Magic Cobbler

I have mentioned several times on the blog, that husband and I eat almost exclusively home-made food, including desserts. It happened gradually, but I became kind of a foodie over the years and I spend more and more time reading and watching recipes, researching ingredients and experimenting in the kitchen.

 I am so satisfied, when I try new spices, new cooking methods, new ingredients and new proportions. This led me to growing some of my own spices, as well as collecting spices, when we travel. But more about this - perhaps in another post.

This summer I came upon a video about an easy American dessert, the vlogger called magic cobbler. Traditional cobblers originated in British American colonies during the 17th and 18th centuries. Lacking standard baking pans or proper ovens, settlers improvised by dropping raw dough over spiced fruit in cast-iron Dutch ovens over open fires. As it baked, the dropped dough puffed into a rough, "cobbled" top layer resembling a cobblestone street.

Unlike the standard cobbler, which uses biscuit dough and which I made some years previously, the Southern magic cobbler involves melted butter, over which a light mixture of flour, milk and sugar is poured and finally a handful of fresh or frozen fruit is gently arranged on top of the batter.

My version is light on sugar and heavy on the fruit and I've been making these all summer long with all sorts of seasonal fruits - strawberries, cherries, apples, pears, apricots, peaches, plums, nectarines, figs and random combinations thereof, as per the content of our fridge and fruit basket :)

Ingredients:

• 40 g butter + 10 g sunflower oil
• 80 g sugar
• 160 g milk
• 100 g flour + 5 g baking powder
• 250 g fruit 

Preparation:

Cut the fruit into small bites or slices, you can cover them with some vanilla sugar, if you want. The amount of fruit is arbitrary - 200 g is probably the minimum, but I've gone up to 600 g with some fruit.

Place the mixture of butter and oil in the baking dish and put it in the oven to melt at 200C. I get the best results, when the oil mixture is hot, just close to the point, when the butter begins to burn - be careful not to overpass this point, as butter contains milk solids, that scorch quickly over high heats. Meanwhile prepare the batter, mixing sugar, milk and flour with baking powder. You can add your favourite dessert spices here - unfortunately my folk do not enjoy most of the spices I love - cinnamon, vanilla, fig leaves powder, mahleb, lemon, but you can go as crazy or as moderate as you please with these.

Take out the baking dish with the hot oil and pour the batter in the center of the oil - it will spread and begin cooking even before you put it in the oven. Arrange the fruit pieces carefully on top of the batter and place the dish in the oven. It takes about 30 to 45 minutes, depending on the amount of fruit. A tooth pick test in the center of the pie will show you if it is completely done.

I absolutely love mine with coffee, but you can serve it with milk, tea or any other beverage of your choice. The dessert is light, it does not contain eggs and is not too sugary - if the fruits are sweet, I reduce the sugar to 70 or even 60 g, as I really dislike dishes, that are too sweet . The texture is soft and the combination of the caramelized crust with the baked fruit is exquisite. Together with the crumble - another recipe I should revisit on the blog, this is our most favourite dessert this summer!

Carob Muffins

Carob powder is such a divisive ingredient in our family - husband loves it, Gaby tolerates it, the rest of us find it unpleasant. So lately, I've been baking two different batches of muffins with jam, to suit our different tastes. As carob is sweet and meanwhile flour-like, I had to adjust the recipe a lot, to take its unique qualities into account.

Here is an example of the recipe, executed with ricotta and strawberry jam.

Ingredients for the muffins:

• 1 egg
• 20 g sugar + a pinch of salt
• 60 g ricotta 
• 60 g milk 
• 35 g sunflower oil
• 25 g carob powder
• 80 g flour 
• 5 g baking powder

Preparation:

Beat the egg with the sugar, add the oil, ricotta and milk and mix. Stir in the carob powder, the flour, mixed with the baking powder. Half fill 6 muffin forms with the batter. Place a teaspoon of jam in the center of each muffin form, the fill in the forms with the rest of the batter. Sprinkle with a pinch of brown sugar on top of each muffin. Bake in a preheated oven at 200C for 30 min, until a toothpick test confirms readiness.

i made also a batch for myself and others, with normal sugar and flour and spiced with baked fig leaves - did you know, that baked fig leaves make for a very interesting spice? I brought a few leaves with me from Greece and made myself a small jar of dried powder, that I love to add to my muffins. Unfortunately, it lost some of its potent with time, I'll have to research further how to prepare and store it, so that the essential oils would last longer.

