A Quarter Pounder By Any Other Name

Hmm, ok, maybe the title is a bit misleading, since the photo is clearly showing a cake! This cake is called a four quarter cake in french, and a pound cake in english and it’s so simple, a child can do it.

And a child did, since the big boy was instrumental in bringing you this cake today: his poor little hands replaced the coveted kitchenaid standmixer as he was allowed to hold the whizzing and mixing machine ALL BY HIMSELF, all the while telling me that he was a BIG BOY NOW!

Despite warnings by She Who Shall Not Be Named (my self-appointed blog consultant — you know who you are), that it was a boring cake and recipe, I actually really really like the quatre-quart. It’s simple in taste, you can use it as a replacement for bread at breakfast, have it with tea in the afternoon and use it as backdrop for layered trifles of any kind.

It’s also the perfect recipe for someone who has never baked anything before, because there is no way that you can mess it up! You can also add some vanilla, lemon zest or dried fruit, but then it wouldn’t really be a pound cake anymore, or would it?

Simple Pound Cake

prep time: 10min, baking time: 50 min

mixing bowl, loaf pan

4 eggs
weight of the eggs in butter plus more for the pan
weight of the eggs in sugar
weight of the eggs in flour
half a pack of baking powder (about 7 g)

Preheat the oven to 180° and butter and flour your loaf pan. Mix the butter and the sugar until fluffy and white. Add the eggs one by one with the handmixer still running. Sift the flour and baking powder over the Mix and fold in. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for about 50 min or until a knife inserted in the center stays clean. Let cool in the pan before unmolding. The cake is great warm, cold, the next day and even toasted!

the Gwyneth Salad

Lately, we’ve been having lots of dinners that we were so impatient to eat, that i forgot to take pictures of them. Or that i was too embarassed to blog about for lack of a ‘recipe’ to share. These dinners having all been on the fattening side of life (I am talking ‘Raclette’, here people!), this is where i seem to still be stuck, too.

Enter: the gwyneth salad

I saw this salad when it appeared in the ny times dining section and was strangely appealed to it. Really, though who wouldn’t want to it a salad involving raw broccoli? I can hear my sister making gagging sound all the way from Switzerland (wave! hi!) and frantically trying to tell me not to make ANYTHING involving broccoli.

Good thing I learned long ago that it doesn’t always pay to follow directives from your older sibling - one incident involved me eating soap after having been told it was chocolate. I was 2, and no, no bubbles appeared out of my mouth and nose, contrary to one particular tintin album - and followed through with the recipe. Of course, I couldn’t help but substitute a few things here and there, for instance 4 raw garlics cloves and raw broccoli sounds like something only a crazy person on a macrobiotic diet would eat (hence the ‘gwyneth’ for all you trashy magazine readers out there). And 3/4 cup of olive oil seemed equally excessive in light of our recent raclette-fest, so i used enough to cover my pan. oh, and I only marinated it for about 40 min, because I couldn’t stop myself from eating it!

Marinated Raw Broccoli Salad

prep time: 10min, marinate for 1h, I dare you!

1-2 heads of broccoli, cut in florets with the stalks sliced a few mm thick
1 1/2 tsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cumin seeds
1 peeled garlic clove, halved
pinch of dried red pepper
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
olive oil

salad bowl, saucepan

Mix the vinegar and salt in a salad bowl and toss through the broccoli. Cover the bottom of a saucepan with olive oil and heat the cumin seeds and the garlic clove until fragrant.* Add the sesame oil and the dried red pepper. Pour the mixture over the broccoli, combine and marinate at room temperature for 1 h. The salad keeps in the fridge for about a day or so. don’t forget to take out the garlic before serving!

*oh, and if you feel like swishing some hot oil around your pan chef-style… don’t do it. Olive oil doesn’t look really great when it’s splashed on a white wall…

Spring!

my day so far:
- hoping that the little boys would stop teething and thus be able to go to daycare.
- my hopes being shattered as I changed the n-th diaperblowout.
- getting a cancelation of my lunchdate by a friend who I have’t seen properly in months
- changing another diaper
- deciding to make something out of the rhubarb I had bought on saturday
- forgetting the rhubarb on the stove because of, you guessed it:
- changing another diaper
- making a load of laundry
- changing another diaper…
You get the picture.

