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...).

Roasted banana ice cream with poppy seeds

Mayhaps you too went to search for some good bursting red tomatoes this one morning and encountered a bunch of blackened bananas instead. No bursting red tomatoes. Sad moment. The bananas looked kinda scary as well. Another sad moment.

But the thing with bananas is that they tend to be villainy. I mean, scaring me like that and then turning out to be perfectly lovely on the inside.

Makes me think I never really cared about the tomatoes anyway.


This is my first attempt at cooking a recipe from apparently the Bible of ice cream, David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop. But still I couldn't help but mess with it, dear me.


Roasted banana ice cream with poppy seeds
(adapted from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop, via butter sugar flour)

3 medium ripe bananas (totally ripe suits as well;))
75 g brown sugar
3 dl milk
1 dl curd cheese (using cream cheese would also be good)
2 tbsp caster sugar
2 tsp lime juice
vanilla (1/2 tsp extract)
1/4 tsp salt
at least 1 tbsp of poppy seeds

1. Preheat the oven to 200C.
2. Slice the bananas and place into a small baking dish together with the brown sugar. Bake for about 40 minutes, until the bananas are caramelized. Turn once during cooking.
3. With the help of a food processor, blender or immersion blender, puree the bananas together with the syrup from the baking dish, milk, curd cheese, sugar, lime juice, vanilla and salt until smooth. Add poppy seeds.
   
4. Chill the mixture in the fridge until cold.
5. Churn in an ice-cream machine until thick or place in a plastic container, pop it in the freezer and give it a good whip every hour or every few hours, depending on the temperature of your freezer.
   

The words banana ice cream never make me drool, actually, as I tend to think of store-bought ice cream pops that carry the same unmistakable banana essence flavour that all banana-FLAVOURED sweets have in them.
Maybe you've seen yellow banana-shaped jellybeans. Well, there must be a reason to their shape. Nobody would understand they're supposed to taste like bananas, is what I'd reckon.

But roasting really intensifies the taste of the bananas. It's not just banana-flavoured ice cream, it's actually banana ice cream. Which, you know, is a totally drool-worthy dish. The poppy seeds? They were the only thing I felt was missing from the ice cream, that's it.

The recipe will also be taking part of the fab event Frozen Desserts, hosted by Mike of Mike's Table.

Warm curd cheese toasts with feta cheese and smoked sausage

Curd cheese toasts (or rather 'kohupiimasaiad') are sweet (sorry if I'm confusing you, but usually they are) Estonian treats we usually make during wintertime when stale bread seems to be lying around everywhere and curd cheese just happens to be in the fridge. They're delicious for a dessert and delicious for breakfast the next morning. Check out Pille's recipe, for example, cause this will be the last time you hear about sweet curd cheese toasts from me today.

INSTEAD, our curd cheese toasts went un poco loco. That's what confused appetite does to a person, because I really craved something savoury.

You could try using ricotta instead of curd cheese here. Or even cream cheese for a richer treat. Though as long as I've got curd cheese, I wouldn't even look towards those two...


Warm curd cheese toasts with feta cheese and smoked sausage
(makes 6 toasts)

about 6 slices of bread

250 g curd cheese
1 egg
1/2 - 1 onion (according to your love for onions)
butter
about 1/2 tsp dried herb mix of basil, oregano and marjoram (you could also use only one of them)
20 g smoked sausage of salami (I used deer sausage)
50 g feta
about 1 dl grated cheese
salt, pepper, sugar

1. Dice the onion and sautee it in butter until it becomes transparent and slightly golden, about 10 minutes.
2. Finely dice the sausage and also dice the feta.
3. Mix the egg into the curd cheese, add the herb mix, sausage, feta and sauteed onion. Flavour with salt, pepper and a bit of sugar.
4. Lay bread slices onto a greased baking sheet and spread the mixture onto them.
5. Bake at 200C for 10 minutes, then add the grated cheese on top of the toasts and bake for 5 more minutes. Serve warm.
   

Nothing is overpowering the taste in those toasts, just like in good pizza. The bread is crisp, the filling warm and creamy. They're good just on they're own, with slices of fresh tomatoes on them or together with a fresh salad for a lunch-er lunch.

Weird how dishes as ordinary as kohupiimasaiad can sometimes surprise so much:/
Just the weirdness I love!

