Tarte Tatin ~ French Apple Tart

Finally! How many days have I not gone around and dreamt about trying to make and taste the famous french apple tart better known as 'Tarte Tatin' which appears to be the only cake to be dedicated an own homepage! I have seen it on my google searches and I saw them making it in the norwegian MasterChef, and I always wondered how it could be severe to succeed with something so easy to make. Tarte Tatin is an upside-down tart in which fruit (apples) are caramelized in butter and sugar before the tart is baked with a lid of tart crust or puff pastry on top.

Everything french is so elegant. The people, the language (love it!), their manners, their food, their style, their personalities etc etc, this list could be so long. And not to forget the most important, the french bakery, the french confectionary; a class by itself!
And how can something french not be delicious? I love their sweet eye-candies and wish I could revel in me all those goodies and still keep my shape slim as the petit french women! Well, atleast I wish to create and taste as much as I can of the thousands of treasures the french bakery has to offer.

The story of Tarte Tatin is very interesting as tradition has it that it takes base in 1898 when a tired Stéphanie Tatin manages to almost burn the apples in the pan at l'Hotel Tatin and rescues the situasion by covering the apples with a tart bottom and bake it in the oven for later to turn the pan upside down on a plate. This idea was a great success and harvest apples even today, 110 years later, and is loved everywhere apples are eaten.

I love this apple cake. I love the soft apples which bathes in caramel sauce. And the crunchiness of puff pastry (I cheated a little and used bought puff pastry sheets as I did not have a lot of time, but there is a recipe for the tart crust for those who want to make from scratch). It was a moment of falling in love with it as I was enjoying it warm bite for bite with some vanilla ice cream and black spiced tea. And I had a whole quarter of this cake! I am definitely going to make it often, it goes straight into my 'I-love-recipes'. Je T'aime <3 The next just-have-to-try-it-recipe in my list is french chocolate cake, I can not wait.

 

This recipe is adapted from My French House

Serves 6-8

I n g r e d i e n t s

100 g butter
100 g sugar
1 kg apples
fresh lemon juice

400 g puff pastry (1 sheet of flaky or puff pastry, pre-rolled)

PS! The pan you choose for Tarte Tatin is important as it must be able to withstand cooking on a stove top and in the very hot oven with extremely hot caramelizing sugar. A heavy bottomed seasoned cast-iron pan is preferable (but it is fine with a regular pan as long as you remember to remove the handle before starting since it is going in the oven).

Preheat the oven to 200∞C, 390∞F or gas mark 5. Measure your pan and cut your pastry sheet into a round disc to fit as a lid (a little larger so that you can tuck the edges). Cover the pastry so it doesn’t dry out and put aside for later.


1. Peel the apples and cut into quarters (I cut each apple into eight pieces) removing the core. Brush with lemon juice so they do not brown


2. Melt the butter and sugar together in the pan and slowly cook together until the sugar dissolves


3. Arrange the apple quarters in the sugar mixture in a snug even pattern. Cook over a slow to medium heat for around 20 minutes until the apples are slightly soft and the sugar has begun to caramelize


4. Place the pastry round securely on top of the apples

Bake in the oven on 200C for about 15 to 20 minutes until the pastry is golden brown


* Let cool for 5-10 minutes. Place a serving dish over the pan and flip upside down to release the dessert, so that the pastry is underneath.

Serve warm as it is (sprinkle with icing sugar) or with some vanilla ice cream, creme fraiche or turkish yoghurt!

Apprécier le gâteau

Fried Banana with Crunchy Caramel, Ice Cream & Chocolate Fudge Sauce

Another new composition of an melody with soft and hard notes. A craving sweet tooth and a few ingredients available along with five minutes of your schedule can be conjured up to the greatest dessert you can think of. This dessert is also a result of that.

It is funny to think how some ingredients and commodities can melt together into each other and make the perfect taste that satisfies the need of our tastebuds. No matter whatever, I need my daily intake of something sweet with my evening tea which rounds off my day. I could not really find anything to have with my tea today, but had a few "leftovers" here and there and ofcourse I had to include turkish yoghurt which I am so in love with ever since I had my first taste in this creamy dreamy yoghurt.

This dessert is made by half a banana, turkish yoghurt, one bar of twix chocolate and one chocolate chip cookie. Fried warm bananas are lovely with cold vanilla ice cream and you can make this dessert with ice cream which will be even more great, but I tell you, they have a great chemistry with some cold turkish yoghurt as well (I did not have ice cream so, you take what you have). So what I did was to fry half a banana for five minutes, chopped the chocolate chip cookie, cut the twix bar in small pieces and lined all the ingredients in a dessert bowl.

