Tag Archives: sweet

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
Print

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.

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
Print

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! 🙂

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
Print

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! ❤

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! 🙂

Kumquat preserve

Hi there! First of all, I’d like to say Happy belated Easter to all who celebrated it, hope you had a really great, joyful and warm holiday!
I’ve been out of bloogging for some time, because my sister visited me and I didn’t have free time to post; we were walking, swimming, shopping and chating all days long. We meet really rarely – one or two times a year, and I miss her all the time..

Thus I didn’t prepare anything for the Easter this time, but I’ve got a great recipe of the citrus preserve! It is the unusual one, because made out of kumquats!

I do like kumquats, that sometimes to treat myself I’m buying a kilo and eat them alone. 😀 Just joking. I have never seen any kumquat jams in stores, and if you like it’s citrus bitterness – go for it!

Kumquat preserve

Servings: 2 jars
Difficulty: easy
Print

Such homemade preserve makes a great gift for family or friends.

Ingredients:

500g firm kumquats, cleaned and sliced

400g white sugar

120ml water

2 star anise

1 cinnamon stick

In a saucepan, put sugar, water and spices, stirring until the sugar has dissolved.
Add kumquats.
Bring the ingredients to boil.
Then switch off the heat, remove the saucepan from the hob and set aside to cool.
After 1 hour return the saucepan to the medium heat and simmer for 15 minutes.
Repeat the step #5 and #4 two more times.
Pour the preserve into prepared hot sterilized jars and seal, or eat it straight away.