Tomato cake, the sweet and spicy type

First point. I've now understood that vegetables do deserve their places in sweet cakes. They make them moist and therefore good. And I understand that before I've even tried beetroot-chocolate cake or chocolate cake with sauerkraut.

Second point. I haven't yet understood why vegetable cakes always hide their flavour behind a heap of spices or chocolate. Would they really be that bad otherwise? I haven't tried a version without them myself, but it seems as though we're just using the vegetables, isn't it? I mean, I'd be insulted, it's like dating a man but begging him to wear a paper bag on his head.

Third point. In case of a tomato flood at your house (I'm looking forward to ours...), this recipe is a great way of smuggling tomatoes into a dish. Just peel fresh tomatoes by scaring them with boiling water until the skin wants to come off by itself.


Spicy tomato cake with curd cheese frosting
(Adapted from Maria Öhrn's 'Tårtor' (Cakes))

100 g butter at room temperature
2 1/2 dl soft brown sugar (I used 2 dl of caster sugar and 1/2 dl of dark syrup instead)
3 eggs
3 dl pureed canned tomatoes (beware, they have to be in their own juice, not marinated)
5 dl flour
1/2 tbsp baking soda
1/2 ml ground nutmeg
2 ml ground cloves
1 tsp cinnamon
100 g walnuts (I used hazelnuts instead - a very tasty adaption!), chopped to pieces

frosting:
400 g curd cheese (cream cheese could be used instead)
2 dl heavy cream
sugar
vanilla
1 1/2 tsp lime juice

1. Beat the soft butter together with the sugar until fluffy.
2. Add eggs one by one and then pureed tomatoes.
3. Mix flour with spices and baking soda, then add to the batter. Add chopped nuts.
4. Grease a 24 cm springform pan and pour the batter into it. Bake at 175C for 40-50 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool completely.
5. Beat the heavy cream and sugar with an electric mixer until whipped, then add curd cheese. Flavour with extra sugar (if needed), vanilla and lime juice.
6. Cut the cake into two and spread the frosting both between the layers and on top. The cake is good served immediately, but it's better after a few hours.
   

It's primarily a spice cake. I tried to trace tomato flavour (thinking of tomato juice), but it was quite hard. I think I noticed a bit of it, but that's as far as my noticing goes; I can't be sure:D

The spice combination kind of gets it and the cake is nicely moist, even if it doesn't look so apparent on the photos. The curd cheese frosting came out really nice and fitting, but I tend to think that sour cream could have been a cooler ingredient here. Even more in harmony with the whole spicy cakey thingy (and it's not that I thought about our family's all-time-favourite tomato salad with sour cream...).

A cheesecake for the minority: Licorice!

Although I'm ill as in really ill right now and almost can't taste a thing, here's a treat I made a month ago. So I TOO could remember what good food tastes like:)

Ohh, licorice.

There's just too little variety in Estonia. Whenever I go to Finland, I know exactly what I'm going to buy. Always the same licorice candy mix from the ship's Tax Free. Then definitely a package of licorice chewing gum. And if I'm lucky - some licorice ice cream, a tube of licorice sauce to bring home or even a licorice flavoured Tupla chocolate.

Nevertheless I've come upon very few recipes using licorice (candies) as an ingredient. I made a licorice cheesecake with gelatin for a friend mad about the candy two years ago, but at last I made my first baked licorice cheesecake that had been developing itself in my head for too long a time.


I didn't tell my parents of the origin of the cake before they had eaten their first bites. The funny thing...they both liked it. Although neither of them belongs to the licorice-loving minority...very very weird indeed. But positively surprising.

Licorice cheesecake with chocolate and lingonberry jam

180 g chocolate cookies
50 g melted butter
100 g licorice candies (regular)
1 dl heavy cream
500 g cream cheese
3 eggs
1/2 dl sugar
vanilla
1 1/2 dl lingonberry jam
50 g grated dark chocolate

1. Crush the cookies into a fine powder and add the butter to make the crust. Grease a springform pan (mine was 27 cm), press the crust onto the bottom and up the sides. Bake at 175C for 10 minutes.
2. Chop the licorice candies into little pieces and combine with the heavy cream in a saucepan. Boil on low until the cream is quite dark (the candies don't have to be dissolved completely).
3. Pour the mixture into a food processor and process until quite smooth.
4. Add cream cheese, eggs, vanilla and sugar. Process until smooth and incorporated well.
5. Warm up the jam (on the stove/in a microwave) and spread on the pre-cooked crust.
6. Pour the filling over the jam and sprinkle the grated chocolate on top.
7. Bake for about 40 minutes more.

