It's been a while since I took part at the Waiter there is something in my ... blog event, organised by Andrew, Johanna and Jeanne. This month's event is hosted by Jeanne, who has chosen the Cucurbitacae family as a theme, or if you want a more poetic title, For the Love of Gourd. I've been featuring quite a few pumpkin recipes recently on my blog - pumpkin and flowering quince jam, pumpkin and ginger jam, pumpkin and nutmeg soup, to name just the last three. But I wanted something more mainstream this time, so I baked a pumpkin and ginger loaf, or a teabread.This pumpkin loaf is somewhat different, as it uses grated raw pumpkin instead of cooked pumpkin purée. It's a slightly modifying recipe from BBC Good Food (November 2002). When I baked it few weeks ago, I had run out of those...
Few weeks ago a friend of mine from Toronto, Melissa, came to visit me. Melissa and I both did our postgraduate degrees in Edinburgh in year 2000, after which she left first to her native South Africa and then moved to Toronto to do her doctorate. She had promised to visit me on several occasions since she left Scotland, and we even managed to meet up at a conference in London at one point. Now, finally, she - and her beautiful 9-month old daughter Natali - came to Estonia for a brief, 8-day visit.And this gave me an opportunity to try some Jewish recipes I had been wanting to try for a while. You see, Melissa is Jewish, who keeps kosher. And she's vegetarian. In this Land of Pork Chops Served with Cheese Sauce, it was easiest for us to eat at home. And one night, I baked us a batch of...
I was in a cookie mode yesterday. Friends of us had invited us over for dinner (thank you, Marika & Tambet!), and we wanted to bring something little and nice and edible along. Browsing through my Estonian recipe site, I came across a Finnish Valio recipe for 'Puolukka-kauracookiet', which sounded perfect, as K's mum keeps us well supplied with lingonberries this autumn (remember the lingonberry and chocolate cake, and Swedish lingonberry cake? You get the picture - we've got loads of these berries).And this cookies were lovely! They made the whole house smell like Christmas - and as it was a beautifully sunny autumn day outside and we were on a way to spend couple of hours sailing on the Tallinn bay, that smell was a good sign of the good times ahead of us..Lingonberry and Oat...
I went on a Stockholm day cruise last week with my friend Melissa and her daughter Natali. Melissa is a friend from my Edinburgh-days, who is now based in Toronto. She spent 9 days in Tallinn, and to give her a small break from my hometown, we popped over to the capital of Sweden for a day. It was lovely, if a bit chilly and wet, and luckily the ferry ride wasn't too bumpy.On a way back to the ferry terminal I picked up two Swedish food magazines, and this Chocolate and Lingonberry Cake in the August issue of Allt of Mat immediately caught my eye. K's mum provides us with lots of lingonberries these days, you see, and although I liked the last week cardamom-scented Swedish lingonberry cake, it's fun to try new recipes. This one was a great hit with K (he had 3 slices on Saturday night...
Remember my recipe for Canadian Apple Pie? Well, it's been one of my most popular recipes - and for a good reason, as it's incredibly tasty. BUT. None of my Canadian friends could recognise the cake, that is to say, they loved the cake, but couldn't confirm its Canadian origin.I'm a bit afraid this Swedish Lingonberry Cake recipe is the same. You see, the recipe is from a Finnish women's weekly magazine, Me Naiset, where it was published in September 2005 and called "Ruotsalainen puolukkakakku" (that's "Swedish lingonberry cake"). But I've got no particular reason to believe it's Swedish, so I apologise beforehand to all my Swedish readers :)As I'm off to a Stockholm day cruise next Monday, I thought it's appropriate to share the recipe with you. It's a bit drier than my usual forest...
How many chocoholics are out there? Hands up, please!? Well, I thought as much. If you like chocolate as much as I do, here's a recipe for you. It's adapted from Sue Lawrence's lovely cookbook "Sue Lawrence's Scottish Kitchen: Over 100 Modern Recipes Using Traditional Ingredients" (UK link/US link), but I've reduced the sugar content by one-fifth with no ill-effect to the texture, but your hips - and tastebuds - will thank you for that, trust me. You'll get a moist and flavoursome chocolate brownie with sweet-tart raspberry spots throughout.Raspberries are one fruit/berry that really thrive in the cool and humid Scottish climate, so various raspberry desserts abound in Scottish cookbooks (think of cranachan, the traditional Scottish oat-raspberry-whisky concoction; more recent and...
