Cherry and Lemon Cream Slice Cseresznyés Lepény

This is a lovely soft buttery pastry jewelled with sweet summer cherries and flavoured with kirsch or cherry liqueur. It's usually served just dusted with icing sugar but this time I added some home-made lemon curd to give it a tangy creaminess. You could serve it with lemon curd mixed with lightly whipped cream too or vanilla cream. Whatever you do it will be a delicious afternoon treat.

100g butter

125g vanilla infused caster sugar (or plain caster sugar and few drops of vanilla essence)

pinch of salt

2 eggs

1 tsp kirsch (optional)

1 tsp baking powder

200g refined white spelt flour (or plain flour)

grated zest of a lemon or a lime

100ml milk

400g cherries, stones removed

Preheat the oven to 180C. Mix the butter and sugar until smooth, light in colour and fluffy. Add the salt, lemon zest, kirsch, eggs and mix well until very smooth. Mix the baking powder with the flour and add it gradually to the mix also adding a little bit of the milk each time until all completely incorporated. Grease and line a 20x30cm brownie tray, pour in the cake mix and spread the cherries on top. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes or until cooked through. Cool and slice, dust with icing sugar. I cut each slice horizontally and spread a little lemon curd in the middle before sandwiching them together again. But it would be lovely to serve it with some lemon curd flavoured whipped cream too.

 

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.

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.

 

Nigella's Lemon and Almond Cake

We all love lemon and almonds in our house and I often make this cake as it's simple and doesn't need too many ingredients. The recipe is from Nigella Lawson's 'How to be a domestic goddess'. 

It's still winter and the height of citrus season hence this cake made it to my blog even though it's not very Hungarian in origin, probably more Middle Eastern. Must warn you it has a lot of butter in it, but on the bright side it has hardly any flour. In fact I think you could probably substitute it with more ground almonds to make it absolutely gluten free.

You only need one bowl for mixing, it's quick and stays moist and delicious for days. We served it with creme fraiche and the saffron poached pears I posted earlier they pair up really well with almonds.

225g soft unsalted butter

225g caster sugar

4 eggs

50g plain flour

225g ground almonds

half tsp almond extract

grated zest and juice of 2 lemons

Preheat oven to 180C/gas mark 4. Cream together the butter and sugar until almost white. Beat in the eggs one at a time, adding a bit of the flour after each one. When it's all really well mixed, gently fold in the ground almonds, almond extract, lemon zest and juice. Pour the mix into a greased and lined spring form cake tin (21-23cm) and bake for about an hour until firm, cooked through and the testing skewer comes out clean. You may need to cover it with foil halfway through if your oven is too fierce and the top colours too much. When ready, let it cool, take it out of the tin and wrap in tin foil and it will keep for several days. According to Nigella this cake will be best left for a couple of days, but we tried it the next day. Dust it with icing sugar before serving with cream, creme fraiche, berries or whatever takes your fancy.

Vanilla poppy seed cake Mákos Pite

As long as you have a packet of poppy seeds on hand, this is an easy winter store cupboard cake. You need to grind the black poppy seeds with  a spice or coffee grinder before making the creamy poppy seed paste for the filling. A very popular pie-shaped (or square tin shaped) cake all over Eastern Europe, Germany, Austria and a really great afternoon treat with your tea or coffee. This is made with a quick shortcrust pastry and a creamy vanilla and lemon scented sweet poppy filling. Add dried fruit to the filling if you wish, sultanas, prunes, cherries or small pieces of quince jelly are delicious mixed in. Serve with a dollop of creme fraiche or whipped cream.