Husband loves to have his carob muffins with milk, I enjoy mine with my morning coffee and German lessons. Life is good, when everybody is happy, nicht wahr?

Cake with Jam and Custard

I LOVE my morning coffee. It's a ritual, it's a religion, it's a sacred rite and communion.

And I love coming up with ideas for the small sweets I eat with my coffee, while doing my Duolingo exercises and reading my German book, all part of my morning routine.

Our dessert with the morning coffee today was a spongy cake with jam filling and custard coating - a perfect combination of textures and sweetness. The 40 g of sugar in the batter makes it very lightly sweet, almost neutral, the jam filling gives a sudden spike of sugary strawberry taste on some bites and the creamy custard with grated bitter chocolate on top smooths the texture and enhances the moisture of the bite.

Ingredients for the cake base:

• 1 egg
• 30 g sugar + 10 g vanilla sugar + a pinch of salt
• 100 g yogurt 
• 35 g sunflower oil
• 100 g flour 
• 5 g baking powder

Mix the batter, pour in a baking form and bake for 25 min in a preheated oven at 200C. Use an apple corer to form holes in the baked cake. Put the extracted cores of cake aside to be turned into crumbles later. Fill the holes with jam.

Ingredients for the custard:

• 1 egg
• 40 g sugar
• 30 g flour
• 300 g milk 

Cook the custard on the stove and pour it on the jam filled cake. Cover with the cake crumbs. Grate a piece of dark chocolate on top. Serve with hot coffee and enjoy!

Easy Homemade Refrigerator Pickled Vegetables

Ever since we tried the recipe for these mixed pickled vegetables, we've been making them in factory amounts. They’ve become a winter staple on our table—a perfect, crunchy replacement for fresh salad. Packed with vitamins and fiber, they are incredibly easy to make and keep well in the fridge, or on the balcony, if your fridge is full and the winter is as chilly as it’s been lately in Sofia!

For our latest batch of mixed pickles we chose red cabbage, however we usually use white cabbage and you can use either, according to your preferences.

The veggies here are about 5 kg:

• 2 kg red cabbage
• 1.6 kg cauliflower
• 0.6 kg carrots
• 0.5 kg celery stalks
• 0.3 kg red peppers 

Wash and cut all the vegetables into small pieces. The finer you slice the cabbage, the more delicate the texture, though it’s certainly not an exact science! Our secret tip: We like to microwave the carrots and cauliflower for a few minutes first. We’ve found we prefer them slightly softer rather than raw. Since we make this at least twice a month, we've refined it to our liking. It might take you a few experiments, until you find your own "perfect" crunch.

After the veggies are sliced and mixed, we cook the brine. For this 5 kg mixture of veggies we put:

•  2 tablespoons salt
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 250 g apple cider vinegar (one cup)
• 150 g sunflower oil (2/3 cup)
• a few grains of black pepper and allspice

We bring the brine to boil, pour the hot brine over the veggies and mix thoroughly. Let the mixture sit at room temperature for a couple of hours to begin curing; then, move it to the cold to slow down the fermentation.

We use a food-grade plastic container for the initial mixing, but we prefer transferring the pickles to glass jars for long-term storage. While they are ready to eat in just a few hours, the texture softens and the flavor only gets better with time. These should keep for months in the fridge—though in our house, a 5 kg batch barely lasts two weeks. Apparently, 5 kg of veggies isn't that much for a family of adults :)

Persimmon Cake

I had two medium size persimmons in the fridge that were getting over-ripe, so I decided to make them into a cake. This summer we went full throttle into the cream cake territory and I made almost two dozen cream cakes with berries we picked on our hikes, or bought at the market.

