Black Forest cake

Black Forest cake, or as it is called in German Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, is one of my favorite cakes. Chocolate, cherries, cream and kirsch are meant to be together! And the kirsch is a must, without it you cannot really call it a Black Forest cake...and the more the better.

I found a recipe at the website of a company selling traditional clothes from Schwarzwald. They also have a detailed pictures of how the cake is put together. It is a great recipe!

Black Forest cake
recipe from Trachten Winkler
chocolate-almond cake
200 g butter
200 g sugar
some vanilla
8 eggs
200 g cake flour
200 g ground almonds
150 g grated dark chocolate
zest of one lemon
2 tsp baking powder
short-crust
100 g powder sugar
200 g butter
1 egg
zest of one lemon and some juice
300 g flour
filling
50 g cherry marmalade
9 tablespoons kirsch (more or less)
8 dl whipping cream
150 g powder sugar
cherry filling
about 500 g fresh cherries or from a jar
about 150 g sugar
about 50 g corn starch
decoration
6 dl whipping cream
100 g powder sugar
150 g dark chocolate, grated
16 fresh cherries

If you can, make the chocolate-almond cake a day before because the next day  it is easier to slices it in three layers.

Preheat oven to 180 C. Line a 26 cm round cake pan with parchment paper on the bottom. In a small bowl put the flour, ground almonds, grated chocolate, lemon zest and baking powder.

In another bowl beat the room-temperature butter, sugar and vanilla until creamy and fluffy. Add room-temperature eggs one buy one until well incorporated. Add the flour mixture and with a spatula slowly mix until well blended. If you fell the mixture is too thick add some milk. Pour in the cake pan and bake for about 40 minutes. Check with a cake tester. Let the cake cool completely. If you are baking the day before, after it has cooled down wrap it in the plastic foil and refrigerate.

Now make the short crust. Beat the sugar and butter, add the egg. When fluffy add flour, lemon juice and zest. Roll out, about 2 cm thick and cut a 26 cm circle. Bake at 180 C degrees about 15 minutes.

If you use fresh pitted cherries for the cherry filling put them in a sauce pan together with the sugar. Cook on a low heat until they have softened and released the juice. In a small cup mix the corn starch and some water, add to the cherries and cook shortly until thick. Let cool.

If you use jar cherries, drain them from the juice. Put the juice in a sauce pan, add sugar and let it boil. Mix the corn starch with some cold water and when the cherry juice in boiling add it. Cook shortly until thick. Take of the heat and add cherries. Let cool.

Assembling the cake
Cut the chocolate almond cake in three layers.  Whip the cream and powder sugar for the filling. Spread the cherry marmalade over the short crust.

Top with one almond-chocolate layer and soak it with 3 tablespoons of kirsch. Spread two rings of cherry filling over the layer. Spread three rings of whipped cream around.

Cover with the second layer of almond-chocolate cake. Soak with 3 tablespoons of kirsch. Spread whipped cream. 

 











Top with the last layer  of almond-chocolate cake, soak with 3 tablespoons of kirsch. Refrigerate the cake for couple of hours or overnight.

Whip the cream and powder sugar for the decoration.Cover the whole cake with whipped cream. Mark the 16 slices with a knife and with a help of pastry bag pipe 16 whipped cream roses. Grate the chocolate and spread on the top and the sides. Top each cream rose with a cherry. Enjoy!

Nanaimo bar

Nanaimo bar is a Canadian cake and I thought it would make a perfect Valentine's cake this year. Olympics have started and Canada is the host. Nanaimo bar is made with chocolate and a cake with chocolate is a must on the Valentine's.

I found the recipe at the website of the City of Nanaimo and I followed the recipe almost to the point. I just did not use as much sugar, 2 dl was sweet enough, and instead of custard powder I used an egg yolk.

The bottom layer is very similar to the sweet salami I have made before. So if you want to reduce amount of butter you can replace it with melted chocolate and milk.

