Strawberry Cheesecake

Gaby had been sending me pictures of the strawberry cheesecakes she made lately for various occasions, making my mouth water, so in the end I asked her for the recipe and made a strawberry cheesecake myself. Mine is a lighter version of the original and it was a great success with husband and son, so I'm writing down the recipe, as I improvised it yesterday:

INGREDIENTS:

For the biscuit layer 

• 150 g biscuits
• 75 g melted butter 

For the cheese cream layer 

• 100 g cheese cream
• 400 g sour cream
• 50 g milk 
• 120 g sugar
• 2 eggs
• a pinch of salt

For the strawberry layer 

• 500 g strawberries
• 1 pack red cake glaze
• 30 g sugar
• 200 g water 

PREPARATION:

Grind the biscuits, stir in the melted butter and transfer the biscuit mixture into a cake form. Compact the biscuit layer with the bottom of a glass and leave to cool in the fridge for a few minutes.

Meanwhile prepare the batter for the cheese cream layer. Pour it over the biscuit layer and place the cake form in a preheated oven and bake at 175C for one hour. After the cake is baked, leave it to cool completely for a couple of  hours. 

Cut the strawberries into slices and arrange them tile-like on top of the cake. Prepare the cake glaze - mix the powder glaze with the sugar, add the water and cook on the hot plate until it thickens. Leave it to rest for one minute, then spread it on top of the strawberries with the help of a silicon brush. 

Leave the cake to cool in the fridge for a couple of hours or overnight. Serve with coffee and enjoy!

Buguirdi

I love simple vegetable summer dishes and as we live in a southern country, they are a natural part of our cuisine. This summer I expanded my cooking experience with new dishes, like grilled filled eggplants, various types of zucchini dishes and others. And this grilled cheese dip is my latest addition. It is called buguirdi (it is also bouyourdi and other spelling variations) and it was suggested to us by our Greek waiter as something unknown and rarely chosen by foreigners because of its unfamiliar name. It turned out to be simple, but super delicious and it was the first thing I wanted to try when we got back home.

There are many recipes online, I chose one, that sounded close to the dish we tasted in Greece.

The ingredients are simple and in Bulgaria they are things we usually have in the fridge at home:

• 250 g feta cheese - the Greeks favour sheep and goat cheese, as they have little land for cattle, in Bulgaria we make feta cheese mostly from cow milk and this is the type I used today. However, I really like the richer taste of mixed sheep and goat cheese and next time I may try buguirdi with a different type of feta cheese
• 50 g grated yellow cheese. Here we call it kashkaval and it is similar / identical to the original Kasseri cheese. I used again whole cow's milk cheese.
• 2 tablespoons Greek extra virgin olive oil
• Dried oregano - I bought mine in an olive shop in Greece and it claims to be from Olympus (I like the thought)
• 250 g grated tomatoes
• a dash of paprika
• a bit of spicy green pepper - this is where I diverged from the original recipe, as we had only Jalapeno peppers at home. I wish we had the traditional long narrow spicy green peppers, that are much milder, probably next time :)
  

The preparation is as simple as the ingredients:

Crumble the cheese in a cooking dish (preferably a clay dish, but mine were either too big or too small for this quantity for two persons, so i used an Jena dish). Sprinkle with sweet paprika on top. Layer the grated yellow cheese. Cover with the grated tomatoes. Add two table spoons of olive oil and sprinkle generously with dried oregano. Finally add the thinly sliced spicy green pepper.

Bake as layered in an oven at 190 C for 15 minutes, then take it out of the oven, stir to mix the tastes and continue to bake for additional 30 minutes. Serve hot with bread and wine (or beer).

I don't have the habit of taking pictures of our food in restaurants, but the buguirdi is the dish at the front of this photo my husband took of me, while we were dining. The one I made today was almost as delicious :)

Blueberry Crumble

This summer we got into the habit of picking a few handfuls of wild berries from the places we hike and then I would make some dessert or two with them. One of our favourites turned out to be the berry crumble, and the best of them all - blueberry crumble. Probably because blueberries are kind of neutral in taste, not too sweet and not too sour, but they make for the perfect filling.

