Strawberrymisu

This is not a tiramisu recipe but a strawberrymisu recipe. In Italy it is called Tiramisu alle fragole meaning tiramisu with strawberries. It has the Savoiardi biscuits and Mascarpone cheese as in tiramisu but instead of coffee strawberries are used. I tried this recipe the first time and it was the perfect dessert after a heavy meal - light, sweet and fresh. Also reminded me of the sweet summer :) I think this dessert will become one of my favorites because its easy and quick to make and tastes amazing. 

Just a few notes:
- Any biscuits can work but Savoiardi biscuits is the original Italian biscuits
- I brushed the biscuits with the juice of the strawberries but for example orange juice could be used too.
- I used a strawberry jam I had made in the summer that had strawberries cut in quarters and mixed with sugar. Another option is to use fresh strawberries mixed with little bit of jam.  

Strawberrymisu

16-20 Savoiardi biscuits (or Ladyfingers)
200 grams Mascarpone Cheese
1 tea spoon Vanilla extract or vanilla sugar
3-4 table spoons icing sugar
2 desiliters heavy whipping cream
1-2 tea spoon lemon juice
1 jar of homemade strawberry jam or about 2 dl of fresh strawberries cut in pieces

For the filling beat heavy cream until soft peaks form. Add in the mascarpone cheese, powdered sugar, vanilla extract and lemon juice and mix.

To ensemble the cake brush the biscuits with juice from the strawberries. Spread a thin layer of the filling on the bottom of the baking dish. I used a glass salad bowl but almost any kind of dish works. Line with biscuits, spread filling again and top with strawberry pieces. Repeat putting biscuits, filling and strawberries until done. Place in the fridge fro a few hours or overnight. Enjoy!

Old fashioned cinnamon rolls

 I just love the smell of fresh baked in the house and the first bite of warm cinnamon roll with a cup of hot chocolate or juice on the side.

As the days are getting shorter and its already dark at 5pm we are coming up with different things to do indoors with the kids. Baking is always a guaranteed success so the other night we decided to make some cinnamon rolls and also try out the mixer. This mixer was my grandma's so it has been used a lot but still works. It does make a lot of noise but makes baking much easier. Also I find that the dough becomes easier to bake and it helps to get a better consistency than by hand.

The Finnish style cinnamon rolls aka korvapuusti are baked in a little bit different way than the American ones. The rolls are turned around and pressed down with a thumb as shown in the picture above. This time I wanted to make the American style with vanilla glaze on top. Enjoy!

Cinnamon Rolls

Dough

2 1/2 deciliters milk
25 gram yeast
1 egg
3/4 tea spoon salt
3/4 sugar
1-2 tea spoons cardemum
6-7 deciliters baking flour
75 grams butter

1 egg brushed on top

Filling

50 gram butter
2-3 tea spoon cinnamon
3-4 table spoon sugar

Warm milk to 38-39 celcius and mix yeast in it. Add the salt, cardamom, egg and sugar, and mix until combined. Gradually add two-thirds of the flour and knead until combined or use a mixer. Add the butter and knead until well combined. Continue to knead and gradually add just enough of the remaining flour so the dough comes cleanly off the sides of the bowl and doesn’t stick to your hand. (Don’t overwork the dough or you’ll end up with hard rolls, not soft as we want them to be.)

Shape the dough into a ball and cover with a clean tea towel. Let the dough rise in a warm, draft-free place for 1 hour or until doubled in size.

Meanwhile, to make the filling, combine the butter, sugar and cinnamon in a bowl and set aside.
Line baking tray with baking paper or use muffin paper cups as I did.

Lightly dust a clean work surface with flour. Punch down the dough so that the air bubbles inside the dough distribute evenly. Roll out the dough into about 20 cm x 40 cm rectangle. Spread soft butter evenly and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar on top. Beginning with a long side, roll the dough into a tight tube and finish seam-side down. Cut into 4 cm slices and place the cinnamon rolls on the baking trays. Cover with a clean tea towel and let rise until the oven is 225 Celsius. 

Lightly whisk an egg and brush over the rolls. Bake the rolls on the middle rack for 10-15 minutes or until golden. Remove from the oven and cool slightly.

Optional vanilla glaze

• Mix 1/2-1 deciliter powder sugar, 1 table spoon butter, and 1 tea spoon of vanilla extract together.
• Add 1 tea spoon of boiled water or milk, stir in to make a thick glaze, adding just a drop of water at a time more until you get a nice thick glaze.
• Spread or pour immediately over cooled cinnamon rolls.
• Glaze will form a crust and harden as it cools, but you can spread over warmed cakes and serve that way as well.