Last weekend we managed to buy some really beautiful French apricots at the market. We made a batch of David's Fresh Apricot Ice Cream, and K. made couple of jars of his delicious apricot jam. We still had plenty of apricots left, however, so I decided to make an apricot clafoutis.Well, it's not a traditional French clafoutis. But it looks similar enough, and the idea is very similar, too. Sprinkle some soft fruit in a buttered dish, pour the batter over and bake. The 'Estonian twist' here is the addition of our much-loved 'kohupiim' or curd cheese (sold as 'farmer's cheese' in the US). It gives the batter some body and a nice tangy flavour. You can use ricotta instead, but add an tablespoon or two of sour cream then as well.Apricot 'clafoutis' with farmer's...
Should you still have couple of rhubarb stalks lying around, then here's a simple cake recipe. It's a real classic here in Estonia*. I made this couple of times during May, and will be certainly making it again soon. Although my favourite fruit to use here is rhubarb, it would be just as good with any other seasonal fruit and berries - raspberries, gooseberries, apples - you name it. I've 'spiked it up' with some almond slices, and think it makes all the difference, as the almonds give a nice crunchy texture and lovely flavour to the otherwise very simple cake.If possible, then try to use good free-range organic eggs for this cake - this gives you the prettiest shade of yellow, and a good rise to the cake.Rhubarb Sponge Cake with Almonds(Rabarbribiskviit mandlilaastudega)Serves 6300 g...
Ground elder, you may wonder? Well, I wrote more about that healthy wild green about a year ago (check out my It's a Wild Thing: Hortapita or Greek Pie with Wild Greens post). Last weekend I managed to pick some new season's young ground elder leaves, and tried a recipe for ground elder and vanilla muffins that was published in a local food magazine. I must admit I first thought 'ground elder muffins' are savoury ones, so seeing sugar and vanilla in the list of ingredients suprised me a little. However, I did follow the list of ingredients, changing the proportions and instructions a little, and was extremely surprised with the end result. Should you come across young and bright green ground elder leaves in your garden, you should really try this recipe.Ground Elder and Vanilla...
If yesterday's salted butter caramel and milk chocolate mousse wasn't your cup of tea (maybe you're not into this salted butter caramel thing, or maybe you simply prefer dark chocolate to milk chocolate), then here's another dessert to satisfy your chocolate cravings this week: Tarte au Chocolat. It's very, very dark and intensely chocolatey, with crazy amount of butter and sugar added (with just a spoonful of flour, so if you're eating gluten-free, you could easily substitute gluten-free flour here). I got the recipe from a Finnish recipe leaflet "Jälkiruokaklassikkoja Ranskasta" or "Classic desserts from France" - and it had got rave reviews on my Estonian site, so I decided to try it myself. I'm glad I did - it tasted absolutely wonderful. If yesterday's pud was juvenile, to use...
May I introduce you to our Shrove Tuesday or Lenten buns 2008:Same old recipe, same perfect shape, same excellent flavour, same pretty looks.Eestikeelne vastlakuklite retsept siin.© 2007 Nami-nami foodblog, nami-nami.blogspot.com This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, or at the aforementioned url, the site you are looking at may be guilty of infringing upon terms of...
Another cake I made for my dear K's mother's birthday party last weekend* was this saffron carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. A recipe is from the Swedish Arla site (Saffran- och morotskaka) and although I was a bit heavy-handed with saffron (we've got loads at home, and it's not easy to measure out half a gram when our scales only recognise 2 g increments!), the cake was a success. Moist and bright-coloured, with a wee bit tangy frosting.* We only attended the Saturday party and were surprised to find out that the most famous Estonian composer - probably the only Estonian composer most of you have ever heard of (who also happens to be a classmate of K's mum) - made a surprise appearance at the party on Sunday. If we had only known that before, I would have turned up on Sunday as...
