Immediatelly when I saw the photos of this fabulous cake over at Cream Puffs in Venice, I knew that I was doing it for Midsummer’s Eve. The cake is not very Midsummery it all, but it looked wonderful and sounded delicious! Another bonus it that it can be prepared in advance (even if I’m a bad planner and somehow always end up cooking everything the same day). It was quick and easy to make, and it does taste divine. The cake is rich but it’s not overwhelming as the fluffy filling quickly melts in your mouth. Now please stop reading this post and go make this cake, you won’t regret it!

Frozen stracciatella cake with fudge sauce
(adapted from Gourmet, ingredients and method changed and recipe converted to the metric system)
serves 6

crust:
150 ml finely ground mandelbiskvier (Swedish mini almond cookies. Original recipe calls for amaretti – Italian almond macaroons. Use a food processor)
60 ml sliced almonds with skin, toasted, cooled, and finely ground (in processor)
3 tbsp melted butter

filling:
3 large egg whites
60 ml caster sugar (preferably vanilla infused, if you have it)
a pinch of salt
300 ml heavy/double/whipping cream, chilled
2 tbsp macadamia nut syrup
100 gram dark chocolate, grated
50 ml sliced almonds with or without skin, toasted and cooled

sauce:
50 ml heavy/double/whipping cream
1.5 tbsp light syrup
1.5 tbsp packed light muscovado sugar
1 tbsp instant-espresso powder
1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
a pinch of salt
50 gram dark chocolate, finely chopped
0.5 vanilla pod, the interior

Butter a loaf pan (arount 12 times 25 cm) and line bottom and short sides with a strip of parchment paper, leaving overhang on each end.

Combine ground cookies, ground almonds and butter in a food processor. Firrmly press over bottom of the loaf pan. Freeze.

Make the cake filling by beating eggwhites with caster sugar and salt with an electric beater until egg whites hold stiff peaks.

In a another bowl beat cream until it just holds stiff peaks. Fold in macadamia nut syrup and half of meringue gently but thoroughly. Fold in remaining meringue along with chocolate. Spoon over crust, smoothing top with offset spatula. Sprinkle the came with almonds. Freeze the cake uncovered, until firm, about 3 hours.

The sauce can either be made in advance and then heated just before serving, or you can make it just before serving the cake. Bring cream, syrup, muscovado sugar, espresso powder, cocoa, salt, and half of the chopped chocolate to a boil in a small heavy saucepan over medium heat, stirring until chocolate is melted. Reduce heat and let simmer, stirring occasionally for about 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in the interior of the vanilla pod and the remaining chocolate until smooth. Cool to warm.

To serve: Remove the cake from the freezer. Carefully hold the bottom of the loaf pan under warm tap water for a few seconds. Transfer the cake to a cutting board and remove the paper. Cut cake into 6 triangular wedges. Let stand a few minutes and then serve with warm fudge sauce.

A couple of weeks ago Swedish television was broadcasting Nigella Express during weekday evenings. After watching the episode with Nigella’s intense chocolate cookies, which can be seen on youtube, I felt an immediate urge to bake the cookies. The recipe is quick and simple and I quickly made a batch before starting to watch Grey’s Anatomy. I changed the quantities of the recipe, I especially cut down on the chocolate as I didn’t want the cookies to be too intense and I also added some white chocolate. The result was delicious chocolate cookies, however very rich so one is really enough.

Intense chocolate cookies
(Adapted from Intense chocolate cookies from Nigella Express, quantities and method slightly changed. Results in 12 large cookies)

125 gram dark chocolate, chopped
150 gram flour
30 gram cocoa, sifted
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
125 gram salted butter, softened
60 gram light brown sugar
60 gram caster sugar
1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped out
1 free-range egg, cold from the fridge
200 g dark and white chocolate chocolate, cut in chunks

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C.

Melt 125 gram of dark chocolate in the microwave.

Combine flour, cocoa, bicarbonate of soda and salt in a bowl.
In the bowl of your mixer, cream butter and brown and white sugar until light and fluffy. Change to slow speed and add the melted chocolate. At the same speed, add the vanilla seeds and the egg. Let it blend in well. Remove the bowl from the machine and by hand mix in the flour mixture. Finally add the chocolate.

Scoop out 12 balls of the cookie dough and divide them between two baking sheets covered with baking sheet paper, without flattening the cookies.

Let the cookies bake for 18 minutes. A skewer should come out semi-clean and not wet with batter. Leave the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 4-5 minutes, then transfer them to a cooling rack to harden as they cool.

Don’t forget to save the vanilla bean for your own vanilla sugar. Just put it in a jar together with caster sugar.

It’s time for another Daring Bakers challenge! The idea of the Daring Bakers is that every month one baking recipe is presented that all members have to follow exactly without any modifications except where specifically allowed. During the month we share our experiences and learn to be better bakers. The recipe, our photos and experiences are then officially posted on a specified day.