The overall impression of the cake is quite chocolate-y (I already hear you shouting 'haha chocolate again - and you said you weren't a chocoholic!'). The flavours of chocolate and licorice suit each other very well and a plus side of the melting-in-your-mouth chocolate coating is also that it covers the grey-ish cheesecake (you see? there's a reason for the chocolate!).

The licorice taste isn't overpowering or anything in the final result, but moderatlely present - that explains why my parents didn't spit their mouthfuls out, but rather asked for more.
I hoped the lingonberry jam would be seen more between the layers, but it kind of melted into the crust. Nevertheless it gives it's slightly bitter accent to the cake.


When in search for licorice recipes on the web, I did notice some of them: Licorice pudding from The Well-Seasoned Cook, Licorice ice cream published in the Courier Mail and Martha Stewart's Black Licorice Creme Brulee Tarts.

Maybe you've got your own to share?
Oh, well, I'm off to tea and napkins...

A rustic take on chocolate brownies

How much do you love chocolate?

(Don't shout! Don't shout! Come on...it was a rhetoric question!)

I've never been a champion at munching chocolate by chunks. Well, I'd like to nibble on some flavoured chocolate or have chocolate omelette for breakfast from time to time, but a cheesecake/apple cake/another good cake will always stand above chocolate cakes in my top 10.

Regular chocolate cakes don't really attract me that much, BUT I'm momentarily sold when I see something different. It has to be different different. It has to confuse my taste buds before I've even read through the recipe. This cake, my darlings, qualified enough to spend time at the back door of my mind for a long time.

It's a brownie recipe that uses barley flour as the only flour. I wouldn't have believed it could work out so well without all the fancy gluten. But it did. It's a cake that bloody could. Barley flour's got my soul now!

Chocolate brownies with barley flour
(Estonian magazine Oma maitse )

200 g butter
150 g dark chocolate
2 dl coarsely chopped walnuts
1 dl dried cranberries or cherries
3 eggs
2 dl sugar
2 dl barley flour

1. Melt butter in a saucepan and add chocolate chunks. Stir over low heat until incorporated well. Remove from heat.
2. Beat the eggs with sugar with an electric mixer until stiff.
3. Add the chocolate mixture, whisking, then add the flour and chopped walnuts and berries (if using cherries, cut them into two). Mix carefully.
4. Bake at once in a greased baking pan at 180 for 20-30 minutes (I used a 24 cm pan).
5. Let cool before serving.

The cake is, essentially, a brownie full of deep chocolate taste, but isn't as smooth as usually, but a bit grainy inside. Barley flour gives it a more crumbly texture and an intense, a bit rustic flavour that suits so well with walnuts. Dried cherries or cranberries add sweetness, but aren't very recognizable on the whole.

I found a most suitable way for completing the taste of the cake by adding some neat slightly flavoured cream.



Cinnamon-vanilla cream topping

1 dl heavy cream
100 g cream cheese
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp sugar
vanilla
pinch of salt

1. Combine cream cheese, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and salt in a bowl, beat with an electric mixer until fluffy.
2. Add heavy cream and beat some more until you reach your desired consistency.

The cream completes the strong flavour of the cake perfectly and creates a fluffy contrast with the dense chocolate brownie. The flavour itself is kind of a shadow of a flavour, but this is the aim here - to let all the rustic delight stand out.

Right now I'd say I love chocolate pretty much!:)

Layered cake with prunes, walnuts and a cream that will cause many 'oohs', 'aahs' and 'I-didn't-know-that-was-comings'.

A position of honour (at least by me) on our kitchen shelf belongs to the book 'Eesti kokkade kokaraamat' which contains recipes composed by 26 Estonian chefs. These range from simpler recipes to Barbeque entrecote with basil marshmallow, ginger-hoisin sauce and roasted tomato seeds (just a sidemark: can you imagine that?).

This cake is adapted from the creation of Maren Rits, the chef of restaurant 'Postipoiss' and is unique for its use of Merevaik, an Estonian creamy processed cheese.