Last weekend I baked no less than four cakes (chocolate buttercream cake with mocha glaze, saffron and carrot cake with cream cheese glaze, Manhattan cheesecake, and chocolate brownies), a cookie sheet full of small potato puff rolls, and prepared a festive salmon dish with lime and mustard. These were all for K's mum's birthday parties on the weekend. We attended just the one on Saturday, but were asked to prepare cakes for the other birthday party session as well:) Of course, I also cooked casual meals for myself and K. (sauerkraut soup with chicken drumsticks for dinner last night, and curd cheese patties with apples for dessert; K. made us these pretty curd cheese pancakes for brunch yesterday. We enjoyed the pancakes with some Cherry Republic's Blue Cherry Preserve - a surprise gift...
K. playing around with gingerbread. See another example of his food styling here. The cookie cutter (do you recognise the Moomin character?) is a gift from Dagmar.I baked a lot of cookies this Christmas - gingerbread cookies, matcha madeleines, sweet mayonnaise cookies, coconut macaroons, and these lovely pale cardamom cookies - to give away as gifts. The recipe is from a Finnish site, and they were called white gingebread cookies, if I remember correctly. The naughty bit is that they don't look like gingerbread cookies - which are supposed to be, of course, dark brown (see the colour contrast on the top photo?) - but they contain a generous doze of cardamom, which gives them a very Christmassy feel. Sneaky, eh?Oh, if you don't have ground cardamom, then seeds from about 20 pods give you...
Häid jõule from me and K!!!Piparkoogid actually translate as pepper cakes, but as spicy Christmas cookies tend to go under the name 'Gingerbread' across the world, I'm sticking to this English name instead. They're a must-have in Estonia. Various newspaper articles and TV programmes compile their "best gingerbread dough in 2007" lists. Mums and dads across the country are rolling and cutting and baking gingerbread cookies with their delighted offsprings. Coffee shops replace the traditional chocolate-with-your-cuppa with piparkook-with-your-cuppa. And those of us with extra time in our hands even make the gingerbread cookie dough.Previously on Nami-nami, I've shown you pictures of stained-glass gingerbread and shared a recipe for gingerbread cookies with almonds. This year I used a...
In every household there comes a time when one has 100 grams of finely shredded sauerkraut left (like after making some boozy sauerkraut) and needs to find a good home for that. Granted, one can just nibble the cabbage shreds (an excellent source of vitamin C). Or one can bake a chocolate cake.Yes, you understood me correctly..When I finally received David's book a few months ago, his version of Maida Heatter's chocolate sauerkraut cake immediately caught my eye. Sauerkraut, you see, is very common in Estonia - there are quite a few sauerkraut recipes on my blog to prove that. However, I had never encountered a cake recipe using sauerkraut before. So when I did end up with some extra sauerkraut and extra time earlier this week (K. had popped over to Finland for the night), I decided to...
I've been making lots of Christmas tiramisu recently (post coming soon), and therefore end up with lots of eggwhites. I've already made meringues, but one can only eat so many airy-crispy egg white cookies. Here's another way to use up those egg whites - Danish coconut macaroons. I must admit that I don't really know what makes these so Danish - it's just I learnt to like these while exchange student in Denmark back in 1992, they're very popular among the Danes (especially during the festive season), and this particular recipe I've been using for years is from the Danish Karolines Køkken site.Note that the bases of these coconut cookies can be dipped into melted dark chocolate - I've never bothered, however. They're exquisite the way they are..Kokosmakroner - Danish Coconut...
Rosemary, you see, doesn't just complement hearty lamb dishes and fruity carrot and orange salads and tender potato focaccia. It's a versatile herb that can also be added to desserts, like this sweet rosemary loaf cake by the original domestic goddess. The recipe is from Nigella's book How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking. I've played with the amount of flour - we do not use self-raising flour here in Estonia, so I've had to add baking powder to the recipe. We really enjoyed the cake, even if the idea of rosemary in sweet baking did sound curious in the beginning. But be not afraid - as Nigella herself says, 'there is something muskily aromatic about [rosemary] against the sweet vanilla egginess of the cake'. Exactly.Nigella suggests you eat this with cold...