The soft melting-in-mouth bananas meets the hardness of crunchy cookies and the sweetness of the caramel from the twix bar along with some velvety turkish yoghurt. Along with a cup of lemon tea. So good! Add some chocolate fudge sauce on top of it to complete this dessert.
Mom made some yummy rainbow flavored custard today which I had with dinner.

Makes 4 portions

I n g r e d i e n t s

4 bananas, ripe
4-6 chocolate chip cookies
4-6 twix chocolate bars
150 g turkish or greek yoghurt or vanilla ice cream

Chocolate Fudge Sauce  (get the recipe at the end of page)

1. Peel the bananas, cut in pieces and stir-fry until soft (5 minutes)
2. Chop the chocolate cookies, and cut twix bars in small strips
2. In a large dessert bowl or 4 small bowls, add fried bananas, yoghurt or ice cream, chopped cookies, twix strips and top it all with a good portion of hot chocolate fudge sauce

Serve immediately!

Marzipan Cake with Lemon Fromage

I have been baking marzipan cakes for many years now and a few rare times have I changed the filling. The strawberry and whipped cream filling mixed with vanilla cream is too delicious to be changed, but a change now and then does not hurt. I have never made a fromage before, bascially because I have never used gelatine in any of my cakes and this was my second try with gelatine after the panna cotta challenge with the daring kitchen. Fromage is a cream made of whipped cream and egg nog which is mixed together with gelatine to make it firm.

I made a lemon fromage with squeezed lemon juice and grated rind of lemon. The lemon taste was very strong and my fromage did not get too firm, maybe because I did not manage to use the gelatine in right way. It was a whole new experience of taste with lemon fromage and raspberry jam in marzipan cake, kind of exotic aroma and a little unusual taste for tongues that are used to typical flavors.
 

I decided to not put any effort in decorating the cake as it was for evening tea at home only and the main purpose of making it was a carton full of whipped cream in the fridge and my curiosity of trying out fromage.
I would recommend this cake for spring and summer season as the strong lemon flavor really reminded me of summer.

Basic Sponge Cake Recipe (you may divide recipe in half if you want a smaller cake, use 22 cm spring form)


I n g r e d i e n t s

1 sponge cake
1 dl Raspberry or strawberry jam
0,5 dl milk
1 dl cream
300 g marzipan

Lemon Fromage

5 gelatine sheets (or 2-3 tsp powdered gelatine)
2 egg
4 tbsp sugar
0,5-1 lemon (squeezed juice of)
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp lemon rind, grated
4 dl full cream

1. Let the gelatine sheets in cold water for about 5 minutes
2. Whisk egg and sugar until fluffy (egg nog)
3. Mix squeezed lemon juice and sugar until sugar is dissolved (if using powdered gelatine, mix with 0,5 dl hot water and stir in the lemon juice and sugar mixture)
4. Squeeze water out from the gelatine sheets and mix with lemon juice mixture
5. Whip cream until fluffy and fold in carefully with the egg nog mixture followed by the lemon-gelatine mixture
6. Let the fromage set a slittle until firm


How To

1. Divide the sponge cake into two or three layers
2. Sprinkle with cold milk all over
3. Spread some raspberry jam and add the lemon fromage (in one or two layers)
4. Repeat until all layers are done
5. Whip 1 dl cream until fluffy and add on last layer, covering the sides
6. Roll the marzipan to a thin sheet and cover the cake, trim the edges
7. Decorate as desired
8. Let cool in fridge for about 4-5 hours or preferabely over night

Kladdkaka (Swedish Brownies Cake)

Ever since I came over the famous "Kladdkaka" with swedish origin on google, I have been so excited to try it out. Especially after reading things such as "Sweden's most loved cake" and "the best cake ever" my excitement was in the sky! I googled a lot to dish out the best of the best recipe which I could find and believe me it is not easy to find the "right one" recipe in the huge ocean of recipes out there. But then I decided to try out this recipe from Kladdkaka recept, which is a webpage dedicated to "kladdkakas" only as it had about 600 comments full of positive feedback.

I guess not everyone is aware of what a "kladdkaka" is? Being a very close neighbour of Sweden I did not have any problem guessing it. For those of you who do not know, "kladdkaka" means "smear or mud cake" and the name lives up to the result, because the cake comes out very smeary and mud-like in texture. To be honest this cake is so near fudge brownies.

