Brown butter flavoured butter

Elegant, yet sinfully simple.
Er...just let me go and get myself a slice of bread!

Or, let's be serious. I'm a butter person. There's a reason why there's the word 'või' (butter') in the Estonian word 'võileib' (translates as 'sandwich', but literally means 'butter bread').

When I was little, I used to eat rye bread with a thick butter layer, taking tiny bites at a time. Then I got older and discovered the charm of cream cheese, but from time to time I still get a rye-bread-with-butter-now! craving or enjoy soft brown bread with a layer of butter and sprinkles of sea salt.
Last March Ideas in Food came out with the idea of brown butter flavoured butter. There's yet much to discover about the opportunities of using this ingredient, but -well- I do like a little treasure hunt. This one's a treasure for sure.


Brown butter flavoured butter
(Ideas in food)

Good quality butter
Sea salt

1. Divide the amount of butter into two.
2. Melt one part of the butter on a skillet and brown it until quite dark brown. Cool it (over an ice bath).
3. Dice the remaining butter and add, whisking.
4. Flavour with salt to taste.

The butter has a deep, an earthy taste of browned butter to it. Perfect for a festive table or just over bread for a weeknight dinner. I've only had the chance to eat it with brown bread and rye bread, but I imagine it complementing my broccoli with pistachio butter...

A rustic take on chocolate brownies

How much do you love chocolate?

(Don't shout! Don't shout! Come on...it was a rhetoric question!)

I've never been a champion at munching chocolate by chunks. Well, I'd like to nibble on some flavoured chocolate or have chocolate omelette for breakfast from time to time, but a cheesecake/apple cake/another good cake will always stand above chocolate cakes in my top 10.

Regular chocolate cakes don't really attract me that much, BUT I'm momentarily sold when I see something different. It has to be different different. It has to confuse my taste buds before I've even read through the recipe. This cake, my darlings, qualified enough to spend time at the back door of my mind for a long time.

It's a brownie recipe that uses barley flour as the only flour. I wouldn't have believed it could work out so well without all the fancy gluten. But it did. It's a cake that bloody could. Barley flour's got my soul now!

Chocolate brownies with barley flour
(Estonian magazine Oma maitse )

200 g butter
150 g dark chocolate
2 dl coarsely chopped walnuts
1 dl dried cranberries or cherries
3 eggs
2 dl sugar
2 dl barley flour

1. Melt butter in a saucepan and add chocolate chunks. Stir over low heat until incorporated well. Remove from heat.
2. Beat the eggs with sugar with an electric mixer until stiff.
3. Add the chocolate mixture, whisking, then add the flour and chopped walnuts and berries (if using cherries, cut them into two). Mix carefully.
4. Bake at once in a greased baking pan at 180 for 20-30 minutes (I used a 24 cm pan).
5. Let cool before serving.

The cake is, essentially, a brownie full of deep chocolate taste, but isn't as smooth as usually, but a bit grainy inside. Barley flour gives it a more crumbly texture and an intense, a bit rustic flavour that suits so well with walnuts. Dried cherries or cranberries add sweetness, but aren't very recognizable on the whole.

I found a most suitable way for completing the taste of the cake by adding some neat slightly flavoured cream.



Cinnamon-vanilla cream topping

1 dl heavy cream
100 g cream cheese
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp sugar
vanilla
pinch of salt

1. Combine cream cheese, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and salt in a bowl, beat with an electric mixer until fluffy.
2. Add heavy cream and beat some more until you reach your desired consistency.

The cream completes the strong flavour of the cake perfectly and creates a fluffy contrast with the dense chocolate brownie. The flavour itself is kind of a shadow of a flavour, but this is the aim here - to let all the rustic delight stand out.

Right now I'd say I love chocolate pretty much!:)

A delicious way of killing your cold

Usually people catch a cold. But, no, not me. I have a cold. Be it summer, be it winter, I've almost always got a runny nose. So I especially should try and eat myself healthy.

On Tuesday I made another try. I found myself eating a whole head of garlic! Yes, a whole head!:) But before you judge me and run away, consider this - it was a delicious way of getting better!

Oven baked garlic, my friends, has a wonderful scent.

Oven baked garlic
(from "Küüslauguraamat", serves 4)

4 heads of garlic
olive oil
salt
(dried herbs to your liking)

1. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Without peeling them, cut the garlic heads into two and place on the baking sheet (the cut side up)
3. Drizzle the garlic with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Add any herbs you want.
4. Bake at 200C for 20 minutes

It's best to eat the garlic while it's still warm. This way the cloves are quite mushy and are easy to mash with a knife, but they get firmer as they cool. Just slip the cloves out of their peels and serve over crispy bread. Or go fancy and add them to a salad or serve beside a meat dish. I plan to make a cream cheese spread with them soon, I'm sure of that. So what your fingers get a bit oily - lick them clean! The oil's flavoured with the delicious deep flavour of the garlic. The taste is mainly 'roasted', but there's a 'healthy' moment in the mouth too. It's all mushy. It's good.