The recipe I chose is more a sort of an algorithm I follow for cream cakes, covered with cake glaze. The cake is made of three layers - a hard layer, which might be made of biscuits and butter or baked cake, a cream layer, often custard, cheese cream, sour cream or a combination thereof and a fruit layer, made of berries or slices of fruit, covered with cake glaze.

Ingredients: 

Biscuit layer:

• 200 g cracker biscuits
• 100 g melted butter 

Cream layer:

• 50 g powdered sugar
• 200 g sour cream
• 1 blended persimmon 

Fruit layer:

• 1 thinly sliced persimmon
• 1 pack red tortenguss 
• 30 g sugar
• 220 g water 

Preparation:

The cake involves no baking, and almost no cooking but for the cake glaze. In order to prepare the biscuit layer, first grind the biscuits. I used the remaining content of a pack of wholegrain crackers and brought the quantity up to 200 g with some of my home-baked lemon biscuits. Then mix the biscuits with the soft butter, spread the buttery crumbs on the bottom of a cake dish and press. Leave in the fridge for at least half an hour to cool and harden a little.

Meanwhile blend one persimmon, add the fruit to 200 g of thick 20% sour cream and fold in 50 g of powdered sugar. Spread the creamy layer over the biscuit layer.

Finally cut the second persimmon into thin slices and arrange them on top. Even better if you have more than one, then you could tile the slices on top of the cream. Cook the tortenguss (cake glaze) according to instructions and spread the hot glaze over the fruit slices. 

Place in the fridge and leave overnight. Serve with coffee and enjoy!

Jam-Filled Muffins

The parking lot for the hiking trail in the village of Sirishtnik is a small square at the end of the village, near some abandoned houses. The people and the houses are now gone, but the fruit trees are still giving fruit and mid-November there were some scattered quinces on the grass under the quince tree at the end of the parking lot. Last year, when we hiked there more or less at the same time of year, we gathered a handful of fruits and made quince jam, which came out very aromatic and delicious.

This year the quince harvest was even bigger and we made almost a dozen and a half jars of jam, which should last us years :) Here is the method and recipe we applied this time:

The total amount of quinces we gathered was 3.5 kg. We washed them and put them in hot water to boil until soft, so that they would be easier to cut and clean. Then we took them out of the water (which we preserved), let them cool and cleaned them. After all cores were removed, the harvest yielded about 2.5 kg quince meat. To that we added about 1 l of the water, in which the fruit was cooked and blended them with a hand blender. Then we added 1.8 kg sugar to the mash and let it stay in a cool place for a couple of hours.

Once the sugar had completely melted and soaked in the quince mash, we added the juice of half a lime and brought the jam to cook at medium heat for an hour. once the jam was cooked, we poured the hot jam into the clean jars and turned them upside down to cool, no boiling of the jars is required.

I used the jam to make a batch of jam-filled muffins. This is probably my fifth batch of muffins with jam core lately. I've been experimenting with the batter and the filling method and though I wouldn't claim that I've nailed it, I am pretty happy with my latest results:

Ingredients for the muffins:

• 2 eggs
• 80 g sugar
• 200 g yogurt 
• 70 g sunflower oil
• 200 g flour 
• 5 g baking powder + a pinch of baking soda
• 5 g spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves) + a pinch of salt 

Preparation:

Beat the eggs with the sugar, add the oil and yogurt and mix. Stir in the flour, mixed with the baking powder and the spices. Distribute the batter in 12 muffin forms. Place a teaspoon of jam in the center of each muffin form, stirring it lightly to push the jam inside the batter. Bake in a preheated oven at 200C for 25 min, until a toothpick test confirms readiness.

Enjoy with your fresh coffee or tea.