This is the latest crumble that we cut this morning for the morning coffee. We picked the blueberries on Osogovo mountain, but as it turned out we had gathered only 100 g, I added 100 g of frozen cranberries I had in the freezer. And yup, that's my breakfast just before I opened my Duolingo for the morning portion of lessons:)

The recipe I came up with is a compilation from here and there, fine-tuned to my kitchen and taste:

For the crust:

• 90 g butter, soft, but not melted
• 50 g sugar
• 1 egg
• 250 g flour
• 5 g baking powder
• pinch of salt
  

For the filling:

• 200 g blueberries (100 g blueberries and 100 g cranberries)
• 120 g sugar
• 15 g corn starch
  

Preparation:

Mix the soft butter with the sugar. No need to beat them to a cream, though one could, I suppose, but thorough mixing with a fork seems enough for me. Then add the egg and incorporate it into the batter. Add the flour with the salt and the baking powder, until your mixture turns into big crumbs.

Prepare the filling, adding the sugar to the berries. Then add the corn starch, it will help thicken the filling, while baking.

Place 2/3 of the crumbs into the baking dish and flatten them, covering the bottom and partially the wall of the dish. Spread the filling on top. Sprinkle with the remaining 1/3 of the butter crumbs.

Place in a preheated oven at 180C and bake for approx. 20 min, until the peaks of the crust become light brown. Leave to cool completely and serve with coffee. I know that some people like crumbles with vanilla ice or vanilla sauce, but I've tried it and to me the additional sweetener kills the taste of the berries, so I prefer to serve it au naturel. Enjoy!

Orange Marmalade Cake

Several years ago we found an orange marmalade brand in our local Lidl, that was very aromatic and excellent for putting into cakes and sweets. I had a favourite cake recipe I used to bake then with this jam. I don't remember it and whether it was my improvisation or I had read it somewhere, but I remember making this type of cake several times and it was a big success with family and friends.

And then, as it often happens with some recipes, I forgot about it. Recently husband brought home a jar of the same orange marmalade with a request for some orange cake. I looked at some recipes on the Internet, none grabbed me, so I decided to try something on my own, having been baking fruit cakes for many, many years now. I am really pleased with this latest one and this time I am putting it down to have it at hand when needed.

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• 150 g sugar
• 200 g yogurt
• 60 g vegetable oil
• 220 g flour
• 10 g baking powder
• 180 g orange marmalade
• 50 g sugared lemon peel
• 50 g walnuts
• 30 g dry kumquats
  

Beat the eggs with the sugar. Add the yogurt, oil and flour with baking powder. Mix into a batter. Add the marmalade, nuts and dried fruit. Pour into a baking form and bake for about 30 min in a preheated oven at 180C. The cake is moist, sweet and very, very aromatic. Enjoy with your coffee or tea.

My Latest Apple Cake

I came upon this apple cake recipe somewhat by chance last week and today is the third time I'm baking it - it's SO good (half of it is already eaten!). My initial idea was to make a cake, using the handful of walnuts and raisins I had in the fridge. I mixed a recipe of eggs, milk, oil and flour and added the walnuts and raisins, but the batter seemed a little runny. So, I cored two apples, cut them in the chopper and added them to the batter. The apple cake turned very juicy, aromatic and sweet.

Here are the ingredients - I definitely want to preserve this recipe:
Products:

• 2 eggs
• 180 g sugar
• 120 g milk
• 60 g sunflower oil
• 200 g flour
• 10 g baking powder
• 10 g mixed spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, black pepper - I grind these together and make the mix myself)
• 300 g (two average sized) chopped apples
• 50 g walnuts 
• 50 g raisins

Beat the eggs with the sugar. Add the oil and the milk. Mix the flour with the baking powder and the spices and add to the wet ingredients. Stir in the walnuts, raisins and apples. Pour the batter into a well greased baking form and put in a preheated oven at 180C. Bake until the toothpick test indicates it's ready. Serve with tea, coffee or milk and enjoy :)

Blackberries

Last Saturday we went visiting our family friends in their country house and they invited us to harvest the blackberries. The berries are sour in taste, but very aromatic and they make excellent jams.

Competitors for the ripe berries - blue tits:

We made a solid batch of blackberry jam:

• 1.5 kg cleaned blackberries
• 1 kg sugar
• 5 g apple pectin

And last night I also made my first terrine - the sweet taste of mascarpone and sour cream combined with the fresh sour taste of the blackberries - a very light summer desert, everyone liked it.