Coffee curd cheese with clove-scented bananas and almond praline

When concerning recipes, I often start my thought process from flavour combinations, as opposed to types of dishes or preparation methods. It gives the thought more free will and results in fantastic ideas more often (though some of them might be impossible to make or far too difficult for me...far too difficult to make them perfect)

Just as I stated, there's no escape from curd cheese on this blog and this time it's a tribute to the combination coffee-cloves-bananas-almonds. Actually the bananas are the X in this equation, successfully replaced by nectarines, peaches or apricots.


Curd cheese with coffee, clove-flavoured bananas and almond praline
(serves 3)

400 g curd cheese (smooth type, paste)
about 1 tsp coffee essence (can be substituted with instant coffee powder)
about 2 1/2 tbsp sugar
vanilla
1 banana
3 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp ground cloves
almond praline (e.g. this)

1. Mix curd cheese to taste with instant coffee powder or coffee essence, sugar and vanilla.
2. Combine sliced banana, sugar and ground cloves on a skillet. Heat until the sugar has turned into a light caramel around the banana slices. Occasionally stir and turn the slices around.
3. Crush the almond praline to little pieces.
4. Serve the curd cheese with warm banana slices and crushed praline.

The bananas turn really soft in the caramelizing process and adopt quite a strong clove flavour that goes together incredibly well with the coffee flavour of the curd cheese. There's basically everything one could want from a dessert - the creaminess of the curd cheese, the stickyness of the bananas and the crunch of the praline, plus three intense tastes that dissolve into one another.

Curd cheese mousse with blackcurrant sauce and kiwis

If there was one thing I'd eat for the rest of my life, it would be curd cheese. Or, well, curd cheese and rye bread. But still. I eat it in all kinds of combinations and for me it's mild flavour is so ordinary that I never use recipes. I just enjoy. Enjoy and ENJOY.

But from time to time a combination just nails it. Just like yesterday. And it makes me wanna share. Oh yes it does.

Although the sauce has quite a strong blackcurrant flavour on its own, it's lost a bit if the mousse has a strong cocoa flavour. Therefore, I suggest using a bit less cocoa powder.
Don't be bothered by the blackcurrant pieces in the jam - there actually an extra!

Curd cheese mousse with blackcurrant sauce and kiwis.
(serves 3-4)

400 g curd cheese
1 dl double cream
sugar (about 1/2 dl)
vanilla
1-2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
blackcurrant-cream sauce (see below)
2-4 kiwis

1. Mix curd cheese with sugar and vanilla.
2. Beat double cream with an electric mixer until fluffy and add (or if you're lazy - just mix it in and beat the mousse a bit).
3. Add cocoa powder to taste, mix well.
4. Peel and slice kiwis.
5. Serve the mousse with warm or cold sauce and kiwi slices. Add cookie pieces, if desired.

Blackcurrant-cream sauce

1/2 dl blackcurrant jam
1 dl double cream
cinnamon, if desired

1. Take a small pot and heat the jam until it's liquified.
2. Add double cream, mixing. If desired, add cinnamon.
3. Boil the sauce for 5 minutes, then serve warm or cold (might get too thick when waits overnight - then just add liquid) .

The blackcurrant-kiwi-cocoa combination truly is a nice find I've been wanting to try for quite some time and it really worked out well! An upside-down version could also be nice - with kiwi sauce and fresh blackcurrants...(summer, summer, come sooner!)

The mild mousse is well complemented by the strong-flavoured, but slightly sour sauce and exotic kiwis. Adding cookie bits adds crispness, serving the dessert while the sauce is still warm and adding some cinnamon to the sauce makes it more interesting.

More curd cheese coming to you soon enough;)

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.

Curd cheese mousse with black tea

Desserts flavoured with tea sound so exotic and exciting for me. Everything flavoured with tea, actually. I have made different experiments and in addition to my yoghurt sauce and green tea cake with cottage cheese I had another really successful one a few days ago.