The cinnamon rolls are best eaten while still slightly warm or on the same day. However, you can freeze them once baked and warm when ready to serve.

 

Vegan Dinosaur Cake

Fall decoration & Vegan Dinosaur Cake recipe

The colors of fall are a great inspiration to me, all the trees bright up with wonderful shades of orange, brown, yellow and red. When the weather can otherwise be depressing with rain and cloudy days these colors bring a lot joy to me. I picked up some maple leaves, rowan tree berries and reeds on my walk outside and made this fall centerpiece to bring the autumn feel to my house as well.

As promised here is the recipe for the vegan dinosaur cake. We celebrated our boy's 3rd birthday about a month ago and I needed to make a cake without egg, without milk, without gluten. On Pinterest most raw nut cakes are quite big and it can be quite costly buying so much nuts. After looking for some ideas on the internet I ended up creating my own cake recipe. The cake was very sweet hence smaller cake was fine. The cake was super easy to make and tastes even better after few days.  Sorry for bad quality of the picture.

Enjoy the recipe!

Ingredients

60g walnuts (Pecans work as well)
180g fresh dates (pitted)
120g cashews (soaked in water overnight)
1 tablespoons honey
Juice from 1 lemon
1/2 cup water
1-2 tablespoons cacao powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

To make the crust blend in a food processor together 60g walnuts and 90g fresh dates until it all starts to stick together. I used a hand blender to get the right consistency. Press into the cake pan, I used a small bread loaf pan covered with plastic wrap. Put in the fridge.

To make the cake blend together rest of the ingredients (90g dates, 120g cashews, honey, lemon juice, cacao powder, vanilla extract) except water. Add water little by little until the consistency of yogurt. Pour onto your crust and let it set overnight or for at least 12 hours in the fridge. You can also freeze the cake like I did, but the take out from the freezer 1-2 hours before serving.

Decorate if you want. I used Cacao Halva, glutenfree breaksticks, dried fruit pieces (sucat) and toy dinosaur for decoration.

Dinosaur cake

On 1st September we celebrated our boy's 3rd Birthday with family and friends. We had great fun playing outdoors and doing barbecue. Its amazing how kids can be happy of the smallest things. Just let them run around in the playground and they can have fun for hours.

For this birthday I decided to make a dinosaur cake. I started planning it months ago. The hardest part was to decide how it would look. I liked the idea from Pinterest of using small toy dinosaurs as decoration hence less work for me :) As flavors I choose tropical papaya-mango filling and to cover the cake dark chocolate filling. The idea for the fillings was from fellow blogger Kinuskikissa and also I used her 70% cake base receipe (see links below in finnish).

In addition I made a vegan cocoa cake for those with allergies. It had to be without milk, eggs and gluten so I looked for some ideas from Pinterest and made my own version. It turned out very nice and both cakes received a lot compliments from our guests. I will make a separate post on the vegan cake later.

Happy baking :)

Dinosaur cake

Base

For this cake I made the base with 7 eggs with following amounts: 7 eggs = weight 350g
sugar 0,7x350g= 245g
flour 0,7x350g= 245g of which 70% is white baking flour 0,7x245g=171g and rest 30% is potato flour (corn starch could work as well) 0,3x245g=74g.
1 tea spoon of baking powder
1-2 table spoons of cocoa powder

Butter and crumb baking pans with bread crumbs. I used two pans; one size 25cm pan and one 23cm pan. This makes 2 cakes with each 1 filling in between. The 3rd top layer I made after on a smaller pan with 2 eggs and using the same formula above. Preheat oven to 175C.

Using a mixer beat the sugar and eggs together until fluffy and doubled in volume (at least 10-15 minutes of mixing). Then mix flour, baking powder, cocoa powder together and sift into the egg mixture, use a spatula to gently mix together. To make this cake fluffy and soft you need to beat the eggs well together and mix the flour in very carefully. If you mix too much when adding the flour the cake will be very dense or even hard.

Pour the batter into a baking pan and bake for about 35 minutes or until cake tester/toothpick comes out clean. Let the cakes cool while you make the fillings.

Tropical filling

3 ½ dl  heavy whipping cream
350 g papaya puree
200 g mango curd (or greek yogurt)
1-2 table spoons of lemon juice
200 g white chocolate

With a mixer whip the heavy cream until cream is forming peaks. Mix together papaya puree, mango curd and lemon juice. Melt the white chocolate in a microwave or carefully on the stove on low heat mixing all the time.  Add the chocolate to the papaya mix and then combine with whipped cream. Let it set for a while in the refrigerator.

