Cheese Croissants

Right now my baking environment is pretty much out of my comfort zone. I am baking in somebody else's kitchen and the kitchen is surrounded by Scandinavian  heatwave - which means +30 degrees of C during the day and +20 degrees of C during the night! I am baking for a party for about 50 people so I need to be efficient, well-prepared and very profound in planning the cakes and savoury pastries to be served at the party. Time is running fast and so is sweat!

I started my baking marathon with cheese croissants which are now happily in the freezer waiting to be defrosted just before the party. My favourite filling is a combination of blue cheese and ham so I baked one batch of them. For those who are not blue cheese fans, I made another batch filled with strong emmental cheese and chopped ramiro paprikas.

I love the looks of the croissants, they are friendly-looking little pastries and they are fairly easy to make, too. Using fresh yeast is a must for me, it makes the dough more airy and chewy in a good way.

Cheese Croissants (makes about 24 middle-sized ones)

5 dl / 2 cups milk (I use fresh/full fat milk)

50 g fresh yeast (or 2x7g bags of dried yeast)

2 tsp salt

2 tbsp sugar or honey

1 egg

150 g butter

about 1 kg plain flour

Filling(s):

250 g blue cheese and 250 g smoked ham chopped into small cubes

or

250 g grated emmental cheese and 1 ramiro paprika chopped into small cubes  

or

400 g your favourite hard cheese

1 egg for brushing

sesame seeds or poppy seeds for sprinkling

1. Warm up the milk so that is about 40 degrees C.

2. Whip in the yeast, salt, sugar and egg.

3. Start adding flour gradually.

4. Melt the butter and pour it in the dough after you have added about half of the flour.

5. Add more flour until the dough is not sticky any more.

6. Let the dough rise about ½h.

7. Roll half of the dough into a rectangle (about 5 mm thick).

8. Using a pizza cutter, cut out triangles and fill them with your choice of cheese (ham, paprika...)

9. Roll the triangles tightly into croissant shapes.

10. Let the croissants rise for about ½ h.

11. Preheat the oven to 225C / 435F.

12. Brush the risen croissants with egg and sprinkle with seeds of your choice.

13. Bake the croissants in the oven for 12-15 minutes.

14. Enjoy! 

I love croissants with my afternoon coffee. They are excellent party food - try making party-sized ones, mine are always too big for some reason... They are brilliant for brunch. The choices for filling are countless. Even plain butter will do as filling.

[To be honest, I do not know if these should be called croissants. The consistency of the dough is far from the buttery French croissant dough. Cheesehorn does not sound right, either. Investigation needed.]

Yeast loves hot weather...

Risen dough with fillings - blue cheese, Emmental, ramiro paprika and smoked ham.

Dough rolled flat, cut into triangles and filled with blue cheese and smoked ham.

Filled croissants rising on the baking tray.

Croissants are brushed with egg just before baking in the oven.

Croissants in the oven - they are brushed with egg and sprinkled with poppy seeds.

Ready croissants cooling. I sprinkled the ham&blue cheese ones with poppy seeds and the paprika&emmental ones with sesame seeds.

Alexander Pastries

Alexander Pastries have always been one of my favourites to buy at the baker's counter or in a cafe in Finland and, to be honest, I am not sure if I have ever baked them myself until now. These pink treats have existed as long as I remember - and much longer. It is told that the first Alexander Pastries were baked in Finland in the early 19th century and they were named after Alexander I of Russia who was not only the Emperor of Russia but also the first Russian Grand Duke of Finland as well.

In my life, there is (or has been) three great Alexanders. My first Alexander is my late Canadian Grandpa who was a great homebaker. In 1988 when I lived a year in Nelson, B.C. as an exchange student I enjoyed the privilege of eating piles of cookies and scones he made for various bake sales. His peanut butter cookie recipe is one I still frequently use - and will write about it here in the blog sooner or later. 

My second Alexander is my favourite writer Alexander McCall Smith whose Edinburgh -based series The Sunday Philosophy Club and 44 Scotland Street are brilliant and very enjoyable indeed.

My most precious Alexander, however, is my younger son whose middle name is Alexander - after no duke  nor writer but his Canadian Great-Grandpa. It is to be seen if he ever will get into baking but at least he loves each and every cake I make. And sure, if I could choose a future for him, I'd rather see him baking than ruling a country. Or even writing than ruling a country. By baking - or writing - you bring joy to people, by ruling...oh, well. 