For the pastry:

300g plain or wholemeal flour

150g butter, cut into cubes

pinch of salt

2 tbsp sour cream or creme fraiche

For the filling:

150g ground black poppy seeds

50g sugar

50g semolina

200ml milk

1 tsp vanilla extract or scraped out seeds of a vanilla pod

grated zest of a lemon

1 egg white

1tbsp sultanas

1 egg yolk for glazing

Make the shortcrust pastry quickly by putting all ingredients into a food processor and mixing until a pastry ball is formed. If you are doing it by hand, crumble the cold butter and the flour together between your fingers until you get a fine crumble texture. Add the salt and sour cream and knead into a firm dough. Make the filling by heating the milk with the sugar and vanilla until almost boiling. Take it off the heat and add the ground poppy seeds, semolina, lemon zest, sultanas, stir until well mixed. Let it cool to room temperature. Beat the egg white until firm peaks form then gently fold into the poppy mix. Preheat the oven to 180C. Divide the pastry into two and roll out the first one to the shape of your greased or lined tart case or baking tin. I used a 24cm loose bottom tart case. Place the pastry in the tin, pour in the filling and roll out the other pastry to cover the filling. Press down along the edges and cut the excess pastry off neatly. Brush the top with the egg yolk and bake for about 40 minutes or until all the pastry and filling is cooked, check this with a wooden skewer. Let it cool and dust with icing sugar.   

Cardamom rice soufflé cakes Rizskók tortácskák

Rizskók or rizskoch is usually a sweet rice soufflé baked in a large baking tray in the oven, then cut up into squares and served with a drizzle of raspberry cordial or jam. It's the typical school dinner pudding and afternoon treat from my childhood and it was always delicious as it was. I wanted to improve the recipe by using nice arborio rice with one or two things I love with rice and milky puddings. An addition of ground cardamom and topping the cakes with cinnamon roasted red plum compote is just so much more wintry and warming. Using little cake moulds, cups, muffin or tart cases  make them look a lot more appealing, but it would be just fine in a tray or cake tin too. 

120g arborio risotto rice

500ml milk

25g butter

half tsp ground cardamom

half tsp lemon zest

few drops of vanilla extract

50g caster sugar

2 eggs, yolks and whites separated

Melt the butter in a pan, add the rice and stir it around gently so it's all coated. Add the cardamom, lemon zest, vanilla extract, sugar and gradually start adding the milk as if you were making a risotto. Try not to stir the rice too much, just move it around slightly, adding more milk as the rice soaks it up while cooking. It should be cooked but not mushy, a creamy texture with a scent of cardamom. Let it cool down. Preheat the oven to 180C. Beat the egg yolks and mix it with the rice when it is cool or just lukewarm. Beat the egg whites until stiff then gently fold it into the rice, making sure it stays airy and light. Fill your greased cake moulds with the rice mix or spread into a lined baking tray and bake for 20-30 minutes until cooked through and lightly coloured. Stick a wooden skewer into the centre, it should come out clean.

For the topping I cut 8 red plums into quarters, sprinkled with cinnamon and 50g sugar, mix and roast in the oven at 180C for 20-40 minutes depending on the ripeness of the fruit. It should be soft and the juices syrupy when ready. Drizzle this over the cakes and dust with icing sugar.

Chocolate cream gateau Lúdláb torta

One of my absolute favourites from childhood. Lúdláb torta is a rich triple layer chocolate cake with a thin cocoa sponge base, a deep chocolate cream filling dotted with dark rum soaked cherries and covered with dark chocolate topping. I made this cake for a friend's birthday couple of weeks ago and managed to save a slice for the picture. All the girls loved it and the cake tin was licked clean before I even put it on a cake stand! But the biggest compliment came from our friend's dad Richie who has eaten many cakes in his life, he said it was THE best chocolate cake he had ever had! How brilliant is that? As I didn't scrimp on proper dark chocolate, cream and butter, it is definitely a cake for days when you are not counting calories!

