Rocky roads - it was about time

Rocky road Lily is back with rocky roads – after a months break. ;) And also back in Blogspot after using own domain name. For a while I thought I'd get rid of the blog for good, but started missing the whole blogging thing! Probably will post only every now and then, but that's better than nothing, huh? 

Oh, and the recipe.. it's an altered version of this one.

200 g milk chocolate
20 g butter
50 g small marshmallows
1 dl cashews
1 dl Daim chocolate

1. Chop the milk chocolate and melt it with butter.
2. Chop the nuts and Daim. Mix the marshmallows, nuts and Daim with cooled chocolate (leave some marshmallows for decoration).
3. Pour the mix into a pan covered with baking paper. Sprinkle some marshmallows and nuts on top. Let set in a fridge for abot an hour. Cut in small squares.
4. ENJOY :P

Mango cream puffs

I lost my cream puff virginity last Saturday when I decided to bake something for a friend's party. I had mango cream cheese in fridge, searched recipes with it and found this. I made the filling according to it (except doubled the amount of cream) and the dough according to this recipe (the first one on the list). At the party table these fluffy yummies were paired with the hostess' amazing sandwich cake. Nice match, I'd say!

 MANGO CREAM PUFFS (20 middle size, 35 small)

1 1/2 dl water
75 g butter
1 1/2 dl wheat flour
3 eggs

Filling
2 dl cream
200 g mango cream cheese
sugar

1. Boil water and butter in a pan. Add flour. Mix with a wooden fork until the dough turns into a firm "ball". Let it cool.
2. Add eggs one by one while mixing with mixer. After adding the first two eggs, keep mixing for 2 minutes. After adding the third egg, mix for 4 to 5 minutes. (This is essential to make the dough rise).
3. Extrude rosette-shape lumps on baking paper or use two spoons.
4. Bake in 200 Celsius for 25 minutes. Don't open the oven door for the first 15 minutes.
5. Make the filling: whip the cream and mix it with cream cheese and sugar. Cut the puffs and fill them.

Christmas cookies in a jar

This is  a nice Christmas present idea. I fell in love with the taste of these cookies so already made another set using white chocolate – not bad! 

 The whole week has been crazy running from one place to another. Finally it's time to relax and enjoy the holidays. 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! <:P

CHRISTMAS COOKIES  (in Finnish here.)


100 g soft apricots (soft cranberries might make a nice variation)
2 dl (100 g) pecan nuts
100 g dark chocolate (white or milk chocolate also worth trying!)
3 dl wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
100 g butter
1 dl sugar
1 egg
2 table spoons light syrup

1. Cut the apricots, nuts and chocolate into crushed grain. Mix flours with baking powder and spices.
2. Froth butter and sugar. Add the egg while frothing. Add syrup, flour, and crushed grain. Mix the dough until even.
3. Make 30 cm long bar of the dough. Wrap it in cellophane and let harden in fridge for about 2 hours.
4. Cut the bar into 1 cm slices. Place the slices on a baking tray covered with baking paper.
5. Bake in 175 C in the middle of the oven for 12-15 minutes, until the slices get a bit brownish. Let the cookies cool down and harden on the tray.

Snowy cupcakes

GINGERBREAD COCONUT CUPCAKES

150 g margarine
1 1/2 dl brown sugar
2 eggs
3 1/2 dl wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons gingerbread spice (I mixed cinnamon (1/2), clove (1/4) and ginger (1/4))
3/4 dl milk or cream
100 g vanilla quark

On top:
2 dl whipped cream
250 g mascarponse cheese
1 dl powdered sugar
1 dl coconut milk
coconut flakes

Whip margarine and brown sugar together. Add eggs one by one. Mix dry ingredients together and add them into dough with milk/cream. Add vanilla quark. Bake about 12-15 minutes in 200 C. Let the cupcakes cool down.

Topping:
Whip the cream until foamy and mix with other ingredients (except coconut flakes). Extrude the frosting on top of cooled cupcakes. Sprinkle coconut flakes on top.

 ...........

What makes my week is a day off in the middle of it. Especially if you get to spend the night before (the night you don't need to worry about going to bed early) with good friends you haven't seen for a while. AND if this all takes place in your friend-couples' beautiful new home you have been looking forward to see. Take a closer look at the house and the decoration style at Kaisa's stunning blog No home without you.