Alexander Pastries

(makes about 20)

250 g butter

1,25 dl / ½ cup granulated sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract or 2 tsp vanilla sugar

1 egg yolk

5 dl / 2 cups plain flour

Filling

1 egg white

120 g ground almonds

1 tbsp granulated sugar

200 g raspberry jam

Pink Icing

5 dl / 2 cups icing sugar

3 tbsp lemon juice (add more if too thick)

some red food colour to get the shade of pink you like, I used 3 tsp

Brown Stripes

1 dl / ½ cup icing sugar

a few drops of water

brown food colour, I used ½ tsp

1. Cream butter and sugar together.

2. Add egg yolk and vanilla extract and mix well.

3. Add flour and mix just enough so the batter is smooth.

4. Put the batter in the fridge to rest for ½-1 h.

5. Preheat the oven into 200 degrees C (390 F)

6. After the batter has rested, divide it into two balls. Roll both into 0.5 cm thick rectangles on two separate baking parchments. 

7. Whip the egg white with sugar until stiff and carefully fold in the ground almond.

8. Spread the raspberry jam on one of the rolled batters and on top of that the egg white-almond mixture.

9. Carefully lift the other rolled batter on top of the first one.

10. Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes.

11. Let cool completely and then make the icings.

12. First spread the pink icing evenly on top of the pastry, then pipe the brown stripes  and by using a cocktail stick make the 'wave' patterns.

13. When the icing is set cut the cake into small squares. Mine were about 5cm x 5cm and  I got 20 of them. - Or cut them smaller if to be served with other petit fours.

Hidden Cat Cake

It is time to reveal the secret of my Hidden Cat Cake (and other hidden shapes I have tried and will try using the same technique) - which is not a secret at all. Phew. It is not even my [hiddenwhatever] cake. Dull enough, it is simply this recipe I found from BBC Good Food which is one of the many few food magazines I buy regularly, and the recipe and idea sounded exciting to try. To be honest, it is not that exciting at all because you have to start by baking one boring cake before you can even start with the seriously exciting part. And it takes time to wait for the cakes to cool down, too.

Simply, the idea is to first bake one cake which you use for your desired hidden shape. Then you make another cake batter of different colour and carefully place the cats (or hearts) you stamped out of the first cake tightly in a row in the middle of the second cake batter in the (loaf) pan before baking the final cake in the oven.

Finding compatible shapes and (loaf) pans has been a challenge for me as too often the cookie shape I want to use is too big and the loaf pan I have is too small. (as you can see from the black cat below, there should have been a little more yellow batter around it - the ear tips are not perfect). Sometimes the desired cookie shape cannot be used in a cake like this at all - think about number 8 as a shape, for example. It would be hard to get the holes filled with batter. Not impossible, I guess, but a lot of work. (and no, the eyes of the cat below are not batter, they are yellow icing I piped into the cake when it was baked and cooled down). 

I love this idea a lot and I am going to bake many, many hidden shape cakes! And yes, cat is my favourite shape, but the perfect cat shape is still to be found. Not too big, no sharp angles, has to be easily recognised as a cat unlike....

...this one which was  the first Hidden Cat Cake I made. It hardly looks like a cat, rather a duck, I would say, so I am not using this shape any more. - For the shape batter in this cake I used cocoa powder and a little brown food colour paste.

For St.Patrick's Day I wanted to find a shamrock cookie shape. I needed to get one the very day so I went to my favourite kitchenware shop Stock in Dublin 2. They had huge shamrocks and some middle-sized ones which still looked a tiny bit too big, but the end result was satisfying enough. - To colour the shape batter, I simply used green food colour.

This is my first ever Hidden Heart Cake which I made for Valentine's Day and I followed the original recipe very carefully. I was extremely happy with the end result and it was great to see how amazed the kids were when I started cutting the cake. I had checked how the heart turned out but then I covered the whole cake with chocolate ganache to hide the heart again. 

I have found the magazine's batter recipe excellent for this cake. I am sure you can use other cake batters as well (for example ones with no almond), just make sure the batter is quite tight. If the cake rises a lot and becomes airy the hidden shape will not stay in one piece and/or keep its shape that well.

