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!

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.

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!

Tyrolean Tart

Husband and I hiked yesterday on Lulin mountain, a repeat of our last year's hike mid July in the hope to find again some ripe raspberries for half a dozen jars of wild raspberry jam. Alas, summer is evidently late this year and the raspberries were at least two weeks аваъ from riping. However, the wild strawberries were still fairly abundant - another evidence that the seasonal fruits are late this year, as other years we've seen ripe strawberries on Dupevitza as early as June 10th.

Anyway, instead of raspberries, we gathered some strawberries and in the evening I made my first Tyrolean tart. I liked it a lot and I am putting down the recipe in my blog, as I know I'll be willing to repeat it, and soon.

The biscuit crust:

• 100 g butter
• 1 egg
• 50 g sugar
• 220 g flour
• 5 g baking powder
  

Beat the egg with the sugar. Add the melted, but not hot butter. Add the flour with the baking powder and mix into a soft dough. I don't have a tart form, so I used my spring cake form, covering the bottom and forming a border along the walls of the form, high enough for the filling of the tart. I pricked the thus formed biscuit layer with a fork and placed it in a preheated oven to bake for 25 min at 180C.

The cream filling:

• 350 ml milk
• 2 egg yolks
• 50 g sugar
• 2 tbsp flour
• vanilla
• 10 g butter 
  

Stir the egg yolks with the sugar, add the vanilla, the flour and a small amount of the milk and stir, until homogeneous. Add the rest of the milk and cook over the hot plate at medium heat until the cream thickens and begins to boil. Set aside to cool down to room temperature. Cover with cling form to avoid a crust being formed.

The fruit layer

Here any fruit and any syrup goes. I used the wild strawberries and I prepared a syrup out of home-made strawberry jam, diluted in 150 ml water. This made my syrup somewhat murky, so next time I'll use something else for the jelly. To thicken it, I added 5 g of gelatin, prepared according to the instructions on the pack. 

Finally I assembled the tart and placed it in the fridge overnight. The resulting dessert is delicious crispy crust with sweet creamy filling and divinely aromatic wild berries with a very delicate sour tinge. Definitely recommend this recipe and will be making it soon with other berries (wild raspberries :), hopefully).

Under The Biscuit Roof

Every February 14th there's a noisy discussion in Bulgaria if we should celebrate St. Valentine's Day or  St. Tryphon's Day - a traditional holiday, celebrating wine and its production. As far as holidays go my credo has always been the more the merrier :) So husband and I honor both holidays with flowers, a bottle of good wine, a good dinner with candles and the obligatory cake - both of us have such a sweet tooth (alas?!).

My Valentine's cake this year - the popular Biscuit Roof, which I'm making for the first time. I bought a packet of combined cocoa and vanilla biscuits of good quality, but a bit small in size for this dessert, so my roof form didn't come as neat as I hoped. My cream is my own idea, there are versions with butter, cream cheese and various other options.
So, the products for this super easy and interesting dessert:

• 1 pack of cocoa biscuits (15 pcs)
• 1 pack of vanilla biscuits (15 pcs)
• 1/2 cup of milk
• 250 g ricotta
• 200 g sour cream
• 100 g powdered sugar 
• 2 bananas

Mix the ricotta and the sour cream and add the powdered sugar. Cover the working plot with stretch foil. Soak the biscuits slightly in the warmed milk and arrange in a checkered form 3 x 5. Cover with 1/3 of the cream.

Arrange the second checkered layer of  biscuits, spread the rest of the cream,place two average bananas upon the central row of biscuits, optional - add nuts, raisins, jam (I used homemade strawberry jam).

With the help of the stretch foil gather the biscuits to form a triangular prism and place in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Cover with chocolate spread or melted chocolate and serve. The dessert is very light, creamy and tasty, I'll be doing it again soon with bigger biscuits (or smaller bananas) :)

And a sneak-peek or rather a full frontal of my first attempt at tulle petticoat. So far so good, but the 50 cm of tulle I had bought only sufficed for half of the petticoat - one layer is not sturdy enough so I'll be buying another piece of tulle to repeat the exercise and finish it properly to get a decent double layered petticoat for Gaby's 50s style Lindy Bop dress.