Blueberry and Spelt Birthday Cake

I made this cake for our little one Leo's 2nd birthday last weekend. He loves blueberries and any cakes, so I wanted to make something special but not too sweet for him. He also has a bit of eczema problem and can't eat heavily creamy puddings, so I used creme fraiche instead of butter or cream filling. The sponge is a standard one I use for many recipes, you add the same number of tablespoons of water and sugar as the number of eggs you use and double number of tablespoons of flour. You can then reduce or increase the quantity as you wish. I learned it from a friend's Mum, she told me a little rhyme to remember it for the rest of my life :-) It goes like this: "Ahány tojás annyi víz, dupla cukor, dupla liszt" In this rhyme you might notice she adds more sugar (!) but I half this for my recipes these days. 

3 eggs, whites and yolks separated

3 tbsp water

3 tbsp caster sugar

6 tbsp wholemeal spelt flour (or plain flour)

1 heaped tsp baking powder

few drops of vanilla extract

For filling and decorating:

icing sugar

blueberry jam

300 ml creme fraiche

fresh blueberries

chopped pistachios

Preheat the oven to 180C. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Mix the egg yolks with the sugar until completely smooth and pale in colour. Add the water and vanilla extract and mix well. Add the baking powder and the flour gradually and mix well again. Using a wooden spoon, very gently fold in the egg whites so that all the air is incorporated and the sponge mix is light and fluffy. Pour into a lined 20 cm cake tin and bake for 30-40 minutes until cooked through. Let it cool on a wire rack then slice into two discs. Beat the creme fraiche with 3 tbsp icing sugar until it resembles soft peaks of double cream, but add more sugar if you like it sweeter. Spread the blueberry jam and the creme fraiche on one half of the cake, place the other half on top. Sprinkle the top with icing sugar, pile some more creme fraiche on top and arrange the blueberries in the middle. Sprinkle with the chopped pistachios and serve the remaining creme fraiche on the side.

Sweet Milk Loaf Fonott Tejes Kalács

As I was toasting the last of the sweet milk loaf I made this Easter, it reminded me how much I wanted to share this recipe. Sweet milk loaves or Kalács you can buy in Hungary all year round, but has a particular significance around Easter. It's perfect with the smoked cured ham for Easter Sunday breakfast but also freezes really well and ready to eat later on with butter and jam, like we did. Braiding the many strands of this loaf can be daunting but I found some excellent video tutorials on YouTube and will include in the recipe below. There are choices of how many strands you want to braid, less is a bit easier, but this one is made with 6 strands and was not too complicated to do at all. Also I think this is a great dough to use for braiding, it keeps its shape and beautiful shiny strands while baking. This is a lovely breakfast bread to make all year round, if you like a brioche, you will love this kalács too! I used refined spelt flour in this recipe as I have been using it for most of my baking recently, but plain white flour is also fine to use.

250ml double cream
50g butter

1 egg

1 egg white

500g refined spelt flour (or plain flour)

pinch of salt

3 tbsp caster sugar

1 packet of dried yeast (7g)

1 egg yolk for glazing

Warm the cream and butter until completely melted and allow to cool to room temperature.

Sift the flour, sugar, salt, yeast into a bowl. Add the beaten egg and the egg white and mix well. 

Add the warm milk and butter mix and knead for about 10 minutes or until you get a smooth, elastic dough that comes away from the sides of the bowl.  Cover and let it prove in a warm place for 1 to 2 hrs or until doubles in size. When ready to braid, divide the dough into 6 and roll them into a 40cm long strand each. Bunch them at the top, arrange them into a fan shape and start braiding. Study this tutorial from YouTube before you have a go. This is what mine looked like after braiding:

 

When ready, let it prove in a warm place until you warm the oven to 180C. Glaze the loaf with the beaten egg yolk and bake for about 30 minutes or until golden and cooked through.

Delicious eaten fresh, but also freezes well and it is perfect toasted for breakfast.

Ízes Bukta

Bukta is a light and mildly sweet dough filled with firm jam and baked snugly in the oven to be shared with friends around the table. The most traditional jam to use is the creamy, smooth aromatic prune jam szilvalekvár. It's not easy to get hold of it in the UK and I was lucky that my husband bought me something similar in France on his last trip. It would be equally tasty to use any other type of jam that is not too runny. Or even whole fruits like blackberries instead of jam would be delicious. I made mine with refined (white) spelt flour, but it's easy to replace it with plain flour. Spelt is healthier, lighter and more digestible and I really liked working with the spelt dough. Serve this warm or cool with some home made vanilla sauce or custard or cream.