Hints&Tips

*There will be leftovers from the first cake. Do not throw them away but crumb them and use them as a base for a cheesecake. (depending on the colour - not sure if a cheesecake with bright blue base would look very appealing...)

Chocolate Dream Tree Cake

He was waiting for his lady under a lonely chocolate tree.

She came and he sang her a serenade.

Together they disappeared into the night. The chocolate tree stayed but felt no loneliness any more. 

Quite often when I bake a cake I feel like I am baking a story. Like writers say that at some point their novel starts living a life of their own, I feel that happens to my cakes too. I want to bake a cake but I don't have a recipe or model so I start creating something from scratch. I may be vaguely craving for something like strawberries or chocolate - or like in this case - chocolate mousse. 

So yesterday I thought I would make a chocolate sponge and fill it with chocolate mousse and maybe grate some chocolate on top, simple as that! But when I had the cake 'ready', it looked dull and boring and unambitious. And suddenly I saw a tree full of leaves in front of me and when the tree was there, I heard a cat singing a serenade...

Chocolate Sponge

200 g butter
100 g granulated sugar
100 g golden caster sugar
3 eggs
200 g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
3 tbsp cocoa powder
100 g dark chocolate
2 tbsp milk

1. Heat the oven to 190 degrees C (375 F) and grease and flour (I use dried and ground breadcrumbs) one  a 20 cm round spring form.

2. Mix together the dry ingredients.

3. Melt the chocolate.

3. Cream together butter and sugar.

4. Add eggs and mix well.

5. Add the dry ingredients, milk and melted chocolate.

6. Pour the mixture into the pan.. 

7. Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes until solid in the middle.

8. Let cool completely on a rack.

Chocolate Mousse

150 g dark chocolate

1 egg

2 egg yolks

2 egg whites

2.5 dl / 1 cup double cream

4 gelatine leaves

1. Melt the chocolate.

2. Add one egg and two egg yolks to the melted chocolate and mix well.

3. Soak the gelatine leaves in cold water for 5 minutes.

4. Take two tbsp of the cream and heat it up with the soaked gelatine leaves so that the gelatine leaves melt completely (about 1-2 minutes in the microwave).

5. Whisk the egg whites until stiff.

6. Whip the remaining cream to soft peaks.

7. Mix the chocolate, egg whites and whipped cream carefully together so that the mixture stays airy.

8. The mousse starts setting quickly but you may want to put it the fridge for ½ h if it is too runny for filling the cake.

Decorations

150 g white chocolate

some melted dark chocolate - I used what was left in the bowl when melting the dark chocolate for the mousse, you need it only a little to 'draw' the tree

To compile the cake

1. Cut the sponge into two layers.

2. Put baking parchment in the bottom of the spring form you baked the cake in and place the bottom layer of the cake in the form.

3. Spoon half of the mousse on top of the bottom layer and place then the top layer of the cake carefully on the mousse pressing gently.

4. Spoon the rest of the mousse on top of the cake and put the cake in the fridge to set while you make the decorations.

White chocolate leaves to decorate the cake

Melt the white chocolate and fill a piping bottle or pen with it. Pipe leaves on a baking parchment or silicone mat. I bought recently a transparent silicone mat just for this purpose and find it extremely handy as you can put a pattern template/printout underneath it.

White chocolate is soft so when you have all leaves ready, put them in the freezer for ½ h so they will harden enough and you can remove them safely from the mat.

For the tree I used some dark chocolate to draw the shape. Then, one by one I placed the white chocolate leaves on the branches. This needs to be done quickly as white chocolate starts softening fairly fast. On the other hand, softness is one of the benefits of white chocolate because when you cut the cake it cuts nice and easy where you want and does not crack like dark chocolate does.

For the final touch - and story... I remembered that I had some chocolate cats I had bought at the Sheridans Cheesemongers Food Fair in May. They are made by Celtic Cocoa and are just adorable - and excellent chocolate, too!

