Pumpkin Pancakes

Pumpkin here,pumpkin there,pumpkin everywhere...

You know it`s fall when pumpkin recipes start to appear all over the internet, which does not bother me, `cos I`m a big pumpkin believer. Sweet or savory, put it on my plate!

Besides, who doesn`t love a warm, spicy pancake that makes your house smell wonderful? Grab yo pan.

Oh, besides, that brown, yucky looking thing on my pancake is nor poop neither mud. It is one of the best husbands for a pumpkin pancake: brown butter espresso topping with roasted salted peanuts. The topping hardens like a brittle and gets all nice and crunchy. Unfortunately...I forgot the ingredients and therefore, cannot give you the recipe for the topping, but the pancake is all yours.

Just pair these with some maple syrup, honey or even a dust of powdered sugar will do. They are that good even on their own. I`ll give myself a tap on the back for such an amazing recipe. Yeah, gurl!

Ingredients:
1 cup pure pumpkin puree (I make it myself, the flavor is sometimes better depending on how sweet you pumpkin is)
2 eggs
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 cup milk 
1 and 1/2 cups all purpose flour
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon spice blend (cinnamon,cloves,ginger,allspice)

Directions:
1. Preheat you pan on medium-low heat.

2.In a medium bowl, mix together the flour,salt,spice blend, baking powder, baking soda. Sifting these will result in a lighter, more air-y pancake, but if you`re feelin` lazy like me, leave them like that. Sifting is for losers.

3. In another bowl, beat the eggs, sugar and pumpkin puree. Add your milk. Pour these over the flour mixture and stir to combine. Do not overmix or you`ll have tough pancakes which is utterly unpleasant. Just stop yourself when you see no lumps of flour.

4. Pour a small amount of batter in your preheated pan and let it cook for aprox. 2 minutes or until you start to see bubbles forming around the edges. Flip it at once and cook it another 2 minutes.

5. Serve the pancakes warm with whatever topping you like and don`t forget to leave me a comment if you made these. 

Linzer Cookies

Ok,brace yourselves for one fancy cookie recipe!

 

If you`ve never heard the word Linzer before, chances are you have absolutely no clue about what it means, right? According to the glorious Internet, it comes from the name Linz, which is a city in Austria. And another thing you should know:

 

                       " Anything Linzer is delicious. "

Who said that? Me, of course! 

 

This recipe is really versatile. You can put any nuts you like, fill it with whatever you like (although I don`t know why somebody would skip on raspberry jam!) and top it with whatever your heart desires.

In my case, I added about 1 cup of toasted, ground walnuts. Yes, 1 cup! Of course, you can use less, about 1/2 cup if you want the nutty flavor to be more subtile, but, again, why would you want to skip on the good stuff is beyond my knowledge. Ok, let`s proceed...

Another thing I want to point out is that you should not knead the dough too much. If you want a tender, crumbly and slightly flakey cookie, you`ll listen to me. And by the way, while kneading, don`t add too much flour either. You want to keep the dough slightly softer than a normal cut-out cookie, ok?

 

Ingredients:

250 gr softened butter *room temp.

250 gr granulated white sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

zest of 1/2 lime

1 egg and 1 egg yolk

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

370 to 400 gr white,all purpose flour

As much fruit jam as you need to sandwhich your cookies

Directions:



1. In a large, metallic bowl, mix on high speed the butter and the sugar for 5 minutes or until light and fluffy. Add the egg, incorporate it well and add the egg yolk, doing the same thing. Lastly, beat in the vanilla and lime zest. Mix on high for 2 more minutes.

2. In another bowl, whisk together the baking soda, baking powder, salt and flour. These are your dry ingredients.

3. With the mixer running on low, add the dry ingredients in 3 batches, beating after each addition so the flour gets well incorporated.

4. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap/cling film and let the dough rest in the fridge for aproximately 1 hour or up to overnight. This step is important, so please don`t skip it!

5. After such time, on a clean, preferably wooden surface, sprinkle a good amount of flour and roll out 1/4 of your dough, dusting your rolling pin and the surface with more flour if necessary. You`ll need a lot of patience for this step, as the dough breaks apart very easily. Roll out 1/4 of a cm (o,25 cm) thick and cut the desired shapes.

6. Using a spatula or a large knife, carefully remove the shapes from the working board and arrange it on a greased cookie sheet. Preheat your oven to 160 C/350 d F/ Gas lvl.3 and bake the cookies for 10 to 15 minutes or until they get a bit crispy and golden brown. Leave the cookies to cool in the pan, then remove them to a platter.

