Favourite ice tea smoothie

I'm quite a fan of tea. Not an expert, rather quite far from the worst expert ever there is. But I love my tea: sometimes with herbs or flowers we've picked ourselves, sometimes great quality black, usually green and always without sugar.

And I crave quite everything flavoured with tea (especially when it's this cake). This dessert however, breakfast or whatnot is as easy as it gets, but it's great when made with different teas. You know, something different each time!

Favourite ice tea smoothie
(serves 1)

2 dl yoghurt
1 dl strong tea (any kind), cooled
about 1 1/2 - 2 tbsp sugar
(vanilla)
(ice cubes)

1. Mix tea with yoghurt, adding as much sugar as you like. If desired, flavour with vanilla.
2. Enjoy with a straw or with white moustache!;) Add ice cubes, if desired.
   

The smoothie is only as good as you make it;) Good tea equals good smoothie, subtly sweet, thin enough to drink smoothly through a straw. I guess it's a good variation of iced tea for those hot hot days that are yet to arrive..

But it's also a contribution to the Spring Tea Party event held by Erin of The Skinny Gourmet. Now I want to see what people come up with when thinking 'tea'!

Ever smelt a garden full of roses? Ever tasted one?

I finally-finally got my hands on rosewater. Rosewater is a product that is basically made using rose petals and water. It was first produced in Persia and has been used in South Asian, West Asian and Middle Eastern cuisines for flavouring desserts. Its wonderfully floral scent is overcome only by the fact that eating or drinking something that's made with rosewater is like tasting a rose garden.

Imagine a warm summer day in a garden full of roses.
Now imagine you are tasting this day.
This is rosewater.


For my first attempt to use rosewater I chose a simple rosewater lassi - a sweet Indian yoghurt drink.

Rosewater lassi
(from the Estonian magazine Oma Maitse, serves 2-3)

5 dl unflavoured yoghurt
1 dl cold water
3 tbsp sugar
2 tsp rosewater
1/2 tsp crushed/ground cardamum
(ice and rose petals for serving)

1. Mix yoghurt, water, sugar, rosewater and cardamum well
2. If you wish, add ice cubes or crushed ice and rose petals for serving

I'd just call the recipe flowery breakfast, because that's what it is for me. It has quite a strong cardamum taste - if you like cardamum, you'll probably love it. I like using ground cardamum because then there's a splash of taste in every sip and no bits to get between your teeth. As for the ice - it's cold here in the North! No ice in my breakfast! I'll just have to wait for the summer for that...

Rosewater is not a very cheap treat, although only little portions are used at a time. If you grow your own roses, see these recipes for making your own rosewater.

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.

A sauce to fight the flu

Will it help? Will it? Probably not, but it's worth trying anyway:)

I've been caught into tea mania. Tea here, tea there, tea in the morning, tea in candies, tea in the afternoon, tea with vegetables, tea in the evening, tea in sauces, tea at night, tea in cakes, tea in preserves, tea with meat, tea on my mind, tea in my dreams, tea bloody everywhere. There's tea in this sauce and it's hidden well.
But you will notice.


Yoghurt sauce with onion, garlic and black tea

80 g onion, chopped
20 g garlic, chopped
2 tsp butter
4 dl very strong black tea
1-2 tbsp sugar
salt
1-2 dl unflavoured yoghurt

1. Melt butter in a saucepan, throw in onion and garlic, cover and cook for about 10 minutes until onion has turned transparent.
2. Add sugar and tea. Let the whole thing boil lively until there's not much liquid left (For me this time was about 8 minutes).
3. Now puree everything you have in the saucepan and let it cool a bit.
4. Add yoghurt to taste and also a tiiiny pinch of salt.

The taste has a lot of onion. And quite much black tea, although it's difficult to recognise that taste for someone who would never consider that option in a sauce. It's weird that my mom quite liked it and she doesn't even like onions (okay, except for in minced meat sauce)!
I ate the sauce with some smoked mackerel, but I can only imagine how well it could go with pork. Or as a dip for fresh vegetables.

And yet I like my tea green.

Caramelised carrot dessert with yoghurt

I have actually survived a lunch of both savoury and sweet carrots. Well no biggy, that fact is just okay when we're talking about me. Just about fine. But carrot desserts tend to remember me about the ones we've had to eat at school and that is not just fine. This vegetable's reputation has to be re-ruined.

We always grate a larger amount of carrots at home in the food processor than we really need at the moment. Its main aim is of course that mom can make fresh salad fast - our family's traditional carrot salad with sour cream and sugar. But it also gives me an opportunity to fetch some into my so-called fast food. I have once mor dug out the bowl of grated carrots from the fridge and this time, ladys and gentlemen, we do have a dessert.


Caramelised carrot dessert with yoghurt
(serves 2)

3 tbsp sugar
1 tsp butter
3 dl grated carrot
3 dl plain yoghurt
1/2 dl cashew nuts, chopped a bit
cinnamon

1. Heat the sugar in a saucepan together with the nuts.
2. When the sugar starts to caramelise, add butter and grated carrot, stir so that the carrots blend well with the caramel and cook them for some minutes.
3. Remove the saucepan from heat and let it cool a bit, then add yoghurt to the mixture.
4. Serve sprinkled with cinnamon and some nuts.



The carrots caramelise nicely and the cashews have this praline taste to them. Sometimes there are larger bits of caramel that melt on the tongue like gems. No more sugar is added to the yoghurt so that the flavours of the caramel have more contrast with it, but that doesn't mean that the yoghurt is too sour. On the whole the dessert is moderately sweet. And not at all reminding me of those experimental school desserts with carrot - the vegetable has regained its reputation.