Vanilla apple tart

What a crazy day we had yesterday! Snow in the morning, sun in the afternoon... Autumn and winter at their best, all in one day! The streets were crawling with hungry little trick or treaters, decked out in their Halloween costumes. This apple tart in by no means an antidote for their inevitable sugar rush, but it was the perfect Halloween desert for me. Lately I've been playing around with different types of fillings for sweet tarts and while I love almonds, frangipan filling (at leat the ones I've tried so far) somehow always turns out a bit on the dry side. With this apple tart I wanted something creamy, smooth, with a dash of sourness. The simple combination of full fat sour cream, eggs, sugar and vanilla really fits the bill here. Next time though I will double the amount of filling, maybe add some cardamom or lime oil and use black plums or pears. Oh, the possibilities!

Ingredients:

For the tart shell:

120 gr all purpose flour
120 gr softened butter
120 gr creamy cottage cheese
pich of salt

For the filling:

2 whole eggs
50 gr powedered sugar
200 ml full fat sour cream
1 tsp vanilla essence

4 medium apples, peeled and cut into small wedges
juice of half a lemon
2 tbsp thin apricot jam
1 tbsp pine nuts

Preheat oven to 400F. Lightly butter a 10 inch tart pan.
Mix together all tart shell ingredients until smooth. Do not overwork the dough. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
For the filling, mix eggs, sugar and vanilla until well blended and creamy. Add sour cream. Mix well.
Mix apples with lemon juice.
Roll out dough to fit tart pan. Pour in sour cream mixture and place apples over top.
Bake for about 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and brush with apricot jam. Sprinkle with pine nuts and bake for 20 more minutes or until golden. Please check frequently, oven temperatures may vary.

Lemon-yogurt fritters

I'm back after one of the busiest yet best summers on record. There was not much time to post anything.  This summer for us was the summer of tomatoes. Big, juicy, colourful, wonderful tomatoes. Served as bruschetta topping, sandwich filler, sliced with fresh basil, sea salt, olive oil and balsamic, or my favourite the once-a-week fresh tomato sauce. We had many lovely dinners of bucatini with crab and tomato sauce, penne rigate with pancetta and vodka-tomato sauce and so on. Tomatoes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I have a very eclectic range, don't I? But now it's time to bid adieu not only to this magnificent fruit but also to my lovely, minuscule garden, source of many a culinary pleasures over the summer.
Now it's time for fragrant curries and warm soups. Slow simmered stews, hot drinks and loads of apple ice cream.
And just because I have a thing for deep fried dough, I'm going to start with these lemon yogurt fritters I found on a wonderful blog, Orangette. See the recipe here. I haven't changed a thing. It's perfect as it is. Read it and weep. Or better yet, make them. As in now!
This is it, proper soul food for the beginning of something new. Because summer is over. Crying, I am.

Playin' around

Yeast and I have had somewhat of a roller coaster relationship throughout the years. As a rebellious cook/teenager, I avoided any recipe that even mentioned the dreaded Y word. Same goes for gelatin.
Needless to say my first endeavour into this (for me) uncharted territory was a disaster of epic proportions. What can I say? I was 15, it was Saturday, and I felt adventurous. Enter an old recipe for cheese danish with raisins. I had fresh yeast on hand, lots of it. So I though, why not?
Thick headed that I am, I was adamant about not needing any help whatsoever. Baaad idea. On the first try the yeast wouldn't rise. No problem, had lots more where it came from. Second try, just as bad. I had the windows open, there was a major drought in the house. But the recipe didn't mention anything about the precarious working relationship of yeast and drought. Thus, not my fault! Finally, on the third try, yeast + sugar + warm water rose beautifully. I was in business! Or so I thought. I put all the ingredients in my large ceramic bowl, mixed it all together, worked the lovely vanilla scented dough into a shiny, springy little ball of beauty. I felt really proud. I covered the dough and let it rise while practicing my "see, I told you I could do this by myself" speech. And then I waited. And waited. And waited some more. But even after two hours the dough wouldn't rise. After three hours and much consideration I concluded that it has risen. A little. A tiny bit. And it still smelled wonderful. Plus I already made the filling. The creamiest cottage cheese from my grandmother' own cremerie, kirsh soaked plump raisins and vanilla sugar. So I rolled out the dough, cut it in squares, filled it with big spoonfuls of cheese and formed the adorable tiny purses. They were a marvel to look at. At this point I was convinced that this achievement was going to be the pinnacle of my blossoming culinary career. To backtrack, I had had some considerable cooking success before that day. My chocolate sour cream ice cream and my potato salads were famous. I mean, really. With my entire family, all three of them.
Next I placed my baking sheet of danishes in the oven and anxiously waited for the final result. I had my serving trays all prepared with doilies and all. The whole house smelled wonderful.
After 30 minutes, the recommended baking time, I went to check on my work. I wish I hadn't. The dough had not risen at all and all the cheese filling was seeping out of the little pockets, forming charred crusty little pools on both the baking sheet and the oven floor.
It took me five years to even look at a recipe with yeast again.
Since that time many a yeasty recipes have found their way to my kitchen, with various degrees of success. I got bolder and no yeasty recipe is ever going to scare me again! But seriously, no two recipes ever come out exactly the same. Is it just me? Am I doing something wrong?
I'm on a quest to make the perfect brioche. Fluffy, light, not to buttery or crumbly or dry and definitely not one that requires 7 eggs for 2 cups of flour!
I know a lot depends on the quality of your flour, your eggs and even the room temperature. I've done my research and the consensus seems to be that fresh yeast is superior to that of the dried kind. But these days fresh yeast is not widely available.
And it's a little scary, too. And then there's the instant kind, which I never used nor do I have any desire to use in the future.
If you get the best results by letting your dough rise slowly, what exactly is the point of instant yeast? What's the hurry?




