I stopped eating meat mainly because I was 14 and it seemed like a cool thing to do, but then found I didn’t miss it and haven’t really missed it  in the [redacted] years since. While I believe that it makes sense to reduce the number of animal products we use, I have never had much of a rationale for vegetarianism, and never felt much inclined towards being vegan. I’m way too lazy to monitor my diet that closely – living with three committed omnivores, I am okay with picking the sausage out of my favorite lentil soup. I’ll cook meat for everyone else, although they have to make their peace with the fact that I won’t taste it to check how it is. What about your family? Do you have a pescatarian in your midst? Or lurking lactose intolerance? How do you handle multiple dietary needs around the table?

So back to the subject of this post. Despite being happily ovo-lacto myself, my most beloved cake recipe is, by chance, vegan. It’s a Bundt cake and pretty much my stock answer to “what should your birthday cake be?” Although it’s extremely easy to make, it falls into the category of a special occasion cake so it’s not a one I make or eat too often, and that’s not right. When I started seeing cookies baked from cake mix around the internet, a little light  went off over my head. Could this be a way to get a dose of chocolate spice deliciousness whether it’s a birthday or not?

Indeed. Baked for ten minutes, these cookies are delightful puffy, pillowy little cakelets, gooey with chocolate chips and perked up with cinnamon and cloves. But try underbaking them by a minute or two, and you will get what I consider the ideal consistency, which is amazing, almost pudding-y. And  what with them being vegan and all, no worries about raw eggs – go ahead and eat a spoonful or two of the dough, you have my permission.

The canonical version of the cake does not include raisins, although they are in the recipe as written on an index card in my mother’s file. These are to be soaked in brandy or other liquid, and while I scornfully cast out the raisins, I do include that liquid; coffee (what else?) in our household. Feel free to booze it up if you have some handy.

Chocolate spice cookies

Since the original cake is by nature a bit heavy, I used some whole wheat flour in the cookies to give them some heft. You could use all all-purpose, but add the coffee/liquid gradually to see that the mixture doesn’t get too thin. It will thicken some if you refrigerate it for a few hours or overnight.

Ingredients

Makes about 3 dozen smallish cookies

• 1 cup whole-wheat flour
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
• 3 Tablespoons cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• ½ cup brown sugar
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• ¾ cup applesauce
• ⅓ cup canola oil
• ¼ cup brewed coffee, cooled (or brandy, or other liquid of your choice)
• 1 cup chocolate chips

Method

• Preheat the oven to 350° F and line a baking pan with parchment paper.
• In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, spices, baking soda, salt and cornstarch. Add the sugars. Stir in the applesauce and oil, then add the coffee and mix until fully combined. The dough will be soft.
• Scoop the dough out in rounded teaspoons on the baking sheet.
• Bake for about 8-10 minutes or until just puffed – leave them to set for 5 minutes on the baking sheet before moving them to a plate to be gobbled immediately cool.

This isn’t my first waltz with gluten-free baking, but almost. I made some gluten-free cupcakes for a birthday party this summer, and let’s just say that even before I burned them they weren’t exactly winners. It’s a pretty different ball game, this gluten-free stuff. (What, how long do you expect me to sustain a single metaphor?)

We have friends who can’t have gluten, which has given me a bit of a push towards trying some of the rapidly-multiplying gluten-free recipes out there. And really, we have dinners that don’t include gluten fairly often without even trying. But baking, not so much. There are so many interesting flours available right now, though, that it’s fun to incorporate them even where health concerns aren’t an issue. They have interesting flavors and textures of their own that may not be exactly like the usual wheat flour-based ones, but are delicious in their own right.

I realize that if you are a Central European reader, you may not have access to as many of these ingredients, at least not easily. But even before we moved, I was amazed to see that bigger “bio” stores were stocking a much wider range of grains, flours and other staples than I’d seen before, not to mention the number of packaged gluten-free products. So take a look around, you may strike it rich – it’s a good time to be gluten free!

This particular recipe is adapted from an applesauce cake on the Healthy Seasonal Recipes blog. My ears pricked up at the words “snack cake”, because, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m a huge fan of all kinds of muffins, quick breads and their ilk. This one didn’t disappoint – it’s not too sweet, moist, and has an almost puddingy texture. What with autumn arriving, I thought the apple original might lend itself to a pumpkin version, so I set about tweaking the recipe for an October weekend, swapping pumpkin for apple, using maple syrup rather than honey, adding some cornmeal, and to reassure the kids that it really is cake, some mini chocolate chips. The result: excellent. Just what’s called for on an afternoon where the wind is picking up, the clouds are moving in, and you’re ready for a cozy and easy baking project. To return to my original metaphor, you’ll want to add it to your dance card.

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Gluten-free pumpkin chocolate chip cake
Adapted from Healthy Seasonal Recipes

The chocolate chips here are optional, but awfully nice. Mini ones work best, since the cake has a fine crumb that might not hold together so well with larger chunks of chocolate. Make sure you use a more fine-ground cornmeal, polenta for example is too gritty in this context.

