A festive cake: chocolate rulltårta

This Christmas my parents wanted me to bake a light and "easy" cake for our Swedish Christmas dinner so we thought of a chocolate filled rulltårta. Rulltårta, or roll cake in Swedish, is known in the US as Swiss roll, while we do not have such a cake in Switzerland. Maybe another Swiss-Swedish confusion :-p

So rulltårta is basically a very thin sponge cake filled with either (whipped) cream and berries or with chocolate cream. Here I went for chocolate cream. It was a totally new experiment and turned out to be a great dessert, for Christmas or any time of the year with coffee in the afternoon.

The recipe is short and the chocolate filling easy to make. The only tricky part is 1) making sure the cake does not overbake, else it will crack when rolled, and 2) flipping the cake upside down on parchment paper, but if you don't hesitate it will be fine ! So try it and enjoy :-D

Recipe for a chocolate filled rulltårta:

Sponge cake:

3 eggs
2 dl sugar
2 dl flour
2 tsp baking powder
0.5 dl milk

Beat sugar and eggs until white. Mix flour and baking powder, then carefully add it to the batter and mix. Add milk last and mix gently. Pour the batter on a sheet pan covered with parchment paper (it's the flat pan that you have in your oven). Bake 4.5-5 min at 250 C. Spread sugar on the cake and flip it upside down on parchment paper covered with sugar. Detach the parchment paper very carefully so as not to break the cake: you can spread some water on the paper, it will help the cake detach from it.

Chocolate filling:

2.25 dl light cream (15% fat)
3 eggyolks
3 tbsp sugar
3-4 tbsp cocoa
2.25 tbsp maizena
23 g butter

In a saucepan, mix all ingredients (minus the butter) and warm up while whisking until the sauce thickens into a cream. Add butter and beat up the cream. Spread the chocolate cream on the cooled cake and roll the cake up on the long side. Cut 2-3cm thick slices and enjoy the cake with coffee or as dessert!

Chestnut cake with chocolate icing

This week was a colleague's 30th birthday (happy birthday Alex!) so I thought I should bake a cake for him. But also because it had been a while since I had brought a cake to work and my colleagues were wondering whether and when I would bring a sweet next. So voilà here is the first cake of 2014: a chestnut cake covered with insane chocolate icing!

I love both chestnuts and chocolate and I think they go really well together (in crêpes too, you should try :-D ). Moreover, grocery shops were closed when I embarked on this new recipe but I remembered I had a pack of chestnut purée somewhere in my freezer that I had planned on using a few months back. The recipe is very straightforward, easy and quick to prepare. I recommend baking the cake in the morning or the night before because of the chocolate icing, but you can also have the cake without icing, the chestnut taste will come out even more. As note, the chocolate icing described below can be used on any cake or dessert, it melts in your mouth (alternatively you can also eat it on its own... mmm).

Ok I let you try it and let me know what you think! Enjoy !!!

Recipe for a 28-30 cm long cake:

200 g butter, room T
200 g sugar
4 eggyolks
4 eggwhites
250 g chestnut purée
150 g ground almonds
2 tbsp flour
1 tsp baking powder

Beat up the soft butter, add eggyolks and sugar and continue beating. Add chestnut purée, ground almonds and flour, mix. Beat up eggwhites in a separate bowl and incorporate them gently into the mix. Transfer to a buttered and floured cake form and draw a line in the length of the batter. Bake 50-55 min at 200C in the middle of the oven.

Chocolate icing

100 g dark cooking chocolate
85 g cream

15 g butter

1 tbsp powder sugar

Melt all the ingredients in a bain marie while gently mixing (alternatively warm up a sauce pan, add the ingredients and gently mix away from the fire, you don't want the chocolate to cook!). Cover the cooled cake with chocolate sauce and let the icing dry for a few hours (or minutes :-p ) before serving.

Swedish gingerbread (mjuk pepparkaka)

a slice of gingerbread served with whipped cream and lingonberry jam

the whole gingerbread with Swedish Jultomtar

Around this time of the year, gingerbread is a popular treat in many countries, especially in Northern Europe. In Sweden, I discovered a soft gingerbread cake that the bakery in Ljunghusen makes and I love it. I would have it every time I'd go to Sweden! Then this month with all the holiday and pre-Christmas dinners around, I decided to try and make it myself and share it with my friends.

