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.

 

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.

 

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.

With our respective families 6000 miles apart, one thing Valerian and I have done together a lot is travel. And with two kids added to the mix now, we arm ourselves seriously when we head out to the airport: books, toys, changes of clothes, and of course, snacks. Lots and lots of snacks. When your kids start to get squirrely, sometimes a treat that would normally be off-limits is just what you need to get through the last hours of a 14-hour flight.

Some of the other things we’ve stashed in our carry-ons to amuse the small fry have included a small notebook and the cheapest set of coloring pens I could find; a set of trading cards; a box of band-aids for peeling and sticking at will, as well as other stickers; sets of little animals, preferably packaged in a plastic tube (often putting things in the tube is the best part of these toys); finger puppets; a magnadoodle.

As far as snacks go, I do nod towards healthy stuff like mini carrots, crackers, string cheese, etc. But really, when you’re looking for distraction as much as nutrition, this might be the time to bust out the Dora the Explorer shaped fruit snax, or whatever. The following recipe is a bit of both – I put in plenty of dried fruit and even chocolate chips, but by making it yourself you can avoid the high-fructose corn syrup and artificial colors.

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On the go Bars

This recipe is pretty flexible – you could swap in ingredients like whole wheat flour, or add some soy flour for protein, use different fruit, nuts, other seeds, use maple syrup instead of honey, add a little cinnamon or ginger powder, and so on. The mixture needs to hold together when you press it into the pan, so chop larger pieces of fruit or nuts, and add a little more liquid if mixture seems very crumbly. Even pretty small kids can help make it, too – mixing with fingers and patting it into the pan can be a fun activity between rushing around getting your bags packed.

Ingredients

Makes about 36 bars

• 1¾ C/200 g rolled oats
• 1 C/150 g flour
• ¾ tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• 2/3 C/155 g brown sugar
• 1/3 c/50 g pumpkin seeds
• 1 C/135 g dried fuit (I use apricots, prunes, dried cherries)
• ½ C/100 g chocolate chips or chopped chocolate
• ½ C/118 ml vegetable oil
• 1 Tbs honey
• 2 Tbs water or juice

Method

• Line the bottom of a 9×13″ pan with baking paper or foil to make it easier to remove the bars. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (170 C).
• In a large bowl, mix together the first 7 ingredients (the dry ones) with your fingers until everything is evenly distributed. Stir in the oil, honey, and water.
• Dump the mixture into the prepared pan and press it together firmly to form a layer about ½” (1 cm) thick. Bake for 30-35 minutes until lightly browned, then allow to cool in the pan before slicing into bars.

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!

We’re recruiting for the Emperor’s Crumbs Army on facebook. Don’t worry, this isn’t the draft; it’s a place to exchange recipes, photos, suggestions and more. We’re even offering an incentive! Anyone who becomes a member of the group Emperors Crumbs Army will be entered to win a selection of  classic Czecho-Slovak treats.

The winner will enjoy crisp wafers with various fillings, the weird and wonderful “soy stick”, unforgettable “Romanca”, indulgent chocolate “Fidorka” and more. You can bet we’ll be stocking up on these delicacies ourselves when we pack our bags for the big move to the US next month. So raise your butter-knife high and join up! The winner will be selected on March 12th, 2010.

The second competition is a bit more involved but it is worth every effort. Try one of our recipes and make a photo or a video. Post it on any photo/video hosting site like flickr, smugmug, YouTube, or vimeo, add the tag emperorscrumbs.com, and in the description of the photo put a link to the recipe. You can enter as many photos/videos as you want, just link to your creations in a comment here so we know where to find them.  We will pick the best submission by March 19th. Along with the amazing and nutritious prize of a fabulous assortment of the best candies and wafers from Slovakia and Hungary, you and your artwork will enter history when we publish it here for everyone to admire!

For me, Christmas is always associated with memories from my childhood. I will definitely make a special post about our customs, but before that I would like to introduce to you our Christmas candy. “Szaloncukor”, or as Slovaks know it, “salonky”, can be translated as “parlour candy”. They were hung on Christmas trees, usually in the  parlour. They were “invented” at the end of the nineteenth century, but the fashion did not pick up until the beginning of the twentieth century. And szaloncukor are still in style.  No wonder, because they are constantly changing – the first ones were just fondant covered with chocolate, wrapped in white paper and tinfoil, but since then plenty of flavors have been brought out. I clearly remember the introduction of the jelly szaloncukor (at the end of  the ’80s – beginning of  the ’90s) when we made special trips to Hungary to purchase this valuable commodity.  According to the customs regulations, we could bring only one or 2 boxes (about a pound), which was never enough for our big Christmas tree.

Since then Slovakia and Hungary joined the EU and the flow of szaloncukor is unobstructed. All the big candy manufacturers have their own szaloncukor on the market so everyone can find a favorite. Yes, you can get Tesco value and Tesco “color” brands,  Milka brand, Norbi Update brand (a Hungarian celebrity weight-loss program), szaloncukor for diabetics etc. The business is good.  The romantic, handmade and rock-hard fondant was replaced by an unbelievable selection of flavors spiced up with wide variety of additives and preservatives proudly printed on the package in E numberology. The flavors for 2009 are stawberry yogurt, caramel cream and the good old chestnut is still in.

One lucky reader can win a few of these gems from Emperor’s Crumbs to decorate your own tree! Details are in the next post. Feel free to indulge – it’s the right time of year. Right?

Disclaimer: No szaloncukor were harmed during the making of this post.

I was intrigued by this recipe in a recent issue of our favorite Czech cooking magazine, Apetit, which is for a Babovka, Bundt cake, made with potatoes. I set out to follow the recipe, but as usual, I changed a little here, a little there (I omitted a packet of pudding mix, for example) and now I’m not sure how much it resembles the original. The potato gives it a wonderfully moist texture, it’s more delicate than I expected, and not too sweet. Perfect with afternoon tea, perhaps. We don’t have a potato ricer and while I used a hand mixer to beat the potato mixture there were still quite a few small lumps in the batter. No matter – they aren’t apparent at all in the finished cake.

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Bramborová bábovka/Potato Bundt Cake (adapted from Apetit Magazine)

Because Valerian gets an upset stomach from too much baking powder, I used half baking powder and half baking soda for this recipe, and so I needed to use something sour like buttermilk or kefir for the 3 Tbs liquid. The original recipe calls for 2 tsp baking powder and using milk.

Ingredients

• 250g/2 2/3 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 250g/8.5 oz cooked potatoes, mashed well or put through a ricer
• 150g/3/4 cup sugar
• 100g/4 oz butter, softened
• 3 eggs
• 3 Tbs buttermilk or kefir
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• zest of one lemon
• 100g/4 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped

Method

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F/180 C. Grease and flour an 8-cup Bundt pan.
• In a large bowl whisk together flour, baking powder and baking soda, and salt. In a medium bowl, beat together the butter, sugar, potatoes, kefir or buttermilk, eggs, lemon zest and vanilla extract. Gently stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Fold in the chopped chocolate.
• Scrape into the Bundt pan and bake for 45-55 minutes or until top is golden.