Pavlova

Been enjoying the summer for a week and summer bakings to go with it. Made chicken salad and my favorite Bread with bubbles. Made also the ultimate meringue cake, pavlova, to celebrate the beginning of the berry season.

Pavlova

6 egg whites
2+1 dl sugar
2 ts corn starch

2 dl whipped cream
sugar
bunch of fresh berries (raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and such)

1. Beat the egg whites ’till stiff. Add 2 dl of the sugar little by little, mixing all the time. Mix the rest of the sugar with the corn starch and mix in like before.

2. Spoon the meringue onto a baking tray covered with baking paper. Form a circle (about ⌀ 30cm), leave the edges a bit higher than the middle. Sprinkle a bit of sugar on top of the meringue.

3. Bake in 125°C in the middle of your oven for 90 minutes. Keep an eye on the meringue, so that it doesn’t get too brown and turn down the heat in case needed. The ready meringue should be crispy outside and moist inside. Let the meringue cool down. I decorated my meringue with some melted chocolate, and having a bit of chocolate flavor worked deliciously in the combination.

4. Whip the cream, spice gently with sugar and spread over the meringue. Clean the berries, cut smaller if needed and scatter over the whipped cream.

5. Enjoy tremendously, summer is here ❤

Marika~

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It’s sourdough time!

This weekend I was finally working with sourdough and being once again surprised how those wild yeasts can make your bread rise. Didn’t come up with any recipe, but settled instead for following the one from here. Didn’t make any variations this time, just cutting the portion into 2/3 for I didn’t have enough sourdough for the whole.

Turned out absolutely beautiful, like a good bread loaf should be. Taste is good too, not so sour as my usual sourdough loaves. Could be for my sourdough is still so young, or then the bread was still so fresh when I ate it. Perhaps tomorrow it’s stronger in flavor.

Planning to bake some pulla tomorrow, it’s been a while since I made some. And tonight I’ll be baking for the citizens of Braunschweig, so it’s sleeping time then.

Marika~

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Pasha

Celebrating and enjoying Easter here in Germany as well. And what would an Easter be without pasha! It’s one of my favorite seasonal desserts. And so, from the countless dessert and baking options for Easter, it’s the one I decided to prepare for us. Also some mämmi would be more than welcome, but for some reason it’s not available in our local store…

Anyway, let’s post the recipe for pasha here as well, so I’ll never forget it – and someone else might try it out, too:

Pasha

100 g  Butter
1-1,5 dl  Sugar
500 g  Quark
2  Eggs
2 dl  Whipping cream
1  Lemon – zest and juice
3 ts  Vanilla sugar
1 dl  Crushed almonds

1. Beat the butter and sugar until fluffy. Whip the cream.

2. Stir the quark, eggs, lemon zest and juice, vanilla sugar, crushed almonds and the whipped cream gently into the butter and sugar mixture until smooth.

3. Line a colander with large gauze or coffee filters and place it on top of a bowl. Pour the pasha mass into the lined colander, cover it with clingfilm and let the pasha drain for 24 hours in the refrigerator. You can also place a small plate on top as a weight.

4. On the next day turn the pasha over onto a serving plate and decorate it with lemon, almond, grapes or such. Enjoy!

This serving of our pasha is a bit strange for it doesn’t usually come with a sauce. I just felt that throwing away the drained sweet liquid would be such a waste, so I decided to cook it into a sauce. Hah, tastes ok, but next year I’ll try to find some other use for it.

Also baguette baking is doing better. Finally made some with my sourdough, and yay – they taste like baguettes and have a nice crust. Slashing still doesn’t work out that splendid, but I’ll work on that. Also had a nice structure with some bigger bubbles. I followed the recipe from here – and it was worth the 6 hours of baking.

And next week back to Finland for a while. We’ll see if post anything before that. Happy Easter for everyone for now!

Marika~

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Cheesy bubbles

Carlos arrived to Finland yesterday, and surprise – I baked some bread with bubbles for us! We decided to put some slices of cheese and a hint of salt on top – works yummy, too:

This week I’ve been mostly finishing my graduation work and it’s finally, finally, finally.. ..almost ready! Well, next week it’s the autumn holiday and the week after that I’ll hear my grade. Then it’s done.

Anything else happening in my life (=oven)? Oh yes, I made a blueberry-crumble-quark-pie. It was delicious too!

-Marika

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