Marek’s Birthday Cake

I’ve been rushing to finish my entries for participating of my first Cake Show, that’s why I haven’t posted but I couldn’t leave my husband’s cake behind :) It was a carrot cake with ganache filling. He’s been dreaming with a car since we “lost” ours, so I gave him the car I could afford haha :P His birthday is tomorrow, but we celebrated it last Saturday. But I have to say that I had a really hard time with the letters spray… Now I know why nobody writes or add letters on them. They get too heavy. Maybe just the letters would have been ok. Also, it was the first time I was using the patchwork cutters (not counting a class I took in 2010 that had a bit of patchwork subjects). It was fun, but I next time I’ll try to work with it more ahead of time, so the pieces dry harder. The spray and the car didn’t turn out as I expected but my husband was happy with it and that’s what matters. :)

Eu tenho corrido pra terminar as pecas para o meu primeiro Cake Show, e por isso nao tenho postado, mas eu nao podia deixar o bolo do maridao para tras :) Era um bolo de cenoura recheado com ganache. Ele tem sonhado com um carro desde que “perdemos” o nosso, entao eu dei a ele o carro que eu pude pagar haha :P. O aniversario dele e amanha, mas celebramos no sabado passado. Mas eu tenho que dizer que o “buque” de letras me deu um pouco de trabalho… Agora eu sei porque ninguem escreve ou adiciona letras neles. Eles ficam muito pesados. Talvez so letras teriam funcionado. E foi minha primeira vez usando patchwork cutters (sem contar uma aula que participei em 2010 que abordava um pouco desse assunto). Eu gostei, mas da proxima vez vou tentar trabalhar com eles com mais antecedencia para as pecas secarem melhor. O buque e o carro nao ficaram como eu esperava, mas o meu marido gostou do bolo e isso e o que importa :)

Well, that’s it for now. Probably next time I’ll be posting after the Cake Show.     

Bom, e isso por enquanto. Provavelmente da proxima vez postarei depois do evento.

Enjoy!!

A Bear and a Fairy…

I still had two baked cookies left from last week and didn’t want to waste them and had the ideas already, so I decorated them. I really enjoyed making the bear :) Don’t forget to check out the other tons of creative cookies for the contest here.

 

There’s still time…

I posted this everywhere and forgot to post it here! I’m a bit late.                               But it’s still Holiday here :)

LilaLoa’s Creative Cookie Decorating Contest

Last week I was fighting a really bad flu that left me in bed for quite a few days. When I was able to sit and use my laptop, I went to check the blogs I follow and came across this great contest at LilaLoa’s blog (there’s still plenty of time to participate!). The idea is to create designs from the template below, that DOES NOT look like a present. We can add or extract pieces as long as we can still see it comes from the same template. Such a wonderful idea. 

I wish there were more contests like this to challenge us and stimulate our creativity. I got very excited with the idea and couldn’t wait to get better to work on them. But I still was recovering, so I decided to start creating them. Since I had all the time in the world in bed, I begun to sketch the cookies and a lot of ideas came up as you can see. When I was 100% better, I made the cookie dough and cut out the cookies using the template. It was that easy since the dough I was using was very delicate, but I could remould the mistakes before baking.

It was so much fun to create and decorate them that maybe I will make more, :) I know it might sound too many already, but it was so much fun!! Have I said that already?? :) No, I’m kidding, I only have 2 designs waiting to dry and that’s it. :) I’ll probably use the inspiration for another cookie shapes. After I finished them, I went to see what the others were doing and it’s so nice to see what they created. I also saw that some people had already similar ideas to mine, but I decided to post them anyways. :) In the end of the post I added the bride and groom together because they are a supposed to be a set, but for some reason they appear too small in the post :/

So, here they are… which is your favourite?

