Cake #192 - Apple, Halva & Yogurt Cake

Monday Own Recipe - Apple Cake with Greek Yogurt and Pistachio Halva.

Apple Cake with Greek Yogurt and Pistachio Halva

Base
100 g soft butter
100 ml granulated sugar
1 egg
250 ml plain flour
1 tsp baking powder

Filling
3 medium-sized apples, sliced
100 g pistachio halva, crumbed
250 g Greek yogurt
2 eggs
50 ml granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla

1. Preheat the oven to 200C and grease and flour a 22 cm springform cake pan.
2. Beat together butter and sugar.
3. Add egg and mix well, then add flour together with baking powder.
4. Spread batter on the bottom and the sides of the cake pan.
5. Place sliced apples on base.
6. Mix together all ingredients for filling and pour on top of apples.
7. Bake at 200C for about 30 minutes.
8. Let cool before removing from pan.

Sugar Donuts

Saturday Night Sugar Donuts.

Can you eat one without licking sugar off your lips until you are finished...?

Sugar Donuts  (makes about 30)

5 dl lukewarm milk
50 g fresh yeast (or 2 bags / 15 g fast action dry yeast)
100 ml granulated sugar
1 tsp ground cardamom
1 egg
150 g melted butter
about 1 kg plain flour

2 litres oil for deep frying
sugar for coating

1. Dissolve yeast in warm milk.
2. Add sugar, cardamom and egg and mix well.
3. Start adding flour gradually.
4. After you have kneaded in about half of the flour, add melted butter.
5. Knead in more flour until your dough is not sticky any more but still soft. It is better to leave the dough a little too soft than make it too dense so the donuts will be fluffier.
6. Leave the dough to rise in a warm place until double in size, for about half an hour.
7. Divide the dough into 25-30 little balls.
8. To get ring donuts, make a hole in the middle of each ball by stretching the sides
9. Leave the rings to raise for about half an hour.
10. Heat oil in a thick pan (unless you have a deep-fryer) until it is 170-180 C. (I do not have a thermometer so I just check the temperature with a piece of toast - when it takes about a minute for the bread to become golden brown, the temperature is fine).
11. Deep-fry your donuts in oil about 2-3 minutes per side and put on plate covered with kitchen tissue so any extra oil will come off.
12. When the donuts have cooled down, dip them in sugar so that they become fully coated. I usually put sugar in a paper bag (an empty flour bag works great - I always save them for this purpose), then put two or three donuts in the bag together with the sugar and shake well.
13. If you do not eat your donuts the same day, do not coat them with sugar but freeze them right away and coat only after defrosting.

Cake #191 - Alexander Cakes

Sunday Family Favourite - Alexander Cakes, shortbread tray bake with raspberry jam and almond meringue filling.

I have made these before starting my cake challenge and written about them in this blog, too. See recipe and story here.

Cake #190 - Tomato Tarte Tatin

Savoury Saturday Cake - Tarte Tatin with tomatoes, caramelised onion and balsamico.

I have to admit, I used ready-made puff pastry. How disgraceful.

I melted some butter on my *still-fairly-new* cast-iron pan, and caramelised 2 medium-sized onions with the butter. Then I placed 4 thickly sliced tomatoes on top of the onions, sprinkled some balsamico vinegar evenly on the tomatoes and added salt and pepper. On top of the tomatoes I placed a round piece of puff pastry and baked the tarte in 200C for about 20 minutes (until the pastry was golden brown). Up-side-down, some rocket leaves and olive oil and - voilà!

Goes as dinner, evening snack, with afternoon coffee.

Cake #189 - Brookie

Friends First Friday Cake - Brookie.

Brownie + Cookie = Brookie.

It was "Dress in blue day". As blue is the new golden brown, or golden brown the new blue or whatever (remember the story about the dress - which people saw either black&blue or white&gold). Let's just eat chocolate with our friends and forget about dresses [which we won't fit in anyways after enjoying a brookie].

The recipe I used is from here. Instead of using small pans,  I baked the brookie as a cake in a 22cmx22cm square pan in 175C for 30 minutes.

Serve with ice cream or whipped cream. 

A dangerous treat. You cannot eat only one piece.

Cake #188 - Mini Lemon Cakes

Thursday Inspiration - Mini Lemon Cakes.

I found the cute spring-like yellow polka dot cardboard cake tins at Tiger and they are actually oven-proof (up to 200C). The colour inspired me to bake something - lemony!

I used a basic Lemon Drizzle Cake recipe and topped the cakes with a mixture of lemon juice and icing sugar (with a drop of yellow food colouring) and Lemon Meringue Sprinkles.

Nice and fresh little miniature treats.

Cake #187 - Meringue Overload

Wednesday Experiment - Meringue "Overload", spring and St Patrick's Day in my mind.

Meringue baked on thin sponges, filled and decorated with whipped cream, fruit and milk chocolate.

Meringue Overload

Base

250 g butter

200 ml caster sugar

2 tsp vanilla sugar

4 egg yolks

200 ml milk

300 ml plain flour

3 tsp baking powder

Meringue

6 egg whites

400 ml caster sugar

Food colouring(s) of your choice

Filling

300 ml double cream, whipped

2 bananas

Physalis

A can of mixed fruit

Milk chocolate, melted

1. Preheat oven to 175C/350F and line 3 oven trays with baking parchment. 

2. Cream together butter and sugars.

3. Add egg yolks and mix well.

4. Add dry ingredients and milk.

5. Spread dough into three circles about 20cm in diameter on baking parchments.

6. Whip egg whites together with sugar until stiff. Divide meringue mixture into three bowls and add food colouring if you want a multi-coloured cake.

7. Spread egg white mix evenly on top of each base. 

8. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes. 

9. Remove from baking trays and let cool before filling.

10. Fill with whipped cream and fruit and decorate with more fruit and piped milk chocolate.