500g white spelt flour (or ordinary white flour)

1 packet (7g) dried yeast

50g icing sugar

60g butter

300 ml milk

2 egg yolks

pinch of salt

creamy smooth prune jam for filling (or other jam of your choice)

butter for brushing

icing sugar for dusting

Start by heating up the milk with the butter until melted and almost boiling, then let it cool to lukewarm temperature. This process of scalding the milk will make your dough lighter and mixed with the melted butter, easier to work into the dry ingredients. Sift the flour, sugar, salt, yeast into a bowl and mix well. Add the egg yolks, warm buttery milk and mix with a wooden spoon or a dough hook until you get a smooth dough that comes away from the side of the dish. Cover and allow it to double in size in a warm place. This takes about an hour. Take the dough and gently knead it over on a floured surface. Roll out to about 1cm thickness and cut it up to 8cm squares. Put a teaspoon of jam on each one and roll them up into a ball or cylinder shape, tucking the sides in. Place them snug into a greased 23 cm cake tin and brush with melted butter. Preheat oven to 180C. Let them prove until the oven is warming up. Bake until they are cooked through and golden on top. In my oven this took about 40 minutes and I covered the top with tinfoil halfway through to stop it colour too much. Let it cool in the tin and dust with plenty of icing sugar. Serve with cream or warm vanilla sauce.

Darázsfészek Walnut Bun Cake

Variations on this tasty treat can be found all over Europe. In Hungarian it literally translates "wasp's nest" and is usually made with walnuts, cocoa or cinnamon. Makes a great brunch or delicious breakfast buns but it's also great as a celebration cake to have around any holidays or take it to your friend's house as a present. It can be baked in a round tin or a square roasting tray but make sure the dish is deep enough for the buns to rise. A couple of things make this cake really soft and fluffy, one of them is scalding the milk with the butter before adding it cooled down to the dough. And the other is brushing the buns with hot sweet milk while they are baking. This will also add a lovely shiny glow to its finish. This quantity will fill a large 30x40 baking dish. But I wanted to make round cakes so I used a 23cm round and a smaller 20cm cake tin. It freezes well if you are not likely to finish the whole lot in a hurry. Best served with fresh vanilla custard.

For the dough:

500g plain flour

7g dried yeast

50g icing sugar

60g butter

200ml milk

pinch of salt

3 eggs, beaten

Filling:

200g walnuts, ground to a coarse breadcrumb texture with a food processor

100g butter

100g icing sugar

For the top:

150ml milk

50g granulated sugar

few drops of vanilla extract

First make the dough. Heat up the milk with the butter until almost boiling, then let it cool to room temperature. Sift the flour, yeast, icing sugar, salt into a bowl and mix well.  Add the beaten eggs and then the lukewarm milky butter mix. Mix thoroughly and knead for 10-15 minutes until the dough comes off the sides of the dish. Either leave in a warm place to double in size for about an hour, or leave it in the fridge overnight for slow cold fermenting like I did. You achieve the same result but the latter gives you a more stable, more digestible and easier to handle dough that will be ready for baking in the morning. When you are ready to bake, bring the dough to room temperature for 30 minutes if it's in the fridge. Knead it briefly on a floured surface, then divide into two. Roll out each to a 30x40cm rectangle shape. Brush it with melted butter, sprinkle with icing sugar and walnut equally divided between the two. Roll up from the longer end and cut up into 5cm discs. You will get around 16-18 buns. Place them into a buttered baking dish or cake tin, loosely next to each other and put the tin(s) in the oven, then switch the oven on 180C/gas mark 4. While the oven is warming up, the buns will have time to prove once again. From that point it takes around 30 minutes to bake them ready, during which time you can warm up the milk with the sugar and vanilla until almost boiling, and brush the buns with the milk as soon as they start to colour a couple of times while baking. My oven is really fierce so I covered the cakes with tinfoil once they reached a nice golden colour. It is done when the testing skewer comes out clean. Leave it to cool on a wire rack and it will keep fresh for a couple of days or also freezes well. Defrost thoroughly and warm up in the oven for 5 minutes before serving it with fresh vanilla custard.

 

Seville Orange Marmalade Narancs lekvár

January and February are the best months to buy really good Seville oranges which are the best suited for making marmalade. This has been a craze for many over the past few years and I have made far too many bottles which often become presents to give away. Can't beat a really good home made marmalade though and this recipe is the best one I used so far, it's based on the one from Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook. Not too sweet and I cut mine quite fine as nobody in my family likes a chunky cut.

2kg Seville oranges

4kg granulated sugar

tsp salt

juice of 2 lemons

Wash the oranges and put them whole into a large pan with 3 litres of water and the salt. Bring to the boil and gently simmer until the oranges are very soft, this takes at least about an hour. Reserve the liquid, half the oranges, scooping out the pith and pips into a saucepan. Add 300ml water to this and simmer for another 10 minutes. This releases more setting agents from the pips. Slice the orange skin as thin or as chunky as you like to eat it and add to the reserved liquid, together with the strained liquid from the pith and pips. Add lemon juice, sugar and gently warm up and stir until dissolves. Bring to a rapid boil and keep it there until setting point is reached. You can check this by putting a teaspoon of jam on a fridge cold plate and if it wrinkles and jam like, it is ready. If not, carry on boiling it for a bit longer. I find this can very quite a lot. When ready, take it off the heat and rest for 15-20 minutes to let the fruit bits settle, this will stop everything floating straight to the top of the filled jars. Skim the scum from the surface while cooling, although this is only air bubbles created during boiling, so not essential. Give it a stir and fill up your warm, sterilised jars.