Happy Birthday Cake: chocolate-orange cheesecake

Hello world!  Did you miss me?  I sure missed you :) A great many things have been going on in my life during the last months (very exciting times!) and I’m afraid I neglected the blog a little bit because of all this excitement…  More than a little bit actually.  In fact so much that I even forgot to celebrate its first anniversary…  That's right, my dear people, the blog turned one!  And as every proud mother I'm thinking to myself "wow, they grow up so fast...".  

Bottom line is: it’s high time to celebrate, so here we are: starting the 2014 blogging year with a birthday cake!

NOT a traditional layered birthday cake though!  To tell you the truth I hate traditional birthday cakes.  I really dislike the soft sponge cake, made unappetizingly soggy by means of some kind of suspicious liquid.  Equally, I am not a fan of butter cream fillings, because they usually are tasteless and remind me of nothing else than butter itself.  To be honest, I’m even not a huge fan of whipped cream (many of you might be frowning now).  Yep, you heard me.  

Instead, I like my cakes dense, solid, heavy and rich.  None of that fluffy-soggy-airy stuff.  That’s why I prepared a properly rich chocolate orange cheesecake – a much worthier birthday cake in my book.

The divine combination of chocolate and orange flavors is something I only recently discovered.  I would have never guessed they go so well together!  I heard of the match before, but it always seemed a bit weird to me, if anything.  Yet once I tried it - I was sold.  And determined to convince everybody else to try out this great combination.  

Somehow the vibrant, citrussy orange zest sparkles (figuratively and literally) in the deep smoothness and earthiness of dark chocolate.  It gives a surprising, yet fantastic twist to chocolate, and brings out qualities you would have never associated with it.  Zest is very powerful, and adds much more flavor than juice.  It's so fine, that you don't taste its texture - a great advantage to me, as I wouldn't like to chew on bits of orange peel while eating a cheesecake.  Despite zest being so fine - or maybe because of it - it conquers the entire cake with its sweet and fresh flavor.

This cheesecake perfectly captures the happy marriage of chocolate and orange.  It is quite heavy, rich and very smooth.  Almost like a cheesecake ganache.  A generous piece can satisfy even the most fervent chocoholic.  The digestive-almond crust works as a perfect background - it does not overpower the chocolate/orange flavor, but just gives a nice crunchy variation in texture, and adds a roasted, nutty aftertaste.  I highly recommend using dark chocolate here, because it will deepen the flavor and work better with the orange.  If you want to make the cheesecake a bit lighter and less dense, try replacing half of the cream cheese with mascarpone.

I waited long before trying out this recipe - do not make the same mistake.  Just imagine sliding your fork into this dense, smooth texture and experiencing the intense, zesty richness of every divine bite...  Need I say more...?

DIRECTIONS:
Recipe adapted from Dorotus’ blog.

Ingredients:

•                180 g dark chocolate digestives

•                60 g almonds

•                80 g butter (melted)

•                600 g cream cheese (room temperature)

•                3 eggs (room temperature)

•                180 g dark chocolate

•                zest of 2 oranges

•                150 ml cream (room temperature)

•                140 g of brown sugar

•                small shot of Cointreau (30 ml)

Directions:

•                Crush the biscuits in a food processor, or by hand (you can put them in a ziploc bag and crush with a rolling pin).  Chop the almonds finely and roast in a dry pan, until golden brown.  Add to the digestives, then add the melted butter.  Distribute evenly on the bottom of a round baking tray (lined with parchment paper and 24 cm in diameter), and push down with your fingers or the bag of a spoon.  Let cool in the fridge.

•                Preheat the over to 160°C.

•                Melt the chocolate au bain-marie (glass bowl over a pot with boiling water).  Let cool down a bit.

•               Mix the cream cheese, egg, sugar and cream until smooth.  Add the Cointreau and cooled down chocolate, and mix again (don’t over-mix).

•                Pour mixture over cooled biscuit bottom. Bake for around 90 minutes.  Let cool and put in the fridge for a few hours before serving.

Bon appetit!

Easter memories & chocolate almond mazurek

Traditions.  Customs.  Family rituals.  I was brought up with tons of those, especially customs that apply during holiday season.  When it comes to such traditions I feel very lucky to be Polish, as we have plenty of really cool customs that have been cherished and nurtured for centuries.  I cannot imagine how plain and boring Easter holidays would be without them.  They are what glues families together, what accounts for hundreds of memories, and what makes home feel like home.  And as all great things -- they come at a price: lots of hard work and planning (a big chapeau bas for my Mum).  But they are totally worth it!

