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!).

Fennel and pear soup

I guess you all have some dishes you make just for yourselves. Maybe you mix together a chocolate dessert when home alone, maybe you have your special sandwich that everyone stares with a you're-really-eating-that face while you're at it.

For me the lonely dishes are pureed soups. Yes, really. My mother refers to them as baby food. My father...well he rather has a problem with what I put into the soups. Or...into almost any savoury dish.

The soups may be lonely, but...at least I can have the whole potful for myself. I must thank Janelle of Let's talk of tomatoes for this lovely soup - half the amount made a good portion of warm food for two days:)

Fennel and pear soup
(Talk of Tomatoes, serves 6)

2 bulbs fennel
1 onion
2 (comice) pears
2 tbsp butter
9 dl chicken broth
2 tbsp flour
salt, white pepper, sugar
1 dl light cream

1. Trim the base and stalks of fennel, thinly slice bulb. Do the same with the onion.
2. Add fennel, onion, butter and 2 tbsp water into your soup pot. Cover and cook over medium heat for 5-7 minutes.
3. Add 2 tbsp flour, heat stirring for 1 minute.
4. Add peeled and chopped pears and broth. Cover and simmer until pears are soft, for 5 minutes.
5. Puree the potful (You can leave some of the soup as it is to have some pices in it).
6. Return the soup to the pot, add cream and flavour with salt, white pepper and a bit of sugar.
7. Simmer 6-8 minutes, serve. (optional garnish: fennel fronds).

The more I ate, the more I liked it. When the soup reached a kind of moderately warm temperature, I decided to start loving it. The obvious wonderful flavour of fennel in creamy consistency, supported by the faint presence of pears. If I hadn't known there were pears in the soup, I probably wouldn't have guessed the 'secret ingredient', but they do deserve the name 'secret ingredient', as they seem to somehow bring out the best in fennels.

Do add a bit of sugar! Although there are pears in the soup the sweetness - on the whole - needs your tiny support. The soup tastes good when it's cooled down too, but I'd still recommend this 'moderately warm' temperature - it'll wake up your taste buds!

Spicy chocolate truffles, if you still miss Christmas

A part of my holiday gifts were these spicy chocolate truffles. They were a bit different from truffles I'd made before because the filling was softer, silkier. With 2007 and all the Christmas mumbojumbo gone, spicy desserts still make their appearances in our kitchen. All year round, actually, all year round...

So for me any time is right for writing about a truffle with a taste of Christmas.

Spiced chocolate truffles

125 g dark chocolate
125 g milk chocolate
1/2 dl light cream
juice of one orange
75 g sugar
50 g butter

flavouring options for 1/3 of the mixture
1/4 tsp ground aniseed
1/8 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon + 1/8 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp Cointreau

coating
about 250 g dark chocolate
50 g milk chocolate, powdered sugar, cocoa powder, cloves, aniseed, nuts...

1. Break chocolate to pieces
2. Bring cream, orange juice and sugar to a boil together and add to the chocolate, stirring until incorporated well.
3. Add butter and mix well.
4. Divide the mixture into 3 parts and choose a flavouring option for every one of them. Let the new mixtures stand in the fridge for some 30 minutes.
5. Make balls or other shapes (you might want to distinguish the different flavours) of the mixtures and let them harden in the fridge.
6. Melt dark chocolate over a waterbath and dip all the truffles into the chocolate, then let them harden on a non-stick surface like foil.
7. Decorate truffles with different flavour differently. You can roll them in powdered sugar or cocoa powder or decorate them with melted milk chocolate. Before hardening you can add cloves on top of clove truffles, aniseed on top of aniseed truffles or just different nuts.

I made truffles flavoured with aniseed, cloves and cardamom/cinnamon. Loved them all! The flavours came through very well and I just couldn't help but pick the aniseed ones.
I really liked the softer filling and it surprised me every time I bit into a truffle. All the superhigh gigaquality truffles that cost a lot of money are usually a lot harder to bite in, for whatever reason. Everyone needs a change, right?

But it was a bit hard to form the balls so I kept running between the stove and the freezer! I guess it's good to combine running with chocolate once in a while...

The darkest spicy tipsy apples

Or, at first glance, more like beets with stalks on.

There must be a heap of recipes for pears in wine on the Internet and everywhere and everywhere, especially around Christmas holidays and New Year's Eve. Yet I'm here. Hmmm... but probably just because my apples turned out very cool-looking.

I don't have exact measurements, unfortunately. I used little-ish homegrown apples and threw in...everything. Feel free to use pears instead.


Spicy apples in red wine and blackcurrant juice

Apples (I had 10 small ones)
About 1/2 l of blackcurrant juice
About 7 dl of red wine
1 vanilla bean
cloves, about 10
1 star anise
1 cinnamon stick

1. Take a pot large enough to fit all the apples onto the bottom of it.
2. Add all ingredients (but not the apples) to the pot and bring to a boil.
3. Meanwhile peel the apples, but leave their stalks on. Cut the core out from the bottom and also cut a slice off the bottom so that they stand better.
4. Add the apples to the pot and boil them at low heat for about 30 minutes, until tender. As the liquid probably doesn't cover all the apples, turn them around for some times to get an even colour.
5. Remove from heat and let the apples cool in the poaching liquid.
6. Serve with vanilla sauce.

Blackcurrant juice is a strong flavourer. The apples do look like beets, but taste a lot like a lighter version of spiced blackcurrants. Tender, juicy. Screaming for vanilla sauce. They're as dark as it gets.

I guess it was the perfect dessert for surprising my granny. She knows how to prepare stunning dishes out of nothing, but after so many years of eating and cooking apples... who could have thought to throw the apples into some juice?

A tortilla that’s not a real tortilla and definitely not a tortilla that I’d call a tortilla

I love reading foreign food magazines. That I can read. But usually buying them aqcuires a thick wallet. When we went to Spain last autumn, I grabbed four food magazines when we were still at the airport. Well, I rushed a bit with that...as I acidentally grabbed one in Catalan...

But this year a friend gave me a three month subcription of the Spanish food magazine Comer Bien for birthday. Yay. That was sweet! Believe me, I’ve ticked a lot of recipes, but this far I’ve only got to making just one thing from all my Spanish magazines...

And in case you’re not fond of the word omelette in this context, well, you can call it a heated dessert or something:)

<Chocolate omelette
(adapted from Comer y Beber magazine, October/November 2006, serves 4)

4 eggs
100g sugar
100g dark chocolate
2 tsp cocoa powder

1. Break chocolate into squares.
2. Beat the eggs together with the sugar until slightly fluffy.
3. Sift in cocoa powder and add chocolate chunks.
4. Prepare an omelette from the mixture on a larger skillet (Do not overbake, or the chocolate inside won't be runny anymore). Cut into four.
5. Serve alone or with a sauce. I'd recommend vanilla sauce or some fruit sauce.

I used a small skillet for making the dessert for just two people and it was so easy to make. Warm chocolate desserts usually take time, but this one is ready in minutes. The flavour is eggy, yes, but it doesn't really taste like an omelette. Creme brulee tastes eggy too, remember?

It's definitely mainly a chocolate dessert, with the chocolate chunks inside pleasantly warm and slightly runny.

You hungry?