Ingredients

Makes about 8-10 generous slices of cake

• 2 cups cooked pumpkin, canned or fresh
• 2 eggs
• ¼ cup vegetable oil
• ½ cup maple syrup
• ½ cup brown sugar
• 1½ cups brown rice flour
• ½ cup fine-ground cornmeal
• 1½ tsp baking soda
• ¾ tsp pumpkin pie spice
• ¾ tsp salt
• generous ½ cup mini chocolate chips

Method

• Preheat the oven to 350 F/180 C and grease a Bundt pan.
• In a blender or tall measuring cup, combine pumpkin, eggs, oil, maple syrup, and brown sugar. Use an immersion blender or, you know, a blender to thoroughly combine.
• In a large bowl, whisk together rice flour, cornmeal, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice and salt.
• Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix until combined; stir in chocolate chips.
• Scrape into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake for 50 minutes or until top springs back when lightly touched.
• Cool in the pan for five minutes before turning cake out onto a rack to cool. Allow it to cool completely (or as long as you can wait) before slicing.

 

The Greenmarket was just a few blocks away in Union Square, and I would spend lonely lunch hours drifting among the stalls, admiring the jumble of apples or frippery of lettuces, flowers, heavy wholesome breads. I can’t picture the booth where I would buy these cookies, just once in a while. They were unassuming, lumpy, resolutely beige with a chocolate chip winking out here and there. But biting into one gave a taste of the unexpected: a whiff of orange.

Despite four years of fancy-pants college education I was easily dazzled in those days, and I was in the thrall of my boss: ten years older, with a degree in philosophy and a cello-playing boyfriend, she was from a cultured, intellectual family and seemed to me the personification of sophistication and adulthood. She subsisted on bites of salad interspersed with gigantic pastries, so I brought her one of these cookies one afternoon.

“It tastes like childhood,” she said.

I knew just what she meant. For all that we had very different childhoods, it seemed we both recalled the chocolate-orange combination as the flavor of parents’ returns, of special treats brought home in a carry-on or reserved for holidays. I remember them being made by Droste, which don’t seem to be available any more, but but you can still find chocolate oranges. Delicious.

It’s not as though  these cookies somehow forged a bond between my boss and me, but years later, I  found myself thinking of that time, those short  indeterminate years and the infinite possibility of that first taste of being a grown-up. I’m not sure whether this recipe succeeds in recapturing  that feeling, but you will find the taste of orange here, among two types of chewy oats and chocolate chips. Where will they take you?

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Oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies with orange

Plan ahead for this one – you need to soak the steel-cut oats for a few hours (preferably overnight) to soften them up. If you can’t find steel-cut oatmeal, just soak a full cup of rolled oats. The cookies seem yummier after letting the dough sit for a day or so, which means you really should get started now!

Ingredients

Makes about 2 dozen cookies

• ¾ cup steel cut oatmeal
• 1 cup orange juice
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1½ cups rolled oats (not quick cooking)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt
• ¼ cup (half a stick, 55 grams) butter, room temperature
• ¾ cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp orange zest
• 1 cup chocolate chips or chopped chocolate

Method

• At least 4 hours before you want to bake, and preferably the night before, combine the steel-cut oats and orange juice in a small bowl. Cover and refrigerate.
• When you are ready to make the dough, preheat the over to 350°F/180° C.
• In a medium bowl, stir together the rolled oats, flour, baking powder and soda, and salt. Set aside.
• In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light. Beat in the eggs one at a time until well incorporated, then stir in the yogurt.
• After draining off any juice that wasn’t soaked up, add the steel-cut oats to the butter mixture. Stir in the orange zest.
• Stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture until thoroughly blended. Stir in the chocolate chips.
• Scoop the dough in 2 tablespoon-ish portions onto a cookie sheet; the dough is soft but don’t worry, it won’t spread much while cooking. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned.
• The dough keeps for about a week in the fridge, longer in the freezer.

 

How do you try out a new recipe? Do you follow it to the letter, or are you a tinkerer? For years, I didn’t cook often enough to feel confident deviating from the written word; the recipe was law unto the kitchen. But after being forced to improvise when I was living in a rented apartment in the Balkans without cookbooks or measuring cups, I got used to following my own instincts over the stovetop. It helps that I was mainly cooking for myself, and I kept the bar pretty low; Valerian or anyone else daring enough to join me generally wasn’t familiar with what I was trying to do, and didn’t know any better if something came out wrong.

And now? Now I can’t just follow a recipe – I have to tinker with it, either because I have to (lack of required ingredients/tools/skill) or because I want to (impulsive! Picky!).