Tapioca Pearls with Red Wine (Sagu)

Sagu is how we call the dessert made with tapioca pearls in Brazil. :)

This is another recipe that takes me back to my childhood. My mom used to make these and yes, with wine. But she boiled long enough so all the alcohol evaporated. However, we could still taste it. To me, it sounds and it looks a fancy dessert, maybe it’s just because there’s wine lol. You can use any red wine you want, I used a cheap one and still tasted wonderful! Husband approved too! :)

Sagu has a really interesting consistency. I feel almost like the pearls massage my mouth. It’s kind of funny for me :)

 

It’s not just because my mom used to make this dessert that reminds my childhood, but because they use to serve it as a snack in some of the schools I’ve studied. But instead of wine, they prepared it with grape juice. I don’t know if they still serve this for the kids in school as I’ve been away from Brazil for more than 5 years. I guess you could use any kind of juice or syrup and you would have a variety of flavours. I’d give it a shot with cherry juice or syrup. Maybe adding a little vodka it’d be great too. Poland makes a delightful cherry vodka called Wiśniówka. I think it would taste amazing with sagu.

 

I heard that some people like to serve sagu with a vanilla custard or pudding, but I prefer it pure like that, with nothing taking the taste of wine away :)

I used a mug instead of a cup to measure the tapioca pearls and the wine. Sorry, I know it’s not precise, but I worked for me :P And it yield a lot as you can see the big bowl in the background of one of the pictures.

You can use the whole bottle of wine, but you will get then a very liquid consistency and will have to boil for longer to get that sauce-like consistency. If the idea is to make sure all the alcohol is gone, then it’s ok. But I’d be afraid to lose that nice colour if boiling way too long.

I was researching to find out how long it takes for the alcohol to evaporate and I found this page. I had no idea about it, so I guess my sagu had retained about 50% of the alcohol, as I boiled it for about 10 minutes.

TAPIOCA PEARLS WITH WINE (SAGU)

Ingredients

1 mug tapioca pearls
3L water
750ml red wine
1 mug of sugar

Directions

In a large saucepan boil the water. Then, add the pearls and slowly stir until it boils again.

When the pearls have a clear looking (no white spots) remove from heat and let it cool.

After cooling, using a drainer to wash out the pearls for a few seconds, so that the gooey consistency goes away (some people leave it, but I think it tastes and looks better without it).

Put the pearls back to the saucepan and add the wine and sugar. Let it boil for about 5 minutes or longer, if you want the alcohol to evaporate more.

Transfer to a large glass bowl, let it cool and take it to refrigerate overnight.

Enjoy!

St. Patrick’s Day False Lime Mousse Pie

So tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day and I couldn’t stay behind. :P I’ve been away for a while, but I’m back. I chose the recipe only for the colour because those were the ingredients I had at home. I do want to try some recipes with Irish coffee, Guinness, etc, but maybe another time.

This is a basic recipe in Brazil, so I just made it up. We use the mixture of condensed milk and cream in many desserts. Somebody might ask me “Why FALSE?”. Well, it’s false because it isn’t a real mousse. The real mousse calls for egg whites and this recipe doesn’t have them, but the final consistency reminds the real mousse.

I used real lime juice for the mousse and unflavoured gelatine powder. But some people use lime flavoured gelatine, which would even make more sense to call it FALSE :) If you choose this option, don’t use the food colouring. It’s a very refreshing dessert and not too sweet.

ST. PATRICK’S DAY FALSE LIME MOUSSE PIE

Ingredients

300g digestive cookies or other of your choice
70g melted butter (add more if necessary)
juice of 4 limes
300ml extra thick cream
2 cans condensed milk
green food colouring
20g unflavoured gelatine powder
1/4 cup boiling water
1 package lime or lemon flavoured jelly

Directions

Preheat the oven to 180C.
Using a food processor or blender, crush very well the cookies. You can use a rolling pin to do it if you don't have these appliances.
Add the melted butter and mix with your hands. Press onto the bottom of a springform pan. Bake the pie crust for about 15 minutes. Let it cool.

For the filling, beat (or whisk) first the condensed milk with the lemon juice. Add the cream and the food colouring (just enough to get the colour desired) and beat again. Dissolve the unflavoured gelatine in the boiling water and mix in to the lemon mixture. Beat very well to make sure there are no lumps. Grease the sides of the pan with a little bit of oil to help releasing.