I mixed and adapted several recipes to finally have one that I found equally soft and moist as the one I bought in the baker shop and made it spicy enough to have a strong taste of Holidays :-) The cake is really easy to make: it takes approximately 10 min to mix ingredients, and then 30 min to bake in the oven: very straightforward and a great cake for December to share with family and friends!

Recipe for a mjuk pepparkaka / gingerbread:

2 eggs
2 dl sugar
2.5 tsp cloves
2.5 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp ginger
1 tsp baking soda
3 dl flour
100 g butter
1.5 dl sour cream / yoghurt

Whip up eggs and sugar until almost white. In a separate bowl mix all the dry ingredients. Melt the butter, let it cool down and then add the sour cream/yoghurt to it. Add dry ingredients + dairy to the egg-sugar mix and mix only until uniform (don't overdo it). Transfer the dough to a buttered and floured Bundt cake form. Bake in the oven 27-30 min at 175 C.
Serve with whipped cream and lingonberries (or lingonberry jam). Enjoy!

Pear tart with almond filling

Last night I had my close friends over for dinner. I wanted to make a Fall-Winter-like dessert, yet something relatively light and with fruits. I remembered an excellent pear tart with almond filling that we often buy in the mountains in the Winter so I went on to try and replicate that delicious dessert.

In the end I came up with a simple recipe composed of a sweet shortcrust dough, juicy pears, and a very easy almond filling composed of eggs, butter, sugar and ground almonds. The trick here is to choose juicy and/or ripe pears because hard pears do not soften while baking and a tart with hard pears is not as pleasant. Else it's a very easy recipe to follow and takes about 1.5 hrs to prepare and bake in total. And it's great both in Summer and in Winter! And with vanilla ice-cream the pear-almond tart tastes even better :-D

Recipe for a big pear tart (28 cm form)

1 portion shortcrust dough (pâte brisée):
240 g flour
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
140 g cold butter
1 dl water

3-4 juicy pears

Almond filling:
100 g butter, room T
100 g sugar
100 g ground+peeled almonds
2 eggs, beaten up

Prepare the dough as previously described and refrigerate it for 30 min. Peel and clean pears, cut them in 2 and slice them evenly (short side).
Beat up butter and sugar together in a bowl. Add ground almonds and beaten up eggs, mix.
Prepare a pie form with butter + flour. Roll out the dough, fold in edges, and prick it with a fork. Place pear halves evenly (geometrically) onto the dough and add the almond filling in between the pears. Bake in the oven 30 min at 200C.
Decorate the tart with sliced almonds and serve with vanilla ice-cream! Enjoy!

Schaffhausen-style onion pie (Bölletünne)

I love quiches and salty tarts. I find them nutritious and an excellent dish filled with proteins, vegetables, carbs and dairy: a whole meal in one! This onion tart is a scpecialty from the Schaffhausen canton in Switzerland and is also called Schaffhauser Bölletünne. It contains bacon lardons and lots and lots of onions. The pie is typically made with standard yellow onions, but here I mixed them with red onions and shallots too because I thought it might be more colorful and more tasty.

It takes a bit of time to prepare all the ingredients and bake it in the oven, count 1.5-2 hrs in total from start to end. You can serve it warm with a fresh salad but it is also excellent cold as snack! I hope you enjoy it and you can also check out my Quiche Lorraine!

Recipe for a big onion pie (28 cm)

1 portion pâte brisée (shortcrust dough)

240 g flour
1 tsp salt
140 g cold butter
1 dl water

750 g onions (yellow, red, shallots)
100 g bacon lardons

2 dl cream
1 dl milk
2 eggs
pepper
nutmeg (optional)

 

 

Prepare the shortcrust dough as previously described and refrigerate 30 min. Peel and slice onions (I chose to use several kinds of onions together), cook them with some butter in a pan until they become transparent (low-mid heat). Let them cool down. Grill the bacon lardons until golden and let them cool on kitchen paper to soak extra fat. In a bowl add milk and cream, and add eggs one by one while whisking. Add some pepper and nutmeg if you like.