As my springform pan is 27 cm, I only cut the cake into 2 layers, although the recipe said 4 (how small does a pan have to be?). I also reduced the amount of prunes by half as there didn't seem to be much more room for them, but feel free to add as much as you like. And I didn't use muscovado and demerara sugar...but substituted with what I had.

Layered cake with prunes
(adapted from Maren Rits's recipe in 'Eesti Kokkade Kokaraamat")

130 g butter, room temperature
230 g light muscovado (I substituted with 180 g regular sugar + 50 g soft brown sugar)
3 eggs
100 g flour
1 tsp baking powder

400 g prunes (I used 200 g), chopped
100 g walnuts, chopped
2 tbsp demerara sugar (I left out)

200g sweet condensed milk
400 g creamy processed cheese (i.e. Estonian Merevaik)
100 g light syrup

1. Slightly beat the eggs with sugar, add butter and beat with an electric mixer until fluffy.
2. Add flour mixed with baking powder.
3. Bake in a springform pan at 180C for about 25 minutes.
4. Let the cake cool down and cut into layers (2-4) depending on the thickness of the cake.
5. Beat condensed milk, processed cheese and sugar syrup together with an electric mixer until incorporated well.
6. Spread the mixture between layers and on top of the cake, sprinkling prunes, walnuts and demerara sugar on the cream.
7. Let the cake stand overnight, serve on the next day for best results.

Now that's one sweet cake! Although it turned out looking quite different from the photo in the book, we really liked it. The cream tastes more of condensed milk than of the cheese, but the processed cheese definitely gives the cream an intense flavour, the source of which is very hard to detect, and makes it a bit sticky. Between the layers the cream is soft, but on top of the cake it has become thick and looks a bit like sugar icing.

The cake, the cream, the prunes and the nuts - there are so different textures together in every bite that it's just pure pleasure! With only 200 g of prunes there was a piece of them in almost every bite and that was enough for us. The overall sweetness (quite overwhelming!) is counterbalanced only by the slightly bitter walnuts. I didn't sprinkle any sugar between the layers - the cake certainly does not need more sweetness, but I believe 2 tbsp of demerara sugar would rather serve as a flavour nuance and crunchy bits in a cake that is generally very soft.

For a drink alongside the cake I'd recommend cold milk. I guess strong coffee could work as well (not that I ever drink it, of course!).

Hazelnut cake with curd cheese and black tea cream : My layered cake dream just came true

I've kept my promise.
I'VE KEPT MY PROMISE!

Who would have guessed? I made this yum curd cheese mousse with black tea in late August and promised to make a layered hazelnut cake with black tea egg-buttercream filling. And...well...I almost kept it. That's a start, right?:)

Maria Öhrn is a fabulous Swedish cookbook author. I browsed through her 'Tårtor' (or 'Tordid' in Estonian, I don't know if it's been translated to English) in a bookstore, said some kind words about it and ended up getting two of these books for my birthday.

Woosh.
Better 2 than none, right? Anyway, although the book contains only about 30 recipes, they are all so very different and most of them have this nice twist to them. I love twists. I could eat twists every day. For this layered cake I used Maria's recipe for hazelnut cake (originally paired with canned pears and Nutella!)


Hazelnut cake with curd cheese and black tea cream
(cake base recipe from Maria Öhrn's 'Tårtor' (Cakes))

200 g hazelnuts
1 dl potato starch
1 tsp baking powder
1 ml salt
6 egg yolks
6 egg whites
2 dl sugar
2 tbsp milk
1 batch of curd cheese mousse with black tea
for decorating: black tea glazed apples and caramelized hazelnuts

1. Grind hazelnuts well using a food processor or a coffee grinder
2. Mix hazelnut flour with potato starch, baking powder and salt.
3. In a clean and dry bowl, beat the egg whites with an electric mixer until stiff peaks form.
4. Beat the yolks slightly with sugar using a whisk, add dry ingredients and milk to the mixture
5. Gradually add the egg white.
6. Pour the batter into a greased 24 cm springform pan. Bake at 175C for about 45 minutes (it took me only about 35). Let the cake cool completely
7. Cut the cake into two layers and spread the curd cheese mousse between them and on the top and the sides (Use quite much of it between the layers). Chill at least for a couple of hours before serving.
   
8. If you wish, decorate with black tea glazed apples and caramelized hazelnuts, setting the apples in the center of the cake and the nuts along the sides. This can be done either before or after chilling the cake.