Great minds really think alike. Four weeks ago I made these lovely cottage cheese muffins for breakfast, but I didn't have a chance to blog about them until now. And although I do follow Heidi's blog, it was only after making my cottage cheese muffins that I came across the recipe for Sun-dried Tomato Cottage Cheese Muffins over at Heidi's blog.Ideally, of course, I would have wanted to blog about these muffins earlier, but then I was in Budapest, spent a day on the seaside, took part in the Daring Bakers and WTISIM blog events, plus I've been spending time trying to learn how to cook from the real masters. Somehow the whole of November came and passed without blogging about these muffins. Last night I decided that today is the day for the cottage cheese muffin post. Imagine my delight...
Ooops. Not only was I late with this month's Daring Bakers submission, I am also late with my WTISIM entry. Jeanne has - naughtily - chose Topless Tarts as the theme. And I made something similar to my toffee apple tart with cranberries I made in January. Remember the sea-buckthorn sorbet and sea-buckthorn jelly? Well, we have got lots of frozen sea-buckthorn berries in the fridge (courtesy of my grandma), so I decided to try the same recipe, but replacing cranberries with sea-buckthorn berries. Furthermore, I was keen to try out the dried sea-buckthorn powder* I bought recently..Sea-buckthorn and Apple Tart (topless, of course)Serves 8Crust:100 g butter150 g plain/all-purpose flour1 Tbsp sugar2 Tbsp cold waterFilling:4-5 smaller apples, cored and sliceda handful of sea-buckthorn berries7...
This is a story of a price-winning and very popular recipe. LoveSchool's Kelli came up with a recipe for Green Tea Shortcakes, which won a Golden Scoop Award earlier this year. Then Fanny made them in France. Edith in Singapore. And then Mae and Inne in England. And Maddy in the sunny Los Angeles, and Lisa in sunny Sydney. Carlos in Spain made them. Maribel liked them, and Mandy liked them. And now they've been made in Estonia by yours truly. I changed the recipe ever so slightly, using fine caster sugar instead of confectioner's sugar (I simply didn't feel like powdering my own at the moment, especially as the sugar I had was very fine indeed). I also listened to Mae's advice and reduced the temperature a little to make sure my cookies wouldn't brown too quickly. Here's my version -...
One of the first posts on Nami-nami back in July 2005 was about feet-shaped cheesy cookies, sprinkled with caraway, poppy or sesame seeds. The idea was derived from gorgeous Nigella's beautiful book Feast: Food That Celebrates Life. Back then I nicked Nigella's idea, traced down feet-shaped cookie cutters, but used one of my favourite cheese cookie recipes instead of Nigella's recipe. I thought it's time to use my feet-shaped cookie cutters again, and finally test Nigella's original cheesy feet, sorry, cheese cookie recipe.I must admit I prefer my old and trusty cheese cookie recipe, especially the caraway-sprinkled version. But Nigella's recipe yields lovely, crumbly cheese cookies that would be a great nibble, whether feet-shaped or not.Cheesy FeetYields: 20 cookies100 g Cheddar cheese,...
[Pille is off to Budapest for a few days, so K. is using the opportunity to guest-blog again..]Few years ago I took some French language courses in the city of Bordeaux, and opted for accommodation with a local family. I ended up staying with an excellent old-school French hosts: a retired couple Marie-Lucie and her husband Jean-Pierre, who had accommodated over hundred language students over the years.Just before my arrival, the family had accommodated a student from Saudi Arabia, for whom it was the first trip outside his home country. Coming from deeply religious surroundings he couldn’t eat pork or drink wine. Seeing students from all over the world, always joyful Marie-Lucie was used to different cultures. But she also adored cooking and eating traditional and delicious French...
Yes, it's that time of the month again when Daring Bakers strike across the foodblogosphere! And I'm one of them. Since joining the ranks of Daring Bakers I've made Jewish Purist's Bagels, then a fancy Strawberry Mirror Cake, followed by a delicious Milk Chocolate & Caramel Tart a la Eric Kayser, and last month I was baking very comforting Sticky Buns & Cinnamon Buns. This month a lot of Daring Bakers are making Bostini Cream Pies. October challenge was set by Mary of AlpineBerry, and you can find the recipe here. Mary tells you all about the background of Bostini Cream Pies, but apparently it's an adaptation of Boston cream pie (vanilla layer cake with cream and topped with chocolate glaze). Boston cream pie is an American classic - the official state dessert of Massachusetts, no...