But i digress, back to the rhubarb: after having forgotten it on the stove and nearly reduced it all to what closely ressembled the content of the above mentioned, I managed to salvage some of it and set about making a crumble - similar to when one frosts a cake because it just looks somewhat… unpleasant. I had high hopes for this crumble, considering the day I’d had so far, thankfully, it didn’t let me down!

Here is my first taste of spring:

Rhubarb Crumble

prep time: 15min, serve hot or cold

For the Rhubarb

5/6 stalks of rhubarb
brown sugar, to taste

saucepan

Peel the rhubarb, cut it into bits and put it in a saucepan. Cover with a lid and cook until it starts to soften up. Add sugar to taste. Eat as is, or:

For the Crumble Topping

1 cup of uncooked rolled oats
1/4 cup of flour
1/2 cup of brown sugar
75 g of butter (room temperature)

mixing bowl, 20×20cm gratin dish

Preheat the oven to 180°. In a mixing bowl, combine all the ingredients for the topping until ‘crumbles’ start to form. You can do this by cutting into the mixture with a knife, or with your hands.

Pour the precooked ruhubarb into the gratin dish, cover with the crumble topping and bake for 40 min, or until the top begins to look golden.

Serve hot or cold, with ice cream, cream, yoghurt or just straight up.

You can substitute any fruit for the rhubarb, and you mostly need to precook only the tougher ones such as quinces etc.

Still Going Strong!

alright, that’s the third post in three days. Am i on a roll, or what? are you taking bets as to whether I will disappear again for a few weeks after this one, blaming another ‘technical malfunction’? Well, who cares, I had a backlog of a few dishes, and haven’t posted anything savoury in a while.

The dish I am about to post is the dinner equivalent of that awesome top/jeans/jacket that you got on sale at h&m and that gets you compliments each time you wear it. A dinner that you will get everybody ooohhing and aaahhhing on you, while you can be all like ‘oh, that old thing? Psshaw, it was done in no time!’. Seriously, all you’ll ever do for this dinner, is slapping some fish in tinfoil, sprinkle some glitter here and there, and open 2 cans of beans.

You can also totally decide to get all pretentious with the name and call it Fish Pillowed in Smoked Hot and Sweet Paprika with its Canellini-Cilantro Mash. Notice how that little fish pillow thing has ITS very own mash? Fancy, huh? In that case, I recommend taking the oohs and aahs very seriously as well as waxing about where exactly the smoked paprika is from, and how you imported those beans yourself, and soaked them. And gently boiled them in kabbalah water or something. Anyway, you get the picture. This dinner, it is dead easy, anyone can do it and so they should. On to the ‘recipe’.

White Fish Fillets with Smoked Paprika

Prep time: 5 min, Cooking time: 12 min

2 white fish fillets (mine amounted to 500 g, and easily served 4)
1 tsp of smoked paprika*, hot or sweet, depending on your taste
some olive oil

tin foil to make ‘parcels’

Preheat the oven to 180°. Take enough tinfoil to make an envelope for each piece of fish. Place the fish on the tinfoil, sprinkle some oilive oil and half the paprika. Close the parcel as hermetically as possible. Repeat with the other fish. Stick in the oven for about 12 min. When the fish is done, it will be all tender and fallin apart. Be careful not to burn yourself when you open the packages.

White Bean Puree with Cilantro

Prep time: 2 min, Cooking time: 5 min

2 cans of white beans, drained.**
100 ml (a scant 1/2 cup) of chicken broth
lemon juice, to taste
cilantro, to taste

saucepan, masher

Pour the drained beans into a saucepan, add the broth. Heat up until the beans are hot. Mash up, add some lemon juice and the cilantro. Serve.

Arange the fish and the purée on a plate and reap the reward of your hard work!

* I had to really, really look for smoked paprika powder — Berlin isn’t exactly full of gourmet supplyiers. In the end, I found both sweet and spicy smoked paprika, and generally use a mix of both.
** You really don’t need fabulous beans for this. The simple storebrand will be enough, no chichi-italian import necessary!