So, we gathered together on Independence day's eve and I was asked to take care of the sweet munchies. I knew Kaisa has a lot of black and white in her decoration, so decided to make cupcakes that fit in :). That sealed the deal with black papers and coconut flakes on top. And since Christmas is coming up, gingerbread flavour seemed a good choice for the dough. The gingerbread cupcake recipe is from the blog Kinuskikissa,  but I switched the gingerbeads on top to coconut topping, which is my own variation. This flavour combination was quite ok, but the outcome was a bit dry, these "snowy" treats tasted better after a night in fridge.

Nuts over nuts – pecan coconut cake

Everything delicious is unhealthy, period. Except one exception: nuts! They may be calorie bombs, but still good for you. My ultimate favourites are coconut, cashews and pecans, so after I found a recipe called 'pecan coconut cake' last fall I had no choice but to try it. I already started to plan what I'll bake for Christmas, and this sweetie has a huge potential to end up on the table. Even though I usually always want to try new recipes. We'll see!

PECAN COCONUT CAKE (in Finnish here)

Cake

200 g margarin 

3 dl sugar

3 eggs

4 dl wheat flour

70 g pecan nuts

1 dl coconut flakes

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons vanilla sugar

2 dl whipped cream

Filling and frosting

75 g margarin

6 dl icing sugar

300 g cream cheese

2 teaspoons vanilla sugar

Decoration

200 g pecan nuts

(I added some cinnamon on top) 

1. Whip soft margarin with sugar. Add eggs one by one while whipping.

2.  Mix flours, crunched nuts, coconut flakes, baking powder and vanilla sugar together. Add the blend into the dough in turns with cream. 

3. Grease and flour a cake tin (diameter about 22 cm). Make the surface even. Bake in 175 Celcius at the lowest level in oven for about an hour. Turn the cake when it has cooled down a bit. Then let it cool entirely.

4. Mix soft margarin, icing sugar, cream cheese and vanilla sugar together with a mixer until smooth. 

5. Cut the cake in three layers. Spread the filling on every layer, on top and on the sides of the cake. Decorate with pecan nuts. Cake stays juicy for several days when stored in a fridge.

Whoopies, woohoo!

They say whoopies (or whoopie pies) are the next big thing after cupcakes, macarons and cake pops. I don't know why they are hip right now, a quick googling reveals they have a long history in America. Traditionally whoopies, sweet sandwich-like treats, are made of chocolate batter and white filling. I rebelliously decided to make a blonde version. In many Finnish whoopie recipes the filling is made of cream cheese mixed with sugar and/or chocolate. The rebellious me went with marshmallow filling.

I spent last weekend at my sister's place in countryside which means my baking environment was much more pleasant than it would have been in my own small kitchen. Just love her romantic country style kitchen!

This recipe (from blog Monalisa's cakes) filled my requirements dough and filling wise.
Btw, when transforming grams into decilitres, table spoons or whatever, this publication by National Public Health Institute becomes handy. Sorry, in Finnish only!

WHOOPIE PIES

75 g saltless butter or margarin
1 egg
150 g (~1,7 dl) sugar
125 g crème fraîche
25 ml (~1,7 table spoons) milk
1 table spoon vanilla extract
55 g white chocolate
3/4 table spoon baking soda
275 g (almost 4 dl) flour
           ...
100 g marshmallows
50 ml (~3,5 table spoons) milk
125 g saltless butter

1. Melt the butter and let it cool down. Whip the egg until foamy and add the sugar 1/3 at a time until thick. Add the butter, crème fraîche, milk, and vanilla extract while whipping. Add chopped chocolate, baking soda and flour.
2. Extrude the dough onto a sheet (diameter about 2,5 cm). Bake in oven (175 Celsius) for about 13 minutes until they get some colour.
3. Filling: heat up the marshmallows and milk in a pan until smooth paste. Let cool down. Whip butter until fluffy and mix it with the marshmallow paste. Extract the paste onto a cookie and place another cookie on top of it.

Note: I added more liquid (both crème fraîche and milk) into the dough to make it more loose. I didn't have a piping tube to extrude the dough, so to make the cookies round, the dough needed to be running.

Ghost cake pops & other Halloween must-haves!