Black tea glazed apples
(adapted from Epicurious)

2 smaller apples
1 dl sugar
2 teabags of black tea
powdered sugar

1. Combine sugar with 2 dl of water in a saucepan and add teabags.
2. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring until sugar dissolves, reduce heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes.
3. Meanwhile peel the apples, slice both into 8 wedges and cut out the cores.
4. Remove teabags from the syrup and add apple wedges. Simmer at low heat for about 15 minutes.
5. With a slotted spoon, transfer the apples onto a rack (used in the oven) set over a baking tray and drain them for 10 minutes.
6. Preheat your oven's grill function. Then sprinkle the apple wedges with some powdered sugar and put both the rack and the baking tray into the oven (you need the tray so that the liquid that drips from the apples doesn't stick to the bottom of your oven). Grill for 3-5 minutes. Let cool.

Caramelized hazelnuts

1 1/2 dl hazelnuts
2 tbsp powdered sugar
a pinch of salt

1. Use unpeeled nuts for a rustic effect or peel them. To do that, just roast them on a dry skillet for some time and then rub the peels of with the help of a kitchen towel.
2. Combine all three ingredients on a pan over moderate heat.
3. When sugar starts to melt, reduce heat to low and stir the nuts constantly until they are covered with caramelized sugar
4. Pour the nuts onto a piece of foil in a single layer and cool.

My expectations were sky-high, because OF COURSE I'd tried bits and pieces of the cake when I cut it into 2 layers and it was, even at that moment, moist and rich in hazelnut flavour. I love that cookbook. In the end, it worked out really well for me, the flavours melted into each other and each bite was moist and had the sensational taste of 'I did it'. The flavours of black tea and hazelnut are both strong and I have a hunch there's something similar to them. I got the permission of making the cake again. Honoured, really, I'm honoured:D

I love how the decorations came out. The apples are really into tea, I'd say, and could make a great dessert by their own. Not peeling the hazelnuts was also a good choice, for this rustic appearance is perfect for an autumn-y cake. And if this cake doesn't say autumn then they're certainly is no autumn outside.

And I'd eat this cake every time somebody brings a store-bought obviously &#"@! vegetable fat cake with &#"@! vegetable fat cream to a family gathering. And I really don't care about good will if the cake is really lousy.
This cake isn't. Hah.

A rainbow of curd cheese

Now that is one wicked cake.

Not in a bad way, but in the best of ways.

I discovered the idea of a rainbow-coloured cheesecake at Slashfood, where there's a recipe for Tie-dyed red velvet cheesecake, a huge hit at Walt Disney's Pop Century Resort in Florida. That's some serious Disney dream food porn, I tell you.

So I took the idea and altered one of my favourite curd cheese cakes for my nephew's second birthday. It's really really fun for children to take part in making this cake - my three-year-old niece absolutely loved splashing mixtures of different colour onto the crust and basically never stopped saying 'that cake is so lovely', adding 'we never make this cake at home' from time to time...

Rainbow-coloured curd cheese cake

(moderated from Pirukaraamat, serves 8)

Crust:
3 1/2 dl flour
4 tbsp melted butter
1 tsp baking powder
2 eggyolks
2 tbsp lemon juice
2-3 tbsp water
1 tbsp sugar
pinch of salt

Filling:
3 dl curd cheese
2 tbsp flour
2 tbsp light cream
3 eggyolks
2 dl sugar
2 1/2 dl sour cream
1 tbsp melted butter
1/2 tsp vanilla sugar
food colouring (5 different colours is good. So is less. So is more. You can also use one color in different amounts for different tones. Unsweetened cocoa powder serves as brown food colouring.)
(Chocolate streussels)

1. Mix flour with baking powder.
2. Add butter, yolks, sugar, salt and the mixture of lemon juice and water.
3. Press the dough onto the bottom and edges of a greased 24 cm pie mold / springform pan.
4. Mix together curd cheese, vanilla sugar, flour and light cream.
5. Beat yolks with sugar using an electric mixer, add butter and then add the mixture of them to curd cheese.
6. Divide the mixture between different bowls and add a different food colouring to each bowl.
7. Now start adding colourful splashes or stripes or drops or patches of whatever shape and size you like onto the crust. Try not to mix up the colours - you don't want a weird brownish cake, really. You can make interesting shapes as the last layer, write something or even draw a picture if you happen to be a professional artist. If you want, sprinkle with some chocolate streussels.
   
