Nutella Madeleines

The recipe for these wonderful madeleines comes from a French food blog Tart'in & Chocolate. The cookies are incredibly tender and fluffy with a wonderful nutty flavor. The inclusion of Nutella to each of the cookies provides wonderful melting sensation in your mouth. They're certainly the best sponge cookies I've ever had.

Nutella Madeleines

Makes 1 pan

3 eggs
40 g caster sugar
50 g flour
40 g unsalted butter
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp Nutella + a drop of Nutella for each madeleine

1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then off the heat, stir in Nutella and caster sugar.
2. Using an electric mixer beat the eggs until pale and thick.
3. Sift the flour and baking powder over the eggs, and gently fold in.
4. Combine with the cooled butter, sugar and Nutella mixture.
5. Leave to rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour.
6. Preheat the oven to 370 F (190 C)
7. Grease madeleine molds. Fill the molds with the cake mixture.
   
8. With a tip of a knife place a drop of Nutella on each madeleine cookie.
9. Bake for 10-15 min.
10. Remove the madeleines from the molds and let cool on a rack.

Przepis po polsku:
Magdalenki z Nutellą

For those who like almonds...

There was Grandmother’s Day in Poland last Monday, and I wanted to bake something for my grandmother for that occasion. I had spent hours looking through cookbooks and cooking magazines to choose the best recipe. Finally, I opted for friands recipe. I decided to make these little almond cakes as the recipe resembled pear and almond cake I had baked a week before. The cake was absolutely delicious, so I thought that another recipe with almonds would be a perfect choice. Well, it wasn’t. Not that the cakes were not good, they were delicious, both I and my husband absolutely loved them. They were soft, they were spongy, they were moist and… they did taste almonds…but when my grandmother tried one, you could see from her face she didn’t share my love for these cakes. At first, I couldn't understand why, but then it reminded me that my grandmother did not like almonds. She had mentioned it to me a few weeks before Christmas when we talked about almond flavor in poppy seeds cake, but I totally forgot about that. So, if you do not like almond flavor either, forget about these cakes, you wouldn’t like them. But if you’re (like me) a fan of almonds, I suspect you’ll love them. They’re simple, but absolutely delicious, perfect with a cup of coffee in the morning or any other time of the day.

The recipe was adapted from Donna Hay's Modern Classics Book 2. I altered the recipe slightly by adding vanilla sugar to the batter and reducing the amount of icing sugar. I also beat the egg whites slightly, even though the recipe didn’t ask for that. I didn’t have friands molds, so I baked my friands in muffin pans, I turned them upside down after baking as they looked nicer this way. I baked my friands plain, but you can top them with some fruit before baking. I suspect they would be delicious with raspberries, but feel free to use the fruit you like most. Also, if you don’t have almond meal, you can make your own by processing whole almonds until finely ground. Since my friands were meant to be a gift, I decorated them with icing and sugar flowers, but I think they would be better without the icing, served with a dash of whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Friands
(adapted from Donna Hay's Modern Classics Book 2)

125 g butter
1 cup almond meal
1 cup icing sugar
16 g vanilla sugar
¾ cup all-purpose flour, sifted
½ teaspoon baking powder
5 egg whites

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C (350° F)
2. Grease 12 friand molds or muffin pans.
3. Heat butter in a saucepan over low heat, whisking frequently, until golden brown.
4. Place the almond meal, icing sugar, vanilla sugar, flour, and baking powder in a bowl and stir to combine.
5. In a separate bowl, lightly beat egg whites with a fork, then fold them into dry ingredients.
6. Add the butter and stir to combine.
7. Spoon 2 tbsp of the mixture into each mold.
8. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden and springy to touch but moist in the centre.

Przepis po polsku:
Friands (Migdałowe babeczki)

Onion Day

As there was Zibelemärit (onion market) in Berne, Switzerland yesterday, Zorra from 1 x umrühren bitte blog has declared 26th November as an Onion Day. She invited food bloggers from all over the world to join the celebration by preparing a dish with onions on 26th November and blogging about it today. Even though I’m not a big fan of onions, there’s one onion recipe I absolutely love! The dish is Red Onion, Feta and Olives Tart and it’s definitely the best savory tart I’ve ever had!!!

The first time I tried this recipe though, it wasn’t that good at all. The mistake I made was omitting balsamic vinegar. I didn’t have balsamic vinegar at home and thought it would taste fine without it too. Well, it didn’t. It turned out that the vinegar was really an essential ingredient in the tart, as without it, the onions came out too sweet. This time, however, I followed the recipe and the result was amazing. The vinegar balanced the sweetness of the onion and sugar mixture and the tart came out delicious. The combination of flavors of sweet (but not too sweet this time) onions and savory feta and olives is absolutely genius.