If Your Are Still Reading…

So. The best thing - in my opinion - about this lovely cake from my last post, was the frosting. One taste of it, and all I could think of, was making marshmallows. Real, honest-to-god selfmade chamallow as they are called in France. And being the only girl in our family of five, it was instantly decided that these mallows, they HAD to be pink.
Luckily for me, others before me had ventured into marshmallow teritory, so all I had to do was check my favorite sources for all things american as well as decide on wether I was going to make marshmallows with, or without egg whites.

In the end, I chose to make them with egg white. Somehow they seemed slightly less indulgent with egg, as if the egg whites made them nearly as virtuous as the famed egg-white omelets favoured by so many south-californians! On a culinary level, making something purely out of sugar, corn syrup which is essentially just more sugar and gelatine somehow wasn’t gastronomically acceptable! So, between this and that recipe, I muddled my way through, and chose to add raspberry purée as a pinkifying agent.

pretty, no?

The recipe is fairly straightforward. Despite all warnings, I whipped up the mass with my handmixer (if anybody wants to donate a kitchenaid to a just cause, I promise tasty rewards!) and it turned out just fine. Now, get to your mixers, the marshmallows turned out to be really really tasty, and fun to make. They would also make a great project to do with kids on a rainy afternoon, although the fact that the mass has to dry overnight might make for a disappointed toddler - don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Pink Raspberry Marshmallows

prep time: 15min, cooling time: 12 h

16 sheets of gelatine
3 egg whites
2 1/2 Tbsp glucose or corn syrup
1 1/4 cup of sugar
100 ml of water
4 Tbsp of raspeberry purée, sieved
corn or potato starch

saucepan, 20 cm square cake tin, cutting board

Place the gelatine in a bowl of cold water to soften it up. Line the cake tin with oiled parchment paper - I oiled both sides of the paper to make sure it would really stick to the tin. Crack the egg whites into a big mixing bowl, the mass will triple in volume. In a saucepan combine the water, syrup and sugar. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 8 minutes, or until the mixture is dissolved.

While the syrup is cooking, whip the egg whites to soft peaks. Drain the gelatine sheets and squeeze out as much water as possible. Add them to the hot sugar syrup, and pour the whole thing gently over your whites while still whipping the eggs. This is the point at which you might realize that yes, you only have two hands, and that a helper might be of use. Once the whole syrup is combined into the egg whites, add the raspberry purée and keep mixing until the (pink!) mass reaches room temperature

Pour the mass into the prepped cake tin, and wonder for a brief moment if you just inadvertently made latex. Let it cool over night.

The next day (before even having breakfast if you are anything like me!), sieve a little starch onto a cutting board, and some more onto a plate. Invert the marshmallow onto the cutting board and dust it with some more starch. With a sharp knife or a pizza cutter.

I recommend letting the cut up marshmallows dry up some more before you package them, as they tend to hold a lot of moisture and will stick together despite the corn starch if you package them too soon. Or you just eat them straight up!

Anybody There?

phsshhht (blows dust+cobwebs of her blog). Hi!
Sorry for not posting, but as I already explained to my 3 readers, our camera was broken, and whats the point of blogging about spareribs, lemon risotto and coffee cake if you have no photos to show for!

My camera is safely back in my hands, and the weekend was spent trying to make up for lost time: we bought a fresh coconut at the market, and I was thus hoping for a cake that would be like a bounty. I didn’t succeed, but the result was crazy nonetheless: behold, the fluffy, cloudy Chocolate-Coconut-Marshmallow Cake
The cake is simple chocolate, filled with marshmallow-coconut-filling and frosted with seven-minute-frosting. It looks very impressive ( If i do say so myself!), and isn’t too heavy, despite the large amounts of sugar. In fact, the cake was gone in two days. Two days, and only gave one piece away to a friend!

Chocolate-Coconut-Marshmallow Cake

for the sponge cake
adapted from Trish Deseine MY CUISINE
prep time: 10min, baking time: 15 min, cooling time: 5-10 min

225 g sugar
225 g butter, softened
4 eggs
225 g flour
2 tsp baking powder
4 Tbsp cocoa powder, diluted in 4 Tbsp hot water

2 25 cm round or square cake tins

Preheat the oven to 180°C. and line your buttered cake pans with parchment paper. In a mixing bowl combine the sugar and butter, mixing until white and fluffy. Add the eggs, mixing well inbetween each one. Sift the flour and baking powder into the bowl and add the cocoa mixture. Mix until just combined.
Divide the batter between the cake tins and bake for 25 minutes or until the cake feels springy to touch and a knife inserted to the center will come out clean. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes then invert unto a rack.

