Cherry clafoutis

Clafoutis (pronounced klafuˈtis) is a classic French pie arranged in a buttered dish and covered with a thick flan-like batter.

A traditional clafoutis contains pits of the cherries. The pits play an important role, it is said, that the pits release a wonderful flavour when the dish is cooked. (despite this fact, I have decided to make it without.) Hmmm slightly crunchy in the outside, soft and creamy in the middle.
When other kinds of fruit are used instead of cherries, the dish is properly called a flaugnarde (pronounced floɲaʁd).

Ingredients: (25 cm diameter spring-form)

• 300 g cherry
• 3 eggs
• 100 g powdered sugar
• 90 g flour
• 200 ml milk
• 100 ml cream
• butter and biscuit crumble for the spring-form 
• 1 Tbsp. honey
• cinnamon

Directions:

Preheat over to 180 Celsius grades and place the rack in the center of the oven.

Wash the cherries, remove the stems and pits. Sprinkle with cinnamon, rum and honey and set aside. 

Coat the bottom and sides of the pan with butter and biscuit crumble.

Divide the eggs. Mix egg yolk with powdered sugar until creamy and whitish colour. Pour milk and cream carefully to it. With soft movements, add flour. Beat egg whites on medium high speed until stiff peaks form. Fold egg whites into batter. 

Pour the batter into the spring-form (or pie form) and sprinkle the fruit over it. 

Bake in pre-heated oven for about 20 minutes or until the clafoutis is puffed, set and golden brown around the edges.  (Do not open the oven door until the end of the baking time or it may collapse.)

Serve hot with dusting sugar. Yoghurt, créme fraiche and/or whipped cream perfectly fit to it. 

Honey glazed yellow- gage flaugnarde

Clafoutis (pronounced klafuˈtis) is a classic French pie arranged in a buttered dish and covered with a thick flan-like batter.

A traditional clafoutis contains pits of the cherries. The pits play an important role, it is said, that the pits release a wonderful flavour when the dish is cooked. (despite this fact, I have decided to make it without.) Hmmm slightly crunchy in the outside, soft and creamy in the middle.
When other kinds of fruit are used instead of cherries, the dish is properly called a flaugnarde (pronounced floɲaʁd).

Ingredients: (25 cm diameter spring-form)

• 200 g yellow- gage
• 3 eggs
• 100 g powdered sugar
• 80- 100 g flour
• 200 ml flour
• 100 ml cream
• butter and biscuit crumble for the spring-form 
• 1 Tbsp. honey
• cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon rum

Directions:

Preheat over to 180 Celsius grades and place the rack in the centre of the oven.

Wash the yellow-gage, remove the stems and pits. Sprinkle with cinnamon, rum and honey and set aside. 

Coat the bottom and sides of the pan with butter and biscuit crumble.

Divide the eggs. Mix egg yolk with powdered sugar until creamy and whitish colour. Pour milk and cream carefully to it. With soft movements, add flour. Beat egg whites on medium high speed until stiff peaks form. Fold egg whites into batter. 

Pour the batter into the spring-form (or pie form) and sprinkle the fruit over it. 

Bake in pre-heated oven for about 20 minutes or until the clafoutis is puffed, set and golden brown around the edges.  (Do not open the oven door until the end of the baking time or it may collapse.)

Serve hot with dusting sugar. Yoghurt, créme fraiche and/or whipped cream perfectly fit to it. 

Witches fingers

Time before Halloween is always busy in our family. I can't sucrifice time enough to prepare good for the big party day. So this year I decided to make something delicious and frightening that can be done quickly. I had a lot of fun to form the fingers. It is just so easy but still yummy and and creepy. Perfect choice for a Halloween party. I was done within 30 minutes including preparation, baking and decoration. Everybody loved it.

Ingredients:

• 125 g flour
• 75 g butter
• 100 g ground almond
• 75 g icing sugar
• 1 egg
• ca. 20-25 pieces of almonds

Directions:

Mix flour, ground almond, icing sugar, butter and egg and with your hands until you get a nice smooth dough. 
Divide it into ca. 20 pieces, roll little balls from them, then form them into a rollers (as long and as thick as your own finger). 
Put the little fingers on baking paper. Press one almond into one end of each cookie to give the appearance of a long fingernail. Form two knuckles (just like on your on hand). 
Take a sharp knife, and cut small rimples into the cookies to get a finger-like appearance. Preheat oven to 180 Celsius digrees (356 F). Bake the cookies for 10 minutes in preheated oven or until the fingers get a slightly golden colour.
Get a pot of red cranberries jam (strawberry might work as well, the point is that the colour of the jam is red). Put the end of the fingers into the jam to have a little bloody outfit to them.

Carrot- walnut cake a'la Ilse

A lovely friend of our family gave this recipe to me after I was lucky to taste it at her home. It was so delicious that I must have asked for the recipe. It's incredible. I seriously couldn't stop myself/ourselves. We almost eat up the whole cake.

Next time I'll try the cupcake version of it. Can't wait to share my experiences.

