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:

Eat Your Veggies Cottage Pie

Long time, no blogging. Though it was loooots of knitting, in the midst of all the chaos typical for moving house-situation. But knitting has to wait a bit, since most of the things are unblocked (perfectionist as I am, the project is a WIP until it has been blocked. I even weave in ends first time after blocking).

To get myself into a blogging modus after such a long hiatus, I’ll start with a recipe, kids- and adult friendly to boot – enter Cottage Pie. There are loads of recipes for it on the internet, in books and everywhere else, but I’d like to share my (highly unique?) version of it, packed with vegetables and pretty light. It was tested today by a 16-months old guy, and the verdict was – ya, Mum, you can do it again some time (well, that’s my free translation anyway).

Cottage pie as I know it is nothing else than a meat sauce covered with mashed potatoes and baked in the oven. Let’s start with the meat sauce:

500 g minced meat (I prefer beef only)

veggies: 1 onion, 2 carrots,1 zucchini,a celery stick

up to 0,5 l vegetable or beef broth

2-3 tbsp tomato puree

I start with sautéing the onion, then add the diced carrots and celery and let them melt a bit together, then tip the zucchini in. Add the meat, broth and tomato puree. Let the sauce boil up, then reduce the heat and leave it simmer gently for half an hour or so. (I use a similar sauce for lasagna too, often with some aubergines as well – yam!)

In the meanwhile, peel 1 kg potatoes and boil them until soft, then mash with a slab of butter and a few spoons of warm milk – just remember it shouldn’t get as creamy as regular mashed potatoes.

Get your oven warm, 180 °C.

Now the assembly: put the meat sauce at the bottom of an ovenproof dish and top with the mashed potatoes (in my case there was a certain mingling of meat and potatoes, but it didn’t spoil anything in the end; it helps to use the back of the spoon here). Pop your creation in the oven for some 20 min – pronto!

Soup for the Soul

Cold weather continues, and I'm happy to contemplate the street from the other side of the window. The cat agrees, too:

But on the positive side, this is a perfect soup weather.  Imagine sitting by the fireplace (a dream of mine, that hasn't come true yet), a pair of woolen hand-knit socks on your feet (I still have to complete the second sock), a bowl of hot steaming soup in front of you... Wait a minute, at least the last thing is doable!

So, for those of you who are freezing as well, here's what I've done:

I've chopped an onion and sauteed it in vegetable oil (I prefer olive oil). In the meanwhile, I've shredded the carrots and cut the sellery.

Then I've added them to the pot with some broth and let them simmer a bit, so that they get slightly softer, but not completely cooked.

I've shredded one large zucchini and cut a bell pepper, and put all that into the pot, to simmer further, until the veggies were done.

That's all! Now cut a chunk of bread, sit down by the fire and savour the steamy goodness...

Buon appetite!

My Creative Space_I'm dreaming of a green summer...

Just to prolong the illusion of summer (we are experiencing below zero temperatures here): simple pasta with cherry tomatoes. Of course, if you are experiencing summer right now (you lucky bastard, who ever you are), it's the perfect dish, as tomatoes are ripe and sweet. If not, be content with anemic ones from the supermarket :)

Anyway, it's an instant gratification cooking. In fact, there's not much actual COOKING involved - you just have to boil water for the pasta, throw it in and try not to forget to take it out in time, to keep it al dente. And while it's getting ready, just cut the tomatoes in half if they are rather big, and leave the tiny baby ones whole. Put a package of ricotta cheese in a bowl, season with salt and pepper, add some spoonfuls of pasta water just to make it a bit more saucy, and mix in the tomatoes. When your pasta is ready, mix it with the sauce and you are ready to savour it! I've used the green fetuccine, for some colour play, but short pasta is actually more convenient to mix here...

Even more creativity is set loose here.

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!