And I love this cake from the very first bite, or wait, from the very first licking of batter from the bowl! It tastes heavenly, just as brownie batter. And I even think this cake is so much better than my brownies which I love so much, mostly because I love the fudgy texture of this cake. Beside that it tastes 99 % as brownies, which is perfectly good. And it is done in one, two and three. So chocolicious with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or whipped cream, I had it with turkish yoghurt and it was yum! I am so going to make it too often now, atleast three times a week. And I have to make a large portion next time cause as the brownies, these were also gone after 2 minutes and left the rest asking "where is the cake?" (I did cut a large piece and hide it for my evening tea before anyone would get their eyes on it)! What a cake, I love Sweden <3

Makes about 16 pieces

I n g r e d i e n t s

2 egg
2,5 dl sugar
1 dl all-purpose flour
4 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tsp vanilla powder
0,5 tsp salt
100 g butter

(icing sugar for dusting)

Grease a spring form, about 24-26 cm

1. Melt the butter
2. Whisk egg and sugar until fluffy
3. Add flour, cocoa powder, vanilla powder, salt and melted butter
4. Mix carefully (you do not want to mix in too much air, because that will result in a cakey texture)
5. Pour in prepared tin

Bake at 175C at lowest slot for about 15-20 minutes (depending on how muddy you want it)

Let cool, dust heavily with icing sugar using a sieve and serve with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream or thick yoghurt and fruits (kiwi)!

An Apple Cake for the Last Days of Winter

As the winter is coming to it's end with half-melted snow everywhere and a hint of spring in the air, in the middle of March, you would not really make an apple cake, which reminds of the colorful autumn. But I made it. Maybe because I do not really associate apple cake with autumn, or maybe I do not really think you need an excuse to bake something as good as an moist apple cake! No seasonal boundries, no thoughts of apples being typical autumn. What do I need to make an apple cake? Apples ofcourse!

  

Apples in the fridge and there one hour later, a perfectly moist and soft apple cake with marzipan, cinnamon and chopped almonds. What an favorful combination of smells coming from the oven!

I always uses the same recipe when baking apple cake, a recipe that I found in a old norwegian baking book and it is amazing, so I have never thought of trying any other recipe. The marzipan was not included in the recipe, but rather an idea of mine as I was inspired by other apple cake recipes and believe me, when you first have tried with marzipan, you will never make without again.

What I love with apple cake is that it is almost self-made. I mean you put everything in and on the cake before it is baked, and when it comes out of the oven you only have to add a spoonful of whipped cream, vanilla sauce or vanilla ice cream. And there 5 minutes later you can enjoy it with a cup of tea or coffee!

I n g r e d i e n t s

3 eggs

2 dl sugar
3 dl all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
100 g butter

Topping

2-3 apples
1 dl almonds, chopped
2-3 tbsp sugar
1-2 ts cinnamon, ground
100 g marzipan or almond paste, grated
* Grease a deep oblong cake tin, about 20 x 30 cm / 8 x 12 inches OR a deep round cake tin 24cm diameter / 9,5 inches

Start by preparing the topping as it will take a little time!


Topping

1. Peel the apples and cut them into small slices
2. Make a mixture of sugar and cinnamon and coat the apples, let stand while you prepare the cake
`

Cake

1. Melt the butter and leave it to cool
2. Beat egg and sugar together to eggnog (about 3-4 min)
3. Sift flour and baking powder together and add into the eggnog
4. Add the melted and cooled butter and mix until just combined
5. Pour the batter into prepared pan. Grate the marzipan all over the batter. Stick the apples in a row closely to eachother in the cake mixture and sprinkle the liquid from the apples on the top
7. Sprinkle chopped almonds all over the cake


Bake in a moderately pre-heated oven, at 175C / 347F for about 40 minutes (lowest slot) until firm to the touch and the cake pin comes out dry


Enjoy with a spoonful of whipped cream, vanilla sauce or vanilla ice cream!

Arabic Cookies - M'amoul

I love arabic food. I love arabic delights. In fact I love everything sweet from anywhere in world. And I love to explore new and different tastes. When I saw a bowl full of dates in the kitchen cabinet that was almost untouched and I do not think anyone had really bothered to steal much from it, I could not resist to make these lovely arabian cookies - M'amouls - which are small Middle eastern shortbread pastries filled with dates, pistachios or walnuts. These are traditionally formed as round or flat with a wooden form, but as I did not have it, I formed them as balls and used scissors to pinch them all around.