This month’s challenge was to bake Cheesecake pops from “Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey” by Jill O’Connor, and the recipe was picked by Elle from Feeding My Enthusiasms and Deborah from Taste and Tell. I love cheesecake but I didn’t find this specific cheesecake recipe to be the perfect one, but it was good. The recipe is straith forward and I didn’t encounter any problems. I did a half batch and ended up with 14 cheesecake pops. I added a bit lemon to the batter and I omited shortening in the chocolate. For coating I used different sanding sugars, chopped hazelnuts, chopped Toblerone and chopped Daim. The pops would be perfect for a party as they are so pretty and as they are so sweet (depending on chosen coating) one is enough to eat. A tip would be to make a few pops next time you have some left over cheesecake.

I find sponge cakes a bit boring, unlike F that really likes them. He especially likes tiger cake which he gets very seldom as I don’t bother to do them very often. Actually there’s nothing wrong with sponge cakes, but they are so plain… To solve this I try to use funny molds, in shape of bears or Moomins, which makes the baking more amusing. I made up this recipe as I wanted just a few cakes and as I wanted to use my new italian silicon rose molds, and the result was very good. We had a lot of limes left from the homestyling of the apartment (!) so I decided to use some of them in the cakes. They came out very moist and delicious with a fresh flavour, perfect now during spring. The tangy lemon frosting was literally “the icing on the cake”.

Lime roses with lime icing
(results in 5-8 cakes, depending on molds. My molds fit around 100 ml each and I got 5 cakes.)

These lovely and moist muffins filled with raspberries are inspired by the ones that I like to buy with my take away-coffee at Espresso House. They don’t look especially pretty but don’t be tricked. l love the idea of crumbles on top of a muffin, however I don’t like the big size of the original ones and I prefer more raspberries. So I decided to bake the muffins at home, using more raspberries and crumbles, and the result was amazing and is definitly my kind of muffins. The cardamon flavour is quite subtile and the tartness of the raspberries goes perfect with the sweet crumbles. Just make sure to have high paper cups so you’ll have enough space for all your crumbles.

Raspberry and cardamon muffins with crumbles
(makes 14 medium sized. Use high paper cups)

muffins:
130 gram butter, room temperatured
200 ml caster sugar (of which half is vanilla infused)
2 eggs
100 ml milk
180 gram flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cardamon
200 gram frozen unthawed raspberries

crumble:
50 gram caster sugar
100 gram flour
50 gram butter

Crumble:
Place the sugar, butter and flour in a bowl. With the tips of your fingers rub the ingredients together until you have a crumbly mixture.

Muffins:
In a bowl beat butter and sugar with an electric beater until smooth. Add the eggs, one at a time while beating. Add milk. Combine the flour, cardamon and baking powder in a separate bowl and then fold into the egg/butter/sugar/milk bowl. Add the raspberries and combine. Spoon the batter into high paper cups, fill the cups to 2/3.

Sprinkle the crumbles over the muffins and bake in 175 degrees C (convection oven) for 20-25 minutes, until a tooth pick comes out clean.

Lemon meringue pie

It’s time for another Daring Bakers challenge! Due to postponing December’s challenge until last minute and then catching a really bad cold on the day for publishing, I didn’t manage to bake the yule log that everyone was supposed to bake. But it feels good to have done the first challenge of 2008. The idea of the Daring Bakers is that every month one baking recipe is presented that all members have to follow exactly without any modifications except where specifically allowed. During the month we share our experiences and learn to be better bakers. The recipe, our photos and experiences are then officially posted on a specified day, this time on the 28th of January.

This week I received yellow beets in my organic vegetable box. I was thrilled and thought about making a yellow beet soup, until I found a recipe for chocolate cake with yellow beets. And as I felt I needed to follow my Garfield quote in the blog header I promptly decided to make the cake instead. And as a matter of fact I still have 500 grams of yellow beets left, which I can use for something else (soup, beets with chèvre, yellow beet cookies?).

I decided to decrease the sugar amount in the original recipe from 400 gram to 300 gram and I also omitted to pre-boil the beets before grating them as I didn’t want all vitamines to evaporate by first boiling and then baking them. To make the cake look prettier I put some walnuts on top of the chocolate glaze. My husband was confused when I served the cake, beets and chocolate? It is in fact a very good combination as the beets are sweet and make the cake moist, but the cake has a distinct beet flavour and if you don’t like carrot cakes you won’t like this one as the amount of vegetables is high. But if you like those kinds of cakes you’ll definitly like this one.

If you don’t have yellow beets you can substitute them with red ones. The differences (that I know about) are that the yellow ones are sweeter and that they don’t bleed when you slice them. And who doesn’t like the beautiful sunny yellow colour now during winter? The colour is so pretty that it makes you smile when grating the beets.

Grated yellow beets.