Merry Christmas 2023 or How I Turned a Hungarian Poppy Seed Roll into a Cheesecake

 

Nothing can beat the smell of baked sweet bread (baigli and cozonaci) in preparation for Christmas, but what if they don't turn out to your taste? I am quite a fussy eater and although these delicacies are highly appreciated in my culture, I never really fancied them too much, unless they had a lot of filling to make up for the dough in between. For those of you who don't know what I am talking about, here is a photo from last year with the traditional poppy seed roll that turned out exactly how I liked it. 

Easy Halloween Cookies

 

As an artist, I have never created anything specifically for Halloween as I don't know how my style would fit with this celebration. However, some of my hanging hearts can be hung with other Halloween and/or autumnal decorations, especially the orange ones. I put some in my autumn tree in the street-facing window and they look rather nice with other handmade items. 

Fluffy Blueberry Muffins

 

I don't have a lot to say about these blueberry muffins except that they are delicious and incredibly fluffy. I followed this recipe without changing anything and the result is so yummy that I struggled to eat just one muffin a day (for breakfast with coffee). The good news is that they keep fresh for 3-4 days without losing their fluffiness. And I also loved that they come out quite irregularly shaped so they have a rustic look. Will you give it a go? 

Orange Cake with Plums

 

I absolutely love baking these sponge cakes using various fruits as they are easy to make and they taste divine. Not to mention the smell in the house when baking. For this cake, I tweaked a little bit the original recipe of boiled clementine cake as I used half sugar and less almond flour replacing the difference with wholemeal self-raising flour.  The taste is as good as the original even with less sugar. Actually, both my husband and I love fruit cakes that are a bit acidic and not too sweet so this was perfect for our taste. 

Sundried Tomato, Pesto and Cheese Palmiers

Starting Sugar Free February with Healthy Banana Bread as Seen on BBC Good Food

I am not signing up for this challenge as I have no experience with raising money and I have no idea what to do and where to start, but I just want to give up added sugar this February for my own health. However, if I see other people doing it, I will definitely support them. 

My relationship with sugar (in fact, cakes) is a love-hate one and it goes back a few years now when I started to develop a sweet tooth (no idea how as I was into savoury). On one hand, I am craving cakes and I would eat them every day for breakfast but on the other hand, I know that too much sugar is not good for you. Then I discovered no-bake ones with no sugar but dried fruits and maple syrup, yet I would still slip back into the old habits of eating old-fashioned full-of-sugar indulgent cakes.

Banoffee Traybake Inspired by BBC Good Food

Luxurious, indulgent and decadent - this Banoffee traybake is the ultimate dessert for the dark autumn weekend days when you just want to stay in and feel cosy. I thoroughly enjoyed making it, photographing it and, of course, eating it. You can find the recipe here. Enjoy! 

Colourful Food

April is a festive month in our household as we celebrate birthdays, name days and Easter. I couldn't help experimenting with colourful food, as you do, from roulades and dips to birthday cakes and Easter eggs. For those who don't know me, don't be deceived by the abundance of recipes shown here; I don't really enjoy cooking, but I like home cooked food so the compromise is trying to make it as colourful as possible so I can enjoy the process of cooking it too, not just the eating part 😉.

This post is supposed to be a visual feast but if you are interested in any of the recipes shown here, feel free to ask and I will be more than happy to answer. 

Dark Chocolate Rye Cookies

Ingredients:

• 200g dark chocolate
• 25g unsalted butter
• 2 eggs at room temperature
• 100g light brown sugar
• 130g wholemeal rye flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 50-70g icing sugar

Waffles Two Ways

Edible Christmas Treats

Inspired by Day 10 of #12DaysofFolksy challenge over on Instagram which was 'FEAST', I decided to try a couple of recipes that I haven't tried before. One was intentional and one was by chance, but both resulted in delicious edible treats that not only can be enjoyed at Christmas table but can be offered as homemade Christmas prezzies as well.

New Cook Book: Sensational Salads

I know that making salads doesn't involve too much cooking, but I needed a book to give me more ideas than my usual onion, tomatoes, cucumber, pepper and feta cheese salad. As I like variety and trying new things all the time, a book containing 101 salad ideas is right up my street. And I wasn't disappointed. First on the list: anchovy salad - lettuce, tomatoes, anchovies and olives plus white vinegar, olive oil and lemon juice for the dressing. Other salads were equally delicious: green bean & walnut salad, potato salad, and walnut, pear & crispy bacon salad - four down, 97 more to go and yes, there are fruit salads too. Result!