I can’t remember how I came across this post about Isabelle’s braided hazelnut bread, but when I saw the photo, I immediately wanted to give it a try. So I did. Immediately. I barely looked at the actual recipe, because what really caught my eye was the beautiful effect with the layers of dough and filling. I threw together a slightly-sweet dough, easy-peasy, and we even had some leftover walnut and poppyseed fillings stashed in the freezer.

And then… problems. Getting the baking time right took a little experimentation – the first time I made it, the oven was too hot and the top got a lot browner than I wanted. Even baking at 350° seemed a little hot on the second time around. I got the best results with a cooler oven, then raising the temperature to get the top edges just nicely browned without drying out the center. I ran out of the frozen filling and had to make my own,even.  Oddly, no one complained about having a lot of not-quite-perfect pastry-ish bread to sample.

The technique for getting the fancy layers is simple, but you have to be careful as you twist the floppy, juicy strands. Once you’ve rolled up the dough into a nice compact log:

I recommend transferring it to the baking pan before cutting the center splice:

Then gently cross the two strands over each other to create the twist:

So, will you give this recipe a try? Or just improvise? Because you know, you’ve got to have a slice of this beauty.

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Brunch Twist
adapted from Our Kitchen

Any of the fillings we’ve posted earlier would be great in this bread, I think, but the walnut one I used here was luscious.

Ingredients

Makes one fairly large loaf

• ¾ cup milk
• 1½ tsp instant yeast
• ¾ tsp salt
• 3 tbs vegetable oil
• 2 tbs sugar
• 2¼ cups flour
• Filling of your choice: try one from here, or use jam, or cheese for a savory option. You’ll need about a cup of whatever you’re using.
• glaze: ¼ cup powdered sugar whisked together with the juice of one lemon

Method

• Make a sponge: warm the milk to just below boiling, then set aside to cool to lukewarm. In the meantime, in the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk together the yeast and half a cup of flour. Stir in the milk and leave until puffy, about 15 minutes.
• Stir in the salt, sugar, and oil, then begin adding the flour. You may not need the last quarter-cup; the dough should be rather soft, but not sticky. Using the bread hook attachment on your mixer, or with your hands, knead until silky and smooth.
• Place in a greased bowl, cover and allow to rise until doubled, about 2 hours. You can also leave it in the fridge overnight.
• Preheat the oven to 350° F/180° C, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
• Turn out the dough onto a lightly-floured surface. With your hands, gently pat it into a rectangle – this will help it keep its shape as you roll it out. Roll the dough out as thin as you can, turning several times to be sure it isn’t sticking to the work surface; you should end up with a rectangle about 18×24″ (30×45 cm). If you’re having trouble getting it to an even thinness, let it rest for a minute or two then roll some more.
• Spread the dough with your choice of filling, leaving about a 1″ lip along the edge.
• Roll up the dough along the short edge, finishing with the seam on top. Press gently to seal, then move the roll to the baking sheet. Using a sharp knife, cut all the way through the roll lengthwise, leaving about 2″ (5 cm) at one end uncut.
• Handling the dough very gently,  and keeping the cut edge up, lay one strand of the bread over the other, alternating so you have a twist shape. Tuck the end under for a neater appearance.
• Bake for 20 minutes; raise the oven temperature to 375° (180°C) and bake for an additional 7-10 minutes or until the top begins to brown.
• Allow to cool on a rack for 10-15 minutes before brushing the glaze over the top. If you can, wait another few minutes before you slice and serve.

 

Have we mentioned that Valerian is a coffee freak geek? That we have about five different coffee-making apparatuses in our kitchen, not to mention a microwave-size roaster in the garage? If you follow EC on Facebook, you’ve surely figured it out from Valerian’s profile pictures; coffee looms large around here.

Aside from, you know, drinking it, we work coffee into a lot of our cooking (check the sloppy joe recipe, for example). A trick I learned on the internet to give chocolate cakes a more intense flavor is to “bloom” cocoa powder in warm liquid before adding it to the other ingredients, and coffee is an ideal medium. It gives the chocolate an extra boost and complements it with its own rich notes. If you’re not a fan of the taste of coffee—and I know you people exist, I’m even friends with some of you—you can dilute the coffee with warm water and still get the same effect without any noticeable coffee flavor.

This dessert borrows from two delicious traditions. There’s the Hungarian Somlói galuska, something like a trifle that kind of knocks you out with its combination of cake, rum, chocolate sauce, custard sauce and whipped cream. The simpler Italian affogato is usually just ice cream with hot espresso poured over. This spring was so chilly and grim, ice cream season seemed distant for far too long; the combination of hot coffee, cold ice cream and crumbled cake just works. Whether it’s cold or hot outside, you can cozy up to this baby any time.

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Chocolate-Coffee Cupcake Parfait

Here’s a recipe for a scaled-down chocolate cake, six cupcakes’ worth to crumble over ice cream and douse with espresso. The coffee flavor is pretty assertive in this one, which is as much a quickbread recipe as it is cupcake. I like the cake a little dense, the better to hold its own against the melting ice cream and coffee. If for some obscure reason you have cake left over from something else, just use that – it will be fabulous, I promise.

