Clementine Cake

With my home reconstructions over (Thanks God!!!!) and all the dust cleaned up (no kidding ….) here I am attempting to keep this blog up and going.

Coming back to food …. I don’t know about you but I love eating seasonal food. I think there is something special about having produce when it is supposed to be there. I love going to the supermarket and finding in the shelves what is in season.

The feeling becomes indescribable when I am in my Asturias garden produce!!! I can tell you month by month what I eagerly expect. Blueberries in July, pears in October and rhubarb in April are my favorite by far.

Clementine is one of those fruits that are a must during their season. I use them for everything and anything. On juice, on dressings, to cook meat, in marmalade, to bake…

The cake is a Clementine cake. The recipe is from “Everyday Food”. The cake itself is just beautiful and tasty. I added a couple of things of my own to please my sweet tooth mother. I cut the cake in two layers that I soak in tangerine syrup. I also made a clementine curd as a filling changing a bit the lemon curd recipe. I covered the cake with Swiss meringue and garnished it with sanded clementine and peel.

I highly recommend the cake!!

I hope you like it!!

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pan

3 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled), plus more for pan

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon fine salt

2 cups granulated sugar

6 large eggs

2 tablespoons finely grated tangerine zest, plus 1/2 cup tangerine juice (from 6 tangerines)

2 tablespoons orange-flavored liqueur, such as Grand Marnier

3/4 cup low-fat plain yogurt

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 12-cup Bundt cake pan. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt.

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat butter and granulated sugar on medium-high until light and fluffy, 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in tangerine zest and juice and liqueur. With mixer on low, add flour mixture in three additions, alternating with two additions yogurt, and beat to combine; beat in vanilla. Transfer batter to pan, smooth top, and firmly tap pan on a flat surface to remove air bubbles.

Bake until a toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 55 to 60 minutes. Let cool in pan on a wire rack, 30 minutes. Invert cake onto rack set in a rimmed baking sheet and let cool completely. (With a serrated knife, trim cake to sit flat, if necessary.)

Check 1-2-1-2 and Lemon Pudding Cakes

I love lemon! In every single possible way …. With fish, pasta, in lemon curd, cookies, lemonade…And desserts. All kind of desserts!!

In my constant research of new desserts I found this simple yet tasty lemon puddings. The texture is fluffy and light. Best thing is the sauce that remains in the bottom. I think I will bake them during the Christmas season …

Hopefully, during the season, I will have free time that I could use to do, among many things, an interesting recipe research. I am also doing a good home-glamour-make-over. I am painting, changing curtains, organizing my china, glassware and tablecloths. Now that is going to be interesting!! I will make sure to keep you posted.

In the mean time here I am trying new lightings, new home “locations”, new accessories…. Finding a way to post during the weekdays when I get home and there is not natural light…sounds familiar, ah?

The Return of the Baking-Jedy

Months ago I said that I will post on my "Le Cordon Bleu" course and I didn´t. Well, they say better late than ever …. So here I am!!!

At the beginning of the summer I joined LCB to attend the basic level of the Pastry Chef Diploma. I had a lot of expectations. I wanted to learn, from professional chefs, how to bake things, as simple and complicated at the same time, as croissants, brioche or charlotte cake… the bases of French baking. I also wanted to know much of a baker I had in me. Is this something that I want to make a career of?

Overall, I can say that mi time at LCB was fantastic. The facilities are amazing. The kitchens have every sort of tool that you can think of. Everything is spotless, and this is one of the big lessons. About the chefs, is such a pleasure to see the difficult techniques done in such a talented and gracious way.

I have also meet very nice people. Those people have a real passion for baking. This takes me to “the baker in me”.

Reality is that I do not see myself in bakery baking for living. I love baking, but baking at home, for family and friends. For the fun of it! And I love baking simple, innocent, comforting goods despite the fact that now I have the skills for a more challenging recipes.

So if you are thinking of joining the school I highly recommend it! The only negative is that from the first tasting with the chefs, you will think that any dessert in any restaurant is just not good enough!!!:-)

On another note, I am coming back to blog-land. I think I have figured out what do I want to tell and how to express it in images. This is going to be a big exercise of organization. I hope you have a little patient ….

By the way …. So happy to be back!!!

Le Cordon Bleu

A year ago I decided that I needed a changed in my life. And I did changed!!!