Nanaimo bar
serves 8
recipe from Nanaimo.com
113 gr butter (room temperature)
1/2 dl sugar
5 tbsp cocoa powder
1 egg, beaten
about 150 gr graham cracker crumbs
1 dl finely chopped almonds
2,5 dl shredded coconut
 

113 gr butter (room temperature)
2 dl icing sugar
1/4 vanilla bean
1 egg yolk
2 tbsp + 2 tsp cream

100 gr chocolate
1 tbsp butter

baking dish 17x26 cm

Put the butter, sugar and cacao in a double boiler and let everything melt. Remove from heat, add the beaten egg, mixing constantly, return to the heat until it thickens, about 2 minutes. Add the crumbs, coconut and almond. Mix everything well and press into the baking dish. I also used plastic foil for my ceramic dish. Put in the fridge while you prepare the filling.

Beat butter and icing sugar until well blended, add the egg yolk, seeds of the vanilla bean and as much as milk as you need. You do not want the filling to be runny. Beat until you have light mixture. Spread over bottom layer and return to the fridge until you prepare the chocolate topping.

Melt butter and add chopped chocolate, whisk until everything is smooth and chocolate is melted. Let it cool but not get hard. If the chocolate is too hot it will melt the butter filling. When cool spread over the butter layer and return to the fridge.

Mexican chocolate pudding

When I saw the recipe for Mexican chocolate pudding in Gourmet I had to make it. I love everything about Mexican chocolate, it is too perfect. And this pudding recipe is using almond milk so I was very curious about how it will influence the flavour. And what can I say, excellent influence.

I have changed the recipe just a bit, I used muscovado sugar and less of it, I added more cornstarch and left out the butter completely. I also cooked the pudding the way I always do.

One important thing when it comes to the cinnamon. There are two different cinnamon types, Ceylon and Cassia. I learned this when I went to Mexico for the first time. In Mexico Ceylon cinnamon (right) is used, but in Sweden Cassia (left) is used.

The taste is really different so when you make Swedish cinnamon buns you have to use Cassia and when you make Mexican chocolate you have to use Ceylon. Otherwise they don´t taste as they should.

Mexican chocolate pudding
adapted from Gourmet serves 2
4+1 dl almond milk
3,5 tbsp cornstarch
3 tbsp muscovado sugar
4 tbsp cocoa powder (I used one with 10-12% cocoa butter)
1/2 tsp Ceylon cinnamon powder
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 vanilla bean

Put 4 dl almond milk in a saucepan. Scrape the vanilla bean and add to the milk together with the pod. Put the milk to boil.
In a small bowl mix all dry ingredients, slowly add 1 dl cold almond milk, whisk until everything is smooth. When the almond milk is boiling, take out vanilla pod and remove from heat. Add the cornstarch mixture, whisking all the time. Put back on the heat and and let it boil on low heat until it thickens, couple of minutes. Do not whisk that much as the cornstarch might go thin. Divide between two bowls and let chill.

Amaranth hearts

I made these cute Valentines hearts with white strawberry chocolate and popped amaranth. The chocolate is made by a German company called Vivani and they make amazing organic chocolate. White chocolate with pieces of strawberries was more than perfect for the Valentines hearts. And almost too cute to eat...almost.

100 gr white chocolate, 5 tbsp popped amaranth....melt the chocolate, mix with amaranth and shape.

White chocolate mousse

Very easy, fast and delicious mousse. White chocolate can be replaced with any other chocolate and orange liquor with any other liquor.

White chocolate mousseserves 2
50 gr white chocolate
1 tsp orange liquor
1 egg, separated
1/2 tbsp sugar
tiny bit of salt
couple of drops of lemon juice
3 tbsp fresh cheese (mascarpone, ricotta, quark)
cocoa nibs to decorate with

Melt chocolate and let it cool. Beat the egg white until foamy, add tiny bit of salt and beat until soft peaks. Add lemon juice and beat couple of minutes more. Add sugar and beat until stiff peaks.