 

This was my first time try ever on these cookies. But I have bited in these crunchy delights before, when our arabian neighbours has sent some of these in the past. I simply loved these small cookies filled with different sweet fillings. The most exciting part is that you never know what kind of filling you can expect when taking the first bite.
M'amouls are usually made with semolina flour mixed with all-purpose flour and few drops of orange blossom water or rose water which gives these cookies a more crisp texture and an exotic flavor. Ofcourse these can be made without semolina and only with flour for those who prefer that, but personally I think the semolina flour gives this extra touch which characterize these cookies. There are used different kind of fillings, and you could fill anything you would like, but typical fillings are dates, pistachios and walnuts as most common. Since I had dates in my hand, I naturally went for the date filling which I blended with ground almonds and toasted, chopped cashew nuts. I had more dough than filling, so I filled rest of the dough with almond macaroon (ground almonds mixed with sugar and eggwhite). The cookie dough recipe is adapted from the arabian cooking webpage DedeMed, and there is actually a video there for most of the recipes which makes it easier to follow them.

Makes about 22-24 small cookies

I n g r e d i e n t s

120 g all-purpose flour
80 g semolina flour
0,5 tsp baking powder
0,6 dl milk
113 g butter, softened (creamy)
0,5 tbsp orange blossom water / rose water / kewra water

1. In a large bowl combine flour, semolina and baking powder, mix well
2. Add creamy butter, milk and orange blossom water (or the one you are using) to the dry ingredients and mix until a dough is formed
3. Chill preferabely overnight or atleast 4 hours in refrigerator

NB! If you want the dough a bit sweet, replace 1-2 tbsp flour with same amount of icing sugar


Filling

250 g dates, pitted
50 g almonds
50-75 g cashew nuts
1 tbsp honey
2 tsp orange blossom water (or other)

1. Boil some water in a sauce pan and put a sieve on top of it
2. Put all the pitted dates on the sieve (they will get the heat from boiling water) and let the water boil until dates become moist and soft and can be mashed up easily
3. Meanwhile, ground the almonds and toast the cahsew nuts in a little butter for few minutes until golden in color
4. Chop roughly the chilled cashew nuts
5. In a bowl, combine the boiled dates, ground almonds, chopped cashew nuts, honey and orange blossom water and mix well (consistency has to be like a really thick puree)


How to

1. Divide the dough into 22-24 small equally sized balls and flatten each of these with a rolling pin until about 5 cm in diameter
2. Add a teaspoon of filling in each of the flattened ball and press all the sides together so that it forms a ball again and the filling remains inside
3. Roll the balls again so that they become smooth
4. If you like, you may use a tweezer or scissor to pinch design on them

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 175C for about 15-20 minutes in the middle of oven until they turn golden on the bottom

Chill preferabely overnight or atleast 4-6 hours (these cookies increases taste and texture when they get to set for some time)

Roll the chilled M'amoul cookies in powdered sugar or icing sugar and serve with tea!

(For other filling ideas, look here)

Real American Brownies

When you really want to treat yourself with something chocolicious, it got to be brownies. Some real fudgy and chewy american brownies! And I do not think there is anything that would be easier to make than some brownies, because they make themselves within half our only. And yes, preparing time is included (if you are fast you can even get finished in 20 minutes!), 5-10 minutes for preparing and 15-20 minutes in the oven. They are so simple to make and are done in two steps only.
Before Christmas holidays I literally baked brownies every single day and they would go with the wind.

What I love the most about brownies is the batter. Maybe even more than baked brownies. Yes, you heard it right. I can not think of a more delicious batter than brownies, well carrot cake batter is pretty good too. I seriously lick the pot with tongue each time and that is the part I love the most while making these goodies. I stand in the kitchen with the bowl on my hand and chocolate all over my mouth, licking like a little kid who has no worries. But this moment lasts only till the bowl is licked ultra clean.
The next best part about making brownies is when they gets out of the oven and have to be cut in pieces. I think I eat half of the brownies while cutting. And the few bites that are left are gone in a second; which means "first come, first served!". The first person to get their eyes on the plate of brownies literally eats all of them in two minutes and later on rest of the people are like "where are the brownies?". Guess how many gets mad on the answer. The wise thing to do is to make a large tray of brownies while you are at it and I really do recommend to double the recipe!