While the cake is cooling off, prepare the marshmallow frosting (also called seven-minute-frosting)

Marshmallow Frosting

1 1/2 cups of sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 egg whites
2 tsp vanilla extract
splash of white vinegar
prep time: 9min, cooling time: 10 min

metal mixing bowl or saucepan, pot of simmering water for a waterbath

Mix all the ingredients together in a metal bowl or saucepan set over a pot of simmering water. With an electric mixer, whip the mixture until the frosting stands in stiff peaks - about 5-7 min. When the right consistency is achieved, take the bowl of the heat and keep whipping until the mixture cools down, about two more min. Let the frosting cool completely for 10 more minutes.

Marshmallow-Coconut-Filling

1 cup of Marshmallow Frosting
1 cup of shredded unsweetened coconut

Mix until combined.

Assembly

Spread the Marshmallow-Coconut-Filling on the first cake and top with the secind one. Set the cake on the plate or stand you want to serve it in. Stick pieces of parchment paper underneath the cake to catch any drips from the frosting. using an offset spatula or a big knife, spread the Marshmallow Frosting all over the cake and sprinkle some shredded coconut on top.
The cake is best eaten cold.

Back to Our Regular Programming - A Simple Lunch for Two

We are back at home and settling into our old routine and cooking habits after weeks of indulgences at my parents house.

Since the husband works from home, and I am still on maternity leave, we share a lunch of salad or soup with a sandwich on the side. I am a huge fan of soups of all kinds, since they are quick to make (especially if you have a pressure cooker), tasty and generally pretty healthy. With the addition of fresh herbs and/or spices, you can turn pretty much anything on hand into a soup(yes, probably even Nutella!)

Today, was a leek and red lentil dahl which turned out reliably tasty, with the perfect amount of spicy and lots of cilantro. Being borderline obsessive about nutrients, I added some fresh veggetable in form of leeks, which i substituted for onions. My obsession, by the way is a futile attempt to right the wrongs caused by my uncontrolled chocolate consumption, and it is in that spirit, that I recommend adding fresh vegetables or herbs to a soup with dried benas or lentils. The vitamin C in fresh produce helps the iron contained in the legumes (I know, I am a total show-off for using the smartypantsword “legumes” to talk about dried beans, peas and lentils of all kinds!) to be absorbed by your body - This fun fact brought to you courtesy of every german midwife I encountered in my two pregnancies!

Leek and Red Lentil Dahl

Prep Time: 10 min cooking time: 15 min

2 tbsp of olive oil
3/4 cup (100 g) red lentils
1 cup (250 ml) water
1 small leek, cleaned and thinly sliced
1/2 tsp curcuma
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp coriander seeds
1/2 tsp mustard powder
2 small dried chilies (or more)
fresh cilantro ( I used about 1/4 cup for 2 servings)
salt to taste

1 medium sized saucepan / stockpot

Grind all the spices together in a mortar or an electric grinder. Heat up the olive oil in a stockpot and fry up the spices at medium heat until they fragrant.

Add the thinly sliced leek and the lentils and cook, stirring for a few more minutes. Add the water and bring to a boil. Cover and let it simmer on reduced heat for about 10 minutes or until the lentils are tender.
Add salt and garnish with the cilantro.

In Honor of the Upcoming World Nutella Day… Chocolate Pizza and Basic Pizza Dough

Did you know, that there is a World Nutella Day? I read about it on Ms. Adventures in Italy, and I had to applaud the initiative. An entire day to celebrate Nutella is only right and proper!

As a child, we were never allowed to have nutella, which resulted in me developing a lifelong addiction to it - so much so, that one of the first things of my own that I bought when I moved into my own apartment, was a giant jar of nutella. Because I polished it off much too quickly, I have since tried to restrict myself to desperate times only. Hence, the appeal of a World Nutella Day.

I’ve had this recipe in my must-try folder for about a year and it seemed to be just the thing for this celebration: chocolate pizza.

