TORT CU NUCA / WALNUT CAKE

I love walnuts and walnut desserts. I have found this recipe here on this site GoodFood.ro - Walnut Cake, I have saved it to favourites and I have finally prepared it! It is a simple recipe, although a little time consuming - but it's worth it  - it is delicious!

MANCARICA DE VINETE/ EGG PLANT DISH

Years ago my Mother used to cook a Turkish egg plant dish called Imam Bayildi (there are tens of recipes on the internet). Although I have kept the recipe, I had never prepared it together with my Mother so as to know its "secrets"; thus after my Mother passed away I've never quite managed to make it as good as hers. After a few tries, I gave it up. A year or two ago I was talking with my aunt Mia about that recipe and she said that it resembled her Egg Plant Dish. I am not sure if the ingredients or the preparation method are exactly the same - but the taste is as good as I remember my Mother's Imam Bayildi.

BOSTON CREAM PIE

One of the last recipes I have tried from videojug was this one. I had it saved among favourites for a long time, I just didn't have the time to make it. It is a cake with a delicious vanilla filling and with a lot of chocolate glazing. The first time I had made it, I fully respected the recipe, but it was a lot a lot a lot of glazing - I mean tooo much and tooo liquid. The good part was that the upper part of the sponge, which had no filling over it, was filled with chocolate. Still, since I didn't want to have chocolate icing all over my table, I chose a stiffer glazing the next times I made it. After a couple of tries, this one is the one I chose to stick with.

SNITEL UMPLUT/FILLED SCHNITZEL

I have this recipe from my mother and it was one of her best dishes, though her food was generally delicious, and it was my father's favourite. It is a very savoury dish and it is also one of my favourites. It is not cordon bleu since the meat rolls are boiled and filled with bacon and Swiss cheese - goodies that make an excellent sauce.

FRIPTURA DE CAPRIOARA CU SOS VANATORESC/VENISON ROAST WITH HUNTER'S SAUCE

Ingredients:
2-3 kg venison meat (I used a deer leg/rump)
salt, pepper, oil, smoked lard to lard the meat

Marinade: 1 large carrot, 2 slices of a large celery root, 2 onions, 2-3 bay leaves, 4 large cloves of garlic, some pepper beans, some pimento beans, 50 ml oil, 50 ml vinegar, 200-250 ml wine

Hunter's Sauce: vegetables from the marinade, oil, 1 tbsp flour, 200 ml cream, the juices from the roast

Difficulty: easy

Preparation time: 3h + 2-3 days in the marinade

PAPANASI FIERTI/BOILED CHEESE DUMPLINGS

Never before the saying "Practice makes perfect" suited me more than with these boiled cheese dumplings. I had many other cooking endeavors which were eventually successful - ile flottante (lapte de pasare), crepes, but I feel that only now I fully understand the expression. For my craving Facebook friends, here's the cheese dumplings recipe I've got from my neighbour Simona.

ALUAT DE PIZZA/PIZZA DOUGH

I've been making this pizza dough for at least 10 years. I found it long time ago in a German book with Italian recipes, it worked out and I liked it from the first time so I did not feel the need to try another recipe. The only other variant I've been preparing in time was this thin and crispy dough from Tarte Flambee when I didn't have enough time to let a dough rise or when we were too hungry to wait.

Ingredients:
for a large pizza (4 serves/ the stove tray)
300g flour
1/2 tsp salt
20g fresh yeast (1 package dry yeast)
187ml warm water
2 tbsp olive oil

Other ingredients: olive oil for the tray, flour for the kneading board

Preparation time: 1h15' (including rising time)

Difficulty: low

Method

Sift the flour and the salt into a large bowl. Make a hole in the middle. Add the yeast previously crumbled in 2 tbsp of warm water (you may also add a little sugar). Mix a little flour with the yeast mixture, cover and let it rise until the surface is a little cracked (15 to 20 minutes).

Slowly add 1/8l of warm water and olive oil and knead with the flour until it rises and it doesn't stick to the  bowl (you can knead it with your hands or with the dough hooks of the mixer). Continue kneading until the dough is smooth and soft. Powder the dough with flour, cover and let it rise at room temperature for about 30 minutes. 

Grease the baking tray with oil. Preheat the oven at 220 Celsius degrees. Knead the dough one more time thoroughly. Roll the though on the kneading board sprinkled with flour and put it into the tray. Add the filling and bake for about 20-25 minutes.