The best thing with this recipe, which I actually found on google on a norwegian website while I was searching for "real american brownies" is that it does not require any hard chocolate. Wonder how many times I have got irritated on all the brownies recipes which calls for chocolate. Seriously, the few times I have chocolate for baking at home is when I buy it thinking I would need and then I just use it on some random stuff. And every time I would need it for brownies, I never have it! So I am so glad this recipe makes it with cocoa powder only.
The texture is perfect, they comes out fudgy, gooey and very choclatey! If you want them more fudgy, you may add a little less flour and if you want them more chewy, you can add a little more flour. Last time I made them, I wanted to try them with some hot fudge sauce and looked for a recipe on google. The sauce came out amazing, I could compare it to the chocolate sauce you get in sundae from Mc Donalds. And guess if I enjoyed my brownies with hot fudge sauce and whipped cream? Actually I wanted ice cream, but did not have at that time, so cream was a good compensation.

I n g r e d i e n t s

2 egg
2,6 dl sugar
1,5 dl all-purpose flour
3 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla powder
100 g butter, melted
Add nuts, fruits, etc. by choice

Grease an baking tray 20 x 20 cm (baking sheet is recommended)

1. Whisk egg and sugar using a whisk by hand (20 seconds)
2. Add flour, cocoa powder, vanilla sugar and melted butter (mix for 30 seconds with a whisk)
3. (Mix in nuts etc.) Pour in prepared tray


Bake at 175C for about 15-25 minutes at the lowest rack. (Time varies from oven to oven, so you might start checking them after 15 minutes)

Sieve icing sugar on the chilled brownies if you like


Chocolate Fudge Sauce


2,4 dl milk
2 tbsp butter
2,4 dl sugar
1-2 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tsp vanilla sugar
2 tbsp all-purpose flour (optional)


1. Combine milk and butter in a saucepan and let the butter melt on medium heat stirring occassionaly
2. Add sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla sugar and flour and let it come to a boil while stirring constantly, let bowl for about 5-10 minutes, still stirring constantly until it thickens
3. Add in a bowl and let cool or use hot
4. Store in an air-tight container in refrigerator (warm it up or use it cold)

A Spicy Carrot Dream..

There have not been any post for a long while now and the reason is that I have been on a long travel since before christamas holidays. Experienced fantastic flavors of turkish cuisine, seen ultra modern Dubai in open air from a big double decker and drove through the lights of Abu Dhabi under dark nightfall.
Now as I am back, there is time to update my blog again. Unfortunately, my laptop crashed and I was not able to save all the thousands of pictures I had filed there, among them all of the photos of my baking.
Anyways, recently I baked all-time favorite spicy, moist carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. This recipe which I found in a norwegian online magazine is amazing and was rated highest by the readers. I can understand why!

I have tested some other carrot cake recipes before, but no cake has ever came out this moist, flavorful and amazing in texture and teste. This recipe is full of lovely spices that gives the special touch to the cake. As you may know, carrot cake become more moist and develops taste and texture when it gets to set over night. Therefore it is a advantage to make it night before and you will not only save time!

                                                   
I n g r e d i e n t s

4 eggs
4 dl sugar
4 dl all-purpose flour
2 tsp cinnamon, ground
2 tsp cardamom, ground
1,5 tsp ginger powder
1,5 tsp muscat nut, ground
2 tsp vanilla sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder (optional)
8 dl (500-600 g) carrots, grated
2 dl oil (sunrose or other neutral)

Grease an baking tray 30 x 40 cm or spring form 26 cm

1. Roughly grate the carrots on a medium sized grater
2. In a medium bowl mix flour, cinnamon powder, cardamom powder, ginger powder, ground muscat nut, vanilla sugar, baking soda and baking powder
3. Whisk eggs and sugar together until a fluffy eggnog forms (2-3 mins)
4. Add the flour mixture and mix for about 30 seconds till corporated
5. Add oil followed by the grated carrots, mix together
6. Pour the batter in baking tray

Bake in a moderately hot oven at 175C for about 40-45 minutes at the lowest rack until firm to the touch (pierce to check if the cake pin comes out clean, if it does, it's ready)


Cream Cheese Frosting

60 g butter
100 g cream cheese, natural
175-200 g icing sugar
2 tsp vanilla sugar
1/2 tbsp lemon juice

1. Mix together butter and cream cheese
2. Add vanilla sugar and icing sugar, mix until there are no lumps and the frosting is smooth
3. Mix in the lemon juice

Let stand in the fridge for a while so that it can set a little and get more firm. The cake has to be chilled throughoutly before putting on the frosting or it may melt.
You may cut the cake in half (if baked in spring form) and put frosting in the middle also. This cream cheese frosting recipe usually holds for an average layer of frosting on the cake, if you want a really thick frosting, you may double the recipe.