Add the egg yolk, orange liquor and cheese to the white chocolate and blend well. Carefully fold in a third of egg whites, then the rest of egg whites. Let it chill in the fridge for an hour. Spoon in the small cups, decorate and serve.

Danube wave

I love food that tells a story, and I believe that this cake is one of them. In German it is called "Donauwelle", which means "Danube wave".

Danube is Europe's second longest river (the longest is Volga river) that runs through 10 countries. Two of these ten countries are German speaking. The cake it self resembles waves and although German Wikipedia claims that there is no connection between this cake and the Danube river I choose to believe that there is a connection.

I believe that once upon a time there was a very creative person who liked to bake and who enjoyed the beauty of the Danube river. One windy day she (he) was sitting on the bed of the Danube, probably under a cherry tree, and the idea for the "Danube wave" cake was born.

This cake is really easy to make and the result is amazing. Chocolate and cherries just cannot be wrong. And then all the waves, wonderful.

The cake batter is a pound cake in two colours, light and dark. I used my brownie baking pan (22x22cm) and thought that pound cake made of 100 gr of each ingredient (sugar 70 gr) would be enough, but I believe next time I will increase to 150 gr of each ingredient. I used only 100 gr butter in the butter cream but next time I will use only custard.

I have also started replacing wheat flour with kamut flour when baking and it really worked excellent in this recipe. Kamut flour is yellowish which makes it look even prettier.

Donauwelle
2 eggs (approx. 110 gr)
100 gr butter
70 gr sugar
100 gr kamut flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tbs cacao powder
300 gr sour cherries in jar

4 dl vanilla custard
100 gr butter

150 gr chocolate
3 tbsp cream

Put the cherries in a sieve. Beat sugar and butter until fluffy, add eggs one at the time, beating well after each egg. Add flour and baking powder and mix very shortly. Divide in two equal parts and add cacao to one part. Mix and if batter is too thick add some milk.

Spread evenly light batter in the pan, spread cacao batter over it. Every 1 cm put one cherry and press down a bit. Bake on 160C for about 25 minutes. Take it out of the oven and let cool completely.

Cream the butter and add vanilla custard, mix well and spread evenly over the cake. Chop the chocolate, heat the cream and add it to the chocolate. Blend well until chocolate is melted. Let it cool a bit in case it is hot so that it doesn't melt the butter cream. Spread on the top of the cake and with a fork make waves.

Waves are best visible if you cut in the middle of a cherry row.

Sweet salami

Here is another dessert with wafer sheets: sweet salami. I still remember very well when I had this dessert for the first time. I was around 10 years old and a cousin of my neighbour made it. I was amazed how cool it looked, I had never seen cake looking like a sausage but made of chocolate and biscuits.

The original recipe is with butter biscuits, chocolate, milk, butter and sometimes nuts. My recipe has no butter, instead I increased the amount of chocolate. I also added some popped amaranth covered with honey. But you can put any kind of biscuits, nuts (chopped, ground), chocolate....

I used one wafer sheet but you can do this cake without it as well. Form salami, let it set over night in the fridge and next day sprinkle with some powdered sugar.

Sweet salami
1 wafer sheet
200 gr chocolate
1,5 dl milk
3 dl popped amaranth
2 dl ground hazelnuts
300 gr crushed amaranth biscuits

Put wafer sheet between two wet tea towels. It needs to get soft so that you can use it as "skin" for the salami.
Crush biscuits and mix with amaranth and hazelnuts. Chop chocolate, heat milk and pour over chocolate, stir until melted. Pour over biscuits and blend well. Let sit for 15 minutes.
The texture should not be too dry or too wet. You should be able to form salami that can hold its shape. If necessary add more dry or wet ingredients.

Put salami at one end of the wafer sheet (rough side up) and role until salami is covered with the wafer sheet. You can also make 2 or 3 thinner salamis if you want. Wrap salami tightly with cling film and put it in the fridge. From time to time turn salami so that it doesn't get too flat.

Blog Quesadillas turns 1 year!