For the sponge base:

2 eggs, yolks and whites separated and egg whites beaten until peaks form

4 tbsp caster sugar

4 tbsp plain flour

2 tbsp cocoa powder

2tbsp water

1tsp baking powder

few drops of vanilla extract

For the filling:

500ml double cream

400g caster sugar

500g unsalted butter, cut into small cubes

200g dark chocolate (50%) broken into small pieces

few drops of vanilla extract

350g frozen morello cherries, thawed, drained and soaked in a couple of tbsp dark rum

Topping:

100g dark chocolate (50%) broken into small pieces

1tbsp flavourless oil (sunflower or groundnut)

Preheat oven to 180C/gas mark 6. To make the sponge, cream together the egg yolks with the sugar. Add the vanilla extract, cocoa powder, water and mix until smooth. Gradually add the flour and baking powder, mix well then add the beaten egg whites, folding in gently so it adds air to the sponge mix. Pour into a greased, lined 23cm cake tin and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes, until cooked through. Cool it down before putting the filling on top.

Make the filling by warming the double cream with the sugar until gently dissolves, then bring it to the boil for a few minutes. Take it off the heat, mix in the dark chocolate, stirring until completely smooth and dissolved. Add the vanilla extract and stirring continuously, add the butter cubes until all melted and smooth. Let it cool down and stick it in the fridge for half an hour to thicken slightly. Mix in the rum soaked, drained cherries and pour it over the sponge base. I left the base in the cake tin and poured the thick creamy filling on top, then put it in the fridge until completely set. I left it there overnight and it was perfect by the morning. For the topping, melt the dark chocolate in a bowl over simmering water, making sure the bowl doesn't touch the water. When melted, mix in the oil until smooth and pour over the cake. Smooth it with a spatula or make rough peaks as you wish. You could sprinkle chocolate shavings on top to make it more of a celebration cake.

 

 

 

Rákóczi Túrós Baked meringue cheese cake

Here is another good old curd cheese cake recipe. There are thousands in Hungarian baking! This one is a huge favourite with everyone and one of the staples you can get in any cakeshop. I have been planning to make Rákóczi túrós for a while, and recently found a Polish curd cheese/cottage cheese in Asda that is very similar to the one you get in Hungary. I was very excited to try it (Saddo). You could use ricotta too. This cake is named after the French trained János Rákóczi, the Hungarian royal master patissier. He created this cake for the 1958 World Expo in Brussels as part of a selection of Hungarian dishes to represent what is quintessentially magyar in our cuisine. Rákóczi's recipe has been changed and altered by many over the years to suit changing tastes, but I followed his basic original recipe as I think it is the best and tastiest of all. He suggests a lettuce pattern of meringue and apricot jam on top, which I think is very retro in its looks and takes too long to fiddle with. So I made a plain meringue topping that I drizzled with jam (using my new drizzling gadget I got from my aunt). You could add more filling or more meringue as you wish.

For the pastry base:

250g plain flour

60g icing sugar

2 egg yolks

grated zest of half lemon

100ml sour cream

pinch of bicarbonate of soda

pinch of salt

For the filling:

500g curd cheese (or strained cottage cheese, ricotta)

3 egg yolks

2 egg whites

200ml sour cream

grated zest of half a lemon

few drops of vanilla extract

100g icing sugar

4 tbsp semolina and more for sprinkling

For the meringue topping:

4 egg whites

150g caster sugar

Mix the pastry ingredients together until you get a shortcrust pastry type of dough and rest it for half an hour in the fridge. Preheat oven to 180C and roll out the pastry to about 5mm thickness and place in a baking tray, I used a 20x30cm tray with 3cm sides. It doesn't need lining and I cut the pastry to the size of the tray base. Prick it with a fork in several places. Bake it for 10 minutes, it doesn't need to be fully baked, just dry enough for the filling to go on top. Let it cool and make the filling.

Push the curd cheese through a potato mincer. Mix the egg yolks with the icing sugar until smooth an pale, add the vanilla etxract, curd cheese, sour cream, semolina, lemon zest.  Beat the egg whites until stiff and gently fold into the filling. Sprinkle the pastry with semolina and spread the filling on top evenly. Turn the oven down to 160C and bake it for about 20 minutes or until the filling has cooked through and when tested with a wooden skewer, it comes out dry. Take it out of the oven and make the meringue topping. Beat the 4 egg whites until stiff peaks form then add the caster sugar gradually. Spread the meringue mix on top of the cheese cake and bake it ready in the oven. I turned the oven up to 180C to start with to get that crisp meringue coat going, then turned it down to 140C to let the meringue centre bake a little but still keeping that lovely marshmallow texture. It really only needs to dry up a bit. When ready, cool it down and cut into squares or slices, drizzle with apricot jam.