Pour the lemon cream onto the pie crust and put in the fridge until completely firm.

Prepare the lime jelly according to the instructions of the package, let it cool a little (before it starts to harden) and pour onto the lime mousse. Refrigerate until the jelly is firm.

Enjoy!

Fat Tuesday, Pancake Day!... not today.

So here I am a little late again, but this time I got to prepare them on the actual day! :) So yesterday was the Fat Tuesday (also known as Pancake Day, Shrove Tuesday and Mardi Gras, in French). It's similar to the Tłusty Czwartek (Fat Thursday) in Poland.

It is the day preceding Ash Wednesday (today), the first day of Lent. Fat Tuesday is observed mainly in English speaking countries, especially Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States but is also observed in the Philippines and Germany. Fat Tuesday is linked to Easter, so its date changes on an annual basis. In most traditions the day is known for the eating of pancakes before the start of Lent. Pancakes are eaten as they are made out of the main foods available, sugar, fat, flour and eggs, whose consumption was traditionally restricted during the ritual fasting associated with Lent. - Wikipedia

Pancakes are much easier than donuts, so I decided to make some. I chose a Brazilian recipe, but there is nothing really different than other pancake recipes I've seen. Maybe one or other ingredient and the amount to get a different thickness or flavor. The original recipe I got from here and I did add one egg for a better consistency. Also, I made the filling in a different way and I prepared a chocolate sauce to go with the pancakes. I just think chocolate and bananas are a good match! :)

As for the photos, I am re ally enjoying taking them. Still have a lot to learn, but it's been fun. My husband has photography as a hobby (all the equipment is his actually) and thanks to him, it has become mine too. I have a little trouble with the light on them because I'm using our old laptop and the screen is not very good, so I never really know if I am seeing what you guys will see. I hope this will change in a couple of weeks. The last picture is from my instagram. It's my favorite angle. I don't know why I didn't do the same with the camera.

CHOCOLATE BANANA PANCAKES

Ingredients

1 cup of milk

2 tablespoons of oil

1 egg

1 cup all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons of sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

Filling

3 sliced bananas

3 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons cinnamon

3 tablespoons water

Sauce

2 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons cocoa

1 tablespoon water (more if necessary)

Directions

Whisk together milk, oil and egg. Add the flour and whisk well until there is no lumps. Add the sugar and baking powder. If you are using a blender, just add all the ingredients into it and beat well.

Grease a frying pan with a few drops of oil or a little butter and heat it. Use a ladle to pour the batter and move the pan to get a nice and thin coat of pancake. Cook until golden brown or and flip it over to get the same color on the other side.

Remove the pancake from the pan and add it to a plate with paper towel and reapeat the steps until the batter is ended.

For the filling, add all the ingredients into a saucepan and heat it on low. Let the bananas soften, but just enough so they don't lose their shape. Fill the pancakes.

In a small saucepan stir the sugar, cocoa and water. Heat it until the ingredients are disolved. Add more water according to the consistency desired. Pour over the filled pancakes and sprinkle powder sugar.

Simple like that!

Enjoy!

Pączki (Polish donuts)

As I promised here, I am posting the Polish donuts (pączki) I was supposed to make for theTłusty Czwartek, but they just happened one day later and the post 4 days later. I'm still learning on preparing my posts ahead of time.

It was much easier to make these donuts than I thought and I will definitely make them again. I'm sure next time it'll be even easier. During almost the whole procedure my husband was at work. It was finally time to fry the pączki, when my lovely husband came back from work. I was heating up the oil for frying them when he said "But the oil must be super hot, Ka." . Even though the recipe says to heat the oil to 180C, but I don't have a thermometer (and I didn't test with the piece of bread), I decided to trust my husband. Since he is Polish I supposed he should know better than me. First mistake. EVERYONE knows that if the oil is too hot (just like if the oven is too hot), the center of whatever your are making never cooks well. Still, I decided to keep listening my husband. I thought maybe it was different for Polish donuts, who knows? The recipe says to fry each side for about 2 minutes and I was frying mine for about 30 seconds and they were getting brown too fast. When I had about almost all of them fried I decided to try one. Second mistake. Why didn't I just try one in the beginning?

