Not More than That

Sometimes life is just so simple. All you need is yeast, flour, water, and oil. Well, ok, an oven, too. And you get two loaves of wonderfully smelling, delicious, crumb-so-soft bread. Pure and simple. If it only could stay like this forever.
And on my needles: a sweater, sturdy and down-to-earth. Pattern will be following soon.

Sprinkle Cake

This is a cake I made for my son’s second birthday. The base is a simple sponge, there are so many recipes around that it doesn’t make sense to write one here. But what I wanted to be special is the cream. Not an easy task, as I didn’t want the cake to be too heavy and too sweet, and butter cream is oh so typical. I was very pleased by the result, light and still keeps the cake moist. Secret ingredient? Ricotta and banana-cherry filling between the layers!
Here is the recipe:
Ingredients:
2-3 ripe bananas
a handful of cherries without pits, fresh or preserved, I didn’t use that many
30 g powder sugar (yes, that little! but don’t forget the bananas, and preserved cherries add sweetness, too)
500 g ricotta
125 g cream
Beat ricotta with the powder sugar well. Beat the cream and fold carefully into the ricotta/sugar mixture. That easy!
Assembling the cake:
Make a sponge base and cut it in two. Put one sponge layer on a plate. Cut bananas in half lengthwise and put them on the cake in rounds. Distribute the cherries around. Like this:

Cover with cream. Put the second sponge layer and distribute evenly the cream on the top and the sides (the amount was more than enough for everything!)
Enjoy!

For more inspiration head to My Creative Space here. 

My Creative Space_Cottage Cheese Bake

I have several knitting and sewing projects (in progress…), but they all linger in their respective baskets, and are way too unfinished to photograph and write about them. So this time I reside to just browsing all the wonderful projects other crafters share – a highly inspiring activity! In return, I will share a family recipe, passed on to me by my Mum. It’s a bake with cottage cheese as a base, and is very versatile – you can make it either sweet or savory, depending on other ingredients. This was a popular dish at our house when I was a child, and now I make it often for my son. Cottage cheese provides protein, and added fruits or veggies the vitamins – just what mummies are looking for!
Here is my basic recipe: 
500g/18 oz cottage cheese, 3 tbsp sugar (or less, if you are against sugar), 3 eggs, 5 tbsp semolina. Yes, that’s all!
Mix the cottage cheese with sugar, add eggs, better one by one, and finally the semolina. Mix everything well, add raisins, or fresh berries (the picture version was with fresh blueberries, oh so yummy!), or grated apples/carrots – whatever you know you little ones like! Pour everything into a buttered heatproof form and bake at 200°-220°C/390-420F for some 20-30 minutes (sorry about being so approximate, but ovens vary so much, you should see that the top is getting yellow and the edges brown a bit, just like when baking cakes!). Let it cool a bit, cut up and serve!

Don't forget to check all the craftiness here!

Update:
I'm happy to see that someone already wants to try the recipe! There's only one little BUT here: cottage cheese I'm talking about here is of this variety:

Baby Baking

Recently I've got a new thing to mull over in my head, depriving myself of sleep: what to cook for my 11-month old son, so that he gets all the necessary nutrients, vitaminsm protein (30 g per day), carbs, vegetables, fruit... Don't forget fluids, please! And how on earth do I prepare a big batch of soup to freeze in small containers? I mean, preparation per se is not a problem, it's getting the perfect 30 g protein-100 g vegies - 25 g RAW WEIGHT rice/pasta-ratio for a big pot of soup that keeps me awake at night! I think I even dreamed of it later on... I think I should follow Scarlett O'Hara's example and leave thinking about many things until tomorrow.

But yesterday I did some satisfying baking for my little boy. He loves bread, and even though I give him some store-bought bread occasionally, my motherly conscience whispers in a tiny voice about salt and many other bad-for-babies things, concealed inside. I have already baked bread for him before, but it has to be cut in pieces, which involves sharp knives, better to be avoided when the baby is around (do I sound paranoid enough to you?) Finger Food! popped in my mind. And an idea was born. It's very simple, actually: you just take a regular bread dough (I will not go there now), roll it out thinly, cut out circles and put an apple slice on one half. Fold the circle in half, press the edges and bake.

What you get is not just bread, but bread with concealed vitamins :) Mommy's happy.

The apple thingies turned out really delicious and juicy, they made a wonderful  baby breakfast this morning.

My Creative Space_Culinary Patchwork

I think I’ve reached a turning point in my cooking career – I can take a recipe and turn it into something different without feeling the urge to adhere to it completely. And it even tastes good.