I'd already made the recipe when I discovered the event Think spice...garlic hosted by Sunita. What a timing! This is my contribution - as garlicky as it gets:)

My favourite quick carrot soup

You say 'pureed soup' - I think 'carrot soup with coriander and aniseed'

For me, it's the quintessence of pureed soup, it's a liquid dream, it's the warm comfort of a cold evening, the cooling pleasure of a hot afternoon. It's versatile, it's under my skin.


I've almost always got organic carrots in the fridge that we've grown ourselves. They're full of taste and have got a homely flavour. Making this soup is very easy and, fortunately, someone has usually peeled the carrots before I get my hands on them:) In wintertime, it's great to enjoy it warm, but it's just as wonderful when eaten cold. I especially love that during summertime! We do have 1-2 weeks of hot weather here!;)

Chicken broth can be replaced by vegetable broth, heavy cream or sour cream can be used in place of cream cheese. Whatever you've got handy! Cream cheese can also be flavoured with herbs /onion/garlic/whatnot.

Carrot soup with coriander and aniseed
(serves 4)

400 g carrots
1 onion
1 tbsp butter
8 dl chicken broth
ground coriander seeds
ground aniseed
4 tbsp cream cheese
1 tsp sugar
salt, pepper

1. Slice the onion and the carrots, sautee in butter in a saucepan until onion is transparent, about 10 minutes.
2. Add the broth and boil until carrots have turned quite tender, 20 minutes will do fine.
3. Puree the potful, then return to the saucepan.
4. Add cream cheese and flavour with coriander, aniseed, salt (if needed), pepper and sugar to taste. Heat, but don't let the soup reach boiling point.

The soup is creamy, even a little portion of cream cheese does wonders! The flavour of carrots is sweetish, but the spices push it to a limit. Coriander and aniseed are not very strong flavourers, they're rather mild, so they suit carrot perfectly. What pleasure!

This time I served the soup with some crispy rye bread cubes, but it's equally good with white bread cubes or grilled chicken. More often than not I like to eat it plainly, without a topping, because the soup itself completes the taste. That sounds weird enough:)

So I guess it's also the perfect recipe for this month's Monthly mingle, themed Comfort foods. Although it's not something from my childhood or anything I'd eat together with my family, I'm sure this soup will guide me through the best and worst moments of the life still ahead of me:D

Cream cheese ice cream

Cream cheese, just like my favourite - curd cheese - makes everything better.

I adapted the recipe from the lovely Tartelette, my step-parent in the Adopt a blogger event. She's great! I've enjoyed reading her blog for several several months now and in addition to her professional photos I like her attitude towards cooking.
Actually I made this ice cream quite some time ago, but it looks like the event was timed perfectly before me writing about it...

But I did not dare call it cheesecake ice cream. What would make it cheesecake ice cream for me? First - for me cheesecake is primarily baked cheesecake. Could I make an ice cream that tastes like that? Amy suggested adding chunks of it. In case you're wondering, I'm drooling right now:) So - more cream cheese into the ice cream, chunks of baked cheesecake and chunks of cookies too. I'm up for the challenge!

But for now, I recommend this - mouthwatering!

Cream cheese ice cream
(adapted from Tartelette, serves 4-6)

4 dl milk
1 1/2 dl heavy cream
1 3/4 dl sugar
2 egg yolks
90 g cream cheese

1. Whisk the egg yolks with the sugar
2. In a saucepan over medium heat, warm up the milk and the cream, then slowly pour a small amount on the egg yolks to temper, then add the remaining part.
3. Stir the mixture well and pour it back into the saucepan, cook over medium-low heat until the cream thickens. Don't let it reach the boiling point!
4. Remove from heat and whisk in the cream cheese (It's easier to do so if you first add some of the mixture to the cream cheese so it's not so solid).
5. Cool the mixture to room temperature. Then cover and refrigerate until cold. Process in an ice cream maker or beat with an electric mixer every 30 min-1 hour (depending on the freezer's temperature - just check your ice cream!) until the consistency is right.

I really was pleased with the result, considering I'm an ice cream amateur. This time I got the consistency right, at least:)

There's cream cheese flavour, alright, but I'm greedy for more! It's sweet, yes, creamy, mild, perfect with a sour pie. It tastes...jolly. It's an amusement park ice cream with a small hint of upper class.
Now, I'm making myself a schedule for WHEN there's time for another batch of cream cheese cheesecake ice cream!