Obviously, they weren't cooked inside and I was blaming my husband for ruining my first Polish sweet experiment. Of course he didn't mean to do that and I know it. :) butI couldn't just throw them away after all the work I put on and here he comes again. "Maybe you can refry them." Great! I "loved" doing this! Let's do it again!! Yay! .... I had no choice.

So there I went to refry all of the ones I knew were fried in "super hot" oil. The ones I used for the pictures were those I fried after, so they turned out in a nice brown and were cooked inside because the oil was on the right temperature. The same happened with the mini donuts, which by the way, I HAD to make a mini version of it. Have I mention I love miniatures? :) However, the ones I refried ended up darker than I wanted, but at least they didn't taste burned and were cooked inside!

I filled them first with fruit marmalade using a pastry bag. It wasn't enough so I used some strawberry jam. I had a little problem filling them because of the pieces of fruit clogging the tip I was using, so it's better to choose a jam with no fruit pieces or just jelly if you are using a pastry bag. My husband and I don't like to eat donuts or pączki and find only a little tiny drop of filling so I was very generous about it. Next time I want to try filling with Nutella, lemon curd or simply a pastry cream with chocolate glaze on top to make the famous Boston Cream, our favorite American donut flavor.

I know they weren't perfect, but for the first time, I was happy with the results. Our Polish friends approved them! Some even said they tasted like their grandmother's pączki!! That's a huge compliment for me and I loved hearing that, even though I think they were just being nice to me :) lol Oh, and my husband approved them too, of course! He said I did a great job saving them! LOL My husband likes to eat pączki with coffee or tea, but I prefer with a glass of milk. :)

So in the end all was worthy it! Next step was getting some pictures. Unfortunately, I had no time to get different angles because the rain was coming, so I had to rush.

The recipe I got from this Polish blog which I love and she got it from here. The original recipes call for bread flour, but I used all-purposed flour and it worked fine to ME. I still have to test it with bread flour to see the difference.

I do know some Polish but I had to use a little help from google translator and I changed a few things to the way I did.

Pączki (POLISH DONUTS)

Ingredients for about 35 donuts

150 ml of lukewarm water

310 ml lukewarm milk

2 large eggs slightly beaten

900 g of wheat flour bread

100 g of sugar

100 g butter (melted but not hot)

1 teaspoon salt

3 teaspoons instant yeast (12 g) or 24 g of fresh yeast

1 tablespoon of vodka

marmalade, jam or jelly of your preference

Glaze

icing sugar

water

Directions using dry yeast (I used this one)

1. Sift flour with salt in a large bowl. Add the yeast and mix.
2. Add the eggs and sugar. Combine the milk, water and vodka and slowly pour into the bowl with the flour mixture. Stir.
3. Gradually add the butter and knead to combine all the ingredients until you have a nice and smooth dough.

Directions using fresh yeast

1. Sift flour with salt into a large bowl.
2. Make a nest in the center and add the yeast.
3. Pour over part of the warm milk. Add two tablespoon
4. s of sugar and let stand for 20 minutes to let the yeast "work".
5. When the time is up, add the remaining milk combined with water and vodka, the rest of the sugar, eggs, adding at the end the butter.
6. Knead until you have a nice and smooth dough.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Cover the bowl with a towel and leave it in a warm place until double in volume, about 1 and half hour.
2. When the dough has doubled, put it on your working surface sprinkled with flour and knead it a little. Divide the dough in half and keep one half covered so it doesn't dry out.
3. Roll out the dough to a thickness of about 1 cm.
4. Use a pastry cutter or glass to cut out circles with a diameter of about 5 - 7 cm. If you want mini donuts, just use a smaller cutter (I used I shot glass). Place them on a baking tray, cover with towel and wait for them to rise again, about half an hour more. Repeat these steps with the rest of the dough.
5. Heat oil in large saucepan to a temperature of 180 º C (a piece of bread should brown in 40 seconds). Fry for 3 - 4 pieces (no more) at once, about 1-2 minutes on each side. When fried, transferred them to a plate covered with paper towel for absorbing the oil.
6. After frying them, fill them with the marmalade using a pastry bag (if you don't have a pastry bag, just use a knife to cut a hole on the side being careful for not crossing to the other side and use a teaspoon to fill with the marmalade).