Pizza, Nutella, and more chocolate to top it off sounded like my idea of a good time — but while it did not disappoint, it is not quite the dessert it was said to be. In my opinion, it is much better suited for goûter (the snack that most french children take after school, around 4 pm) or maybe even for a decadent breakfast.

It’s very quick and easy to make, I used my go-to basic pizza dough recipe, nutella and subsituted ribboned orange zest for the hazelnuts which gave it a more refreshing taste.

Basic Pizza Dough

Prep Time: 30 min baking time: 15 min

2/3 cup of lukewarm water
1/ Tbsp active dry yeast (amounts to one envelope)
1 Tsp of sugar
2 cups of flour
1/2 Tsp of salt
3 Tbsp of olive oil

baking sheet

In a mixing bowl, mix the water, yeast and sugar together and set aside in a warm place until bubbles form at the surface (5 min)
Add the flour, salt and olive oil to the yeast-preparation and beat with the wirehooks of your handmixer until an elastic dough forms (5 min). You can of course mix the dough by hand, but it will take about 5x longer.
When the dough has come together, roll it into a ball in the mixing bowl, cover with a teatowel and let it rise in a warm place until doubled in size (20 min).
Preheat the oven to 200° and line your baking sheet with parchment paper.
You will have enough dough for either 4 small pizzas, 2 medium sized ones, or one big one. If you are making pizza, proceed to top the rolled out dough with the topping of your choice and bake for about 20 min.

Chocolate Pizza

Prep Time: 2 min baking time: 22 min

1 Tbsp of melted butter
about 1/4 cup of Nutella or to taste
2 Tbsp white chocolate chunks
1/2 cup of dark chocolate chunks
1 Tbsp of orange zest

baking sheet

When your dough is done and rolled out into the desired size, prick it with a fork and brush the top with the melted butter. Bake it in the oven until golden and baked through - for about 15 min
When the pizza is done, take it out of the oven and spread it with your choice amount of nutella. Sprinkle the chocolate chunks and the orange zest on top. Bake it in the oven for another 2 min, or until all the chocolate has melted. Serve warm.

Bringing Bunny Back - Rabbit Saddle Stuffed with Dried Fruit

Rabbit doesn’t seem to be very popular anywhere but in France where we are also known to be eating such weird things as frog legs, snails and the other clichéed mouldy cheeses. Anyway, after posting so many sweet recipes, i decided to finally post something savory, and to make sure i had all your attention, I chose to cook a shocker - hence, the bunny.

The taste and smell of rabbit is to me forever linked to the house in Savoy where my grandmother (not the parisienne, obviously!) was born and raised, and where my great uncle and great aunt lived up until their death. This house you see, was a farm. A real farm, with crops, raspberry patches, a chicken coop, a rabbit house, a tractor that could be climbed upon, a well and an outhouse (no indoor bathroom!). It also boasted a real wood-fired cast iron stove that was used to cook and bake everything the farm produced.

Whenever we would come and visit, my great aunt would invariably either serve us a chicken, or a rabbit. Both were ‘readied’ for the meal right before our eyes. My great uncle would hang the rabbit by its leg on top of the ladder that was leaning on the barn and with one smooth gesture, he would skin it. I don’t really remember being grossed out, but it really stuck in my memory and comes back whenever I eat rabbit.

The dessert by the way, was even more invariable: a custard tarte with pink pralines. My mother and my grandmother have both tried to replicate it, but it seems the flavor would always pale in comparison to the one my great aunt made in her old stove. My grandmother gave me a copy of this particular recipe in a book of family recipes that she compiled for our wedding, and I have since sworn to try the recipe as well. But I digress. Back to the bunny…

The recipe comes from the fall issue of ‘Elle à table’, which featured different ways to prepare rabbit saddle (aka bunny back). The one with dried fruits in a honey-ginger-soy marinade caught our eyes, but since the original recipe called for skewers and that is both a bother to prep and a bother to eat, my mother and I decided to roast the saddle as a whole in the oven instead.

The meat was delicious and tender, and we served it alongside peppered pears, as the recipe suggested. However, with dried fruit, the honey-bases marinade AND the pears, there was a a slight sweet overkill. Next time, I’ll use fewer dried apricots.