Ingredients

Serves 6

• 1 cup flour
• ½ tsp baking soda
• ½ salt
• ½ cup sugar
• ¼ cup freshly-brewed coffee
• ¼ cup cocoa powder
• 2 Tbs vegetable oil
• ½ cup buttermilk
• 1 egg
• 1 pint good-quality vanilla (or your preferred flavor) ice cream
• 3 cups freshly-brewed coffee or 6 shots espresso

Method

• To make the cupcakes, preheat the over to 350° F/190 C. Grease 6 cupcake cups.
• In cup, whisk together the ¼-cup coffee and cocoa powder. Set aside to cool.
• Meanwhile, stir together the flour, baking soda, salt and sugar in a medium bowl. In a small bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, oil, and the egg.
• Pour the buttermilk mixture into the dry ingredients, and add the cocoa/coffee mixture. Blend with a few swift strokes until combined; do not overmix.
• Fill muffin cups about ¾ of the way full; bake for 22-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes in the pan, then remove cupcakes to a rack to cool completely.
• To serve, tear each cupcake into chunks. Layer the cake with scoops of ice cream in individual bowls, and give each lucky diner half a cup of coffee or an espresso shot to pour over the top of parfait once served.

 

Here is the promised third Czech Christmas Cookie. You can find a similar recipe in the December issue of Sauveur magazine, although they call it an Austrian cookie, which raised my blood pressure. Luckily there are bloggers out there who will correct these mistakes.

Anyway, these cookies have a deep walnut flavor, buttery richness, and are amazingly tender. That is what makes them my favorite. Beware – you can  eat an awful lot of these before you know it. They’re that good.

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Vanilla Crescent Cookies – Vanilkové rohlíčky

Ingredients

Makes about 60 cookies.

• 1 cup walnuts
• 2 cups flour
• ½ cup powdered sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 stick of butter

Method

• In a food processor, grind the walnuts until they form a crumbly paste.
• In a large bowl (of a stand mixer if you have one), combine the ground walnuts and the other ingredients. With the paddle attachment, or with your fingers, blend until a smooth dough comes together.
• Form the dough into a ball, then shape it into a disc and put it into the fridge for 30 min to rest.
• Preheat the oven to 350° F/190° C.
• Cut the dough into ½” strips, roll them into a rough log shape and then cut those into ½” slices.
• Roll the small slices and then curl them to make a crescent shape.
• Place them on a cookie sheet lined with baking paper and bake for approximately 10 minutes, or until the edges are just beginning to brown.
• Let them cool and dust with powdered sugar to serve. Enjoy.

This is our second Christmas Cookie recipe. My dad’s favorite: the buttery, delicious, and very delicate “stars”. They melt on your tongue. You could make them in any shape, but stars are our tradition, with a window for the jam to peek out from between the layers.

Katy was surprised that all these cookie recipes use powdered (or confectioners or icing) sugar rather than granulated sugar, which is the standard in American cookies. It’s common in recipes from Central Europe, but I don’t know whether it makes a difference in the way the dough handles. Powdered sugar is much more finely ground and is mixed with corn starch, but I am not sure what effect that has on the cookies. Maybe it’s time to experiment!

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Star Cookies – Hviezdičky

Any jam that’s not too chunky will do for these delicate sandwich cookies, but we prefer tangier ones such as apricot to set off the sweetness of the dough.
Ingredients

Makes about 30 sandwich cookies.

• 3 cups flour
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 sticks + 6 tbs of butter

Method

• Preheat the oven to 350° F/190° C.
• In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients.
• With the paddle attachment of a stand mixer, or with your fingers, blend the butter into the dry ingredients until a smooth dough comes together.
• Form the dough into a ball and gently knead it a few times. Shape it into a square and roll it into ¼” thick dough.
• Cut stars with star shaped cookie cutter.
• Place them on a cookie sheet lined with baking paper. In half of them (50% for geeks) make a hole in the middle – these will be the top half of the sandwich, with a window for the jam to peek out.
• Bake for approximately 10 min or until edges are getting brown.
• Let them cool for 5 minutes in the pan, handle carefully as they are very delicate.
• When cooled, spread the bottom stars with your favorite jam and place a star with hole over them and gently twist. This way the jam gets into the hole and fills it.
• Dust with powdered sugar and enjoy!

There are a few differences between the Christmas season in Central Europe and how most families celebrate in the USA. The major one would be that the presents are brought by the baby Jesus, and not by Santa.  During the dark Orwellian times, the fashion from the Soviet Union was to bring in “Ded Maroz” (Father Frost), which was the comrades’ version of Santa. It did not work for many reasons, one being that December 6 in Central Europe is Saint Nicholas day, when kids eat themselves sick on candies brought by Saint Nick. For kids it was very hard to understand why would a man in red suit and beard coma back at Christmas and bring toys. Why he wouldn’t he drop off the candies and toys all at once? We needed another character.  So the concept of baby Jesus survived.