Curd cheese mousse with black tea
(4 servings)

400 g curd cheese
2 eggyolks
2 eggwhites
2 dl milk
1 dl sugar
4 teabags
vanilla

1. Heat milk together with the teabags (use a teflon coated saucepan). When it has started to boil, remove it from the heat, cover and let stand for 5 minutes.
2. Discard the teabags, but try to press all the liquid you possibly can out of them.
3. Beat eggyolks in a bowl and add the mixture to them.
4. Pour the milk-eggyolk mixture back into the saucepan and heat (over medium heat) until it thickens, stirring to avoid clumps. Let the mixture cool down in the fridge while you prepare other ingredients.
5. Mix curd cheese with sugar and vanilla.
6. In a clean and dry bowl beat the eggwhites with an electric mixer until stiff peaks form.
7. Mix the tea mixture with curd cheese, then gently add the eggwhite foam (add half of it at first).

For serving I’d recommend fruit or berries and lots of them! The more fruit the better goes for all dishes, right? I like to mix the mousse with apple cubes as I have plenty of apples lying around in the kitchen. At last. One small apple diced and mixed with each serving – now that’s delicious. I believe I’d like it with ice cream too.




The mousse has quite a strong taste of black tea, it’s moderately sweet and has a really light foamy texture. At the same time it’s a real pleasure for all you curd cheese lovers out there (although it’s my modest opinion that Estonian curd cheese is the best in the whole world – it’s the one thing besides our rye bread that I just couldn’t live without if I moved abroad).

Have you got any favourite fabulous recipes using tea?
My next idea is to make a layered hazelnut cake with black tea egg-buttercream filling. Just hope I have any time to cook in September...

Sweet double bread pudding

Made of leftovers.
And delicious.

Somehow, unexpectedly (I egoistically like to think it was because of my birthday), too much bread found its way to our house. What's worse - it found its way to our fridge. Now, bread in the fridge is not a nice sight for me, so I figured that the best way to get rid of it is just to go ahead and eat all of it.

What would usually happen? White bread would turn into sweet bread pudding saiavorm (read more here) and rye bread would turn into sweet rye bread 'soup' - leivasupp (my classical). But today I rebelled a bit and made an experimental bread pudding - which is going to be a keeper! Curd cheese can be replaced with sour cream, cream cheese or yoghurt (although I would never ever replace it!), light cream or even milk can be used instead of double cream. But...you do want double cream, you do.


Sweet rye bread and white bread pudding

150-200 g white bread
150-200 g rye bread
1 dl sweet apple puree/jam
2 eggs
2 dl double cream
1 dl curd cheese
3 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp - 1/2 tsp cinnamon
vanilla

1. Dice white bread and rye bread.
2. Grease a loaf pan and lay white bread onto the bottom of it.
3. Cover the bread with apple puree and top with rye bread pieces.
4. Beat eggs with curd cheese and double cream until smooth, add sugar, vanilla and cinnamon. Then pour the mixture onto rye bread (Try to make sure that all of it gets soaked).
5. If you wish then sprinkle some sugar onto the pudding, then bake it at 180C for about 30 minutes.
6. Serve warm with cold milk (poured over it or on the side), with ice cream or with some kissel poured over it.



The bottom part is so soft and sweet enough to fill my appetite, I love the texture curd cheese gives to bread puddings (or anything, actually!). The top part is nicely brown and crunchy under one's tooth. Although it might seem that rye bread tends to burn dangerously during those 30 minutes in the oven, it's not like that - it just takes time for it to become crunchy and all. I wish I'd added a bit more cinnamon, 1/4 tsp is a bit too little for us who we are used to eating heaps of cinnamon on saiavorm.

What about next time? I said the recipe was a keeper! I'd really really like to add berries or fruit - I can feel the dessert calling for fresh blackcurrants picked from the garden or sour morellos. Or on another day - for bananas and blueberries.


Ahh, how I love our cuisine.

A pinch of Estonia plus a pinch of onions

When I decided to bake something for the Waiter there's something in my...bread event hosted by Spittoon Extra, I immediately thought about onions. I've eaten some great onion bread (rye bread, of course - it's Estonia after all) while in South-Estonia and unfortunately they don't sell it here in the north (like the country was so big!)