This little blog of mine has turned 1 year! I really have been enjoying blogging about food and all new food-experiences while abroad.

You really can learn a lot about a country and its culture just by visiting food-market or exploring street food. I have tried to do that (and more) and although everything on this blog is experienced through my eyes, I also hope that all you readers have learned and experienced something new as well.

Nevertheless, this 1 year celebration is a great excuse to make a cake! As I am in China right now I just felt I needed to make a cake that has some typical Chinese ingredients, and what is it if not red bean paste.

So I made a mini chocolate cake and I steamed it in my good "old" bamboo-steamer (so Chinese). When done I filled it with red bean paste and Italian meringue mixed with whole and chopped red beans. And the cake was covered with a thick layer of Italian meringue. Happy Birthday Blog Quesadillas!

Chocolate cake with red beans and Italian meringue
1 egg
1 dl + 2 tbsp of sugar
10 gr of butter
30 gr chocolate, divided in 2 equal parts
2 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 dl + 1 tbsp flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
bit of salt

2 egg whites
1 dl sugar
1/2 dl water

1 dl red bean paste
1/2 dl whole red beans

a mini cake pan, 10 cm in diameter

Melt the butter and half of the chocolate, add milk and vanilla. Grate the rest of the chocolate as small as possible. Beat egg and sugar until pale and thick. Add butter mixture. Mix flour, salt and baking powder and add carefully to the egg mixture. Blend in almost all grated chocolate, leave some for the top. Pour the batter in the cake pan, sprinkle some chocolate on the top and steam on high heat for about 15-20 minutes. When it is done it looks like this:

The best thing about steamed cakes is that it very hard to end up with a dry cake. When you bake in oven sometimes a couple of minutes can make a difference, but when steaming you really have to work hard to end up with a dry cake. I like a lot!


To make meringue start with the sugar syrup. Mix water and sugar in a pan and boil until it gets a consistency of a syrup, 2-3 minutes. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form and add slowly hot syrup. Beat until meringue is cool and stiff, at least 10 minutes, by hand.

Easter chocolate eggs

I wasn't looking for a chocolate egg mold, but when I saw it at the store where I bought the moon cake molds I couldn't resist.

I have never made chocolate eggs before, I always thought it looked a bit complicated, but for some reason I thought it was time to do try it out. It was not easy, I guess is one of these things where "practice makes perfect" gives you encouragement. But it was so much worth it, egg mold is here to stay.

The mold is made of hard plastic and gives 9 whole eggs. Each egg half holds 2 tsp of water, so they are just perfect size, not too small not too big. What I did was, I melted chocolate, filled each half with a bit less then 1 tsp and I spread it around by moving the mold. Then I put it in the fridge until chocolate was hard and repeated the coating 3 times more, but with a brush, thought it was easier.

The tricky part was to make nice, flat, thick edges as they are important when you are putting two egg halves together. And to keep egg shells nice and shiny, next time I will wear plastic gloves.

As much as I was excited about the chocolate shells that much I was excited about the filling inside the eggs. After some creative thinking the result was eggs filled with ingredients from 3 different continents and 3 different countries.

Jasmine tea and dark chocolate ganache - tea was discovered in China and is very important in Chinese culture. There are close to 1000 different types of tea but in this chocolate egg I chose jasmine. Jasmine and dark chocolate go so well together. I infused tea with hot cream, strained it and mixed with chocolate to make ganache, wonderful!






Daim bar and milk chocolate ganache - Daim is so Swedish, so Swedish you can find it at IKEA. It is made of crunchy almond bar and covered with milk chocolate. I crushed some of it and mixed with a milk chocolate ganache, love it love it love it...




|




Amaranth and cajeta - cajeta is Mexican syrup that is made of caramelized goats milk...yes goats milk! I am lucky enough to have supply of cajeta and amaranth all year round from Mexico.

 
Green tea and amaranth - this one is a hit! I made white chocolate ganache, added some green tea powder (Chinese, not Japanese matcha) and mixed with some amaranth.

