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 sweet mosaic of cookies

I just couldn't resist buying the Australian cookbook Sweet Food when I first browsed through it in a bookstore (actually it was the second time, but first sounds so much more poetical). For me a big deal of the recipes inside are exotic, using ingredients that are unusual in an Estonian kitchen - macadamia nuts for example, which are quite often in the ingredient lists. Ask an average Estonian what a macadamia nut is - you'll probalby hear the answer 'Misasi?' or - in English - 'A what?'

One of the first recipes that caught my eye was of cracked cookies (the name may differ in the English version, as I'm re-translating the recipe from Estonian). Their appearance is just so...wow that I was sure I'd be making them before I'd even read through the recipe. The cool look is achieved by rolling balls of cookie dough in powdered sugar before baking - that will leave a two-coloured cracked effect.

I substituted the allspice in the recipe with a double amount of cinnamon and pecan nuts with walnuts. I do have a budget, you know.


Cracked chocolate cookies
(adapted from Sweet Food)

125 g soft butter
370 g soft brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 eggs
60 g melted chocolate
80 ml milk
340 g flour
2 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
salt
85 g chopped walnuts
powdered sugar

1. Beat together butter, sugar and vanilla until the mixture is light and creamy.
2. Add eggs one by one
3. Add chocolate and milk (I was afraid that chocoalte would turn lumpy when added to the cool mixture and mixed it with warm milk first).
4. Sift flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, cinnamon and a pinch of salt onto the butter mixture and mix well.
   
5. Add chopped walnuts.
6. Cover the dough and place it in the fridge for at least 3 hours (you can also prepare the dough the evening before)
7. Preheat the oven to 180C and slightly grease 2 griddles.
8. Use a teaspoon for measuring and make balls out of the dough (the recipe said this technique would make about 60 cookies - I got over 80 though I scooped quite much dough every time)
9. Roll each ball in a small bowl with powdered sugar so that it's covered well and place the balls onto the griddles, leaving enough space between them
   
10. According to the recipe you should bake the cookies for 20-25 min. I baked my best batch only for 18 minutes - the edges shouldn't look very dark when you take the cookies out of the oven. Even if they don't get burnt - too much time mean rock cookies.
11. After removing from the oven, leave for about 3-4 minutes, then place on a rack and let cool.

I subconsciously tried to find the cookies I had baked for 18 minutes afterwards - they were softer inside and seemed to have more taste. The cookies were moderately sweet and had a charming scent of cinnamon. This is rather a cacao-holic cookie than a chocoholic one, if I'm allowed to say such a thing! And I do believe one can't refuse eating something that looks like a sweet mosaic. Even if he or she has accidentally used a too long baking time and it cracks under the tooth like a real one:)



I wouldn't say these were the best cookies ever, but they were good and looked like A-class celebrities. That's great enough for me!