Cake #218 - Orange Madeleine Cakes

Easter Monday Treat - Petites Madeleines à l’orange.

Madeleine Cakes have become one of my absolute favourite quick treats. They are effortless but still sophisticated and so tasty. This time I spiced the batter with grated orange zest and fresh orange juice.

Orange Madeleine Cakes (makes 24)

2 eggs
100 ml sugar
150 ml plain flour
3/4 ts baking powder
2 tbsp fresh orange juice
2 tsp grated orange rind
75 g butter, melted

1. Preheat oven to 200 C and grease Madeleine moulds.
2. Beat together eggs and sugar.
3. Mix flour with baking powder and add to the egg-sugar mix together with melted butter, orange juice and rind.
4. Fill Madeleine moulds about 3/4 full and bake in 200 C for 8-10 minutes.
5. Remove carefully from moulds and sieve icing sugar on top. Serve fresh

Hot Cross Buns

Traditional Irish Hot Cross Buns.

Recipe is from here and there is a bit of history and tradition explained, too!

Cake #217 - Smoked Salmon Cheesecake

Savoury Easter Feaster - Smoked Salmon Cheesecake.

Smoked Salmon Cheesecake

Base
200 g Finncrisp Original Sour Rye Crisp Bread, ground
100 g butter, melted

Filling
400 g cream cheese
200 g creme fraîche
100 g smoked salmon, finely chopped
1-2 pickled dill cucumbers, finely chopped
lemon pepper, black pepper
6 gelatine leaves
juice of 1 lime
2 egg whites

Garnishing
100 g smoked salmon, lime wedges, fresh dill

1. Mix the breadcrumbs and melted butter together and press firmly on the base of a springform pan covered with baking parchment. Put in the fridge while you make the filling.
2. Soak the gelatine leaves in water for 5 minutes.
3. Mix together cream cheese, creme fraîche, chopped salmon and pickled dill cucumber, and season with pepper to taste.
4. Heat the lime juice together with the gelatine leaves in microwave so that the gelatine leaves melt. Add to the cream cheese mix.
5. Whip 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 three hours until firm.
7. Remove the firm cake from the pan very, very carefully on a serving plate and decorate it with smoked salmon strips, dill, lime wedges, red onion...
8. Serve with salad as appetizer or enjoy with your afternoon coffee or even brunch.

Cake #216 - Ferrero Rocher Cake

Sweet Easter Feaster - Ferrero Rocher Cake with Nutella Cream.

Ferrero Rocher Cake with Nutella Cream

Sponge
175g self-raising flour
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
150g caster sugar
2 large eggs, slightly beaten
150 g butter, melted
150 ml milk
2 tbsp syrup

1. Preheat the oven to 175 C and grease and flour a 22 cm cake pan.
2. Mix together all ingredients and beat well.
3. Pour batter into pan and bake in the oven for about 40 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.

Filling and Garnishing
300 ml fresh cream, whipped
4 tbsp Nutella
1 tsbp sugar

50 g chopped and roasted hazelnuts
Ferrero Rocher Chocolates

To compile
Cut the cool sponge into two halves. Mix together the whipped cream, Nutella and sugar and spread 1/3 on the bottom layer. Place second layer on top. Cover cake with the rest of the Nutella cream. Sprinkle chopped hazelnuts on sides and place Ferrero Rocher chocolates on top.

To make the Happy Easter sign, melt some dark chocolate and pipe the text with white chocolate.

Cakes #214 and #215 - Traditional Easter Cakes

Traditional Easter Cakes.

#214 Kulich
#215 Pasha

Both of these are traditional Easter cakes in Finland and both are Eastern / Russian / Orthodox origin.

There are several recipes and variations to make these and families have often their secret recipes, too.

To make the Kulich, I used this recipe.

For Pasha, see this recipe. Pasha is best when made of quark (I recommend not to use any other cheese!), which is widely available in Ireland, too. Even Tesco has their own brand quark.

Cake #213 - Rhubarb Cake

Friday Treat - Rhubarb Cake.

This was meant to be a Rhurbarb Tarte Tatin. Let's just call it a Rhurbarb Cake as I did not want to flip it up-side-down because it wouldn't have stayed in one piece.

Beautiful new season Irish rhubarbs! Still young so not too sour or bitter. Absolutely yummy and juicy.

Rhubarb Cake

Pastry

400 ml plain flour

200 g butter

200 ml icing sugar

3 egg yolks

Filling

500 g rhubarb

150 ml sugar

100 g butter

1. Preheat the oven to 250 C.

2. Mix flour, cold butter and icing sugar until crumbs. 

3. Add egg yolks and mix well.

4. Form a ball of the dough, wrap it in clingfilm and put in the fridge for at least an hour.

5. Peel and slice the rhubarbs.

6. Caramelise 100 ml of the sugar on a hot pan.

7. Place the rhubarb slices on top of the caramelised sugar, sprinkle the rest of the sugar and the butter on top. 

8. Bake in the oven until the rhubarbs have softened a bit, about 10 minutes.

9. Take the pastry out of the fridge and roll into a circle of the size of your pan. 

10. Place the pastry on top of the rhubarbs and put back into the oven.

11. Turn the heat down to 220 C and bake until golden brown, about 15 minutes.

12. Serve warm with whipped cream.

Macaroons

Wednesday Experiment - Macaroons.

Something spring green for Easter.

There are dozens and dozens recipes for macaroons. I am still looking for the fool-proof one so I am not sharing any recipe in the blog yet. Although I do believe that when you make macaroons, there is a lot of luck involved, too.

This time I made three batches. Using exactly the same recipe and doing everything exactly the same way three times. Still, the first batch turned out just about perfect, the second not quite and for the third everything came out cracked.

If you have a fool-proof recipe, please share it with me!

The fillings were perfect, though. The brown one is half and half melted milk chocolate and cream cheese, the green one is half and half lemon curd and cream cheese with a drop of green gel food colouring.