7. Sandwich the cookies with about 1 teaspoon of jam, more or less if you like, then dust with powdered sugar or top them with whatever you like. They last up to 9 days if stored in the fridge in an airtight container.

Healthy Energy Bites

So yes, school is here and I can`t say I`m terrified. It`s pretty much the same for me if I`m in my free time or not because my activities are pretty much the same. The idea is that I`m extremely busy even during my holiday. You may or may not want to know what I have been doing the past two months.

I. worked. in. a. sweet. shop.

Yes, that means that I have exercised my passion (baking, of course) while earning a lil bit of money. Ok, it`s not about the money here, I had the greatest time of my life and maybe the best summer of my life! I remember going to bed so exhausted but so happy at the same time, you know? My feet had blisters, my back was killing me from so many hours of running here and there. But I had a smile on my face always. The pain or tiredness were barely noticeable for me. Sad thing eveything had to stop.

Ok, back to our recipe here...
I hope you had a lot of fun during the great summer holiday and that you are back on track because school ain`t gonna be easy! So this is why I prepared these delicious, almost brownie like energy bites. Ditch the chips or candy bars and replace them with something that tastes good and offers you energy instead of leaving you sleepy. Some of you know how bad processed sugar is (I`ll post some about it and how mindless snacking affects your body), some of you don`t care and a few of you want to avoid it because you are aware of its consequences.

Now, I know it sounds like I`m being a hypocrite(this is how you spell this word, right?haha) because having a blog with tons of indulging, sugar-filled recipes and then telling you sugar is the enemy is not the best way to act.
I love sweets. I admit it. I`m human and I crave something every five minutes. I almost arrived at the hospital after a sugar overdose and I`m grateful for still being healthy and having low sugar levels in my blood.
I am baking a lot of unhealthy stuff, but that has to  change. Of course I`ll be posting indulging, comforting recipes from time to time. Still, I would like to show you that healthy eating can be fun and you can still eat sweets which aren`t harmful.

But don`t exaggerate! Moderation is the best way to live your life. Maybe that didn`t make any sense... .However, there will be a story on how I educated myself to stop eating so much sugar and choosing what`s healthier instead.

Doesn`t mind, whether you want to cut down on your refined sugar intake, these little Bites taste like a brownie. Indulgently sweet and satisfying, you`ll feel full after at most 3. Yes, they are very sweet, but from the following ingredients: 150 gr pitted dates, soaked in water, 50 gr raisins (soaked in water again), dried mango, dried pineapple, dried cranberries, goji berries and 1 tablespoon of honey, although you can omit the honey, I think I went too far with it. Then the dry ingredients are as follows: 1/2 cup oats, up yo 4 Tablespoons unsweetened flaked coconut, 1 Tablespoon flaxseed, 1 big handful of any nuts you prefer (almond, walnuts, pecans, peanuts and the list can go on), 1/4 cup sunflower seeds and the last but not least Karob or cocoa powder. I prefer karob powder because it is lower in fat and it has a natural sweetness. Now, if you want, go on and add 1 teaspoon of allspice or pumpkin pie spice (these spices are made of ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, nothing too fancy). Like I did. Then you are going to use your blender and blend until you have a cookiedough-like consistency.

Next, roll them in the wet palms of your hands and toss in shredded coconut. That`s it! Now enjoy a healthy dessert! :)

Pavlova with White Wine Poached Rhubarb & A week at the seaside

"Pavlova? What`s that?" this is what I thought before meeting this  beauty. Look at the cracks, at the pale cream color and the boozy poached rhubarb on top. That`s something I honestly enjoyed eating. More than my fudgy brownie with homemade creamy lemon ice cream.

For the ones who don`t know what a Pavlova is: It is literary a GIANT Meringue with a crispy exterior and a soft, chewy and marshmallowy center. It`s meringue at its best. 

Fancy as it may look, it is so easy to make if you follow the steps and use very clean, grease-proof kitchen tool (bowl, mixer attachments and all that). 

The most difficult step is...waiting! I hate this word "wait". Don`t know why, maybe because I`m not the least patient when it comes to food. It`s food and I want it NOW!

However, we`ll talk Pavlova later. 

I was absent for a whole week or more mainly because me and my mom decided to make a well deserved trip. She has a stressful time, I had a stressful time as well so we made our luggage and  were headed to the seaside.

There we slept in a pretty mansion with view at the sea, so when we woke up in the morning, we had our breakfast on the balcony. Of course, there was rain. A lot of rain. But we had sunny days too!