For the glaze

Add 1 cup of icing sugar into a bowl. Mix in 2 tablespoon of water and stir. Then gradually add enough water to reach the desired consistency. Deep in each donut holding it upside down to let it drop the excess.

That was a long a post!

Enjoy it!

Tłusty Czwartek, in Poland

I tried, I swear. I wanted to make them today, but I had a rolling pin issue so it never happened. I also wanted to post it before, but the day just passed too fast. Even if I'm late, I felt I should write something (I got it from here). My husband is Polish and as I mentioned before, we lived in Poland for 1 year and their desserts is part of what I want to show here.

Today is, or it was, the Tłusty Czwartek, in English, Fat Thursday, is a traditional Polish and German feast marking the last Thursday before Lent and is associated with the celebration of Carnival. Because Lent is a time of fasting, the next opportunity to feast would not be until Easter. It is similar to, but should not be confused with, the French festival of Mardi Gras ("Fat Tuesday"). Traditionally it is a day dedicated to eating, when people meet in their homes or cafés with their friends and relatives and eat large quantities of sweets, cakes and other meals forbidden during Lent. Among the most popular all-national dishes served on that day are pączki or berliner, fist-sized donuts filled with rose marmalade, and faworki, French dough fingers served with lots of powdered sugar.

I will owe a picture on this post, but very soon, hopefully tomorrow, I'll have one, with the recipe :)

Sweet dreams!

Last Valentine Post...

And here I finish the Valentine's Day combo. These mini cheesecakes are the same from here. I just wanted to try the perfect match: the tiny pans with these tiny plates!

Valentine's Day No Bake Mini Cheesecakes

Those who know me also know that I looove miniatures. All miniatures, not just food, but I go crazy with every tiny little thing I see, a tiny cupcake earring, a tiny souvenir doll, a tiny chair for tiny dolls. And this has been since I was a child. I loved to play dolls with tiny little pots and fake cook tiny little pasta and put on the dolls tiny little shoes. I remember when I used to have art classes at school. We learned how to make origami and had to make a project (like a maquette) in the end with the pieces we'd made. I chose to make a mini zoo. The zoo wasn't that mini, but the origami animals were. They measured up to 1,5 cm height and I just had so much fun making them and appreciating how tiny they were. I have a friend (Carol) who never forgets that and if she reads this, she will laugh.

And here I am, baking and decorating, not just mini desserts, obviously... My passion when decorating is the detail, the tiny details that make the difference. When I bake, if I can make something very little, makes me have fun. It is all also a challenge.

As it is Valentine's Day, I think these little treats could make a nice surprise. Unfortunately, hubby won't have them because they're gone long time ago :)

The original recipe is from Nigella and I changed a few things because I made them in those little forms. I added gelatin because it was the first time I was using the tins, so I wanted to make sure the cheesecakes would come out nice and clean.

Valentine's Day No Bake Mini Cheesecakes

Ingredients:

125g graham crackers

75g soft butter

300g cream cheese

60g icing sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

250ml double cream

1 tablespoon of no flavored gelatin powder

1 jar of strawberry preserves (or other of your preference)

Directions:

1. Blitz the biscuits in a food processor until beginning to turn to crumbs, then add the butter and whiz again to make the mixture clump.
   
2. Press about 0.5cm of this mixture into tiny springform tins. Don't add too much here or you won't have enough space for the cream.
3. Beat together the cream cheese, icing sugar, vanilla extract and lemon juice in a bowl until smooth.
4. Lightly whip the double cream, and then fold it into the cream cheese mixture.
5. Hydrate the gelatin in about 2 tablespoons of warm water. Before it hardens add it to the cream mixture stirring slowly.
6. Spoon the cheesecake filling on top of the biscuit base and smooth with a spoon. Put the tins in a bigger form and leave them in the fridge for 3 hours or overnight.
7. When you are ready to serve the cheesecakes, unmould them and spread the preserves over the top.
8. Additional information - for vegetarains make sure the cream cheese is a brand suitable for vegetarians.

