Tag Archives: photo

Salted peanut cookies

I love shortbread cookies, there are almost thousands possibilities of flavours that you can add: mandarin, lemon or orange zest, vanilla or cinnamon, cardamom and etc. I stumbled upon this recipe a long time ago on one Russian website that content was about news, conferences for chefs and there were some recipes as well. I don’t know why I haven’t tried this recipe earlier, because these cookies are amazing! They have the right shortbread cookie texture – not too crumbly neither hard, simply divine! 🙂

Salted peanut cookies

Time: 1hr 30min
Difficulty: moderate
Print

I mix all ingredients with my hands. You may do it with electric mixer, but don’t overmix.

Ingredients

75g butter, cold

50g caster sugar

1 medium egg

lemon zest from 1 small lemon

120g plain flour

30g salted peanuts, chopped

Method

Cut butter into 1cm cubes and bring to room temperature. Divide the egg into yolk and white.
On a flat surface (you can do it in a large bowl too), mix butter with sugar until just coarse crumbs.
Add egg yolk, half of egg white (keep the rest) and lemon zest. Mix to combine.
Mix in flour. Combine the dough. On this step you may think you need to add extra flour, stop, no need to add extra flour or overknead the dough; after resting it’ll be perfect. Cover the dough in a plastic wrap and put in a fridge for 40-50 minutes.
Once the dough is cooled, roll it out on a lightly floured surface into 5mm thick disk. Cut out cookies any shape you like. Carefully transfer cookies on a lined baking tray. Brush with remaining egg white, sprinkle with peanuts.
Bake in preheated 180C oven for 12 minutes or until cookies are lightly golden.

Enjoy!

Russian sour cream cake

Hello-hello! May be some of you remember this post when I wrote about cowberries. I love these bright, sour and bitter beauties. These little cowberries is an excellent source of Vitamin C, and of course the best way to eat them as is or sprinkle with some sugar. A handful of these beauties make any cake only prettier, like I did – threw some on the top of this wonderful cake. I know, it’s not easy to find even frozen cowberries in stores, so go ahead and use cranberries (but I mean small ones). Honestly speaking, they are pretty similar. Russian sour cream cake

In Russia, we consume much of sour cream; we use it as a sauce for both sweet and savory pancakes, to dress salads, to make famous Beef Stroganof and etc. And it’s no wonder that we make sour cream cakes. The cake is very soft, aromatic and tender; and the big plus – you can use almost any fruits that you can find in your fridge – apples, plums, or may be some pears.. And even prepare it plane-without any fruits or berries, then cut a good freshly-baked slice and enjoy it with a cup of hot milky tea. 🙂

Russian sour cream cake (with plums and cowberry)

Servings: 6-8
Time: 1hr
Difficulty: easy
Print

I used 20cm baking tin.

You may substitute yellow plums for red; and use cranberry instead of cowberry.

Ingredients

200g sour cream (20% fat)

80g white sugar

2 eggs, at room temperature

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp cinnamon, optional

1 medium lemon, zest, chopped

1/3 tsp baking soda

2 tsp lemon juice

150-180g self-raising flour

4-5 yellow plums, cut into 4-6 slices

100-150g frozen cowberry (no need to defreeze)

Preparation method

In a large bowl, whisk sour cream with sugar for 5 minutes. If using electric blender 2 minutes will be enough.
In a separate bowl, whisk eggs with vanilla, cinnamon and lemon zest ( you need only to combine ingrefients, dont overwhisk). Stir into sour cream mixture.
Dissolve soda in lemon juice and stir into the batter.
Gradually add flour.
Line and grease baking tin. Pour in batter. Arrange plum slices (lightly push them into batter) and cowberry. You may sprinkle with extra lemon zest and granulated sugar.
Bake in preheated 180C oven for 35 minutes. Leave to cool in a tin for 10 minutes. Carefully take it out and serve.

Next day gently reheat the cake before serving.

Enjoy!

Small quiches: 4 fillings

I Love Pies! Small and large, closed and opened, with fish and hm less meat, whether it’s cabbage pie or raspberry tartlet. So, it was that day when I couldn’t decide what filling to choose and made 4 different savory quiches! Beautiful and delicious! 🙂 It’s a quick (especially if you prepared the pastry ahead as I did), easy and tasty way of using up all those small cheese pieces and veggies leftovers.

Small quiches: 4 fillings

Servings: 4-8
Time: 1hr 30mins
Difficulty: moderate
Print

Pastry

160g/5.6oz all-purpose/plain flour

120g/4.2oz butter, cold and cut into cubes

a good pinch of ground sea salt

40-50ml iced-cold water

Put flour, salt and butter in a big bowl. Quickly rub ingredients together until coarse breadcrumbs (or use food processor). Add water and mix until the dough is formed. Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes or overnight. You can keep the pastry in a fridge up to 3 days.

Roll out 3-4mm thick dough to fit your baking tins. Bake blind in 180C preheated oven for 15-20 minutes.

Filling

2 large eggs

100-150ml 30% cream (or double cream)

freshly ground sea salt and black-white pepper, to taste

Broccoli+Gruyère cheese
Leek (slightly sautéed in butter)+Cheddar
Zucchini (raw, sliced or grated)+Thyme(fresh or dried)+Parmesan
Sun dried tomato (chopped)+Olives+Basil (fresh or dried)+Pecorino Romano cheese

Whisk eggs with cream and season to taste. Arrange vegetables, grated cheese and herbs in pastry cases. Pour the egg mixture over veggies. Bake in 180C preheated oven for 20-25 minutes or until the filling is set.

Enjoy!

Holiday Panna Cotta

Cold days, beautiful pine and spruce trees with toys, lots of gingerbread cookies, smell of mandarins and cinnamon.. How does your holiday look and smell?