All started this weekend, when I got some free radicchio from my MIL. Lots of radicchio it was, and it has to be cooked, as it’s rather bitter for a salad. I had a recipe on hand, too. So off I went today, to buy all the necessary ingredients (listed in the book, that is). And then I added this, and this, and made my own dough, and made a pie out of the whole thing instead of a strudel. It turned out very tasty, slightly bitter, and a nice company to a glass of red wine…

Would you like to know how I did it? Well, first of all, you’ll need a pie crust – store-bought or your own. I’m not very good with pie dough, so I have a go-to recipe that NEVER fails you. I mean it, never. It’s foolproof. Really. You just take 200 g butter and 2 cups of flour (my cups are 250 ml), BUT mixed with baking powder; you cut the butter into the flour, just as with the regular pie crust. And now comes the fun part: you take 250 g cottage cheese (known as topfen  in Austria) and simply mix everything together, with your own bare hands. Perhaps you’ll need some more flour. The good part is that you are allowed to knead the dough a bit more than a pie dough – you have to mix everything well. And then it’s ready to get rolled out and put in the pie form! Out of the above mentioned amount I got a double crust pie.

The filling: actually, it needs some time on the stove, so you’d better start with it before – the dough does not have to rest because of the baking powder. Cut some nice juicy onion in rings and cook it slowly in fragrant oil. Then add radicchio in stripes and let it cook, until it reduces its volume and gets soft. Salt and pepper, of course, and a nutmeg was such a nice addition! Then let your fantasy roam free, I would say. Mine went into the direction of some button mushrooms, cooked together with onion/radicchio mixture, and some ham and cheese in cubes, added at the very end. Then just put the filling into the pie crust (no pre-baking!), cover with the “lid”, cut some holes in it to let the hot air out, and slide into the oven, 225°C, 25-30 min. And then pour a glass of full-bodied red wine and enjoy!

Creativity goes wild here. 

September, 2nd_Berrylicious

This is grand opening post of the new Carpe (Yester)Diem blog!

Amidst my knitting and keeping my baby from falling down from all possible surfaces, I was in a baking mode yesterday (the blessed moments when he was sleeping). I’m trying (hard and not always successful) to stick to some kind of diet, to lose the baby fat, and those buns fit the bill – just with some honey for sweetness and fresh berries, for even more dolce-ness. And they look just as good as they taste!

Here we go (all measurements are in ml here, as it’s a Swedish recipe; conversion from Celsius to Fahrenheit was done on my mobile phone, so please don’t take the numbers too seriously):
50 g yeast (I used dry here)
500 ml milk
50 ml vegetable oil
50 ml honey (use the same measuring cup you’ve just used for oil – honey glides out effortlessly then)
200 ml oats
about 1110 ml flour 
200 ml fresh berries (blueberries, for example)

Warm up the milk to about 40°C/104°F (use your small finger, it should feel the heat already!). In the meanwhile, mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Add oil, honey and berries to the milk and then gradually add the flour mixture. Very often you can need less flour – I’ve noticed how much flour varies even from package to package. The thing is to get the dough that is NOT firm enough to knead with the hands – all you have to be able to do is to mix it with the spoon. Or machine, if you prefer it that way, but it can mash the berries.

Leave the dough for 30 minutes to raise and preheat the oven to 225°C/437°F. Scoop up the dough with a spoon and put it in heaps on the baking sheet (well, you can always strive for a certain bun-likeness). Bake for 12-15 minutes. And then comes the best part – devouring them still hot with a cuppa of your preferred drink and perhaps some butter!

Cookies Day

It takes a cloudy day to produce a stay-at-home Saturday and some cookies production (preceded by their craving). I have never tried this recipe before, but I thought it looked rather healthy (well, as far as cookies can be HEALTHY) – very little sugar and some oatmeal. Well, they can indeed be called healthy – one is more than enough (um, almost), as they are pretty rich, after all, but that makes them all the better for a rainy day. The recipe is from a Swedish book, so all the measures are either in grams or in milliliters – even flour, that’s the usual Swedish way. But for sure you have a measuring cup with milliliters division – good opportunity to use it!
Here’s how I made them:
200 g butter
4 tbsp sugar
150 ml oatmeal
300 ml flour
Mix together butter and sugar, then add the oatmeal and flour. Form the dough into balls and press them slightly with a fork. Bake at 200 ° Celsius for 10 minutes. Enjoy!