The smell of autumn: smoked aubergine purée

It's been a while since I wrote this article and I am still enjoying a good old aubergine salad which, in the meantime, I found out is called smoked aubergine purée (it is a matter of translating from Romanian into English and not about the dish itself - we call it salad even though it is a purée). The ingredients are the same: smoked aubergines, homemade mayonnaise and either onion or garlic. But my version replaces mayonnaise with mascarpone cheese and I am also adding red peppers. There are other varieties out there, one of them being with smoked aubergines, yoghurt, garlic and dill - this is something I've yet to try. In a meantime, here are some pictures showing my version and if you like aubergines in every shape and forms (I love them!) this is a perfect autumn dish that you can use either as a dip or as a breakfast spread on toast. Delicious!

Foraging blackberries for a delicious cake

I love foraging - wild strawberries in late spring, elderflowers in summer and blackberries in autumn. The first day of September was sunny so I decided to go foraging and bake a cake. Even though I am trying to make no-bake low calories cakes, every now and then I would bake cakes with fruits like boiled clementine cake, gooseberry cake and today's cake with blackberry. I used the same recipe as for gooseberry cake that I found here and yes, I did make a gooseberry cake a few weeks ago when I bought some gooseberries on sale and they were too sour to eat. 

July Healthy Eating

This is a visual feast of some of the foods I cooked this month. If you want to know more about any of them, please feel free to ask. Also, you can share your own versions, I would be happy to try them. In the meantime, enjoy the photos and let me know which recipe appeals to you the most.

Broad beans and spring onion soup, decorated with fresh basil, Parmigiano cheese and red chillies.

Go on, it's healthy - May cooking inspiration

In May, I decided to make a change from my usual low-calories and no-baking cakes (with one exception) and post some of the healthy foods I cooked this month, mainly inspired by one of the latest cooking books I bought. Although I don't enjoy cooking much, I do like good food that is healthy and easy to prepare plus I am always willing to try new ingredients like kale, quinoa and lychees for example.

No-bake Strawberry Cake

Ingredients 

✽ 600g low-fat Mascarpone cheese 

✽ 300g low fat reach tea biscuits - crushed into small pieces

✽ dried apricots to taste - cut into small pieces

✽ approx 1 dark chocolate - small pieces 

✽ strawberries to taste halved 

✽ 1 gelatine + 1 berry fruits jelly

April No-bake Cakes

The making of carrot cake - photos Teodora Totorean

April is a festive month in our household as we celebrate my husband's birthday and name day (George), Easter as well as my birthday - not always in this order 😊. This month I wanted to continue with my low-calorie no-bake cakes knowing that my husband enjoys them too. The kiwi cheesecake was a lucky failure as the top layer was supposed to be a mixture of fresh kiwi, sweetener and gelatine but as I was trying to prepare it, I hated the smell of the gelatine so I decided to use kiwi jam instead and it tasted divine! What I like is that as I become more experienced with these kinds of cakes, I can play with quantities and ingredients, making my own versions, according to my taste and to what I have in my ingredients stash. So here are this month's cakes; feel free to try them and share.

March No-Baking Cakes

Staples

     ✽ Various nuts: hazelnuts, almonds, cashew nuts, pecans & walnuts;
     ✽ Raw cocoa powder & drinking cocoa;

     ✽ Dates & other dried fruits;

     ✽ Organic sweeteners - agave & maple syrup;

     ✽ Coconut flakes; 

     ✽ Low-fat Mascarpone cheese  (instead of coconut oil - the flavour is too strong for me);

     ✽ White & dark cooking chocolate;
     ✽ Vanilla scented candle to help me relax;
     ✽ Accessory - handmade glove.

I Like Big Cakes and I Can Not Lie

After a year of starving eating healthily and sweating-my-curves-off exercising and only losing 1 stone (I was hoping for 1¾), I came to the following conclusion:

This was one of my Facebook posts in the last weeks and neither statement is far from the truth. While I found that I put on weight very easily and I lose it far too slowly (don't get me wrong, I know the math behind it) sometimes I just want to give up and eat those cakes that I tried so hard to forget existed. My craving for cakes is fairly recent as I wasn't a sweets person. I am still not much of a chocoholic, nor icecream-cholic, but I do like cakes. The bigger, the better. The more calories, the yummiest. Coffee cakes, velvet cupcakes, caramel cakes, brownies - you name it, I like it!