Cinnamon Buns

A small recipe I'm adding to my collection, as these proved easy to make and very delicious with the morning coffee (or milk) (or tea).

I always associate cinnamon buns or rolls with Karlsson, who lived on the roof, and when making the buns I smiled remembering his note to Miss Rogg about the insufficient quantity of cinnamon in the buns. So I tried to add enough :)

Ingredients for the dough:
3 1/2 cups flour
7 g dry yeast
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup water
2 tbsp soft butter
1 tsp salt
1 large egg

Ingredients for the filling
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp cinnamon
2 tbsp soft butter

I made the dough in the mixer and then left it to rise in the oven at 40C for about an hour. Then I spread the dough into a rectangle approx. 70 x 25 cm, spread soft butter on top and sprinkled with the mixture of brown sugar and cinnamon. Then I rolled the dough, cut it into small slices and arranged them in the baking tin. I put the tin back in the oven for another half hour at 40C for the buns to rise and then baked them at 180C for 20 min.

Homemade Eclairs

My first homemade eclairs. I'm a big fan of all varieties of pastry with custard filling, but I always thought eclairs were too time consuming and difficult to make at home. Well, it turns out they are pretty easy to make. Really.

For the pastry:

• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup sunflower oil
• 1 cup flour
• 4 eggs

Bring the water and oil mixture to a boil. Add the flour and stir vigorously, until the dough is smooth and comes away from the sides of the pan. Take the pan off the hot plate and let it cool. Then add the eggs one by one, stirring in each egg until the mixture is smooth.
Cover the baking tin with baking paper, take small heaps of dough with a spoon and place them on the baking tin, leaving enough distance between the dough spoons. Preheat the oven at 200C and bake the eclairs for 30 min. To my surprise they tripled their size:

For the custard filling:

• 500 ml milk
• 1/2 cup water
• 5 tbsp flour
• 8 tbsp sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 vanillas

Beat the eggs with the sugar until you get thick froth. Add 1/2 cup of water to the flour and stir. Boil the milk and add the flour and the beaten eggs. Stir energetically until the custard is ready. Take off the plate and add the two vanillas. Let the custard cool.

After the eclairs have cooled, cut them in half, fill in with the custard, spread some melted chocolate over and voila - homemade eclairs. Best served cooled with coffee or milk.
I made two plates in the morning and now they are all gone ...

Tee Rose Apple Pie

Another apple pie, very juicy and tasty, this time with yeast dough. I found the recipe on a Bulgarian forum, translated from a Russian blog, adapted from a French blog, ...

Ingredients:

• 270 g flour
• 120 g milk
• 60 g butter
• 7 g fry yeast
• 4 tbsp sugar
• 1 pinch salt
• 5 small apples

Make the dough as usual and leave it to double its volume. Meanwhile peel the apples, remove the seeds and cut them into thin slices. Cut the dough into two and spread each half into a rectangle. Cut the dough rectangles into bands 1.5 - 2 mm wide and arrange the dough bands and apple slices into concentrated circles in the greased baking tin. Leave to rest and rise for half an hour, glaze with 1 egg yolk and milk, sprinkle with granulated sugar and cinnamon and bake for 45 min in a preheated oven at 180-190 C. Serve cold with tea or milk.

Because of the plentiful of apples this pie is very light and juicy and has a very tasty sugary crust, I liked it!

Cheese Roll-Ups

A quick recipe for not very photogenic, but mouth-watering cheese roll-ups:

Ingredients:

• 500 g flour
• 250 ml warm milk
• 7 g dry yeast
• 1 egg + 1 white (1 yolk for glazing)
• 25 g butter
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp salt
• hard yellow cheese, white feta cheese, savory

Warm up the milk in a bowl. Add the dry yeast and the sugar and leave for 20 min to rise. Sift the flour in the bowl, add the butter, the salt and the eggs and mix the dough. Leave to double its volume for an hour. Roll out the dough to 1/2 cm thickness, spread the grated hard cheese, crumbled feta cheese and savory or other spices. Roll up like a sausage, cut into circles and arrange cut side down on a baking dish, covered with baking paper. Leave to rest for 30 min, glaze with egg yolk and milk and bake in a preheated oven at 180C.

I made half with savory and half without. I prefer the ones with savory.