Rabbit Saddle Stuffed with Dried Fruit

adapted from Elle à table
Prep Time: 15 min roasting time: 40 min

For the stuffed saddle
500 g rabbit saddles
16 dried apricots (I’d use less, 12 maybe?)
8 prunes
For the marinade
4 Tsp sesame (again, 2 Tsp would have been plenty)
1 cm peeled and grated ginger
2 Tbsp soy sauve
4 Tbsp honey
2 Tbsp olive oil
For the pears
4 middle sized ripe pears
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
1 Tbsp butter
mixed pepper, to taste

roasting pan, non-stick pan, twine

Preheat the oven to 190. Lay the saddles back side down on a cutting board and stuff them with the dried fruits. Roll up and bind them shut with twine and lay them in the pan.
Next up, make the marinade by mixing the honey, soy and ginger together. Pour over the saddles and chill while you prep the pears.
Peel and slice the pears. Toss in the lemon juice
Stick the saddles in the oven. You might want to cover them up with a lid or aluminum foil for part of the time (I covered mine for the first 25 min or so) to prevent them from drying out. About 10 min before your rabbit is done, melt the butter in a pan add the pears and cook until translucent. Serve hot.

Chocolate Cake on a not so good day

Phew, has it ever been a while since I posted! My lack of posting is not to be attributed to lack of enthusiasm, far from it: We have been staying with my parents for the last month, and most of the cooking has not been done by me. This means that I couldn’t really post anything salty either even though I had been meaning to do it.
Instead, I would like to share with you the highlight of my not so good day: the gateau au chocolat de Marie.

It is very similar to this cake and I believe also this one. In short, it’s a super rich chocolatey, fudgey, buttery chocolate cake. But but but, before you start whining about caloric values and other health risks involved with the consumption of this cake, let me add that this one also boasts extra vitamin c thanks to the addition of orange zest and orange juice. If that’s not healthy, I don’t know what is! Another selling point for this cake is the fact, that it comes together in 30 min, less time than it takes you to get ready for a dinner party! But beware, thatthe chocolatey goodness is at it’s best after a substantial cooling time, or even on the next day.

The recipe for this chocolate cake comes to me courtesy of my aunt Marie, who gave it to my mother. It was the go-to chocolate cake for years, since it’s easy enough that a kid can do it with hardly any help needed. In fact, when I was in high school I used this cake as a trade in for favors: I never had a drivers license, let alone a car so I traded one chocolate cake for one semester of hitching rides to school with some friends!

My aunt herself, had the recipe from my grandmother, a true parisienne if there ever was one. As a young girl, she was trained at the prestigious Ecole du Cordon Bleu as part of her bourgeois upbringing,where she learned to bake this cake at the Cordon Bleu school, and passed it on to her daughter, and her daughter only. She is rather secretive about her recipe, and was none to pleased when she found out that we (my mother, my sister and I) had been using her recipe as well - from her point of view, recipes are not to be shared. OOOPS, my bad!

My sister suggested that I make this cake in order to cheer me up from my not so good day (involving 2 teething twins and a troublesome toddler amongst other things) and as is to be expected with all things chocolate, it totally worked!

Gateau au chocolat de Marie

Family Recipe
Prep Time: 8 min baking time: 22 min

200 g butter
200 g dark chocolate
150 g granulated sugar
4 eggs
zest and juice of 1/2 an orange
1 Tbsp flour

25 cm round or square cake tin

Preheat the oven to 190° and line your buttered cake pan with parchment paper. Melt the chocolate together with the zest and juice of 1/2 an orange. Add the butter and sugar and let it melt with the chocolate
With an electric mixer, mix in the eggs one by one (BTW, does anybody else find it super annoying to add eggs one by one when using a handmixer and NOT a kitchenaid? just saying!) and finally fold in the flour.
Pour the mixture evenly into your cake pan and bake for 22 min, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out slightly moist. The sides of the cake will rise more than the middle. Cool in the pan for 5 min before inverting it onto a plate (safer than a cooling rack, which might break the cake at this point) and letting it cool of completely.
The cake is really good on it’s own or with a coffee. But americans will certainly tell you that it’d be even better with a tall glass of cool milk!