The recipe comes from the Polish edition of Good Food: 101 Veggie Dishes cookbook and asks for ready puff pastry. I made the pastry myself using Nigella Lawson’s Processor Puff-Pastry recipe from How to Be a Domestic Goddess, I altered the recipe slightly by omitting the lemon juice though. The pastry came out great: buttery, flaky and tender.


Red Onion, Feta and Olives Tart
( adapted from the Polish edition of Good Food:101 Veggie Dishes)

Serves 4

25 g butter
2 large red onions, finely sliced
2 tbsp light brown sugar (e.g. Demerara or Light Muscovado)
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
450 g puff pastry (see the recipe below)
100 g feta cheese, crumbled
175 g black olives, sliced
1 tbsp olive oil
basil, chopped

Preheat the oven to 200°C (400F)

Melt the butter in a large pan. Add the onions and season to taste with salt. Fry for 10 minutes until golden and soft stirring occasionally. Add sugar and balsamic vinegar, and cook for a further 5 minutes until the juices are reduced and syrupy. Leave to cool.

Roll out the pastry on lightly floured surface. Lightly grease 25 cm (10 inch) tart pan, then line with the pastry. Cover with the onion mix. Scatter the feta and olives over. Drizzle the olive oil over the topping.

Bake for 15 minutes or until the pastry is risen and golden and the base is crisp. Top with the basil. Serve with green salad.

Processor Puff-Pastry*
( adapted from How to Be a Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson)

250g strong white flour
pinch of salt
250g cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 cm slices
5-6 tablespoons iced water

Pulse the flour and salt together in the processor, then add the butter and pulse 3-4 times, the pieces of butter should still be visible. Add the iced water, and pulse till the pastry begins to form a ball, then form a ball with your hands. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for half an hour.
Dust a surface with flour, roll the pastry out into a long rectangle, and fold it in three like a business letter.Now turn the folded pastry so that if it was a book the spine would be on your left. Repeat twice more, turning every time.
Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for another half an hour before using it.

* This makes enough for 2 tarts, so you may need to scale the recipe.

Citrus Weekend

I’ve found out about a very nice Polish food blog event recently. The event was called Cytrusowy Weekend (Citrus Weekend) and was hosted by Tatter from Palce lizać blog. It’s the first challenge I've been taking part in, so I’ve been quite excited about it. I spent hours searching for recipes with citrus fruit and I was actually surprised how many delicious things you can make with it. I’ll be certainly using more citrus fruit in my cooking from now on.

Now when the days are cold and cloudy I really miss summer days. That’s probably why the recipe for Sunshine Tart was the one that most appealed to me. The recipe was adapted from a special edition of Polish Naj magazine, the issue from March 2000. The original recipe called for orange liquor, but since I didn’t have any at home, I used brandy instead and it worked fine too. I also increased the amount of mandarin oranges as the amount used in the recipe wasn’t enough to fill the whole tart. The recipe called for different amounts of sugar twice which was probably a mistake, I added only the first 5 spoons and didn’t use the remaining 7 spoons for which the recipe asked. The tart would have been a way too sweet with 7 spoons of sugar more. I also placed the glaze on the mandarins, not under as the recipe said.

The result was wonderful. The tart came out delicious- very very sweet, but somehow light and refreshing at the same time. The use of orange zest in the pastry added a lovely depth of flavor to the tart. I also must say that making this tart has almost therapeutic properties. First, because of its bright and energetic color, second because it fills your kitchen with a wonderful orange scent. Here's the recipe:

Sunshine Tart

1 ½ cup flour
125 g margarine
5 tbsp caster sugar
pinch of salt
1 egg
1 tbsp orange zest
4 cans (300 g each) mandarin oranges
1 tbsp orange liquor or brandy
2/3 cup apricot jam
fresh mint to decorate

Sift the flour into a large bowl. Using your fingertips, rub the margarine into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Add salt, egg, sugar, and orange zest and knead the dough with your hands to form a ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for one hour.

Preheat the oven to 200°C (400F)

Lightly grease 25 cm (10 inch) tart pan, then line with the pastry. Prick all over with a fork. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.

Arrange the mandarin oranges over the crust. Heat the apricot jam and the orange liquor (or brandy) in a small saucepan until melted. Remove from the heat and strain the jam through a strainer to remove any fruit lumps. Let cool until slightly warm. Brush the tart with the glaze. Decorate with mint leaves.


Przepis po polsku:
Tarta pełna słońca