8. Bake at 175C for about 45 minutes
9. Let the cake cool completely before serving and cut it with a sharp knife. If the sides of the slices don't retain clear colours, try holding the knife in hot water before cutting a slice.

The cake is very creamy from the yolks and sour cream. It's sweet, it's good. Unfortunately I didn't have very interesting colours, but the splashing game is worth playing even when there are only two colours - kids love making it and kids for sure point their fingers towards the 'colourful cake' when they're asked if they're still hungry.

There are - of course - certain aspects...

When I made the cake together with my niece, it definitely took more time and the colour spots kind of flattened - resulting in a not that wonderful cross section of a slice. I tried making a small cake with batter of about the same thickness a week before and got this - looks better?

And another thing - could this amount of food colouring be a problem? I'm not a chemistry expert, but this stuff is not natural... This scared me a little - red spots on the kids' faces caused by me - not good! Luckily no red spots have been discovered so far and no moms have yelled at me.
But that's the only problem I can think of.

A tricolor cake for patriots of Estonia

Either thinking about Estonia's recent experiences during street riots or Eurovision song contest - the time's never wrong to think about my home country while cooking. No it's not going to be about sauerkraut in the middle of may! But who cares about the weather, one's mood or current prime minister - there's always room for sweet bites.

My idea was to make a flag cake. A simple, yet...special. Different sponge cake recipes can be used here, but I preferred to make one without eggyolks to maintain the white colour (which I...almost did). The amount of batter I made would have never fitted into my cake mold, so I reduced the recipe to 2/3. To keep it simple.


Estonian flag cake

120 g soft butter
200 g sugar
290 g flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/5 tsp salt
1 1/2 dl milk
2 eggwhites
vanilla
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
blue food colouring

1. Beat together butter and sugar
2. Mix flour with baking powder and salt. Add the mixture, in turn with milk, to butter until smooth. Add vanilla.
3.Beat the eggwhites stiff and gently mix them into the batter mixture (first mix only some of it to make the batter more fluffy).
4. Divide the batter into three equal parts
5. Grease a loaf pan and pour in 1/3 of the batter. Bake in a middle osition for about 10 minutes at 180C.
6. Add cocoa powder to one part of the batter and pour it onto the first layer. Bake for another 10 minutes.
7. Add blue food colouring to the third part of dough and after pouring it onto the cake, bake for additional 30 minutes.



The taste of the sponge cake is mildly sweet, cocoa gives the middle stripe a strong flavour. The crust is quite hard, so it's actually better to eat the cake using one's hands. Leave your spoon behind! I'd add vanilla sauce or ice cream. Oh yes I would.

But the visual effect kicks ass. It caught my eye every time I passed the kitchen counter (Which I do and do and do and do) and would catch the guests' eyes even more when served as dessert at a party. OK, so these arent' the REAL flag colours...but the cake is blue-black-and-white enough to wait for the Independence Day to come again.

SHF#30 - Vanilla flowers over cherry sauce

I didn't get around any edible flowers for Sugar High Friday#30 Flower Power hosted by Monisha of Coconut Chutney(a really lovely blog as I've discovered recently). So I decided to just make one. It's the simplest cake - the simplest-simplest cake turned into what's a surprising dessert. It's what you have in your fridge and in your pantry - thrown together. And noone will notice you didn't have to go through a three hour shopping trip to find ingredients for a spectacular extravagant dish. Oh no. Slice-slice-slice-slice and place-place-place-place. Fantasy might just save some money to go shopping and buy...a special treat for yourself. I know, It's hard to believe I'm that selfish. But wouldn't you want to be too? Now don't go shaking your head!


Simple mix-together vanilla cake

130 g flour
200 g butter, melted
4 eggs
2 dl milk
90 g sugar
vanilla
salt

1. Beat the eggs with sugar until fluffy.
2. Add melted butter, then milk and flour, also some vanilla and a pinch of salt.
3. Pour into desired greased baking pan and bake at 170C for about 50 minutes (a toothpick has to come out clean!).
4. For serving - use some coating, jam, sauce or ice cream or cut into slices to serve in a dessert.


Cherry and hazelnut sweet yoghurt sauce

3 dl unflavoured yoghurt
2 tbsp sugar
120 g cherries/morellos (may be frozen)
120 g hazelnuts
some ground cardamom

1. Chop and roast the nuts (I also peeled them first - it's quite easy to use the same technique that's used with almonds: put the nuts into boiling water for about half a minute, cool under cold water and peel)
2. Mix everything together. If using fresh berries, cut them into halves. I used frozen ones and just slightly pressed them with the back of a spoon when mixing to help spread the flavour.