Here's my entry for the 10th installment of Waiter, there is something in my ... (WTISIM) foodblogging event, a brainchild of three fabulous British foodbloggers Johanna, Jeanne and Andrew. This month's edition is hosted by Andrew, who has asked us to send in our recipes for LAYERED CAKES. I decided to try meekook or a layered honey cake that is available in most cake shops and is a popular birthday table option. It consists of six thin cake layers and six simple sweetened sour cream layers. Our layers were slightly thicker than we expected them to be, but the taste was exactly right.Enjoy!MEEKOOK aka Estonian Honey Cake*(Meetort)Serves 12-16Source: Koogiraamat (Lia Virkus & Angeelika Kang), 100 Rooga* I have a confession to make. The cake I'm shamelessly submitting to the WTISIM...
When you look at the picture below, then these muffins look a lot like blueberry/bilberry/bog bilberry muffins, don't they? But nope, the berries that lend those dark speckles are not of the Vaccinium genus at all, but Black Chokeberries (Aronia melanocarpa), belonging to the Rosaceae family. It's a popular hedge plant here in Estonia, and because my aunt Vaike has a whole garden hedged off with chokeberry shrubs, a whole basket of ripe black chokeberries landed on my doorstep recently.Chokeberries?? Never heard of them? Well, chokeberries, which look a bit like rowanberries (only purplish-black), are considered functional food or nutraceuticals because of its high anthocyanin content. Those very anthocyanins contribute towards the astringency of the black chokeberries, but also gives...
My dad doesn't eat cakes. He's got a sweet tooth, alright, but he prefers chocolate over baked goods. He's also not into vegetables so much. His favourite meal would probably consist of roasted pork, pickled wild mushrooms, loads of cheese, all drowned with some Estonian beer. So when my parents came for a cup of coffee and a slice of cake last Sunday afternoon, I didn't tell them that I was serving a beetroot cake*. My mum did wonder what were the ruby pink speckles in the cake, but it was only after they had both eaten a slice that I told them it was a beetroot cake.Neither one of them batted an eyelid, and both of them promptly helped themselves to another piece.And I was one happy daughter..* If you like carrot cake (and I do), then you're bound to like this cake (and I did). Beetroot...
I really wanted to save this post for Christmas, as it'd be perfect for the festive season, but wasn't able to. You see, some of you saw the photos in my Flickr stream, and started asking for it, persistently. Being a kind person as I am, I decided that it'd be unfair to let you wait for another 3 months before sharing the recipe..Few years ago an Estonian cookery programme Kaunimaks köögis (channel TV3) featured a recipe for a pear and blue cheese tart. I hadn't seen the programme, but a friend of mine did, liked what see saw, tried the tart at home and sent me the recipe. I waited a few years until I had some lovely pears, excellent blue cheese, and some good puff pastry in hand. After couple of inevitable adaptations (puff pastry for shortcrust one, sliced pears for cubed ones etc) I...
After Jewish Purist's Bagels, a fancy Strawberry Mirror Cake and delicious Milk Chocolate & Caramel Tart a la Eric Kayser, it's time for daring comfort baking. Pip in the City's Marce chose a recipe for Sticky Buns/Cinnamon Rolls from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I've been really busy all September, so I didn't have a chance to make these buns/rolls until today, which was a bit nerve-wrecking. What if the dough won't rise/burn in the oven/collapse in the tin? Luckily, they turned out just well. I'm not intimidated of using fresh yeast in the kitchen, and I've made cinnamon rolls for years (remember this?) Remember, the task of any daring baker is to use a recipe without changes. However, Marce had given us some allowances. I made one portion of dough, and used half...
For weeks, K. has been asking me to check if they already sell Emma Leppermann plums at the market. These are some of the best-loved plums in Estonia - juicy, flavoursome, sweet & tangy, large and pretty, round and yellow-pink (see picture here). (The cultivar was developed by a German gardener W. Leppermann back in 1897, and he named the tree after his wife; if you read Danish, then you can read more here and here:)Last Saturday morning we headed to the market again to stock up on various fruit and vegetables. We were due to visit my parents afterwards, and knowing that their garden has a lot to offer - my mum's got a really green thumb - I asked my mum what any good daughter would: 'Mom, we're coming over for a cup of coffee later. Have you got anything in the garden for us?' She said...