One thing we did after St. Nicholas (Mikulas) day was to start baking Christmas cookies. My mum used to make 4 batches of 6-7 different types of cookies. Emperor’s Crumbs will bring you my top three, starting with “Bear Paws” today. It has always been the tradition that everyone pitches in to make the cookies; while filling the molds with bear paw dough,  my brothers and I had to sing. This way my mum was sure that we were not eating the dough (which is pretty good, maybe even better than the cookies!).

Here is our family recipe and a video tutorial as well. The video stars my mum, who has been making these cookies for more than 60 years now. Some of the molds we used have been in our family for almost 200 years.

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Bear Paws – Medvedie Tlapky

This is a rich, soft dough that can be handled quite a bit without getting tough – so it’s perfect for working with kids (also, no raw eggs to worry about if someone happens to nibble the dough). While we are lucky enough to have vintage molds, we got equally good results from a brand new cookie pan like this one. Traditionally, these cookies are allowed to sit and soften for a week or more before they’re considered ready to eat, but we’ve never had a problem gobbling them up as soon as they’re cool enough to touch.
Ingredients

Makes one good batch for a big family and more.

• 1 cup walnuts
• 2 cups flour
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 3/4 cup cocoa
• 1 tsp ground cloves
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• pinch salt
• 1 cup +2 tbs softened butter, in small pieces

Method

• Preheat the oven to 350° F/190° C. If your cookie molds are unseasoned or not non-stick, lightly oil them.
• In a food processor, grind the walnuts until they form a crumbly paste.
• In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients.
• With the paddle attachment of a stand mixer, or with your fingers, blend the butter into the dry ingredients until a smooth dough comes together.
• Form the dough into a ball and gently knead it a few times.
• Pinch off a small quantity of dough and press a thin layer into your cookie mold. It should just cover the bottom and sides of the mold.
• If you are using individual molds, place  them on a baking sheet; bake for 8-10 minutes, watching carefully that the edges of the cookies don’t burn.
• Allow the cookies to cool for 5 minutes before gently sliding them out of the forms.

It is here. It is exactly one year since we had the crazy idea to eliminate our free time and start this blog. Yes, I remember very fondly the time when we were playing with templates and arguing over what are we going to publish on our blog. Our mission was and still is to introduce Central European food to the rest of the world. We try to recreate Hungarian, Slovak, and Czech recipes in an American environment (more so now that we live in California). Our mission was very successful last year, because we reached hearts, minds, and stomachs of expats, a few second-generation immigrants and people who spent some time in Central Europe and miss the awesome food. Our mission for the next year will be to introduce this food to the uninitiated: people who have never experienced Central European food. We have some strategies in mind. No, kidnapping people and force feeding them is NOT one of them. But cooking for school picnics might be.

Since we started this blog I had the chance to meet amazing people with amazing stories and recipes of their own. They should start a blog! It is not that hard to do. And in the next year, I am going to show you how. I am planning to put together a few posts on how to start a blog and how to do basic photography and maybe video. I hope I can motivate you to start your own empire.

There is one more thing I need to get off my chest. The general economical downturn has affected everyone. Therefore I am considering to put a few ads on the page. My plan was to find a sponsor and to not bother you with “random” ads, but unfortunately Central European food is a very niche market in the US and I do not think I can find an individual sponsor. I would be really happy if you would give me your input about this issue. Would ads bother you? Would it change your opinion about the blog?

So happy birthday Emperors Crumbs! How better to celebrate then with Katy’s favorite “Méteres Kalács/Meter Cake”. Celebrate with us!

Slice the cake

Spread the pudding, then add the banana

Glue the cake parts back together - Frankencake!

Spread the pudding on top

Top it with chocolate glaze and slice diagonally

Enjoyed with good espresso, it could take you to heaven.

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Meter Cake

This is no fancy confection you get in Hungarian sweet shops. This is home-made goodness made with lots of heart and love (and a package of pudding mix). The chocolate disks (callets) from Trader Joe’s worked perfectly for the chocolate coating.

Ingredients

Feeds 8 people.