The profane traditions obviously evolve around food.  There are plenty of traditional dishes, such as the "white borscht" (barszcz biały or its variety żurek) -- a sour rye soup with white sausage, potatoes and eggs), white sausage served hot, baked pâté and slow-roasted meats, the famous Polish vegetable salad and various egg dishes.  There are also plenty of traditional desserts such as the babka (sweet yeast bundt cake, sort of like the Italian panettone, but less buttery), traditional cheesecakes, mazurek (see below) and a curd cheese dessert called pascha [pass-hah].

Traditional Easter activities include painting whole egg shells (you make holes on both sides of a raw egg, and blow the egg white and yolk out), preparing a basket with symbolic Easter foods and having it blessed in church on Holy Saturday, or abundantly spraying each other with water on Easter Monday, a day we call śmigus-dyngus or lany poniedziałek (both names basically signal you will get soaking wet that day).

And let's not forget the tradition cultivated at every holiday season -- eating as much as you can, and then some.  No wonder the most frequent commercials on Polish TV during this time promote anti-acids and indigestion pills.

One of the most traditional items on the Easter table in Poland is a cake called "mazurek" [mah-zoo-reck].  There is no one type of mazurek -- it varies greatly depending on the regional customs, family recipes, and simply your own taste and imagination.  Nonetheless you will definitely know one when you see it.  

You can recognize a mazurek by the following: (i) it is very very sweet, and thus is served in small pieces (exceptions apply -- for example my brother has no problems at all with eating huge chunks of it), (ii) it has thin layers: usually a pastry bottom topped off with a luscious sweet layer, (iii) it is flat and short in height (iv) it is hard and crumbly, yet sticky, and (v) it is both simple and fancy - simple in structure, and fancy in decorations.  The latter include the word "Alleluja" written in icing or chocolate, and candied / marzipan eggs, bunnies or flowers.

Mazurek is often made with shortcrust or ground almond pastry, sprinkled with lots of dried fruit and nuts, and abundantly covered with colored icing, chocolate, fudgy caramel or smooth marzipan.  And last, but not least -- it is insanely delicious! 

Left: two marmalade / icing mazurki, middle: chocolate almond mazurek, top right: caramel fudge mazurek, bottom right: babka.

This chocolate-almond-raisin mazurek has been on the Easter table in my family since I remember.  It has the best, signature shortcrust pastry -- very similar to the one I use in the poppy seed almond cake and Christmas cookies.  The pastry is so fragile and crumbly that you have to be careful when transferring the cake from tray to platter, as it brakes easily.  I remember this once happened to my Mum when I was a kid, and she had to make a new one totally last minute.  She was bummed of course, but the rest of was could not have been more happy -- somebody had to eat the broken chunks of the shortbread.  And it was incredibly delicious on its own!

The shortbread is covered by a layer of melted chocolate, with a bit of butter added for increased smoothness and glossiness.  You can add raisins or chopped nuts to the chocolate or leave it plain.  The top layer is a traditional decoration with peeled almonds -- the perfect finishing touch.  Feel free to let your imagination run wild and be creative!

BASE

Ingredients:

• 300 g of flour
• 200 g of good quality butter
• 100 g of sugar
• 3 egg yolks, boiled (boil whole eggs and get them out) and crumbled (it's best to pass them through a sieve)
• 1 package of vanilla sugar (or vanilla essence or scraped out vanilla seeds from 1 bean)
• Natural rum aroma
• Pinch of salt

Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 180ºC.
• Roughly chop the butter (makes it easier to kneed the dough) and put in a bowl with the rest of the ingredients.  Kneed the dough until it forms a uniform ball (I did it by hand, but you can of course use a food processor).
• Line a big square baking tin with parchment paper (also on the sides and sticking out of the tin - it will help lift the cake out of the tin once baked).
• Distribute the dough evenly in the tin, forming 1-2 cm high edges (the base will better hold the chocolate layer).  Punch holes with a fork on the bottom of the cake.
• Put the tin in the fridge for an hour or two, or in the freezer for around 30 minutes.
• Take out of the fridge/freezer and bake around 35-40 minutes until golden.
• Let cool entirely.