To assembling the dessert now. Spread some sauce on the plates. Cut the cake into slices with desired size (the cake should be cooled before that) and assemble them so that they form the shape of a flower. Put a cherry in the centre and sprinkle with some powdered sugar. That's it!


The cake in its softness, richness (look (or rather don't) at the amount of butter!) and simplicity brings the flavour of vanilla out well. It does not keep very well and is best if eaten the same day it's made. The sauce adds the missing sour note and surprisingly there are a lot more crunchy nuts under the flower anyone could've guessed.
Cake has never been looked as a part of some kind of mixed dessert at our house. The best part (yes, the best part) is that if its sliced, there seems to be a lot more of it on the plate too, even if there isn't. Now that's eating advice!

Poppy addicts! You wouldn't want to get caught after eating this cake.

Many drug tests would actually turn out positive after eating cake that's got poppy seeds in it. Even after eating one slice. And even if the test is done two days later. So imagine - this cake was my lunch on Thursday or rather quite a lot of this cake. Must I feel guilty now? I did read about a baker who ate 2 litres of tea made of poppy seeds every day (made from 4 kg of seeds) and that didn't end well for him. If the World Wide Web says so...it must be true. But please let me introduce my guilty pleasure before I promise never to go near poppy seeds again.


I had this craving for poppy seeds actually (already sounding like addiction, uh?) and tried to find a recipe that would have at least a whole pile of them in it. Well I didn't (or are these maybe illegal?). Had to come up with everything all by myself again! It's a warning - this cake has a lot of poppy seeds. I'm not talking about drug tests anymore, I'm talking about taste and if you don't like the taste of poppy seeds, you shouldn't read any further.


Poppy seed cake with curd cheese

400 g curd cheese
300 g unflavoured yoghurt
2 tbsp semolina
3 eggs
1 1/2 dl + 3 tbsp sugar
100 g poppy seeds (ground)
1/2 tbsp lemon juice
vanilla

1. If you have ground poppy seeds already, there's no problem. If not, grind them - I used a coffee grinder for that.
2. Mix together curd cheese, yoghurt, 1 1/2 dl sugar, vanilla, lemon juice and semolina. Add eggs one by one.
3. Pour 1/3 of the mixture into another bowl and mix with ground poppy seeds and additional 3 tbsp sugar.
4. Cover the bottom of a greased baking mold with the poppy seed mixture and then pour the curd cheese mixture over it. Bake at 175C for about 1 hour.
5. If you're patient, serve the cake when it's completely cooled or even on the next day. But eating it warm from the oven is good too, although I'd recommend being patient.



As I said - a lot of poppy in the taste. My mother complained about it being a bit too bitter, but in my opinion it wasn't. At all. There's a slight taste of lemon and the cake is really moist, especially on the next day (which would explain me having it for lunch on Thursday). The quantity of poppy seeds may be reduced, the quantity of lemon juice raised - but that's already a question of taste. When served warm, I'd pour some cold milk over it or serve with ice cream.

Actually I'd promise to go near poppy seeds again and again. It's the taste, not the opium.

Green tea cake - not really a desperate cry for a healthier dessert

Isn't it just awful? I mean having green tea cake at home. There's this opportunity that I could decide having some slices of cake instead of a cup of hot tea. Oh I hate these I'm-really-healthy not-so-healthy-at-all dishes. It's like fitness cereals - the more you eat, the better for you. Well...no. More cake always equals more cake. This green tea cake although, if you wish, is a healthy cake. Say it to yourself until you believe it.


The cake is good served with raspberries or raspberry sauce when it's still warm. When the cake had cooled, I topped it with some unflavoured cream cheese and served with raspberries. The cream cheese could also be flavoured with lemon or lime. I used green tea with mint in the cake and it was a really good choice. I recommend it, I really do. Although other flavourings would be nice too. Jasmine green tea maybe?