Ingredients for the cake: (24cm springform pan)

•  3 eggs  
• 200 g sugar  
• 1 pinch of salt  
• 200 ml sunflower oil  
• 250 g flour   
•  2 Tsp. grounded cinnamon   
•  ½ package of baking powder   
•  3 ounces rasped carrots   
•  2 mashed bananas 
•  80-90 g chopped walnuts  
• Butter (for greasing the springform pan)

Ingredients for the glaze:

• 25 g butter (at room temperature)  
• 2 ounces of icing sugar
• 3 Tbsp. cream cheese

Directions:

Preheat oven to 170 Celsius degrees (340 F). Mix eggs with sugar and pinch salt and beat until soft creamy. Turn the mixer on the lowest setting and slowly pour oil to it.

Sift flour, baking powder and cinnamon powder over the egg mixture and mix gently with a wooden spoon (You can do it with your mixer on the lowest setting, it works perfectly as well.)

Add rasped carrots, smashed banana and crushed walnuts, stir gently and pour the mix into greased springform pan.

Bake in the preheated oven for about 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean (toothpick test/doneness test).

Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely. Let cake cool off!

For the glaze: Combine all ingredients and beat until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Frost the cooled cake. 

 

Bavarian cream (Bayrisch Creme)

My mom was born on 8th Mai. This cake is meant be a tribute to her big day with a tornado like kitchen helper next to me.

Mom, happy birthday! Wishing you many years of health and happiness to come!

For the recipe, I would like to say hereby a big thank to my ex co-workers from Munich. My going away gift included a German recipe book (Peter Ploog: Bayerische Küche). In this book I happened to find this recipe. Thank you guys, you are awesome! 

Ingredients:

• 250 ml cream
• 125 ml milk
• 1/2 inside of a vanilla bean
• 3 sheets of gelatin (transparent)
• 2 egg yolks
• 50 g powdered sugar

Directions:

Whip cream until stiff peaks form and set aside.
Cut open vanilla bean and scrape out the seeds. Add bean, seeds, and milk to a pot. Bring to a boil. Add gelatin to 1 dl cold water.
Mix the sugar with egg yolks until creamy. Pour some boiling milk by constantly stirring into the egg mixture. This will heat the eggs without scrambling them. Put the milk back over the heat and put the egg mixture into the milk, while  stirring constantly. Bring milk&egg mixture to a boil while constantly stirring again. Add gelatin and mix well.
Allow the mixture to cool to the point where it begins to thicken.
Fold in the whipped cream then put the whole mixture/cream into a nice pot.
Allow to set in the refrigerator for a few hours.
According to the original recipe, garnish with raspberry sauce. Unfortunately I didn't have it home, so I used red cranberry sauce instead. Worked well.

Semolina cake

Anything with semolina says “childhood” and “kids” to me… BUT! After sniffing on the google for a few hours, I had to realize that this deliciously easy and uniquely impressive cake is extremely popular in many countries in the world, especially Italy, UK, Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria and some Arabic countries. This recipe of mine is the combination of the original Italian variant and my mom's secret recipe.

Ingredients for the dough:

• 50 g unsalted butter
• 75 g flour
• 12,5 ml water
• sugar
• pinch salt

Ingredients for the semolina pudding:

• semolina
• 300ml milk
• 2 tsp. sugar
• 1 package of vanilla sugar

Directions:

Mix all the ingredients of the dough and knead it until you get a homogeneous dough. Form a ball of it then put it in the refrigerator for an hour (covered in cling film).
After one hour take your pastry board. Sprinkle it with flour and roll out the cookie dough with a rolling pin. Cut out the form and size of your cake tin (a round springform pan is just perfect). This layer of dough is going to be the bottom of our cake so you have to line the bottom of the tin with it. 
In the meanwhile: mix all the ingredients for the semolina pudding in a sauce pan. Cook it on medium heat until it gets thicker.

When cooled off, pour on the dough and spread and disperse in the pan. Use the rest of the dough for decorating your cake (before it goes into the oven) - e.g. flowers and leaves.

Preheat the oven to 180 Celsius degrees (350 F) and bake for 25 minutes.
Serve cold or warm with icing sugar, fruit syrup or chocolate sauce.

Strawberry cheesecake

It's strawberry season and the fresh berries are ripe and ready to eat and enjoy in many ways at the dinner table. This time I have chosen this classic, decadent and delicious dessert.

Ingredients:

• Strawberries
• Almond flakes

For the bottom: Ø26 cm

• 1+1/2 cup biscuit crumbs or cracker crumbs
• 3 Tbsp. (if possible brown) sugar
• 1/2 cup melted butter

For the cream:

• 1 cup cottage cheese
• 500 g Mascarpone or Azurro
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 Tbsp. flour
• 1 p. vanilla sugar or ¼ teaspoon vanilla aroma
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup milk

/1 cup = approx. 2,5 dl/

Directions: 

Mix biscuit crumbs, sugar and butter. Press firmly into bottom of pan.

Preheat oven to 180 Celsius (356 F).

Beat cottage cheese, mascarpone, sugar, flour, vanilla sugar, eggs and milk 5 minutes on medium speed, then15 minutes on high speed until well blended.

Pour into crust. Bake 40-45 minutes. Let it cool in the oven!

Wash and slice strawberries. Top cheesecake with sliced strawberries and almond flakes. Refrigerate at least 4 hours before serving.

Serve with strawberry jam or strawberry syrup.