Not another gingerbread cookie

This year it only took 8.5 hours. We're getting better!

Like I said last year, I have this tradition of baking gingerbreads with my good friend Marie. Usually we're not finished until early morning hours, because we take our time. And we mess with all kinds of stuff and ideas and stuff. Some day I will have the courage to speak about how pathetic amateurs we were at first...but I can't admit it just yet.

Now, trust me on this. YOU HAVE TO MAKE FILLED GINGERBREADS. We fill them with every possible thing we can find, but maybe it's safer to know what you're putting in your treats at first...


For sweet ones I recommend peanut butter and bananas, but also chocolate chunks, dried fruit, nuts, berries. Peanut butter is compulsory, by the way.
But be brave and try savoury ones too - liver pate is the best thing for savoury Christmasy snacks!
That's how we make them...


If you want to give some good candies as presents (or something small), you could try making these gift boxes.

Just bake 6 squares for each (and some spare ones too, we needed 4 spare squares for 5 boxes! amateurs!) and heat some sugar to a caramel on a skillet for 'glue'. Put together 5 of the squares, fill the box with desired treats and then 'glue' on the last one. Then it's time for the icing to make the boxes look real (this one here is quite ordinary, but you get the idea).

Gingerbread balls are still a favourite. These are the ones I nibble the most. Making them is like therapy and eating them is even more so. If you've bought or made dough that's too sticky or is difficult to handle by some other reason, just MAKE BALLS. Really. Save yourself from all that depression.

I don't think gingerbread baking is over for me just yet, we've still got plans on doing it at my granny's in the countryside. Perfect Christmas.

A glance back and a deeply unconventional sauce.

There's a food blogging veteran gene in me now. At least a small one. Because it was yesterday one year ago that I started writing on this blog with no high expectations but a lot of words in my head waiting to be written.

In between all this mumbojumbo I've left behind about 70 recipes, half of which, I guess, have been my own creations. I've eaten my full in Georgia and in Norway, met other Estonian bloggers and finally, quite accidentally, got into a cookbook with three recipes of mine. Not bad at all!

If I look back...I started off with an unusual rhubarb-kamacake, other favourites have been onion marmalade with balsamico, tosca cookies, lime cream tartelettes, honeyed onion and apple soup with caraway, poppy seed cake with curd cheese, curd cheese mousse with black tea, broccoli with pistachio butter, cashew nut fudge with rosewater, roasted spiced sweet potatoes, healthy onion tart. Ohh. Only droplets in a sea for me.

Thank you so much to everyone who's been visiting me! As I have the privilege, I'll just use it...is there something that you've liked particularly? Haven't liked? Is there something you've tried making? Something you'd like to say? I'm quite all ears:)

But now - on to the recipe. How would you like to make...

...this?

Applesauce aka Several cm thick black thingy in the bottom of the saucepan
(serves as a job for 2 people for several days)

4 dl applejuice
1 dl sugar
cinnamon stick
half of a vanilla pod

1. Measure all ingredients into a saucepan and heat them to a boil.
2. Go do some stuff. Let the sauce boil vividly, but check it out once in a while.
3. If the sauce has been boiling for 10 minutes, decide it still needs some more time and go do some more...stuff.
4. After some time, go check out the sauce.
5. Try to make and end to the thick smoke coming from the saucepan with the help of running water.
6. Give up and throw the saucepan out of the window, into the snow.
7. Swear.
8. Swear some more.
   
9. Open all windows in the house (don't forget to open the one you can't close later, so you have to turn the radiator on the maximum to avoid freezing to death in your living room).
10. Wave your hands to get the smoke out of the windows (doesn't help).
11. Fetch the saucepan from the snow and look into it.
12. Swear some more.
13. Try to clean it. Somehow. Or throw it away.
    

These things just happen, I know. I'm ashamed. Deeply. I am. But that is to show that not every day is a day of chocolate balls filled with apricots and marzipan.

But what's next here? There are piles of gingerbread cookies and candies downstairs and I promise I'll tell you about them as soon as I have the time. Yet I declare there will be a second year as surely as the first one's over now:)

Ohio Shaker lemon pie: A whole lot of lemon and a little bit more

I'm warning you: this pie contains whole lemon slices.
If you're lemon-phobic, do leave now. If not, then this is what you've been waiting for for your whole life.

Who are the Shakers, by the way? They are a religious group, officially named the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Coming. What's important to me, is that they created this pie, in order to not to waste a bit of lemons.
I first found it mentioned over at Ben bakes a cake.
(The pic's really lousy this time, I know)

Ohio Shaker lemon pie (adapted from Epicurious) 300-400 g pâte brisée 2 lemons 4 dl sugar 4 big eggs 1/4 tsp salt Blanch the lemons for 30 seconds in a large saucepan of boiling water, then drain them and rinse under cold water. Cut off the ends of the lemons, discarding them and then cut the lemons cross-wise into paper-thin slices (I used an electrical slicer, but a lot of patience and a sharp knife can complete the mission, too). Remove the seeds. Put the lemon slices into a bowl, trying to collect all the juice that has flown out of them. Cover with sugar and let the mixture stand for one whole day, stirring after the 1st hour. Next day roll out half the dough on a lightly floured surface and fit it into a 22-24 cm pie plate, leaving an overhang. Remove the lemon slices from the liquid that has formed to the bowl and arrange them in the pie shell. Add the eggs and salt to the sugar, whisk until combined well and pour the mixture uver the lemon slices. Roll out the remaining dough so that it would also leave an overhang. Cover the pie with it and fold the overhang under the bottom crust, pressing the edge to seal it. Cut slits in the crust with a sharp knife, forming steam vents, and bake for 35 minutes in the middle of the oven at 220C. Reduce temperature to 175C and bake for 20-25 minutes more, or until the crust is golden. Let the pie cool and serve it at room temperature. I'd definitely say a heap of ice cream is a must!