This past weekend I was craving the satisfaction that comes from working with soft yeasty dough with your bear hands. So I made these walnut buns, using Nigella Lawson's Norwegian Cinnamon buns recipe for the dough. I halved the recipe, since
using 4 cups of flour for two people seemed a tad to much. For the filling I used 1 stick of butter mixed with 1 cup of ground walnuts and some vanilla sugar. Should you wish to give this walnut version a try, you could also use this recipe (for the dough), one of my favourites and on regular rotation in our kitchen. The walnut cream knocks it out of the ball park, so you might want to try it. You can bake them in muffin tins, or just spread the filling on the dough, roll up, cut it up in 1 1/2" coins and bake them as you would cookies, placing them 2 inches apart on your cookie sheet. I baked the second half in these cute little tins I bought in Tokyo, along with a bunch of other tins and moulds that I have yet to figure out how to use.
Happy baking! As for me I'm right back to the drawing board. I still have a lot to learn. Another day, another stubborn recipe: caramel roll ups with fennel seeds. And yeast, of course. I'll keep you posted. Later,(in my life) I might even consider making homemade bread. Real bread. With crunchy, thick crust. Just like the ones they make in Paris. Whit natural starter or old dough. Check out the brilliance here.
In the meantime any yeast related tips, suggestions are more then welcome.

Liptauer cheese spread

Liptauer is traditional Austro-Hungarian cheese spread, but Romanians, Czecks and Scandinavians also claim it as their own. It's typicaly served as a snack on rye bread, or sometimes as a filling for different types of appetizers. I like it thickly spread on rye bread with some cornichons and thinly sliced red onions. Oh, and it's great with beer!
My version is made with a combination of cream cheese and cottage cheese. Use the best cottage cheese you can get your hands on. It should be rich and creamy, nothing like some of the clumpy, loaded with additives commercial brands out there. Try your local Farmer's market. Some recipes use capers and anchovy paste and a lot of paprika. I kept it fairly simple. You adjust it to your taste. That way we can all avoid heated arguments or virtual hair pulling, trying to figure out what the stuff should be like or where it comes from. The important thing is where's it's going: your hungry belly!

Ingredients:

250 g cream cheese
250 g good quality pressed cottage cheese
2 small cornichons, finely diced
1 large clove of garlic, minced
1 tbsp fresh chives, chopped
1 tsp caraway seeds (a must)
1/2 tsp Hungarian paprika
1 tsp grainy mustard
pinch of salt

Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Serve at room temperature with rye bread or crackers, cornichons and thinly sliced red onions.
Or for a fresh summer lunch try stuffing some sweet cherry tomatoes with the cheese spread and toss them with fresh heirloom salad leaves, radishes, chopped boiled eggs and some herb vinaigrette.

Sour cream coffee cake with chocolate pecan filling

As this wonderfully moist coffee cake was on the picture,(previous post) I thought it wouldn't hurt to post the recipe as well.
It's a great, easy to make alternative to more elaborate cakes or pastries that could be served with coffee. It makes quite a large cake, but no worries here, it keeps for 4 to 5 days under a cake dome.





Ingredients

For the cake:

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
5 oz unsalted butter, at room temperature
5 1/2 oz superfine sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream


Filling:

1/4 cup toasted pecans
3 oz coarsely chopped bittersweet chocolate
3 tbs light brown sugar
1 1/2 tbs natural cocoa powder

Preheat oven to 350F. Generously butter a 9-inch bundt pan.
Make the filling: In a food processor, pulse pecans, sugar, chocolate and cocoa to combine and chop the pecans and chocolate.
For the cake: In a bowl whisk the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. In another bowl beat the butter and sugar until smooth and creamy. Beat in eggs, one at a time until well blended. Blend in vanilla.
Next alternate adding the dry ingredients and the sour cream, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients.
Spoon half the batter into the bundt pan. Smooth with the back of a spoon, spreading out evenly. Sprinkle over the filling, then layer on the rest of the batter. Run a large wooden skewer around the pan for a few times to get the desired marbled effect. Smooth the top again.
Bake until golden brown and the wooden skewer inserted comes out clean, about 45 to 55 minutes.
Transfer to a wire rack and let cool before removing from the pan.
Recipe adapted from Fine Cooking magazine.

Glorious brunch

Bad weather should not get me down. Not me. Not usually. But when by some miracle it does, I already know how to make my day better. A long, long weekend brunch that will keep me satisfied for the day is the answer.
Muesli, with lots of sweet dates, apples, walnuts. Maybe some coffee cake. A big bowl of latte. And maybe some simple scrambled eggs, with chives and truffle oil. Just a tiny bit. Drizzled on top.







Honey muesli with medjool dates, apples and walnuts


Ingredients

225 g old fashioned oats
125 ml fresh orange juice
250 g plain yogurt
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
4-5 pieces chopped medjool dates
2 apples, grated
50 g toasted walnuts

Mix oats, orange juice and 150 g of yogurt (or more, depending on how thick you like it).
Mix in lemon zest, chopped dates and half of grated apples. Serve in a bowl, topped with rest of the yogurt, chopped apples and toasted walnuts.