• 2 cups flour
• 1½ tsp baking powder
• ½ cup lukewarm water
• 1 cup sugar
• ½ cup oil
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 Tbs cocoa powder
• 8 oz melting chocolate
• 1 package vanilla pudding
• 3 cups milk (to prepare pudding)
• 2 bananas

Method

• Make the pudding according to the directions and set it aside to cool.
• Preheat the oven to 350° F/190° C. Grease two 9×5″ (large) loaf pans.
• Combine the flour and baking powder
• Separate the egg yolks from the whites. Add sugar, oil and the lukewarm water to the egg yolks and mix well.
• Beat the egg whites and incorporate into the egg yolk mixture
• Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ones. Divide the mixture into 2 equal parts.
• Add cocoa powder to the first half and vanilla extract to the second one.
• Pour the mixture into the prepared pans and bake them for 30 minutes.
• Allow the cakes to cool completely, then slice them about ½-inch thick. Spread a layer of pudding generously on each slice, reserving about 1/3 of the pudding. Place a few slices of bananas on top of the pudding, then line up the cake slices, alternating chocolate and vanilla pieces so you have sort of reconstructed the cake so it’s twice as long, with banana between each slice and plenty of pudding to “glue” it all together. Don’t worry if it looks a little uneven, the next steps take care of that!
• Cover the cake with the remaining pudding. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler, then coat the pudding on the cake with a layer of chocolate.
• Allow the cake to cool and set for a couple of hours.
• In order to get the two-color effect, slice the cake along the diagonal.

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Emperors Crumbs

Original recipe tripled, reduced eggs. We have been able to find semolina without any trouble here, both packaged (Bob’s Red Mill is one brand) and in the bulk bins. We love the bulk bins these days!
Ingredients

Makes 5-6 portions

• 2¼ cup/300 g semolina
• 3 cups/750 ml milk
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 5 eggs, separated
• pinch salt
• 1½ cups/300 g sugar
• zest from 1 lemon
• 50 g butter for sauteing
• powdered sugar, compote or jam or all three as topping

Method

• Mix together the semolina, flour and milk. Let it sit for an hour or so to let the semolina absorb the milk.
• Mix the egg yolks together with sugar and stir it into the milk mixture.
• Whip the egg whites and a pinch of salt into firm peaks and fold it into the milk/egg mixture.
• Melt the butter and add the batter. Stir the batter with a spatula or wooden spoon until it starts to form little clumps – crumbs. Depending on the size of the pan this can take up to 30 minutes.
• Serve hot with powdered sugar or with jam, or with compote or drizzle with some syrup.

This is the kind of thing you throw together when your fruit trees are producing more than you can manage, or if you’ve gone a little crazy at the farmers’ market. Back in Slovakia we have an orchard of nearly 30 little fruit trees, but here in California we have just one rather bedraggled nectarine tree. It miraculously produced about 8 or 10 nectarines,

but then something took a single bite out of most of them, leaving only  a few untouched. Sigh. It’s  funny that here in the suburbs we have more trouble with wildlife than we did in the wide open spaces of Central Europe.

ANYWAY. Pair a not-too-sweet cake with your favorite fruit and you’ve got bublanina, a Czechoslovak summer classic (although I’ve been known to make it with canned fruit for a taste of sunshine any time). This is a very simple recipe, and infinitely flexible – try adding a little lemon zest, or a swirl of jam, or anything that takes your fancy.

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Bublanina – fruity snack cake

Almost any kind of soft fruit works here; we usually stick with stone fruit such as plums, peaches, or cherries; berries also work, although they will kind of melt into the cake. Apples and pears may not cook through in the short time it takes to bake the cake itself. I like to sprinkle a couple teaspoons of demerara or other coarse sugar over the top before baking for a little crunch.

Ingredients

Makes one 9×13″ rectangular cake, or two 8″ rounds

• 6 Tbs/85 g butter
• 1 rounded cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2½ C flour
• ¾ tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 cup buttermilk
• About 1 cup fruit, cut into chunks

Method

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F/180 C. Grease and flour a 9×13″ pan and set it aside.
• Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl until light. Add the eggs one at a time, then the vanilla, and beat until fluffly, about 2 minutes.
• Stir together the flour, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl. Add the flour mixture alternately with the buttermilk, mixing gently until just combined. Don’t overmix or the cake will be tough – the batter will be quite stiff and doughy.
• Gently spread the batter into the prepared pan, and then press the fruit into the surface. Be generous, the batter expands quite a lot so you can use more fruit than you think.
• Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown and the top springs back when touched. Slice and serve.

Given the contents of this blog, it might surprise you to learn that in fact we try to eat sensibly during the week and reserve our most decadent dining for the weekends. This recipe definitely falls into the category of indulgence. When I was living in New York, I discovered chocolate babka at Zabar’s, which is pretty much the Platonic ideal of bread + chocolate. Or at least my ideal. While it most definitely originates in Central Europe, I haven’t seen babka in a bakery there (the fact that there aren’t many Jewish people left to bake it being the obvious reason). We have tried a variety of similar things with different names, all good but not quite babka.

Valerian got me Peter Reinhart’s Artisan Breads Every Day for my birthday this year and I just recently got around to trying to bake a loaf of my own babka from there. It turned out better than I could have hoped, and it certainly didn’t survive the weekend. Perfect with a cup of coffee, this is a treat that is worth the calories.