If the dough is larger than the tray, I sprinkle some grated cheese and fold the surplus over (Pizza Hut style). First I add pizza sauce to the dough - made cold or cooked and cooled (with tomato paste or mashed tomatoes, finely chopped or blended onion, seasonings, etc.). Then I sprinkle dried oregano and basil and then I add the filling with grated cheese or mozzarella on top, olives, slices of tomatoes etc. Be careful not to add to much moist filling (tomatoes, peppers, onion, mushrooms, especially not directly on dough), otherwise the dough won't cook nicely.

Bon appetit!

Tort Hello Kitty/Hello Kitty Cake

Here I am starting the new year with a children's cake. Every year for my daughters' birthdays I think of something else to invent (please read 'to find on the internet') for their anniversary cakes. I already wrote once about my cakes for children or adults so I am not going to go into details about cakes now. The only thing that I still want to say about it is that there are many cakes which are impressive, beautiful and not very difficult to make. I am not very good on decorating, on the contrary, and still I managed to make some special cakes because I chose simple models. Last December my daughter Emi became 5 and I've been thinking for over a month about what to prepare. She had in mind one of the other cakes I've made for hers or her sister's birthday the years before. But I wanted something new. I can't remember how I came across the Hello Kitty cake, but I thought it would be easy to make and that Emi would love it because she likes Hello Kitty very much. I was inspired on how to ornate the cake here: You tube - Hello Kitty cake .

Ingredients

Sponge: 6 eggs

              6 tbsp water

              2 cups of sugar (measure in a 500ml measuring glass)

              2 cups of flour
              1 package baking powder

Syrup:  150-200 ml water boiled with sugar and rum essence or
             the juice from a can of fruit compote

Filling: 350 ml milk
             1 package vanilla pudding (if you use bourbon vanilla is better because its colour is lighter)
             120 g sugar
             2 white chocolates
             2 egg yolks
             200 g butter

To decorate: 100-150 g marzipan
                      red food colouring
                      1 roll of licorice(lakritz)
                      1 yellow candy
                      3-4 squares of bitter chocolate
                      (you may also need 200 ml of cream + 2 packages of vanilla sugar)

Preparation time: 1-2 hours

Difficulty: medium

Method

Draw or print Hello Kitty's face. Cut it out. Take the butter out of the refrigerator. Melt 4 squares of bitter chocolate on bain-marie or in the microwave. On an greased aluminium foil draw a few ovals for Hello Kitty's eyes. Spread melted chocolate on the drawings and refrigerate. (I have made 6 eyes just to be sure and eventually only two of them were rather equal and usable). 

Sponge

Mix 6 eggs, 6 tbsp of water and 1/2 l sugar very well until they whiten. Add slowly 1/2 l flour and the baking powder. Bake at high heat at first, then when it starts to grow lower it. It is baked in 30-45 minutes - use a wooden skewer to try it. For this cake I greased the stove baking tray with margarine, sprinkled it with flour and I put a baking paper. Since the sponge is thinner than that of a cake baked in a special round cake tray, it may take less to bake. Take the sponge out and let it cool. Cut the sponge into two even rectangles. Put the Hello Kitty face drawing on one rectangle and fix it with drawing pins. Cut it out carefully with a sharp knife (see the video above). Do the same for the second rectangle. 

Filling

Prepare the pudding as indicated on the package using instead of the given quantities 350 ml milk and 100-120 g sugar. In the meantime separate the egg yolks and break the white chocolate into little pieces. When the pudding is done and still hot add the yolk one at a time mixing with the hand mixer and then add slowly the chocolate mixing well. Leave the pudding cool for an hour or so - until it has the same temperature as the butter. Mix the butter with the hand mixer and add the pudding one tbsp at a time until adding it all. 

Put syrup on the cold sponges, but not to much or the second sponge might slip. Put filling in between the two sponges and over the second one and cover the entire cake. If the filling is to yellow, use whipped cream over it to cover the cake. Knead the marzipan mass with a few drops of red food coloring. Roll it out and cut it as a ribbon. Bring the ends of the ribbon to the middle. Shape the middle of the bow from the rest of the marzipan and put it in its place. Put the bow on the cake. Put the chocolate eyes and the yellow candy as the nose, cut the licorice ribbon (lakritz) into six pieces and add the whiskers.

Bon appetit!