Today recipe is a well-known dessert among foodies – panna cotta. Many of you already cooked it or tried in a restaurant, but I’d like to show you the festive presentation, how you can serve the gorgeous-looking dessert to your family and guests during the winter holidays.

Everything in this dessert says ‘winter’: delicate and tender snowflakes (recipe coming soon), smooth and creamy panna cotta that looks almost like a real snow-blanket, rosemary “pine needles”, and of course aromatic mandarin -segments. Another great thing about this dessert is that it looks like you really fussed over it. Shhhh… 😉

You can make panna cotta a day or two ahead, and you will need only to saute mandarin segments and garnish the dessert. But don’t forget to cool mandarins, otherwise panna cotta will melt.

Holiday Panna Cotta

Servings: 4
Time: 4hr+
Difficulty: easy
Print

Ingredients

Panna Cotta

200ml double cream

300ml full-fat milk

45-50g white sugar

1 vanilla bean (or 1 tsp vanilla extract)

2 tsp powdered gelatin

40ml cold water

Garnish

1-2 tbsp demerara or brown sugar

2 small mandarins

few rosemary needles

2 tsp mandarin zest, optional

1 tbsp orange liquor (or brandy), optional

1 mandarin shortbread cookie per cup (recipe is coming)

Preparation method

In a pan, pour cream with milk, add vanilla and sugar, heat (but don’t boil) until sugar is dissolved. Turn off the heat and let the mixture infuse with vanilla flavour for 20-30 minutes. Then take out the bean, and rewarm the mixture.
In a small cup, add cold water and sprinkle gelatin over it.
Take the pan from the heat, add gelatin and stir until the gelatin is completely dissolved.
Pour the panna cotta mixture into 4 cups, put cups in the fridge for 4 hours or overnight.
For the garnish, in a frying pan add sugar, mandarin segments, zest and rosemary, and saute for 3-5 minutes on a medium-high heat. Add liquor, if using, and saute for few minutes more. Leave to cool.
Garnish each cup with few mandarin segments and one cookie.

Happy Holidays!

Sunny pie

Today is the winter solstice, it is an astronomical event that occurs twice a year (summer and winter solstice). Winter solstice is the shortest day and the longest night of the year. During the paganism time in old Russia this day was a special celebration, which was called Yule night. It was a festive and holy day for the honour of greeting the baby-sun named Kolyada, that was born on this night, which slowly but steady began to be stronger and brighter. That means that with each upcoming day nights became shorter, days longer and sun shone brightly and warmly. In the night people had to get together (there was a superstition that to stay alone in this night was unluckily), they set a big festive fire, sang songs and burnt all old and useless stuff; people also prepared chickens and turkey, baked round pies and praised the Sun.

As you can see, I’ve tried to make a sun-looking pie. Rich and sweet pastry holds lemon-scented milky filling and all covered with lightly soured apricot puree. In a word, I liked this bright and tasty pie! It reminds me another pie that I made – ‘cottage cheese and cranberry pie’, so if you liked that one – give a chance to this sunny pie as well. 🙂

Lemon-tvorog pie with apricot top

Servings: 6-8
Time: 4hr
Difficulty: moderate
Print

I used 20cm loose-bottom baking pan.

*Tvorog is Russian cottage cheese, you can find it in many European or Russian stores.

Lemon-tvorog pie

Ingredients

sweet lemon pastry

400g tvorog*

100g butter, at room temperature

zest of 1 medium lemon

3-4 tbsp lemon juice

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

3 medium eggs

30g (3 tbsp) brown sugar

30g (3 tbsp) white sugar

60g golden raisins

hot black tea or water, to cover the raisins

2 tsp cornmeal

apricot top

Preparation method

While the pastry case is baking, prepare the filling.
In a small bowl, put raisins and cover with hot black tea or water. You can also add a tablespoon of cognac or brandy for extra flavour. Leave to soak while making the diary filling.
In a large bowl, whisk tvorog with butter until just combined. In another bowl beat eggs with sugars.
Add lemon zest and juice, vanilla and beaten eggs to the tvorog mixture, beat until just combined.
Drain raisins and mix into the filling along with cornflour.
Pour the filling into the pastry case. Pour the apricot puree over the tvorog filling.
Bake in preheated 190C oven for 45-50 minutes. If the top begins to burn – cover it with foil.
Let it cool in the pan for 10-15 minutes, then carefully transfer onto the serving plate. Enjoy!

P.S. The filling wasn’t smooth as you can see from the pics, if you like it -ok, if not- you may push tvorog through the sieve.

Sweet lemon pastry

170g butter, at room temperature

50g golden caster sugar

zest of 1 small lemon

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg (40-45g), at room temperature

260g plain flour

Glaze: 1 small beaten egg yolk, optional

In a large bowl, whisk butter with sugar until just creamy. Add lemon zest, vanilla and egg and mix until just combined. Mix in flour. Cover the pastry with plastic wrap and chill overnight or up to 3 days until ready to use.
Roll out 3mm-thick (or as thick as you like) circle to cover your baking pan. You can also make ‘sun rays’ and stick them to the base and sides of the pan, but it’s optional step. If you have any pastry remains, roll out it and cut out cookies, then bake it on a baking tray for 10-12 minutes.
Put the pan with pastry into the freezer for 10 minutes.
Cover the pastry case with foil, add beans/rice/special stones for baking and bake in preheated 190C oven for 20 minutes. Then remove the weight, brush with the glaze (optional) and return to the oven for 5 minutes more.

Apricot Top (optional)

5 small sliced apricots (150g) (or sub with apricot jam)

2 tsp lemon zest

1 tbsp lemon juice

2 tsp cornflour

20-30g (3 tbsp) golden caster sugar