We spent our time in a clean, quiet resort. Everything was excellent, except the food. Ugh, we ate at one restaurant the whole week, the only place you could find something edible and at a good price. What really surprised me was how high prices were when it came to food, but how low when it was about clothes. We bought a lot of nice things to wear, among which a silicone spatula. I`m so crazy about it! It really does its job neatly. I mean, as neatly as a spatula can do it...

Messy hair, sleepy eyes...a selfie can be done under any circumstances.

I took a lot more pictures, but there are only a few I really like and they are in this post. 

Since the temperature wasn`t high, we were not able to spend our days sunbathing, so we took long walks. I filled my sneakers with sand. The only thing I really hate about sand is that it gets literary everywhere! And the worse is in your shoes, in my opinion.

Still, I really like the pictures I took, they will remind me later of our trip.

I have to admit: nature is something magical. All the colors, the miracles...

Another activity of ours was shopping. Like, a lot of shopping. We bought so many things that we had to carry almost twice as much as our luggage. Thanks to my uncle who came to pick us up with his car and help up carry everything at the train station.

Of course, I had to try some new variations of chocolate which you don`t normally find in my part of the country:

Thank God there is chocolate in this resort. Brightens my mood on stormy afternoons. White chocolate with rum filling. Maybe the best choc combo I have ever had.

Look at the waves. Look at them!

Storm having passed, the sea was furious! 

Now, these pictures make me melancholic in a good way. A week passed so quickly, even tough I`m not very tanned, or we haven`t spend that much at the seaside as expected because of the weather. 

Sadly, all the trips and holidays have an end. Just like this summer. I admit I`ll kind of get bored studying and going to the gym, but hey, what`s three months of relaxing?

So this is how everything looked like a few hours before my departure. The waters were very tranquil.

Now back to our Pavlova!
Look at all those marvelous cracks. That`s something beautiful. Don`t you think so?

And maybe you`re wondering where this name comes from. This dessert was created in the honor of the famous Russian ballerina, Anna Pavlova. 

Now, the topping for a classic Pavlova are whipped cream and berries, but I decided to go for something tart and boozy to cut on the sweetness, because this recipe is quite sweet, so I would not recommend to serve it as it is or just with whipped cream. You have to put a tangy fruit (Granny Smith apples, strawberries, raspberries) on it.

I lost count of how many times I`ve mentioned it, but it`s absolutely necessary that your bowl, whisk and mixer attachments are completely clean and there is no trace of fat on them or in the whites! Why? Because the whites won`t whip. They will deflate and everything will be a big mess, and you won`t make a Pavlova, but a huge failed meringue or whatever.

Speaking of deflated whites...while baking, you`ll notice that the Pavlova will sink a bit and it will crack. That`s perfectly fine. A Pavlova is supposed to do that.

So now that I`m done speaking, here`s the recipe with full instructions:

Ingredients:

4 large egg whites, room temperature

1/4 tsp salt

250 gr castor sugar or granulated white sugar

1 tablespoon cornstarch or known as cornflour (not regular flour! And no other substitutions)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar (you can`t skip this ingredient, it is crucial for the Pavlova`s texture)

For the White Wine Poached Rhubarb:

500 gr rhubarb, washed and cut into strips

half a cup of dry white wine 

3 Tablespoons of sugar

3 tablespoons water

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 150 d C/300 d F and draw a 9 inch/23 cm diameter circle on a regular piece of paper. Put it in a baking tray and cover it with parchment paper, so you`ll have a guide when trying to shape the Pavlova. Set aside.

2. In a large, stainless steel or any other metal bowl, whisk the egg whites with salt until light and frothy. Continue beating on high speed with the mixer until they form soft peaks. 

3. Add the sugar, 1 Tablespoon at a time and beat until it gets completely incorporated. 

4. When there are no sugar granules left, gently fold in the vinegar and vanilla extract, followed by the cornstarch/cornflour.

5. Drop all the meringue on your parchment paper and try to follow the circle in order to make it round. Remove the paper underneath the parchment before baking.

6. Bake for 1 hour or 1 hour and 15 minutes in the preheated oven or until the Pavlova looks dry and has a crispy outside. Let it cool in the oven with the door open. After it has cooled completely, you can top it with the White Whine Poached Rhubarb.

White Whine Poached Rhubarb: 

1. In a medium saucepan, put the rhubarb strips, sugar, wine and salt. Stir them to combine and bring it to a boil over medium heat. Then, reduce the heat to low and let it simmer for 5 minutes with the lid on. After such time, put the poached rhubarb in a bowl and let it cool completely before putting it on the Pavlova.