A charming idea, if you asked me. By the time the cake is ready, it's filled with creamy lemon curd, although the lemon slices still remain...slices. If you're not the type who likes eating a cake with a fork and a knife...you have to put whole slices into your mouth. It's funny how they really are so delicious, pith and all. At the same time the cake still is a little bit more sour than the usual lemon curd, but in a baffling way.

Do add good vanilla ice cream to the servings! The crunchy crust and the sweet-cold ice cream create such contrasts with the intensively tasting filling that it's simply heavenly. Thin lemon slices slipping out from between the crusts are just waiting to be popped into your mouth!

What if I used limes instead of lemons? Now that would be incredible. A must-try, I guess.

A healthy onion tart, three ways

A bag of onions makes me happier than a bag of candy.

Like...really. As I'd managed to somehow eat all our onions, I was happy as hell to eye a bunch of them when I went to the kitchen, looking for food. I knew exactly what I'd make - and it's not just that the recipe is called 'healthy onion tart' (it wouldn't be healthy if I ate half of it anyway).

I've made it several times and been really happy with it, although I've always been annoyed with the crazy salt amount the recipe calls for. How is it that cookbook authors sometimes really mess up? How is it that they sometimes manage to leave some parts of the recipes out? Or some ingredients? Don't they like...read their work over again and again?
Whatever. But that's lame. Let's just stop whining and stuff our mouths full.

Healthy onion tart on an oat flake and carrot crust (adapted from '100 pirukat', serves 8) Crust: 1 dl oat flakes 1 dl flour 1 dl grated carrots 100 g baking margarine (or butter) at room temperature 1 tsp baking powder 1/4 tsp salt Filling: 3-4- onions 1 tbsp butter 2 dl milk 2 eggs 3/4 tsp salt Mix grated carrot, oat flakes and margarine. Mix flour with salt and baking powder, add to the mixture. Take a 24cm round baking pan and press the dough onto the bottom and sides of the pan (it's easier to do so when you've chilled the dough in the fridge for some time). Place the pan into the fridge for a half an hour. Meanwhile slice the onions and cook them with the butter until they're golden. Mix eggs with milk, add salt. Bake the crust in the middle of a preheated 200C oven for 15 minutes. Spread the onion slices onto the baked crust and pour the milk-egg mixture over them. Bake at 180C for 20 more minutes.

Feel free to add herbs to the onions (thyme, maybe? rosemary? sage? or oregano?) or cheese on top of the tart when it has been baking for some time already (I allow you to keep the name 'healthy' even when you add cheese;))
I'd definitely go for some green salad on the side for serving, be the tart warm or cold. I love to warm up the cold tart in the microwave, too. The onions are so mild, the crust is sweetly speckled from grated carrot. It's not very crisp - the crust - only the bottom and the sides are, the filling kind of melts into its upper layer.

Long long time ago - in the summer - I used the very same recipe for onion tartelettes.



I think I pre-baked the crust for some 5 minutes and added 1-2 tbsp of both onions and milk-egg mixture to each tartelette, also adding cheese in the middle of baking. They were marvellous snacks to eat with fingers! As this method used up all the crust dough, there was left-over filling and I baked it in bread slices that I placed in a muffin pan. For bread and onion tartelettes I added cheese right away.



Talking about 'marvellous'? These were perfect when eaten warm and definitely on a green salad! I don't think there's a need for a more accurate recipe. Just...look!

This post will also be taking part of the 11th WTSIM event Topless tarts, hosted by Jeanne from Cook sister. Fortunately being underage can't stop one from participating...:D

All the flavour of peanut butter in a flourless cookie

Crunchy, but soft on the inside. Crumbly and so so full of that creamy peanut butter flavour that you might just as well send around the jar and let everyone stick a spoon into it!

These cookies, adapted from Nicole at Baking Bites, are flourless. No flour - no problem. No problem whatsoever. If you honestly have never baked before or - honestly - have failed doing it every single time, then it's time to get your fingers dirty. You can lick them clean, afterwards, of course:)


I made the cookies for a friend who came for a visit. 'She'll be here in 15, I'll just quickly throw a batch of cookies into the oven' But...I did it faster.
According to what you like, you can add 2 dl of chocolate chips/chopped chocolate or some peanuts. Or you can add both.

Flourless peanut butter cookies (adapted from Baking bites, makes about 20) 180 g peanut butter 1 3/4 dl sugar 1 large egg 1/2 tsp vanilla extract (or other vanillla flavouring) 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/4 tsp salt (optional: 2 dl chocolate chips, peanuts) Preheat oven to 175C. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or grease it with butter. Beat together all ingredients until smooth (add chocolate chips or peanuts at the end of mixing) Drop by tablespoonfuls onto the baking sheet and flatten slightly with a moistened finger. Bake about 10-13 minutes until golden brown at the edges. Cool on the baking sheet for some minutes, then cool on a rack completely.

I'd recommend a shorter baking time for a chewier cookie, but that's already up to you. If you love peanut butter, you'll never get lonely with these cookies around. As my friend was a bit late...I didn't get either...
Check the clock! Have 15 minutes? You know what to do!