Kuglóf

Kuglóf must be one of the easiest cakes to make. It's a very popular coffee and tea time cake you can find in most European countries (Gugelhupf, Bundkuchen). It's made with a soft, sweet yeasty dough and can be filled with dried or candied fruit, nuts, marzipan, chocolate or cocoa (marble cake) and in Hungary often layered with poppy seed. My Mum gave me her lovely old blue enamel kuglóf baking mould a few years ago but it's chipped in a few places going rusty, so I need to get it fixed before I can use it. For this recipe I tried my new silicone mould, which is not as tall as the enamel one. The recipe is from one of my old cookbooks Venesz József: Magyaros konyha.

I added some sultanas to the dough as that's the only filling we used to have when we made it at home and it looks great when you slice it.

280g flour

15g fresh yeast

400 ml milk

3 egg yolks

60g butter

80g icing sugar

grated lemon zest

pinch of salt

30g sultanas

Crumble and mix the yeast with 80g of the flour  and 150ml warm milk. Cover and leave this starter dough to prove in a warm place for 30 minutes. 

Cream the icing sugar with the butter and egg yolks until smooth and fluffy. Add the starter dough, rest of the flour, lemon zest, sultanas, salt and the rest of the warmed up milk. Mix it well, until it is light and air bubbles start to form in the dough when you mix it. It will be a slightly runny, soft, sweet dough. Cover and leave to prove in a warm place for about an hour.

Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease and dust a ring shape tin/kuglóf tin with semolina/fine breadcrumbs or use a silicone mould (you don't need to grease this). Fill the mould with the dough, cover and let it prove for another 30 minutes. Bake until cooked through and golden colour, this takes 35-40 minutes. When ready, turn it out of the mould and cool on a wire rack, dust with icing sugar.

Meggyes csokitorta - Chocolate and Morello Cherry Cake

This was one of the cakes I made for the Macmillan Cancer Support coffee event we organised with a couple of friends. I thought it would be worth adding to my blog as it seem to be one of the most popular cakes yesterday afternoon. Its recipe is similar to the Rhubarb Cake recipe I posted in August, but I added some cocoa powder to the sponge mix. I found frozen morello cherries in Asda a while ago, they remind me much more of the fresh ones as opposed to the slightly soggy bottled cherries. Not sure if this cake really does exist in Hungarian cookbooks, it is a complete mix of all the things I love in cakes. Chocolate and morello cherries are two classic ingredients though so I could get away with it I reckon!

For the cake mix:

3 eggs

250 g icing sugar

100g cocoa powder

450 g plain flour

150 ml milk

150 ml flavourless oil (groundnut or sunflower)

1 tbsp baking powder 

350g frozen morello cherries (thawed and drained completely before baking)

For the filling:

bottle of morello cherry jam (Lidl)

150ml double cream

For the topping:

150ml double cream

150g dark chocolate, chopped

1 sachet ground arrowroot

Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 6. 

Beat the eggs with the sifted icing sugar and the cocoa powder until it is well mixed. Add the oil and the milk and mix well. Add the baking powder and slowly add the flour, mixing as you go so it doesn't get lumpy. Gently fold in the morello cherries. Pour the cake mix into a lined 23cm cake tin and bake for 40-45 minutes or until the testing skewer comes out clean and the cake is cooked through, even in the middle. Cool on a wire rack. You could do this the day before you actually need the cake.

When the cake is completely cool, slice it in half so you have two round discs. Spread the morello cherry jam over the bottom part. Whip the double cream until soft peaks form and spread this over the jam. Put the top disc on top of the cream and make the topping. Gently warm the double cream and melt the chocolate, stirring until completely dissolved and beautifully glossy. Take the pan off the heat and add the ground arrowroot to the topping, mixing well. It will start to slightly thicken. Slowly pour the topping over the cake, adding it gently so it covers the top evenly, looking a bit like a giant whoopie pie. Let it cool completely before serving. 