Halloween fuss hasn't been around for too long in Finland, but every year you can see more and more spiders, pumpkins and witches decorating store windows. The Halloween bug (spider in this case?) bit me 5 years ago, when I got to spend it in the USA. There's something magical about the whole celebration, even though the idea of the souls of the deads hanging around isn't exactly that, um... tempting.

Based on conversations I hear at coffee tables, on bus or wherever, we don't really know which weekend Halloween should be celebrated in. In most countries Halloween happens on October 31st, on the eve of All Saints Day, so the "right" time would be the last weekend of October, not the first of November. Anyhow, the Finnish style to solve this dilemma is to celebrate both weekends, which doesn't get any complaints from me :). 

Ghost cake pops.

I decided to throw a small Halloween party for friends last weekend, and wanted to serve something yummy in the spirit of the holiday. I've made a vanilla pumpkin pie for Halloween two years in a row now, and this weekend was no exception. This recipe is simply amazing, beats many cheesecakes (my favourites cake-wise) if you ask me. I only skip the cooking-the-pieces part because I use more of the soft inside, not the hard flesh, and mash it as raw. The funniest part begins when the pie is in the oven: carving the pumpkin! I'll make another post about that soon.

For other treats to serve I went through some googling and ended up with the following menu (find recipes below pictures):

Pumpkin pie served with whipped cream and maple syrup

Ghost cake pops

Breadstick bones with pesto "blood" dip

Cheese bones with apple/cinnamon "brain" jam

Halloween spirited candies 

Purple punch

GHOST CAKE POPS (around 20, variation of this recipe, decoration inspired by this recipe)

2 tubes of Domino/Oreo mint cookies
100 g cream cheese
200-300 g white chocolate

Smash the cookies until fine. Mix with cream cheese. Put in fridge for about 1 hour until the dough is a bit harder. Roll small balls of it and put in fridge for a few minutes. Melt the white chocolate, dip the other ends of the sticks in it, stick the stick into the ball and roll in chocolate. Let dry in fridge and paint the faces preferably with black pasta colour or other powdered colour mixed with water. 

The baking store had run out of black pasta colour, so bought an edible ink pen, which turned out to be a fiasco: the colour just didn't come out of the sharp end, so I had to go back and forth with the sides of the head. I overpainted the scary little faces with dark green powdered colour I happened to have. That's why my ghosts have blurry faces!

Vanilla pumpkin pie with whipped cream and maple syrup.

VANILLA PUMPKIN PIE (for 12, find the recipe in Finnish here.)

400 g of refrigerated shortcrust pastry

2 dl crushed pecan nuts
5 dl mashed pumpkin
4 eggs
2 dl vanilla quark
1,5 dl cane sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
0,5 teaspoon ginger
hint of powdered clove
0,5 teaspoon salt

whipped cream and maple syrup

1. Melt the pastry, roll it a bit thinner and press it on the bottom and sides of a pie tray.
2. Crush the nuts and roast them on a dry pan until they get some colour. Be careful not to burn them. Pour the nuts on the pastry.
3. Cut the "hat" of the pumpkin off, remove the seeds, gouge the flesh and boil it until soft and smash it (I never boil the flesh, just smash it raw).
4. Whip the eggs until soft foam. Mix all the ingredients together and pour over the nuts. Bake at 200 C for about 40 minutes. When done, let the pie cool down completely befor cutting it.

Serve with whipped cream and maple syrup.

Breadstick bones.

BREADSTICK BONES (in Finnish here)

PASTRY
70-80 g grated parmesan cheese
3 cloves of garlic
5 dl milk or water (I used water)
1/4 pckg yeast
11-12 dl flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 dl olive oil
2 tablespoons dried herbs (eg. basilica, rosemary, thyme)

ON TOP
olive oil
grated parmesan cheese
sesame/poppy seeds
sea salt

1. Heat the milk/water until warm, crumble the yeast into the liquid. Add 8 dl of flour after the yeast has dissolved. Knead the pastry until elastic and go on for about 15 minutes.
2. Add cheese, garlic, olive oil, salt and herbs. Mix until even. Cover with a towel and let rise for half an hour. Press the pastry and let rise for another half hour. Heat the oven to 225 C.
3. Divide the pastry in four. Use a rolling pin to roll the pastry into a rectangle (15 cm x 25 cm) and cut it lengthwise into 8 pieces. Roll the pieces between hands until finger thick sticks. Place on a baking tray, brush with olive oil and sprinkle other ingredients on top.   
4. Bake for about 15 minutes or until slightly brownish. Preferably serve right away.   