CHOCOLATE ALMOND RAISIN LAYER

Ingredients:

• 300 g of good quality dark chocolate
• 200-250 g of good quality milk chocolate
• 50 g of butter
• 200 g of big golden raisins, rinsed and dried
• 200 g of whole peeled almonds

Directions:

• Roast the almonds for a few minutes in a hot dry frying pan, until golden.  Let cool.
• Melt the chocolate and butter au bain marie (in bowl over a pan with boiling water).  Add the raisins and stir thoroughly.
• Spread the chocolate mixture evenly over the baked shortcrust bottom.  Decorate with the roasted almonds.

Bon appetit!

Merry Easter & chewy cranberry chocolate cookies

Aah, the holiday spirit!  Streets covered by a white fluffy blanket, snowflakes dancing playfully in the air, frosty wind biting you in the nose and cheeks, and colorful store window decorations announcing the holiday season.  ♫ It's beginning to look a lot like Christm... ♫ NO, WAIT A MINUTE!  It's not December, but nearly April!  

Spring has officially -- or at least theoretically -- started, and we shouldn't be listening to the jingle bells ring, but rather make sure we have enough chocolate eggs in store.  Nonetheless, somehow I am more inclined to go Christmas tree shopping than to pick up some fresh daffodils to decorate my house for the upcoming celebrations.

I don't remember it ever being so cold during Easter time.  Certainly not in the US, not in Belgium or the Netherlands -- not even in Poland.  Clearly I am not the only one who is surprised by this cold spell, as lately weather is literally the only thing people can talk -- or in fact complain -- about.  

You hear it on the news, read it online, talk about it with your colleagues while getting coffee, or use it as a solid conversation starter during conference calls.  Hell -- even the people you meet in the elevator (that usually seem particularly intrigued by their shoes and keep staring at them -- barely noticing you) become disturbingly chatty and complain about yet another snowfall last night.

I decided to make the most of it by posting this great cranberry chocolate cookies recipe.  Theoretically, these cookies fit better in the Christmas season than Easter, but when you look outside the window it is really hard to tell one from the other.  Besides -- who is to say you can only bake Christmas cookies during Christmas?

Call me eccentric (the more diplomatic word for "nuts"), but I often like to do things that normally would be considered unfitting for the circumstances at hand.  Singing Christmas carols while sunbathing near a pool in mid-August, eating ice-cream during a walk in a snow storm or starting a meal with dessert.  It's not that I don't like singing carols at Christmas time. It's just that I like singing them so-oo much, that I can't wait a whole year before I can do it again.  And why would I?

Similarly -- why would you wait with baking these cookies until next December?

And they are totally worth it!  The cookies are as good as oatmeal cookies can be.  Tangy from the cranberries, sweet and luscious from the milk chocolate, incredibly chewy and finished off with crispy almond flakes.  Let's not forget the cinnamon flavor that will fill your entire house when you're baking these. Mmm - holidays in your kitchen!

So go ahead and have yourself a merry little cookie!

The recipe comes from Dorotus' blog, slightly modified (mainly through the addition of almonds, and increasing the amount of cranberries).

Ingredients:

• 170 g of flour
• 1 tsp of cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp of baking soda
• pinch of salt
• 140 g of oats
• 150 g of butter (soft, at room temperature)
• 150 g of light brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp of vanilla extract
• 180 g of fresh cranberries, roughly chopped
• 200 g milk chocolate, roughly chopped
• 70 g of almond flakes

For the decoration:

• 70 g of milk chocolate, roughly chopped
• 50 g of almond flakes

Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F).  Line 2 cookie trays with parchment paper.  
• Whisk together the flour, cinnamon, baking soda and salt.  Add the oats and combine.  Set aside.
• Mix the butter with the brown sugar and vanilla extract.  Add the egg and mix again.
• Add the butter mixture to the flower mixture, combine.  Add the chopped cranberries, chocolate and almonds, combine.
• Scoop small amounts of the dough on the baking tray, leaving enough space between the cookies as they will melt and expand.  
• Bake for around 15 minutes, checking often towards the end to see if the cookies don't burn.  Let cool on the tray.
• Melt the chocolate au bain marie (over a pan with boiling water).  Toss the almond in a dry hot frying pan for 30 second or until golden.
• Decorate cookies with the chocolate and sprinkle with almonds.

Bon appetit!