Dark chocolate filling

4 dl whipping cream
200 g cream cheese
260 g dark baking chocolate (70% cocoa)

With a mixer whip the heavy cream until cream is forming peaks and mix in the cream cheese. Melt the chocolate in a microwave or carefully on the stove on low heat mixing all the time. Add carefully to the whipped cream.

Cut the cakes to 2-3 layers. Place one layer of cake on a platter, moisten with milk, top with tropical filling. Place another layer of cake on top and repeat until you are done filling all the layers.

Cover the cakes with dark chocolate filling. A good tip is to make thin layer first and then refrigerate. Once set make add another layer of the chocolate filling to make it look nice and smooth.

Because of the size of the cakes I had difficulties of lifting the other on top of the other. So I put the smaller cake in the freezer for a while and then could lift it on top of the bigger one. The chocolate filling acts like clue keeping the cakes together. Because it has a lot of chocolate it becomes solid in the fridge. If this happens you can melt it on the stove by heating some water and putting the bowl on top of it for a while.

Once you have assembled the cake, place it in the fridge for few hours. I made the cakes ready the day before for the flavors to set and then did the decoration the next day.  For decoration I used chocolate sticks and salt sticks as the woods, green sukaatti (type of lemon dried and diced) and chocolate halva as the gravel and stones, mint leaves as bushes and toy dinosaurs to get the jungle look.

Original receipes from Kinuskikissa
White chocolate mango filling - https://www.kinuskikissa.fi/mango-valkosuklaatayte/
Chocolate filling - https://www.kinuskikissa.fi/helppo-ja-hyva-suklaatayte/
70% cake base - https://www.kinuskikissa.fi/70-kakkupohja/

Grandma's strawberry cake

The summer is over but we are still enjoying some warm days here in Finland. It was a nice summer with a lot of fun days together as a family; having picnics at the park, swimming, eating yummy strawberries and enjoying the midnight sun.

How does summer taste to you? What food memories it brings to your mind? When I think about how summer tastes I am always reminded of the strawberry cake/pie my grandma used to make. It had a simple cake base (often ready made from the store), plenty of whipped cream and fresh strawberries. We used enjoy our cake and coffee out at the porch while chatting and talking for what seemed hours. Grandma was full of love, warmth and care for others. In the memory of my grandma I decided to make her strawberry cake this summer. In the end it did turn up a little different but the taste was how I remembered it. I hope you will enjoy it too.

Grandma's strawberry cake

Base

The cake base is from another blogger Kinuskikissa (link: https://www.kinuskikissa.fi/70-kakkupohja/). I use it almost always now because it makes a nice fluffy and soft cake base good for layered cakes. Its called 70 % cake base because its based on weighing the eggs first. Then you add 70% of eggs weight of sugar and flour.

For this cake I made the base with 3 eggs with following amounts:
3 eggs = weight 150g
sugar 0,7x150g= 105g
flour 0,7x150g= 105g of which 70% is white baking flour 0,7x105g=73,5g and rest 30% is potato flour 0,3x105g=31,5g.
1 tea spoon of baking powder

Butter and crumb baking pan with bread crumbs. I used size 24cm pan. Preheat oven to 175C.

Using a mixer beat the sugar and eggs together until fluffy and doubled in volume (at least 10-15 minutes of mixing). Then mix flour and baking powder together and sift into the egg mixture, use a spatula to gently mix together. To make this cake fluffy and soft you need to beat the eggs well together and mix the flour in very carefully. If you mix too much when adding the flour the cake will be very dense or even hard.

Pour the batter into a baking pan and bake for about 35 minutes or until cake tester/toothpick comes out clean.

Filling

2dl heavy whipping cream
1/2-1dl curd or greek yogurt
1 tea spoon of vanilla extract or vanilla sugar
powdered sugar according to taste
plenty of strawberries

With a mixer whip together the heavy cream, vanilla and powdered sugar. In the end add curd or greek yogurt and powdered sugar. Check the taste and continue whipping until the cream can hold a stiff peak.

Once the cake base has cooled off cut it to 2-3 layers. Place one layer of cake on a platter, moisten with milk, top with filling and add sliced/diced strawberries. Place another layer of cake on top and repeat. Place the third layer of cake on top and cover with the leftover filling. Decorate with whole strawberries and whipped cream (and mint leaves). Enjoy after few hours in the refrigerator.