Note!:

Top the Pavlova with the poached rhubarb just before you serve it, otherwise it will get soggy. 

Bread Pudding

Bread is a staple food and every single household has it: it`s cheap and you can pair it with anything from savory to sweet. It acts both as a dessert and a appetizer. But what if you get bored of the plain butter+jam combo and want to try something warm to your soul? What if there is too much bread in your pantry? What if you want to offer your family a breakfast treat but you don`t have more than bread, milk, eggs, sugar and a bit of jam? You make a BREAD PUDDING!

Maybe it doesn`t look very appealing, but I bet this is comfort food at its best: easy, quick, cheap, warm, comforting. Besides, you can adapt the recipe however you like. Feel free to substitute bread for Croissants, Babka(this is a type of sweet bread with different fillings in it, such as walnut, poppy seed, Turkish Delight, cinnamon and sugar), Brioche Bread, Muffins that are dry and no one want to eat them any longer, sponge cake or any other type of bread that soaks up liquid.

So, I don`t want to get too boring. All I`m trying to say is that you can add, substitute and reduce/increase the amount of ingredients to your preference. You could make it savory by eliminating the sweeteners (sugar, raisins, sweet biscuits) and adding grated cheese, pepperoni, bacon (OMG!), your favorite veggies or/and leftover pieces of meat from yesterdays lunch. I think I`ll come with a savory Bread Pudding recipe in the near future. I promise!

Ingredients:
half a loaf of bread, cut up into cubes
250 ml milk
120 gr sweet crackers (such as Nilla Wafers, Oreos etc) crumbled with your hands
2 eggs
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup raisins
2 Tablespoons walnuts
4 Tablespoons Fruit Jam (strawberry, apricot, plum etc)
4 teaspoons sugar for sprinkling on top
35 gr butter 

Preheat oven to 180 d C/375 d F. Grease a small casserole dish with butter and sprinkle some of the crushed up crackers/biscuits/cookies on the bottom, even it out so that it covers the entire bottom of the pan in a thin layer.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, cinnamon, vanilla extract. Set aside.

Spread half of the bread cubes amount in the casserole. Sprinkle raisins and walnuts over it. Add the jam over it.Top with half of the amount of crackers/biscuits/cookies. Then, finish with another layer of cubed bread and cookies. 

Pour the egg and milk mixture slowly over the other ingredients (bread, cookies etc) in the casserole. Take a spoon or a fork and slightly press the bread cubes to assure they are all coated in the milk mixture. 

Just before inserting it in the oven, place small dots of butter over the top and sprinkle the sugar. Bake for 30-45 minutes or until it is set, the bread is puffed up and golden brown. I guarantee your house will smell delicious.

Peach Cheesecake

There`s no chance I can resist the temptation of peaches. That sweet flavor! Paring them with a cheesecake has never been such a good idea. Love it.

How I love summer...mostly for its delicious, fresh fruits. If I could, I would pick them out of a tree or bush all year long, so I can bake with them Unfortunately, there are 3 more seasons. I think this is the reason I don`t like winter: no fruits and veggies. All dead, gone.

I have to admit that, like everybody else, I`d rather eat something juicy and fresh than warm, gooey and sticky during summer. Also, I choose sweet-and-sour rather than very sweet. Do you know what I`m talking about? Never mind, back to our cheesecake

The first time I baked a cheesecake was a while ago. Yeah, it was pretty good, but the crust was almost invisible. And that was a pity because it was made of pretzels with cinnamon. I wanted more. So this time, I almost filled my pan to the half with the crust. I just want to warn you and mention that you can reduce the amount of crackers in this recipe, or use another recipe for homemade graham cracker crust.

Then, the filling. Ah, the filling! It has everything you wish from a cheesecake: creamy texture, sweet yet tart and there are chunks of peaches in there. That`s a bonus, in my opinion.

Oh, I apologize for the pictures. They are horrible, I`m aware of that.

Ingredients:
Crust:
275 gr graham crackers or any digestive biscuits
90 gr butter-melted 
a quarter (1/4) teaspoon ground cinnamon

Cheesecake batter:
1 kg room temperature cream cheese 
4 eggs
3/4 cup sweetened condensed milk
2/3 buttermilk
1/4 cup sugar
4 peaches, pit removed and diced in medium sized chunks/cubes
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Peach Topping:
2 large peaches, pit removed and chopped
2 Tablespoons water
3 Tablespoons sugar

Directions:
For the Crust:
1. In a food processor or using a rolling pin and a bag, crush the biscuits until they resemble breadcrumbs. Make a well in the center and pour melted butter and add cinnamon. Stir with a fork or a spoon until the mixture resembles "wet" sand, it should stay together when pinched between your index finger and your thumb. If it falls apart, add 20 more grams of melted butter until you reach the right consistency.
Butter a 9-inch(23 cm) diameter round cake pan with removable walls and press the biscuit mixture into it, making sure you cover everything evenly. Bake at 180 C/375 d F for 7 minutes. Take it out and let it cool, but don`t turn the oven off.