In my new life my job is not the most important thing in my life. I don´t travel like crazy. I get off at 6.30. I ride my horse everyday. I sleep in my bed. I go to my Asturias home whenever and I bake non stop!!!!

So since as now I do all the things that makes me happy ... I thought that it was the time to take my "I am happy while I am baking" to the next level.

Here I am, tomorrow is my first day at Le Cordon Bleu!!!!!! Do you imagine if this is really my thing and I become a pastry chef?? Now that´s a change!

I will keep you posted on my Cordon experience. What we learn, what we bake, my progress, exams ....

Wish me luck!!!

Mariola

Hot Milk Sponge Cake and See You Soon!

I feel that reached this point it would be more honest and straight forward to take a break from my blogging life. Although I enjoy cooking and sharing what I do with my dear ones, I do not feel the need of blogging about it. I am just not inspired!!

Do not get wrong! My free time at home has reduced by a factor of a 1000! My loving horse Oberon gets the largets part of my free time and my desire of having my appartment almost perfectly tidy the rest of the time ...

Do not think I will be gone forever .... my closest friends know that I "disapear" from time to time but I always come back.

It feels that I need the time for me. And my new ME loves myself and has promise to take care of me. So there you go!

Thanks so much for being there, for sharing with me your comments and experiences, for being so nice and supportive. I will see you very soon!!

The recipe is from "The Amish Cook´s: Baking Book" which has got all my attention in the past weeks . I highly recomend it!! The cake was yummy and fluffy!

I hope you like it!

Strawberry and Lemon Whoopie Pies

Life has been busy these past weeks. Between my job, my horse and my baking I have not had that much time left for anything else.

To recuperate energy I went to spend some days off to my Asturias house. I have been gardening, specially concentrated in my peonies and rhubarb, reorganizing the furniture I brought from Switzerland and exercising

So now back in Madrid, and getting ready for a new week and before it gets crazy I wanted to post my whoopie pies.

Whoopie pies are my new favorite thing. Original from the Amish, nobody is really sure where the name comes from. The only thing for sure is that in any variation they are terrific.

This recipe is from Martha and needless to say is just great.

I hope you like it!!

Ingredients

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature

1 cup plus 3 tablespoons light-brown sugar

1 tablespoon grated lemon zest

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 large egg

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon coarse salt

1 cup whole milk

3/4 cup heavy cream

1 cup fresh strawberries

Directions

Preheat oven to 350. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat butter, 1 cup brown sugar, and lemon zest until light and creamy. Add vanilla and egg and beat to combine, scraping down bowl as needed. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. With mixer on low, beat in flour mixture in 3 additions, alternating with milk and ending with flour mixture (scrape bowl as needed). Beat well to combine.

Drop batter in 2-tablespoon mounds, about 2 inches apart, onto two parchment-lined baking sheets. Bake until puffed and pale golden around edges, 17 to 19 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through. Let cakes cool completely on sheets on wire racks.

Spring Onion & Parmesan Cornbread

In a couple of weeks I will be going to Asturias. Yeah!!!!!! I have not been in my house for a while now …. I know I know …. I should have go. But the weather, Switzerland, the new job …..

So, very soon I will be at home2!! I am so excited to think about my garden produce. At the end of the summer I planted rhubarb and I hope a decent amount of plants have survived the winter. I am thinking rhubarb pie …. Yum!

Asturias has many faces, smell and flavors for me. But there is one among all of them that takes me to my grandmother’s kitchen: Corn.

This time I am bringing you a super easy and yummy cornbread. Let me tell you something: You have one piece of this bread and you can not stop!!

The recipe is from “The Photo Cookbook” application for IPad.

I hope you like it!

Serves 16

Ingredients

140 gr fine cornmeal

140 gr plain flour

4 tsp baking powder

2 tsp celery salt

55 gr Parmesan cheese, grated

2 eggs, beaten

400 ml milk

55gr butter, melted

1 bunch Spring onions, chopped

Ground black pepper

Directions

Preheat the oven to 190º/375F. Grease a 23cm/9 inch Squire baking tin.

Sift the cornmeal, flour, baking powder, celery salt and pepper into a bowl and stir in 40 gr of the Parmesan cheese.

Beat together the eggs, milk and melted butter. Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and stir well to mix evenly. Stir in he chopped spring onions and spread the mixture evenly into the tin.

Sprinkle the remaining Parmesan over the mixture. Bake in the preheated oven for 30-35 minutes, or until firm and golden.

Cut the cornbread into squares and serve warm.