These mini cheesecake pans I bought in Brazil while visiting my family in 2010. The moment I saw them, I knew I had to make something :)

Enjoy!

Valentine's Day Brazilian Butter Cookies

As bakers we all have those nostalgic recipes. This one brings me back funny - now they are funny - memories of my childhood. My mother still mentions this in our talks some times. I loved to make those cookies when I was, I don't know, maybe 10, 12 years old. But the point was that I always got angry with them because I never got the right consistency to roll them out, every time. It was so frustrating that many times I threw the dough on the floor and then, MY MOM got angry with me because again I was making a mess and wasting the ingredients. She tried to helped me when both of us calmed down and everything was fine. But a few months later, there I was again trying to make those cookies, not getting the right consistensy and so on.

When I decided to make them for this blog I knew everything was going to work out because, well, I'm much more mature now LOL and as the dough started drying out, I just had to knead it a little longer so my hands would warm the butter making the dough pliable again. And this happened very naturally and made me think "that was the point, and it was so easy... if only I knew this at that time... " :)

I do have a recipe for them but, as I mentioned before, we just moved and our things haven't come yet and the recipe is not here with me. I only have the pictures because I brought the backup cds.

The ones with little stripes have the classic design (they will be subject of another post in the future) and as part of Valentine's Day's ideas, I shaped a heart in the center with my fingers and added some strawberry marmalade before baking.

Here they are, fresh from the oven. They are great with a cup of tea or a glass of milk...

Enjoy!!

Miss Apple has moved :)

And also Miss Apple's Sweets, but not the web address :)... I don't know if somebody still comes here, but I'm about to do a big change in my blog. I want to take advantage that I was blessed with the possibility of living in 3 different countries and now I've just moved to the 4th one!

I am from Brazil, moved to the USA in 2007, met my lovely Polish husband there, lived there for 4 years and then we moved to Poland and stayed for 1 year. Now, by the forces of the destiny or something like that, we are living here, my 4th country and here we hope to stay.

Anyways, I want to explore much more my baking, decorating and desserts passion and share some of my sweet experiments from all the cultures I've known, the one that I'm about to learn and why not some of the ones I don't know yet too? so lots of new things will be posted. I believe it will be much more interesting, especially for me because I've got lots of ideas. I just hope I can keep up with them. I have been practicing some photographing, digging in and searching for lots of inspirations.

I just need to get everything on track first. WE are here, but not all of our stuff, so I don't have a lot of my baking tools with me. Also, I still need to do some paper work.

However, I did prepare some pictures before I left Poland and I have to post them soon, as some of them were about Valentine's Day!

Enjoy!!

Christmas Cake (Cracow, Poland - 2011)

This cake was for the Christmas Eve we had at work about 2 weeks before the real Christmas Eve :P Each one had to take something delicious and I chose the ones below.

This is the chocolate and walnut cream cake decorated and covered with fondant and I hand painted the Santa Clauss. It was my first time painting on a cake, but I loved it how it turned out and I loved making it, as always :)

Here I cropped the picture for a close up of the inside :)

This is a Brazilian Lemon Pie, very popular in my country and one of my favorites. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to get a more professional picture of it, I borrowed a friend's camera for this shot before the pie was gone. :)

Bombons (Poland - Easter 2011)

I made these bombons for my in-laws for Easter. The fillings flavors were: orange, poppy seeds cream (very popular in Poland), rum and raisins chocolate ganache. I added the little toppings for easy identification (the little box with yellow cream is also orange filling). They are Brazilian recipes adapted to their tastes.

Christmas Cookie Decorating Class (Brazil 2010)

I took this class in December 2010 in Brazil with Vera and Camila Madeira, mother and daughter together in the sugar art world :) They are great artists. But I haven't practiced this technique for a year and must check if I can remember to make them.

Photo from Cursos Vera Madeira