For the Cheesecake batter:
1. Cream the cream cheese and sweetened condensed milk until homogenized. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the sugar and beat for 2 more minutes.

2. In a small bowl or a regular cup, mix the buttermilk, vanilla extract and cubed peaches. Add them to the cream cheese batter and beat it well for another minute or so.

3. Pour the resulting batter over the crust in the pan, tap it a few times on your counter to get rid of any air bubbles( so you don`t have cracks in the cheesecake). Put the pan in a high-side square or rectangular cake tin and fill it with hot water until it reaches halfway the wall of the round cake pan. Bake it at 160 d C/325 d F for about 1 hour and 15 minutes or until the edges look set and the center is still jiggly. 

4. Turn off the oven and let the cheesecake cool completely in there with the door ajar (slightly opened). About 2-3 hours. After such time, remove the cheesecake from the water filled pan and put it in your fridge to set for about 4 hours or overnight.

Just before serving, make the topping:
Put the chopped peaches, sugar and water in a food processor or a blender and turn them into a smooth puree. Put the puree in a medium saucepan, set it over low to medium heat and cook until bubbly, about 5 to 10 minutes. Immediately pour the resulting topping over the cheesecake and even it out with a spoon or a spatula. Set it in the fridge for 1 hour, but you can cut into it immediately.

Enjoy. :D

Strawberry Ice Cream

Finally! Strawberries are in season and at their best. I swear I`ve eaten 3 pounds in the last two weeks. I ate so many that now I have a pound hanging around in my fridge. I kinda got tired of them. Whatever, I was craving homemade, creamy and rich ice cream and not the full-of-additives industrial one. Everything that`s homemade tastes at least ten times better.

National Child`s Day was on the 1st of June and my dad asked me what I would like as a gift. I wanted to say that I already have everything I need, but suddenly I realized that an ice cream maker is missing from my kitchen. So we got in the car and traveled to the nearest shop where I knew they were selling such things.

Guess what? I love it. Yes, I love my ice cream maker.

There`s a few things you should know: 
1.If you don`t have an ice cream maker, then your homemade ice cream will not be as creamy and will have ice cristals in it. Also, you can "still"freeze the ice cream but you`ll have to stir it every 15 minutes to incorporate air and therefore to turn it into ice cream. Keep in mind that this is labor intensive and you`d better not try this recipe unless you want it.

2.Don`t fill your ice cream maker more than 3/4 of the way full, as the air will get into the ice cream mixture and the volume will increase.

3.It is very important to use the best quality ingredients you can get your hands on, because it will affect the taste and texture of your ice cream.

4.Don`t be impatient and skip the step with the chilling overnight of both the ice cream mixture and the bowl.

Ingredients:

2 cups whole/full-fat milk

200 ml heavy cream (35%-40% fat content)

5 egg yolks

3/4 cup sugar

291 gr strawberries

1/2 teaspoon lemon extract

1/4 teaspoon almond extract

Directions:

1. Put the strawberries along with 2 Tablespoons of sugar in a food processor or blender and turn them into puree. Take a fine mesh sieve and pass the puree through it, in order to get rid of the seeds. Discard the seeds and set the smooth strawberry puree in the fridge.

2. In a medium saucepan, heat the milk and heavy cream together until they start to steam. Meanwhile, whisk the egg yolks with the sugar until thick and pale in color, for about 3-4 minutes. Add 1/4 of a cup of the hot milk-cream mixture to your egg yolk mixture and whisk constantly. This process is called "tempering". I`ll talk later about that.

3. Cook the mixture stirring constantly over low heat until it becomes thicker or coats the back of a wooden spoon. Transfer the custard in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap to prevent a "skin" form forming and chill 6-8 hours or overnight in your fridge.

4. When the custard has cooled, fold in the strawberry puree along with the lemon and almond extract. 

5. The final step is to freeze the custard in your ice cream maker. Make sure the bowl of your ice cream machine has been frozen well (6-8 hrs in the freezer). Churn it for about 35 minutes, then transfer the resulting ice cream in a container and freeze for at least 2 hours prior to serving. Top with strawberry jam or sauce for a better flavor.