also can be topped with fried onions or just accompanied with sour cream according to local taste or preferences (i.e. last two toppings are quite popular in Russia).

The most popular fillings are potatoes, mushrooms or fish. Vareniki could be also made sweet, with cherries or sweet cottage cheese filling.

There are many recipes of vareniki nowadays, with egg or sour cream in dough, based on water or kefir.

My recipe is the simplest one, and I used a mix of mashed potatoes and mushrooms. You can use the same dough for sweet fillings, such as cherries or black currant.

Here is the short video how I make these lovely twisted edges of the Vareniki.

Vareniki

Servings: ~70 pieces
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Vareniki can be frozen well, that’s why I usually make a big batch, put them in ziplocks and freeze! No need to defrost before cooking.

Ingredients

The dough:

500g plain flour

1 egg

2 tsp salt

200 ml warm water

The filling:

800-900 g potatoes, boiled and mashed

1 onion, cut into small cubes

300 g wild or button mushrooms, sliced

1 Tbsp oil + 1 Tbsp butter

Small bunch of dill, finely chopped

Salt, pepper to taste

Garnish per portion:

1-2 Tbsp sour cream

1 Tbsp chopped dill

a knob of butter

Method

Dissolve salt in warm water. On a flat surface make a well in the flour, add egg and salted water. Knead until the dough is pliable. Cover with plastic wrap or towel and let rest for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, saute onion and mushrooms in oil and butter. In a bowl combine mashed potatoes with vegetables and dill. Season to taste. The filling is ready.
Roll the dough into 8cm/3-inch circles, place 1 tsp potato mixture into center, fold the dough over filling and press it.
Bring a large pot of salted water to boil (salt the water as for pasta or you like). Put vareniki into water and carefully stir with a spoon. When they come to the surface – cook for 4-5 minutes more.
Serve vareniki with sour cream, chopped dill and a knob of butter on top.

You can brown vareniki a bit in a butter straight after the boiling. Serve with sour cream, but already without extra butter on top.

Enjoy the delicious vareniki! 🙂

Are you going to Angie’s party? You can try superb cocktail there! 😉

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