I made a red dip for the sticks by mixing sour cream with red pesto.

Chocolate (pumpkin) balls, cheese boned with apple/cinnamon jam. With a bone-shaped mold these were super easy to make.

PURPLE PUNCH

Almost a whole bottle of Parfait amour liqueur (the purple one)
1/2-1 bottle of dry white whine
Red soda (eg. Fanta Exotic)
Sparkling water


Wow, that was a lot of recipes for one post! Happy and creepy Halloween! It's time for this witch to park the broom and go to bed.

Caramel cupcakes with pecan

My mom knows I'm into baking so she surprised me with this super cute book full of the most amazing cupcake recipes (Ingrid Hancock Bjerknes: Kuppikakut / WSOY. They have an english version as well called, surprisingly, Cupcakes). It was hard to decide which ones to try first: mojito cupcakes, marshmallow cupcakes or perhaps Baileys cupcakes. The lucky winner was pecan nut cupcakes with caramel topping. The combination of those two sounded (and tasted) heavenly, and the picture sealed the deal. Ok, my versions didn't turn out that pretty, but they were delicious. Especially served with whipped cream. I think the photo in the book has been taken right after pouring the topping, whereas in my picture the topping has already dried up. 

See the recipe below and enjoy!

Caramel cupcakes with pecan

INGREDIENTS

Dough
300 g pecan nuts
200 g warm margarin
1 1/2 dl sugar
1 1/2 dl brown sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cardamom
mocha essence (I skipped this one)
4 dl sieved wheat flour
1 dl grinded almond
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3 dl whipping cream
1 banana

Caramel topping
60 g margarin
100 g brown sugar
4 tabelspoons light syrup
1 1/2 dl whipping cream

DIRECTIONS

1. Heat the oven up to 180 Celcius.
2. Roast the nuts in oven about 15 minutes and let them cool down. Crunch half of them and leave the other half for decoration.
3. Whip margarin with sugar until fluffy.
4. Add eggs one by one while whipping.
5. Add cinnamon and cardamom (and a few drops of mocha essence). Whip until smooth.
6. Mix flour, grinded almond and baking powder together and add into dough. Whip for a few minutes.
7. Add whipping cream little by little.  
8. Squash the banana and add into dough.
9. Add crushed pecan nuts.
10. Fill cupcake tins half full and bake them for about 15 minutes.

Caramel topping
1. Measure margarin, brown sugar and syrup into pan and heat while mixing until bubbly. Continue mixing for another 2 minutes.
2. Add cream and keep mixing until thick.

Decoration
The topping is very running so use high edged cupcake tins. Decorate cupcakes with nuts (either crunched or whole ones). Pour the topping on top.  

Cake pop time!

What a week! Got fever on Monday and it lasted until Wednesday. And the sluggish feeling lasted even longer. So got nothing done, including blog updates.

Cake pops have been around for a good while, but in case there's someone who hasn't tried to make them yet, I decided to post about them. Hope you get inspired! What is so cool about these cute treats is that only your imagination is on your way when planning the flavour, shape, colors and decoration. I used Valio's mango cake pops recipe, which you can find here. The idea is to 

1. Crumble a ready made cake (150 g), mix it with cream cheese (100 g) and powdered sugar (1 dl) and roll balls.

(I baked the cake myself, but don't think it's worth the trouble. Use basic sugar cake, chocolate cake, tart or whatever you think matches with the cover you're going to use. Mango-flavored cream cheese worked well in this recipe, gets my recommendations!)

2. Dip the balls in topping, whatever you choose it to be.

(I used melted white chocolate (100 g). I coloured the other half with red food colouring, but for some reason it thickened the topping so badly I ended up shaping it on the balls instead of dipping. That made the balls too heavy for the sticks, see the picture below.)

3. Decorate!

I didn't find lollipop sticks to buy, so I used these long grilling sticks. There are many ways to serve cake pops: you can e.g. stick the sticks in sugar or serve them upside down on a plate. Find some nice examples here. Since I used these ridiculously long sticks, I ended up sticking them in a half cut cabbage which I covered with a nice napkin. I added some two-sided tape on the cabbage to keep te napkin in place. Voila!