Serve it with softly whipped double cream on the side.

Almás pite - Cinnamon apple squares

 

This is my Mum's recipe. She prefers a yeasty dough for the pastry as it makes this cake really light and it keeps fresh and soft for days. It is a perfect mid-afternoon autumnal treat with the warm scent of cinnamon and cooked apples. I used dessert apples as they need less sugar for stewing and we like their flavour. In Hungary it is served with just a dusting of icing sugar, but it would also be lovely with cream, fresh egg custard, creme fréche, sour cream or thick Greek yoghurt.

For the pastry:

500g plain flour

100 ml milk

20g fresh yeast or 7g (1packet) dried yeast

100g icing sugar

2 egg yolks

200g melted butter

Crumble the fresh yeast into the luke warm milk and leave to activate in a warm place for 15 minutes. If using dried yeast, add it straight to the flour. Sift the icing sugar and flour together, add the yeasty milk, egg yolks and knead it until well mixed. Add the melted butter gradually until it becomes smooth. Use a dough mixer or a bread maker for these first stages (you can leave dough to rise in bread mixers too). Cover it with a damp tea towel and leave in a warm place to rise - this could take an hour or more. In the meantime, make the filling.

For the filling:

2kg dessert apples, peeled and grated

5tbsp sugar (less or more to taste - depends on your taste buds and the sweetness of the apples)

1tsp ground cinnamon

Grate the apples by hand or a food processor and put them in a large heavy base saucepan with the sugar and cinnamon. Warm it slowly until the sugar dissolves then stew it with a lid on, until the apples have softened, very little juice left and it has become a soft, not soggy but creamy texture. This takes about 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 6. When the dough is ready, knock it back and knead it for a minute on a floured surface. Devide into two and roll them out to the size of your greased baking tin (I used a 30cmx40cm tin). Lay the first sheet of pastry in the tin, sprinkle with semolina or breadcrumbs, this will stop the pastry going soggy from the filling. Spread the apple filling evenly on top then sprinkle with more semolina and place the second sheet of pastry on top. Give it an egg wash if you wish and bake in the oven for 35-40 minutes or until it is a lovely golden colour. Leave it to cool completely in the tin - it is much easier to cut into neat squares when cooled down. Dust with icing sugar.

Cherry and poppy seed cake

Cherries and poppy seeds are two very popular and frequently used ingredients in Hungarian desserts. Cherry and sour cherry trees are part of every garden and basis for all sorts of preserves and sweets. Poppy seeds, usually ground and made into a sweet creamy paste makes a lovely rich filling for many pastries. In this recipe it replaces half of the flour and substitutes some of the sugar too, adding a distinctive flavour and a speckled look to the cake. By this perhaps reducing some of the calories too... Serve it with a dollop of sour cream or creme fréche. It's really quick to make and great with afternoon tea.

3 eggs

100 g caster sugar

50 g plain flour

50 g black poppy seed (ground - this is best done in a coffee grinder)

1 lemon

2 tbsp sour cream

250 g cherries, stones removed

Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 6.

Mix the eggs with the sugar until it looks light, pale and fluffy - this takes 3-4 minutes in a free standing mixer and it should  double in size. Sift the flour into the mix, add the grated zest of the lemon, the ground poppy seeds, mix well. Gently mix in the sour cream.

Pour the mixture into a lined springform cake tin or pie dish (24 cm) and add the cherries, gently pushing them into the mix. Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes or until cooked through. Baking time depends on the size of your tin. If it is larger, the cake will be ready quicker. If it is smaller, it will be a deeper cake that takes slightly longer to cook through. Keep checking with a wooden skewer.

If you wanted, you could macerate the cherries in some kirsch and sugar a few hours earlier, then use the liquid to make a reduced syrup to drizzle over the cake while it is still warm.