A perfect Valentine's Day cake

This is a cake that has it all: chocolate, hazelnuts and meringue! To share it with the one you love is all you need for a perfect Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's!

Browniebabe

Browniebabe is a wonderful food-blog event founded and hosted by Myriam at Once upon a tart. A babe who can bake an ultimate brownie of the month will get the honour to be a “Browniebabe of the month”.

As the month is August I thought I wanted to bake a summer inspired brownie. Recently I made Cocadas and having Caribbean on my mind I decided that coconut should definitely be one of the ingredients in my brownie.

And for some reason whenever I think of Caribbean I also think of this drink called Coco-Loco. A wonderful coconut-pineapple cocktail, similar to piña colada but better, so you can imagine. So to my recipe I added fresh pineapple as well. And what can I say….. Brownie+August+summer+Caribbean+Coco-Loco = Browniebabe of the month

Coco-Loco Brownie
300 g dark chocolate (at least 65%)
200 g butter
180 g sugar
4 eggs
200 g flour

150 g fresh coconut
1 dl water
0,5 dl sugar
150 g fresh pineapple
2,5 dl milk
1,5 dl sugar
2 tsp corn starch


Start with the Coco-Loco batter. Shred coconut finely. Put 100 g shredded coconut in a saucepan together with 1 dl water and 0,5 dl sugar. Cook for about 30 minutes on a low high-heat until coconut gets transparent and water is gone. In the meantime, cut pineapple in small pieces, the smaller the better. Squeeze out all juice and mix with the cooked coconut.

In another saucepan put 2,5 dl milk and 1,5 dl sugar and cook on a medium high-heat for about 30 minutes. The mixture needs to get thick, a bit thicker than condensed milk. Pour into the coconut-pineapple mixture, add corn starch and blend well. Set aside.

Now make the brownie dough. Melt chocolate and butter together over bain marie. Whip sugar and eggs; add melted chocolate and butter, blend well. Add flour and blend until incorporated.

Pour the batter into a buttered and floured pan (I use cacao instead of flour). The pan should be 20x30 cm. Take a small spoon and “dot” the brownie with small amounts of coco-loco mixture. Bake in preheated oven 200 C for about 20 minutes. When done, let cool and put in the fridge over the night. I really think all chocolate cakes taste better the next day.

Next day roast 50g of shredded coconut, cut the brownie into small pieces, role the sides in the roasted coconut…delicious delicious, simply delicious.

Amaranth

Yet another Mexican obsession of mine…amaranth! This tiny seed is more than perfect. Amaranth has been used by ancient Aztecs and is still used in Mexico. Most commonly candy bars called "Alegría" are made of it. But amaranth can be used in many, many other ways: you can make porridge, you can make flour of it, you can pop it and make sweets or add to your cereal, you can cook it just as you cook quinoa…

For all these reasons I am really fascinated by this little grain and as a plus it is also ultra healthy, gluten-free, vegan, heart-friendly, just name it. And the best thing ever, I can buy it in my local supermarket here in Sweden.

As I first tried Amaranth in an amaranth-chocolate bar I will also start my amaranth-recipe series with it. It is very easy to make it, hardest part being popping amaranth. As the seed is very tiny (poppy seed tiny) is very easy to burn it. It is almost like popping popcorn but without oil, so make sure you have a lid ready.

What I do is the following: first I heat a 15 cm saucepan, it needs to be very hot, and add no more than 1 tablespoon of amaranth. Pop them, shaking the pan all the time, for about 5 seconds, lift from the stove and let finish popping.
The one on the left on the picture above is amaranth that has not been popped and the one in the right is popped one.

Amaranth chocolate bars
100gr chocolate (white, milk, dark)
10 tablespoons popped amaranth (or as much as you like, but not to much as the chocolate needs to hold it together)

Melt chocolate, let it cool a bit, it should not be hot when you stir in amaranth. Stir in amaranth, mix well and shape as you want. Let chill and is ready to serve!