Blueberry Caramel Ombre Cake

I am aiming to bake some stylish and a tiny bit fancy cakes for my son's confirmation party which will be held in Finland in a couple of weeks. So far I have baked half a dozen different 'test cakes' and to date this Blueberry Caramel Ombre Cake is the creation I have personally been most satisfied with. In the real celebration cake I may replace the blueberries in the filling with raspberries to give the taste some sharpness but on top I find the blueberries simple and beautiful and also a safe choice in the sense that they do not make a mess, that is, leak juices around them. What comes to the filling, caramel sauce and vanilla creme make a lovely combination. I made them myself but feel free to use ready-made ones to speed up your baking!

Blueberry Caramel Ombre Cake

Sponges

For a tall, festive cake you need two sponges. This recipe is for one sponge but if you have two 23cm cake pans and you can bake the sponges at the same time in the oven, double these amounts - otherwise make one sponge at a time:

200 g soft butter

200 g granulated sugar

4 eggs

200 g self-raising flour

1,5 tsp baking powder

2 tbsp cream or milk

1. Heat the oven to 190 degrees C (375 F) and grease and flour (I use dried and ground breadcrumbs) one or two 28cm round cake pans.

2. Mix together the dry ingredients.

3. Cream together butter and sugar.

4. Add eggs and mix well.

5. Add the dry ingredients and cream or milk.

6. Pour the mixture into the pan / divide equally between two pans. 

7. Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes until solid in the middle.

8. Let cool completely on a rack.

Filling

Caramel Sauce

2.5 dl / 1 cup cream

1.5 dl / 2/3 cup dark brown sugar

1 dl / 1/3 cup golden caster sugar

2 tbsp butter

1. Place cream and sugars into a saucepan over medium heat and stir until sugars have dissolved.

2. When the mixture starts bubbling, lower the heat and keep mixing until it thickens. Usually this takes 10-15 minutes.

3. Add butter and let cool down just a little - the sauce spreads better when still warm.

Vanilla Creme

4 dl / 1½ cups milk

3 tbsp sugar

2 egg yolks

2 tbsp corn flour

3 tsp vanilla sugar or 2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Mix all ingredients together except vanilla in a saucepan.

2. Heat over medium heat until the mixture thickens but does not boil.

3. Let cool down and add vanilla sugar/extract.

Buttercream Icing

200 g butter

400 g icing sugar

1-2 tbps cream and/or any leftover caramel sauce from the filling

Blue and red (or colour of your choice) food colours to make purple

1. Beat the butter and icing sugar in a bowl until soft. 

2. Add cream drop by drop to make sure the mixture does not become too loose.

3. Take 1/3 of the mixture and colour it with red and blue to make your desired purple shade.

Blueberries or other berries or jam of your choice

For this cake I used about 300 g of blueberries

Blueberry (or other) juice to moisten the cake

Decorations

Blueberries or other berries of your choice

Mint leaves

Coloured icing

To compile the cake

1. Cut each sponge in half so you have 4 layers of the cake.

2. Moisten each layer carefully with blueberry juice.

3. Spread 1/3 of the caramel sauce on the bottom layer. If you use jam instead of berries, spread it next. Otherwise spread the vanilla creme on top of the caramel sauce and then the fresh berries.

4. Put the second layer of the cake on top of the first layer and repeat step 3, then do the same with the third layer.

5. Place the top layer on the cake and press gently but firmly so that the cake looks stable and stands straight.

6. Take the coloured buttercream and start spreading it upwards on the sides of the cake with a spatula or small knife until half way of the sides. 

6. Take the rest of the buttercream and first spread it on top of the cake and then on sides until it reaches the coloured buttercream. Where the buttercreams 'meet', mix them very carefully to create an 'ombre' - fading - effect.

7. Decorate the cake with blueberries and mint leaves. I had some leftover coloured buttercream from the sides so I piped it on the cake and plate for a more decorative look.

Nectarine and Brown Butter Tart

The recipe for this yummy and definitely not very light tart was recently published in my favourite Irish Times Magazine which comes out every Saturday. There is usually just a couple of recipes in each magazine but very often they seem to be interesting and inspirational - and suitable for my Saturday agenda - like this one by Domini Kemp. 

Making this tart for the first time, I was following the recipe carefully - only replacing peaches with nectarines as I happened to have nectarines in my fruit basket already. Next time I will probably make some shortcuts, like baking the crust together with the filling from the beginning...