Green tea cake with cottage cheese

170 g ground graham cracker cookies
2 tbsp melted butter
350 g cottage cheese
200 g sour cream
150 g sugar
4 eggs
vanilla
2 1/2 tsp ground green tea (with mint)
1 tbsp flour

1. Mix the ground cookies with butter and press the mixture otno the bottom of a greased springform pan.
2. Blend cottage cheese and sour cream so you have a really smooth mixture, add sugar and flour, mix in eggs one by one. Finally add vanilla and green tea. Pour the batter into the pan.
3. Bake at 170C for 50-60 minutes.
4. Serve warm or chilled.



The green tea flavour comes out just nicely and mint adds a refreshing accent. I'm sorry, but this cake does make me use the evil word interesting. It has an interesting taste. I imagine little round green tea cakes, topped with what looks like a small hill of raspberries. I guess drinking tea with it would be a sin already?

Sour milk cake goes 'yum'

Although I managed to really burn my finger while taking the cake out of the oven, I forgive it. Well the cake didn't make me run desperately around in the kitchen looking for ice spray, I did. But my finger's alive and so is the cake. Double luck or what?
My mom recently nagged at me for not having any ordinary cake recipes. Any normal ones. So I had a use-this-sour-milk-from-the-fridge mission and know what? I had a recipe. Well, almost.


The inspiration came from the Estonian cooking magazine Oma Maitse. I substituted sour cream with sour milk and used frozen rhubarb and raspberries instead of sliced rhubarb. I also reduced the quantity to 2/3 and did some nice sugar tricks. I believe my mom's going to adopt the recipe now and next time I'd really like to use more topping on the cake. Not twice as much, but definitely more! I'll also chop the nuts into smaller bits (and maybe they won't do a disappearing trick into the cake).


Sour milk cake with raspberries and rhubarb

60 g butter at room temperature
60 g powdered sugar
60 g chopped nuts (hazelnuts, walnuts)
1 tsp cinnamon
90 g soft brown sugar
70 g sugar
1 egg
150 g flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 dl sour milk
100 g (frozen) raspberries
100 g (frozen) sliced rhubarb

1. Melt half of the butter and mix with nuts, powdered sugar and cinnamon.
2. With an electric mixer, beat together the rest of the butter, sugar and egg. Then add sour milk.
3. Mix together flour and soda, add to the mixture. Finally add raspberries and rhubarb.
4. Grease a rectangular baking pan and pour the batter into it. Then crumble the topping onto the batter.
5. Bake at 180C for 30-35 minutes. Serve warm (with ice cream) or cooled, cut into rectangles.



The cake is equally good served warm or cooled. The raspberries bring out a nice sour flavour, at the same time the cake is quite sweet. My topping slowly sinked into the batter while baking and only marks of it were left on top of the cake, but every bite into a cinnamon flavoured nut was like an unexpected surprise that completed the sour juicyness of the berries.
Now my mom can hide her rhubarb cake recipe, we've got one!

Like swimming in peanut butter

Before cheap jars of peanut butter appeared in our stores (and that was only tiny bits of time ago), I decided to give it a try and buy one (and definitely not the cheapest) good-looking foreign jar. A jar of creamy peanut butter, really full of taste. So, impressed by its content, I visited the jar with a little spoon quite often and finally scooped out every bit of it. Although about 1 1/4 cups of it went into this cake. Why eat just peanut butter when you can add a little something to it and feel like eating loads more peanut butter?



Peanut butter cheesecake
(adapted from Epicurious )

450 g cream cheese
1 1/4 cups creamy peanut butter
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup sour cream
3 eggs
vanilla
150 g chopped dark chocolate

1. Grease a springform pan or a ceramic baking pan (this is what I used). If you're using a springform pan, wrap it carefully with aluminum foil.
2. With an electric mixer, beat together cream cheese, peanut butter, sugar, sour cream and vanilla. Add the eggs, one at a time. Finally mix in chocolate and pour the batter into your baking pan.
3. Place the baking pan into a larger one, then fill the large pan with hot water so that it comes about half way up the sides of the smaller baking dish.
4. Bake the cake at 160C/325F for about an hour and cool it completely before serving.

Yes, the cake is very peanut buttery. Oh and cream cheesy, it's true. Although eating huge amounts of it sounds wonderful, you wouldn't want to do it. Small slices are already nicely rich and fill the belly enough. With a cup of coffee, on spring mornings like today? For me this cake is a reminder of quality peanut butter. Looking forward to the day when these jars full of taste are sold in every supermarket, I'm really trying to ignore the cheap ones now. Oh, well, it's Estonia.
And swimming in peanut butter? Not really one of my dreams.