But my rye bread adventures still lie ahead of me. Nevertheless I wanted to stay traditional and decided for barley flour and curd cheese. With a personal favourite of course - onions. Onions-onions-onions. What luck that someone had bought them, cause I remember eating them all:)


Onioned barley and curd cheese soda bread
(adapted from Estonian National Cuisine)

125 g curd cheese
2 1/2 dl milk
1 egg
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar/honey
2 tbsp butter
2 1/2 dl barley flour
1 1/2 dl wheat flour
1/2 tsp soda
200 g chopped onion

1. Melt butter in a saucepan or a skillet and cook onions at low heat until transparent. Then puree until smooth.
2. Grease a loaf pan with butter and add some flour or semolina, shaking to cover the bottom and sides evenly.
3. Beat the egg and add curd cheese, milk, salt, sugar.
4. Mix flour with soda and add.
5. Pour the batter into the mold and bake at 180C for 30-40 minutes.



My bread turned out nicely moist. It was pure pleasure eating it warm from the oven with only some butter on it. In fact it's almost the only thing I've eaten the whole day. The taste of onion is rather on the background, but it's there. Barley flour gives the bread a somehow rougher taste, it's also slightly sweet.

The orginal recipe had no onions, so I decided to add an additional 1/2 dl of wheat flour too (that might just be the mind of a beginner, but hey - it worked!). For more oniony taste I'd add more of them. Not pureed, but as tiny bits, so the taste would be in tthe foreground too. This time I decided not to add herbs to get a pure taste, but thyme or parsley would fit well. Pumpkin seeds are another idea - inside or on the top.
Anyway - a thank you to my ancestors.

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.

Pasha with custard - a variation of an Easter tradition

I've heard from different sources that every Estonian makes pasha (pashka) at Easter. What? Really? The first time ever I heard about this traditional dessert was some four years ago when I was accidentally watching a Russian TV show Subboteja on one of the Estonian TV channels. I asked my mom about it. Her description was rather like 'well...it's like...hmm...' than 'it's an Estonian tradition too, you know'.

So I have been associating pasha with the Russians, it's their tradition after all. But recently I've discovered how many people in Estonia actually make it and I mean among the Estonians. My family has been making it for three years now (we've gotten over this 'well...it's like...hmm...'). But still - to discuss it as a traditional Estonian Easter dessert? Don't mention it when I'm around. Nevertheless I like pasha as I love all things made from curd cheese and the recipe we chose this year was a true hit. Custard is not a very usual component in pasha, but it might turn into one at my household!


Pasha with custard
(from the April 2006 edition of Oma Maitse magazine)

100 g butter
3 dl double/single cream
4 eggs
2 1/2 dl sugar
1 tbsp vanilla sugar
1 dl raisins
1 dl candied citrus peel or marmalade
1 dl almonds
500 g curd cheese
+ extra raisins/almonds/candied peel for decorating

for draining:
a special pasha mold/large sieve/flowerpots with holes in the bottom
cheesecloth

1. Prepare the almonds. Peel them (you can do so by first 'scaring' them for about half a minute in boiling water, then cooling under cold water and gently pressing the peels off between two fingers), roast them on a dry pan or in the oven (about 5 minutes at 200C) until golden and chop.
2. Using an electric mixer, beat the eggs and sugar until fluffy. Melt butter in a saucepan, add cream. Then add the egg mixture into the saucepan and start heating it up, whisking constantly until the mixture thickens (don't let it reach the boiling point!). Add vanilla and let the custard cool.
3. Press the curd cheese through a sieve if it's not smooth and then add raisins, chopped almonds, candied peel or marmalade and custard to it.



4. Rinse the cheesecloth carefully with hot water and then use it to line the mold you've chosen. Pour the curd cheese mixture into the mold and cover it with cheesecloth. Place something heavy over the top to fasten the thickening process and let the dessert stand in the fridge for at least 8 hours.
5. For serving - turn the mold over and decorate with raisins, almonds, candied peel, marmalade or with whatever else you want.




Want a definition to rich food? I guess this is it, this is the one. But it's really good. Moderately firm, but silky on the tongue, with bits of roasted almonds that crunch between the teeth. The mild custard challenges the sourness of curd cheese and finally wins, but with the help of sugary marmalade that almost melts itself into one's bite when bitten.
But yes, it's rich. What if I discarded double cream and used milk instead? And what if I accidentally forgot to add that huge amount of butter? Would it still taste heavenly? I mean...everybody loves the taste of fat (even when they don't admit it), but I do think people wouldn't mind if I broke some rules. Even pasha might like the feeling of being slim:)

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?