Blueberry Cream Cake

The idea for this cake was inspired by the traditional German Kirsch-Schmand-Blechkuchen - layer cake with a cream filling, made with pudding and sour cream. I don't think I had ever met such a combination and I was very curious to try it. In the original recipe the fruit is cherries, usually from cans, but I used the blueberries that i picked on Mechit specifically with this cake in mind.

Instead of a butter cake layer, I chose to make a biscuit cheesecake base out of cracker biscuits and butter. My cream layer is custard, mixed with sour cream and the last layer is blueberries (no idea how much, all that I had managed to collect) and one packet of tortenguss - German fruit glaze, which I ordered from amazon.de.

Ingredients: 

Biscuit layer:

• 200 g cracker biscuits
• 100 g melted butter 

Cream layer:

• 2 eggs
• 100 g sugar
• 50 g flour
• 400 g milk
• 150 g sour cream  

Berry layer:

• blueberries
• 1 pack red tortenguss 
• 50 g sugar
• 220 g water 

Preparation:

This cake is made without baking, but you still have to cook the custard and the tortenguss. First prepare the biscuit layer - grind the biscuits, mix them with the butter, spread the buttery crumbs on the bottom of a cake form and press. Leave in the fridge for at least half an hour to cool and harden a little.

Meanwhile cook the custard - beat the eggs with the sugar, add the flour, stir, add the milk gradually, while stirring with a whisk. Bring to boil on a hot plate, while stirring constantly, until the custard is cooked. Leave to cool completely, covering the top with a stretch foil to avoid the formation of a crust.

Once the custard has cooled to room temperature, stir in the sour cream until smooth and homogeneous.

Spread the cream on top of the biscuit layer and leave in the fridge for at least half an hour.

Place the berries on top of the cream layer. Cook the red glaze according to the instructions. Cover the berries with the glaze and leave the cake in the fridge overnight.

The resulting cake is very light, creamy, with a fresh fruity taste, ideal with the morning coffee.

Easy Stollen

Stollen is a traditional German Christmas cake, which husband loves dearly. I had tried making it before, but found it too time-consuming and the result - underwhelming. However, last December we came upon a simplified recipe, which we liked very much and I've probably made already a dozen of these.

With every attempt I've moved slightly away from the original, so probably my version is now hardly a stollen, but who cares - it is delicious, we love it and I'd like to have it on the blog, so that I wouldn't loose the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 250 g flour
• 7 g fresh yeast
• 70 g warm milk
• 50 g melted butter
• 30 g sugar
  
• 1 egg
• 200 g dried fruit
• 25 g rum
• a pinch of salt and spices (cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, star anise)
  

Preparation:

Put all the dry fruit in a bowl, add the rum, cover and let them sit for a few hours, preferably over night,  so that the fruit can soak up the rum.

Warm the milk and add the fresh yeast and the sugar in it. Melt the butter. Add the milk with the activated yeast, the melted butter, the egg and the spices and mix. Knead the dough until elastic and leave it to rest for a couple of hours in a warm space. In winter I put it covered in my oven with the light on.

Once the dough has doubled its size, it is time to add the dry fruit, which has soaked up the rum. Mix and knead thoroughly and leave to rest for another hour or two.

Spread the dough on a surface and flatten it into a rectangle. Fold one third of the rectangle, then fold the second third on top and press, giving the dough the traditional stollen form. I used to bake the stollen in free form on a baking tin, but lately I prefer to put it in a rectangular cake form and bake it like that. I know, it is not as per tradition, but it is easier to cut in slices.

 

Leave the stollen to rest for a final half an hour, preheat the oven at 180 C and bake until ready, for about 40 min.

Once the stollen is out of the oven, you can brush it with melted butter and cover it with powdered sugar. That is the traditional way and we do it sometimes, but frankly, I prefer it without the added sugar and usually skip the last step. 

Around Christmas I used to put candied orange and lemon peel and other Christmasy goodies in the dough, but lately it is only dried fruit of various sorts, these here are raisins, plums, dates and cranberries, a favourite combination of mine, which combines sweetness, sourness and flavour.