You can find the recipe here: 

http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/food-and-drink/recipes/peach-and-brown-butter-tart-1.1855421

Purr Love

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Tiger Cake (Marble Cake)

Tiger Cake is one of the cakes I have been baking as long as I remember, since I was 10 years old or even younger. Traditionally the dark stripes / marble patterns have been made by adding chocolate to one part of the cake mixture. Nowadays there are many variations, for example one with salty licorice - which I will try as soon as I get hold on proper Finnish salty licorice...

Tiger Cake

300 g butter
4 dl / 1½ cups granulated sugar
4 eggs
6 dl / 2 1/3 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1½ dl / ½ cup cream

100 g dark chocolate
3 tbsp cocoa powder

1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees C (350 F) and grease and flour (I use dried breadcrumbs) a 2-litre fluted ring cake pan.
2. Combine flour and baking powder in a bowl.
3. Cream together butter and sugar.
4. Mix in eggs.
5. Add the dry ingredients together and the cream and mix well.
6. Melt the chocolate. 
7. Take about 1/3 of the cake mixture and fold in the melted chocolate and sieve in the cocoa powder.
8. Fill the cake pan with the plain and chocolate cake mixtures alternately to get the 'tiger stripes'. If you want to create a proper marble effect take a skewer and swirl it around the mixture in the pan.
9. Bake the cake 50-60 minutes in the oven and let cool on a rack before removing from the pan.

Lime Cheesecake

This low-calorie Lime Cheesecake is light and fluffy. Lime gives it a taste of summer and fun. This cake is definitely worth a try! Don't feel guilty if you eat the whole cake at once - as you can always make a new one. If you buy own-brand digestive cookies and cream cheese this treat is an affordable one, too.

Lime Cheesecake

Crust:
150g Digestive cookies, crumbed
75g butter, melted

Filling:
300g Philadelphia Light Cream Cheese (or equivalent, I use quite often more affordable cream cheese brands of Lidl, Tesco or Aldi)
1,5dl / 2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla sugar
6 gelatine leaves
juice of 2 limes
3 egg whites

Decoration:
zest of 1 lime, grated

1. Mix the digestive cookie crumbs and melted butter.  Press the mixture into the bottom of a loose base cake pan, base covered with baking parchment. Let the crust cool and rest in the fridge while you make the filling.
2. Soak the gelatine leaves in cold water for 5 minutes.
3. Mix the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla sugar.
4. Heat up the lime juice and melt the soaked gelatine leaves in the hot juice and pour the smooth liquid into the cheese mixture. Mix well.
5. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them very gently into the cheese mixture trying to keep it ‘airy’.
6. Pour the filling on the crust and chill in the fridge for at least four hours until firm.
7. Remove the firm cake from the pan very, very carefully on a serving plate and decorate it with grated lime zest.
8. Enjoy!

Lemony Peach Cake

Lemony Peachcake by Donna Hay has been one of my favourite recipies for a few years. Like many other favourites, this one was also published in the Irish Times Magazine. Then suddenly the recipe was not available in their archives any more but I was happy to find it and reunite with it at the Donna Hay website!

https://www.donnahay.com.au/recipes/sweets/cakes/lemony-peach-cake

Spicy Banana Cake

Oven mittens and paper napkins from Kilkenny Shop. Design by Ulster Weavers.

This is The Cake you can nearly always find in our house. We keep buying bananas regularly but then not eating them as regularly as we should so we end up having overripe bananas in the fruit basket. And the easíest place to dump them into has become a cake, this cake!

Spicy Banana Cake

150 g soft butter
2 dl / 3/4 cup granulated sugar
0.5 dl / 1/4 cup soft brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
3-4 soft (overripe) bananas, mashed
1 dl / 1/2 cup corn flour
4 dl / 1½ cups plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bread soda
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees C (350 F) and grease and flour (I use dried breadcrumbs) a 1,5-2-litre fluted ring cake pan.
2. Combine flour, baking powder, bread soda and spices in a bowl.
3. Cream together butter and both sugars.
4. Mix in eggs and vanilla extract.
5. Add the dry ingredients together with the mashed bananas and mix well.
6. Pour into the pan and bake about 1 h in 175 degrees C.
7. Let cool completely before cutting into slices.

Optional:
*Sprinkle with icing sugar.
*Enjoy with vanilla ice cream and butterscotch syrup
*Make muffins instead of cake - baking time in 175 C about 20 minutes