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Chocolate babka from “Artisan Breads Every Day”

If you want to have this for brunch, make the dough the day (morning) before you want to serve it, let it rise, then shape the loaf in the evening and put it in the refrigerator overnight to bake the next morning. Reinhart advises freezing the chocolate for the filling to make it easier to grind; I found the main thing was not to overload our mini food processor, but to grind the chocolate in batches.

Ingredients

Makes one loaf

• 2 Tbs instant yeast
• ¾ cup milk, warmed
• 6 Tbs/85 g melted butter
• 6 Tbs/85 g sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 4 egg yolks, plus one egg for the wash
• 3 1/3 cups/425 g flour (all-purpose or bread flour)
• 1½ tsp salt

For the filling:

• 1½ cups/255 g frozen semisweet chocolate (chips, chunks, or chopped)
• ¾ tsp cinnamon (more if you like)
• ¼ cup/57 g cold butter, cut into small pieces

For the streusel topping:

• ¼ cup/57 g cold butter, cut into small pieces
• ½ cup/65 g flour
• ½ cup/113 g brown sugar
• pinch salt

Method
• Make the dough: dissolve the yeast in the warm milk and set it aside for about 5 minutes.
• Cream the butter and sugar. Add the 4 egg yolks one at a time, mixing to incorporate each one. Add the vanilla. Continue mixing until fluffy, about 2 minutes.
• Add the flour and salt, then the milk mixture. Keep mixing until you have a soft dough, then turn out the dough and knead it for 2-3 minutes until the dough is smooth and satiny. Form the dough into a ball and put it in an oiled bowl to rise for about 2½ hours. (I accidentally left mine much longer and it grew enormously but was fine.)
• While the dough rises, make the filling.
• Grind the chocolate to a powder, pulsing in a food processor or by chopping it as finely as you can. Add the cinnamon, then cut in the butter until you have a crumbly texture.
• Once the dough has risen, roll it out into a square about 15″x15″ (38×38 cm) on a floured surface; be careful to keep lifting the dough to ensure it doesn’t stick. Sprinkly the filling mixture evenly over the dough.
• Oil a 5×9″ (large) loaf pan.
• Roll up the dough square like a jelly roll, pinch the long seam closed and roll it to the underside of the log. Gently rock the log back and forth to lengthen it out to about 18-24″ (45-60 cm). Coil the roll up like a snail, the turn in on its side so it really looks like a snail – then smoosh it down so that it more or less fits inside the loaf pan. Cover loosely with plastic wrap.
• Let the dough rise at room temperature for 2-3 hours, until the babka fills the pan or has increased to about 1½ times its size. At this point you can either bake it or put it in the fridge overnight. Let it sit out at room temp for about 2 hours before baking if you do refrigerate.
• When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (180 C).
• Make the streusel – in a food processor or with a pastry blender (or even a fork) cut together the cold butter, flour, sugar and salt until you have small crumbs. Make an egg wash by beating together the whole egg and a tablespoon of water, brush it over the top of the babka and sprinkle the streusel over that.
• Bake for 20-25 minutes, rotate the pan and bake for another 25 minutes or until the top is a dark brown. If you have a thermometer, the internal temperature will be around 185 F (85 C) when it’s done.
• Let the loaf cool before you try to slice it so the chocolate has time to set somewhat. Yum!

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Valeria’s Potatoe Torte

This is the cake part of the recipe. We used Russet potatoes, which worked great.  The recipe calls for three eggs, but our eggs were small so we used 4. You can experiment with the filling. We tried to mix cocoa and chocolate into the potatoes and we layered that with chunky cherry preserves. The results were ok but not great. I think the original filling is more suitable. You can also try any ordinary buttercream frosting but then forget about the cake being good for people watching their weight! You can also eat it without filling like a coffee cake. In that case add some vanilla and more walnuts.

Ingredients for the cake

• ½ pound floury potatoes
• 3 large eggs
• ½ cup sugar
• ½ cup walnut halves




Ingredients for the filling

• ½ pound potatoes
• Up to ½ cup sugar
• ½ cup walnuts halves
• rum
• 1 Tbsp butter

Method

1. Cook the potatoes until soft, then mash them or put them through a ricer.

2. Let them cool a bit, but while they are still warm add the egg yolks, sugar, and ground walnuts. Mix well.

3. Beat the egg whites to form soft peaks, and gently fold into the previous mixture.

4. Pour it into 2 nine- inch round pans and bake it at 350F for 20-25 minutes. You wll see that the top is getting a bit golden.

5. Cool on a rack for 10 minutes, then turn out from the pan and frost as desired.

The recipe for filling:

Cook the potatoes until soft, mash them in a medium bowl, beat in the other ingredients. Enjoy!

Along with those of his great-aunts, Katicza and Agota Gyurkovics (pictured above),  he has a few recipes by a magnificent woman Countess Marica Ordody, whose godfather was Kossuth Ferencz (son of Kossuth Lajos) and some from his mother Valeria. We will post some of these recipes. The very first one I wanted to try my grandma’s recipe for Linzer bars. I love linzer and my dad always asked my mum to make linzer like his mum used to make. So I was curious about two things.