Roll out the dough onto a buttered + floured pie form, fold in the edges and prick it with a fork. Bake in the oven 8 min at 200 C. Spread the bacon lardons on the pre-baked dough, add the cooked onions and finally the egg-cream mix. Bake in the oven approximately 30 min at 200 C. Serve with a small salad.


Adapted from: http://www.swissmilk.ch/fr/recettes/HWL_CHKL2003_12/tarte-aux-oignons-a-la-schaffhousoise.html
www.myswitzerland.com/en/bettybossi/recipes/41809_en.pdf‎

Pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving

Pumpkin pie in the lab :-)

Now that I made a big stock of pumpkin purée I decided to use it further to make pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie is great in November and especially for Thanksgiving, which wouldn't be a proper Thanksgiving without a pumpkin pie.
I tried several recipes until getting one from my friend Scott and adapting it slightly to my taste. It's a soft and spicy pie based on homemade pumpkin purée and shortcrust dough. It's very easy and quick to prepare, takes about an hour to bake, and in the end it's delicious and fast to eat :-)

Recipe for a big pumpkin pie

5 dl pumpkin purée
4 dl (or 2x300 g tubes) of sweetened condensed milk
2 large eggs, beaten up
1.5 tsp cinnamon
0.5 tsp ginger
0.5 tsp nutmeg
0.5 tsp cardamom
1 pinch of cloves
0.5 tsp salt
1.8 dl brown sugar
4-5 tbsp flour

Mix eggs, condensed milk, and pumpkin purée. Add spices and mix. Add sugar and flour and whisk. Roll out pâte brisée* into a buttered and floured pie form. Prick it with a fork and pour the batter in the pie form. Bake in the oven 15 min at 220 C then 50 min at 180 C.
Let it cool down and serve with whipped cream.

*Pâte brisée
240 g flour
140 g cold butter
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
1 dl cold water
Mix sugar, salt and flour. Mix butter in the flour with your hands and make crumbs. Add water and mix fast to make a dough. Refrigerate 30 min.

Pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting

November is Movember month for men and is Pumpkin month for Laura. I really like pumpkin in all its forms and shapes, whether as cake, pie, soup, purée, muffin etc, and that started when I used to live in the US. I chose a nice big "Cucurbita moschata" pumpkin (musquée de Provence), made a purée out of it, and then used it to bake a wonderful pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting.

This cake is made in a Bundt cake form and is extremely easy to execute. Once you have your stock of pumpkin purée, it takes 10 min to mix and prepare the batter. Then you need to wait 1h30 or so for the cake to bake and to cool down, and then another 10 min for the frosting. Try it now, it's the perfect season and great as afternoon snack with coffee or tea. Enjoy :-D

Recipe for a big pumpkin cake
(divide all amounts by 2 for a 25 cm-long cake)

2 dl brown sugar
2 dl white sugar
2.4 dl fat (oil or melted butter)*
5 dl pumpkin purée**
4 eggs

Mix fat, sugar, and pumpkin. Add eggs one by one while beating.
* I do half colza oil half melted butter, for something more moist use only oil and for something more dry use only butter.

4.8 dl flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2-3 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp nutmeg

Mix dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Add to wet mix while beating. Pour batter into a floured + buttered Bundt cake shape. Bake in the oven 50-55 min at 180 C. Unmold the cake and let it cool down.

Cream cheese frosting

113 g cream cheese
60 g (4 tbsp) butter at room T
4.8 dl powder sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
some milk
pecan nuts or walnuts

Beat up cream cheese and butter together. Add powder sugar + cinnamon and beat. Add a few drops of milk to make the mix more fluid if necessary. Spread the frosting on top of the cake and decorate with some walnuts or pecan nuts.

**Pumpkin purée

Cut + clean a pumpkin (remove the seeds). Bake in the oven on parchment paper with a little bit of oil until soft (approximately 1 hour at 180 C. Peel off the skin, mix the pumpkin in a bowl without adding anything. Et voila! A great base for cakes and soups.