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.

Rosewater and black tea granita

There's somebody out there who thinks like me.

Oooohyes.

If the love for tea meets the love for rosewater then finding a recipe for Rosewater tea granita means that the actual dish may as well be in the fridge already.


The original recipe suggests to serve the granita with baklava. I believe it would make a good refreshing accompaniment to this nut and phyllo cake that's sticky from amounts of syrup, but on a weekday evening a refreshing dessert on its own is good enough already.

My recipe is approximated for the metric system, the instructions are made a bit easier. If you have a good bowl that you can use in the freezer as well, use it in the beginning already.


Rosewater and black tea granita
(Epicurious)

1 l pure water
1 1/2 dl sugar
1 tsp rosewater
5 teabags of black tea
1 1/2 dl light cream/ half and half

1. Mix water, rosewater and sugar in a bowl/pitcher. Add teabags.
2. Cover with foil and leave the bowl on a sunny windowsill for 3 hours.
3. Discard teabags and add cream.
4. Pour the mixture into a dish that you can use in the freezer. When the mixture has frozen by a couple of cm from the edge, break the ice cristals with a fork and mix the whole thing well. Do this after every 30-60 minutes until all of it has turned into nice cristals.
5. Scrape granita from the bowl with a fork and serve immediately - that's the easy version. You can also break the ice cristals finer in a food processor and then serve or put the dessert back into the freezer for serving later.

The important thing in the making process is that you mix the granita thoroughly. Otherwise you'll have a watery upper layer. It is later great to discover from the bottom of the bowl that - oh - this stuff does have a taste, but discovering that is hardly the idea:) So - do mix it well. If you don't do so, you'll have to let the mixture melt and then start the freezing process again.

Tastes good! Imagine some outdoor event at winter where they serve people tea for free - it's always black tea and has a heap of sugar in it. The granita is sweet as well, but instead of being in the mittens the coldness is in your mouth and what's warm is not the tea, but rather the heart. Rosewater is not a taste in the foreground, so it's okay to add it even if you're not a fan - the taste of 'free tea' gets a nice 'expensive' nuance from it.
I once also tried mixing the granita with some flavoured yoghurt and got a good cool dessert.

For me the punch line right now is that an ice cream truck just drove past my house. Don't you just hate the tune?

Broccoli pleasure for one

I spotted the recipe for Broccoli with hazelnut butter on Epicurious. Although it was love at first sight, the reviews made me want it even more - someone actually wrote it was the only way to get his/her children eat their veggies.

But...
...someone forgot to buy hazelnuts. Not a big deal! I had just the amount of salted pistachios and figured these could suite the dish even better.

Although I made this dish for one, I'm going to include the original quantities for 6 people. It's so fast that cooking this for one is not a problem, but rather a blessing. Instead of steaming I just blanched the broccoli - steaming is a technique I have yet to study... I can't help but add salt to the boiling water - come on, what's a veggie without taste?


Broccoli with pistachio butter
(adapted from Epicurious; serves 6 (1))

900 g (150 g) broccoli
80 g (15 g) butter at room temperature
115 g (20 g) salted pistachios (weighed after shelling)
black pepper

1. Cut broccoli stems into 1/2 cm slices and florets into 2 1/2 cm pieces
2. Boil the stems for 3 minutes, then add the florets and boil for 5 more minutes
3. Finely grind half of the pistachios and mix with butter, season with pepper (the pistachios have enough salt to them already)
4. Drain the broccoli and mix well with the butter mixture.
5. Chop pistachios that are left over and add.
6. Serve warm

This is one of the easiest and most delicious broccoli dishes I have had and made. I will definitely make this again - probably tomorrow already:) The broccoli is just tender enough and pistachios add a crunchy effect. Plus the dish has the nicest green colour! I'm sure it would make a great side dish for chicken as well.
Do make your kids eat this.

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.

Coco-nutty prune candy

A few weeks ago I had cravings for ice cream with hot sauce. That's called a tooth-ache wish. I happened to have a bunch of prunes left over from my chocolate-y meat sauce and decided to boil them in some coconut milk. The coconut milk thickened and adopted the fruity sweetness of the prunes, which turned soft and velvety, being rich in creamy coconut milk.

I didn't eat it all, no matter how serious my cravings were.
I discovered the left-overs later when they had already cooled down. Instead of a sauce there were soft coconut-flavoured prunes. Ding! An idea! I would have walked..well...a mile to have got hold on to some white chocolate to dip these prunes into. It took me a week to get the chocolate, though...


Coco-nutty prune candy
(about 30)

2 dl prunes
2 dl coconut milk
about 120 g white chocolate
about 2 dl coconut flakes

1. Boil prunes with coconut milk for 10-15 minutes (don't cover).
   
2. Remove from heat and let the prunes cool. If there is too much coconut milk left, you can just pick the prunes out.
3. Melt chocolate over a waterbath. Prepare a small bowl with coconut flakes to roll the candy in and parchment paper/foil/silicone sheet to place the candy on for cooling.
4. Dip each prune into white chocolate, let excessive chocolate drip off, roll the candy in coconut flakes and place onto parchment paper/foil/silicone sheet to cool. (I used 2 teaspoons - one for dipping and one for covering so I didn't get a chocolate-coconut flake mess)

The candies can be stored in the fridge and taken out only some time before serving - that way it's better to eat them in several bites. If they're kept at room temperature, it's better to eat them in just one bite - or pieces might fall off them and...that's just not that comfortable.



How long should you boil the prunes? I have boiled them at quite a high temperature. The first time I made the candies, I used a small pot - the prunes didn't fit in one layer. I boiled them for 15 minutes and the coconut milk was still quite light-coloured. The second time I used a saucepan - the prunes didn't fill one layer. After 10 minutes I removed the saucepan from heat, because the coconut milk was quite brown already. So I recommend using a pot that just holds one layer of prunes and keeping an eye on it - don't let the coconut milk turn that brown, the taste will be better.

The candies have a mild coconut taste and are very velvety inside. White chocolate adds additional sweetness and makes the overall impression quite sweet. If you're an extreme sweettooth, try adding dark syrup when boiling the prunes. Using toasted coconut flakes would make the nutty accent yummily overwhelming.
Do try this at home!