1. How does my grandmother’s  linzer taste, obviously.

2. Would my dad recognize the taste and would he mention that “this is like my mother used to make it” or is he just cruel to my mum and he wants to make her something that does not exist.

Grandma

The test won in the 1st case but lost in the 2nd. I loved this Hungarian linzer. It is very easy to make and tastes great! After feeding crumbs to my dad (it is a small recipe… not too much left) he did not instantly recognize it as a miracle from the past though. When I told him that it is my grandmother’s recipe he said… oh yeah that’s right…that’s how my mum used to make it. So, some success but I was expecting more. After this I had a third question: why did’t he show the recipe to my mum, because if she knew it is so easy she would have been delighted.

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Linzer Bars/Cake/Cookies

This is a small recipe so do not make it as your main dish.

Ingredients

Makes 4-5 portions.

• 1 stick/113 grams butter
• 1¼ cup/240 grams sugar
• 2 egg yolks
• 2.2 ounces/60 grams crushed almonds
• 3/4 cup + 2tbs/100 grams flour
• small jar of you favorite jam (I used cherry)
• a few blanched almonds for decoration

Method

• Work the flour, butter, sugar, egg yolks, and crushed almonds into a dough.
• Roll them 1/2 inch/2 cm thick into your desired shape: it can be one big square, one big circle or small circles. This might be a bit tricky with the rolling pin because the dough is very fragile and may fall apart. I used my fingers and pressed it into shape. Reserve a little bit of dough to make shapes on the top of the linzer. I made a lattice. Or tried to  — as I mentioned, the dough was very fragile.
• Spread the jam over it, and add a dough design if you choose. Place blanched almonds on top for decoration.
• The recipe says you should bake them in a very hot oven. So I tried 350 F (180 C). I baked them for 25 minutes, but I think 30 minutes or a higher temperature might work better. The dough under the jam was slightly undercooked.
• When the sides and the lattice are getting golden, take out the linzer and let it cool.
• Do not touch! Let it cool completely. And enjoy.

It’s Carnival season around these parts – before Lent the shops are decorated, kids’ costumes are on the racks, and doughnuts – sišky, fánk, or vdolky, depending on where you are – seem to be frying up everywhere you turn. I’m not complaining, or maybe I am, because it’s hard to get enough exercise in the winter to work off those deep-fried treats; anyway, a warm sugary puff is a pretty delicious way to beat the snowbound blues.

While I was researching recipes, I found most of them call for filling the doughnuts with jam after you fry them, using a piping tool. That was definitely more trouble than I’m willing to go to these days, but I remembered seeing a method for filling doughnuts before frying. It was an unlikely source – a Martha Stewart recipe for Hanukkah sufganiyot – but it was effective.

A couple of the doughnuts puffed up around the seal, but none of them leaked any of their fillings of jam or nougat (like Nutella). Success!

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Filled doughnuts

Ingredients

Makes about 12 doughnuts

• 1 cup/240 ml milk
• 2 oz/28 grams butter
• 3½ –3¾ cups/400-420 grams flour
• 1 packet instant yeast
• 1/3 cup/60 grams sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 eggs, separated
• ½ cup jam and/or nougat (or even frosting) for the filling
• Additional sugar to roll the doughnuts in

Method

• Heat the milk and butter together in a small pan until just below boiling. Set aside and allow to cool to lukewarm.
• In a large bowl, stir together 3½ cups flour, yeast, 1/3 cup sugar, and salt. When milk mixture has cooled, add it to the dry ingredients along with the egg yolks (reserving the whites for later). Mix to form a soft dough, then turn it out onto a floured surface and knead until the dough is smooth and still a bit sticky, adding more flour a tablespoon at a time if it’s very sticky. Place the dough in a clean bowl, cover, and leave in a warm place to rise for 2 hours or until doubled (or in the fridge overnight).
• When dough has doubled, turn it out onto a lightly-floured surface and roll out to about 1/8″ (0.5 cm) thin. Using a 2″/7 cm round cookie cutter, cut out circles; you can re-roll the scraps until you use up all the dough; you should get about 24 circles.
• Brush a circle with the reserved egg whites, then place about a teaspoon of filling in the center of the circle. Top with another of the dough circles, and pinch along the edge to seal. Repeat until all the circles have been used.
• Cover the doughnuts with a cloth and leave for 20-30 minutes or just until puffed.
• In the meantime, heat about 2 cups/0.5 liter of vegetable oil in a large pan. When a scrap of dough sizzles when you drop it in, the oil is hot enough.
• Fry the doughnuts in batches, being careful not to overcrowd them. Cook each doughnut for about 3 minutes or until golden brown, then turn and cook another 3 minutes.
• Place the cooked doughnuts on a layer of paper towels to cool for a minute or two; while they are still warm, roll them in granulated sugar and serve.