Cranberry cheesecake

Red & white.  Sweet & tart.  Creamy & crunchy.  Mmmm - what an excellent harmony of contradictions!  This cheesecake is a perfect dessert to prepare on a lazy Sunday afternoon.  You can watch the food processor do the work for you, while you sip a good aperitif -- ekhm, I mean herbal tea -- and nibble on a left-over biscuit.

The cheesecake it ridiculously easy to make, but at the same time looks impressive -- so you can invite people over to show off, and listen to their compliments of you rising to the heights of culinary stardom.

This cheesecake reminds me a lot of American cheesecakes you can get at Starbucks or other coffeehouses.  It's nothing like traditional Polish cheesecakes, which is all the better for me, as I don't like the latter.   It's so un-be-lie-va-bly creamy that you have to be careful when cutting it (it's best to use a big, sharp knife, dipped in boiling water (and wiped dry)).  
 

You could also prepare it in cute small baking trays and serve as individual portions.  Especially recommended, if you're after even more compliments.

The cheesecake is very versatile and can be made all year round.  You can also use other fruit and types of chocolate.  I promised my boyfriend (who was very sad to see how quickly the cheesecake "disappeared") to make a sour cherry & dark chocolate version next time.  I have a suspicion it will be just as excellent.

The recipe comes from Dorotus' blog.

Ingredients:

• 180 g of digestive biscuits
• 80 g of butter (melted)
• 450 g of cream cheese
• 1 large egg
• 180 g of white chocolate + 70 g for decoration
• 100 ml of cream
• 110 g of powdered sugar (next time I would add a bit less, as the cheesecake was a tad too sweet for my taste)
• Zest of 1 lime
• 300 g of fresh cranberries

Directions:

• Crush the biscuits in a food processor, or by hand (you can put them in a ziploc bag and crush with a rolling pin).  Add the melted butter.  Distribute evenly on the bottom of a round baking tray (lined with parchment paper and 24 cm in diameter), and push down with your fingers.  Refrigerate for about 30 minutes.
• Preheat the over to 160°C.
• Melt 180 g of chocolate and the cream in a bain-marie (bowl over a pot with boiling water).  Let cool down a bit.
• Mix the cream cheese, egg, sugar and lime zest until smooth.  Add the cooled down chocolate and mix again.
• Pour mixture over cooled biscuit bottom.  Sprinkle cranberries on top.  Bake for around an hour.  Let cool down.
• Melt the remaining chocolate in the bain-marie.  Decorate the cake using a spoon or a cake decorating pen.  Refrigerate for a few hours, preferably over night, before serving.

Bon appetit!

In the beginning was THE CAKE...

... and what a cake!  Rich and moist, aromatic like spiced gingerbread - yet with a distinct dark chocolate flavor.  And let's not forget the exquisite ginger ale icing, which finishes off the cake perfectly.  An ideal treat to have on a cold winter afternoon with a cup of strong black coffee (...while sitting in a comfortable armchair, enjoying the cheerful crackling of the fireplace and watching snowflakes cover the winter wonderland outside -- but let's not get too carried away).

I decided to add this chocolate gingerbread to this year's Christmas repertoire as an experiment.  At first it was received with a bit of skepticism (also by myself), but turned out to be a favorite among the other holiday treats.  I will definitely make it again next year.  

The recipe is a slightly adapted version of Nigella's Chocolate Gingerbread.

CAKE

Ingredients:

• 175 g butter
• 175 g dark muscovado sugar
• 200 g golden syrup
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 2 tbsp warm water
• 2 eggs
• 250 ml milk
• 275 g plain flour
• 40 g cocoa
• 200 g chopped bitter chocolate

Directions: 

• Preheat the oven to 170ºC.  Line the bottom of a round baking tin (23 cm in diameter) with baking parchment.
• Melt the butter, sugar, golden syrup and ground spices in a big pan.  Take the pan off the heat.
• In a separate cup, dissolve the bicarbonate in warm water. 
• Add the milk, eggs and dissolved bicarbonate to the butter/sugar mixture and whisk together.  Add the cocoa and flour and stir thoroughly.  Finally add the chopped chocolate and stir again.
• Pour the mixture to the baking tin.  Bake for about 50 minutes, let cool.

ICING

Ingredients:

• 250 g icing sugar
• 30 g butter
• 2 tbsp cocoa
• 60 ml ginger ale
• 50 g of roughly chopped walnuts

Directions: 

• Melt the first four ingredients in a a small pan.  Let cool and thicken a bit, and pour over cake.
• Sprinkle with chopped walnuts.

Bon appetit!