Mum has a sweet tooth for whipped cream. Sweet tooth may be simplistic to describe her relationship with whipped cream and the speed with which her spoon speeds under my eyes when I make a cake, returning to her full of whipped cream.

This said, she loves simple and traditional desserts: tiramisu, mantovana, rose cake with almonds, cream puffs. Simple, caring, reliable, reassuring, good, just like she is for me.

Saturday was her birthday and as usual, in a hurry and trying to fit everything that needed to be done, we could not celebrate properly her special day, apart from a huge bowl of real homemade fries, crunchy and sprinkled with Maldon salt crystals.

Though, since I am foodblogger and a daughter, I could not play dumb longer, and yesterday I made a simple cake to celebrate her in the afternoon with the rest of my large, noisy and happy family, you know perfectly all the adjectives that usually come along with my family on a Sunday afternoon!

Yesterday morning I had little time and a great desire to take a walk out pretending it was already spring, so I needed an error proof cake. In these crisis moments I always have an ace up in my sleeve: the pound cake is the basic recipe I bake every time I want to create something from scratch, avoiding disastrous side effects. You just need eggs, flour, sugar and butter in your pantry, you can replace butter with yoghurt, cottage cheese, mascarpone cheese, olive oil… and the cake is ready to be baked.

Yesterday I substituted butter with plain whole yoghurt and I added two heaping tablespoons of intense unsweetened cocoa in the dough. The result was a deep flavoured and light chocolate cake, moist and soft inside. Then, since we’re enjoying the citrus season, I have enriched the cake with lemon custard (the same I used for the Tuscan pine nut cake) to give a marbled effect and add a citrus freshness to the cake.

You can replace the lemon custard with lemon curd or make a simple cocoa pound cake with no other additions, now you know how it works with it! Do you have other tempting ideas for the marble effect? I would suggest also a good strawberry jam…

Happy birthday Mum, I love you!

I told you that the sunny countryside was tempting me in a walk outside, so as soon as the cake was ready I run out (ok, I walked out, I still have to exercise more after the Christmas feast to be able to run avoiding a heart attack!) to see which surprises the Nature had reserved for me. I was not wrong.

On the way back home I saw something moving in the fields in the valley: there were three roe deer running into the woods nearby. In the picture they are nothing more than spots of colour, but I believe you can still recognize them! A little farther on there was another herd of seven deer, but this time my fixed lens could not take a picture of them, so I simply watched them graze peacefully.

Searching for other ideas for a pound cake?

• my first attempt with pound cake was the mascarpone and strawberry pound cake, bookmark it for the upcoming strawberry season!
• this is one of the cakes I loved the most, the lemon and white chocolate pound cake. Since we’re not in season yet, use frozen berries for the topping, or just whipped cream.
• the persimmon cake, bake it with apples or pears for a wholesome afternoon cake.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Cocoa pound cake with swirls of lemon custard

You should be interested also in:

1. Strawberry and mascarpone pound cake
2. Lemon & White chocolate cake
3. Dutch cocoa cupcakes

I received a gift. I was living one of those moments in your life when you need to find a goal, something to commit for, something so important to deserve sacrifices and long hours of work. I wanted to find out who I was, I wished to be able to define myself through a dream. In that moment, a few years ago, my passion for food, Tuscany and writing lighted up and showed me what was meant to be made.

I realized I had received a gift, I had been living for my whole life in the Tuscan countryside, one of the most beautiful areas of the world. I could share this passion, the love for my region and for our food and our traditions. That could be the goal I was searching for in the past, that could be the reason that would lead my actions, giving a meaning to my everyday life. This will be my job from January, I couldn’t ask for a greater gift than passion!

This was the ultimate gift, this is the first mental image I had when Gloria asked us to talk about gifts for the Italy blogging roundtable. Don’t miss, on the 14th of December, the posts about gifts written by Gloria and by the other participating writers, Alexandra from ArtTrav, Jessica from Why Go Italy, Melanie from Italofile, and Rebecca from Brigolante.

This said, I am also a material girl and I adore simple gifts, received and made. I love the rustling of decorated paper, untying glittered ribbons or wrapping home-made gourmet gifts with care and imagination for my dear ones and friends.

This is one of the reasons that made me sign up to the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap, hosted by Lindsay of Love & Olive oil and Julie of The Little Kitchen:

The premise is this: sign up. Receive the addresses of three other food bloggers. Send each of them one dozen delicious homemade cookies. Receive three different boxes of scrumptious cookies from other bloggers. Eat them all yourself (or, you know, share. If you want. No judgement either way.) Post your cookie recipe on your blog. See everyone else’s cookie recipes. Salivate. Get lots of great ideas for next years’ cookie swap. Rinse and repeat.

How not to sign up? Rossella asked them to extend the chance to take part to the swap to Italy as well, and we managed to reach the critical number of required foodbloggers and we largely exceeded it. Just add foodbloggers, cookies, Christmas and swap into the same jar, shake it up and you have one of the most exciting event of this Christmas!

I received buttery and decadent ginger and chocolate cookies from Nathalie, crunchy Sicilian cookies with pistachios and chocolate from Claudia and original chestnut shortbread cookies from Rossella.

My cookies, instead, travelled all the way to Luisa, Alessandra and Annamaria. Curious to know my recipe? It was a simple short pastry cookie, made with organic flour, butter and eggs and flavoured with the most fresh and natural essences: orange, lemon and mandarin peels, a citrus Christmas for everyone! They are the perfect treat for the afternoon tea, slightly crunchy and fruity. My favourite ones were the lemon and cardamom cookies, amazing with a cup of steaming black coffee.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Gifts, Christmas swaps and short pastry citrus cookies

You should be interested also in:

1. Christmas cookies, III episode
2. Cookies: Christmas reharsal
3. Grandma Menna’s Kitchen: cavallucci, typical Tuscan Christmas cookies

When a month ago I took the first breath of the evening fresh air and looked at my four weeks of holidays unwinding in front of my eyes, I suddenly felt a child again, full of projects and ideas scribbled down on sheets of notebook paper. The time expanded and I could not see the end of my vacation beyond the map of my journey.

Then, in the twinkling, here I am again, back to the starting point. I am still not completely aware of what has happened between that first night of holidays and this morning, when I left my light dresses and my flip flops for a more appropriate business clothing.

If I had a magic wand, I would like to live again this past month, I would press rewind on a remote control and review a few scenes that made ​​me laugh so much, or moved me to tears. I would savour again my thirtieth birthday cake or the evening green tea in London, the first beer in Germany with my sister Claudia or the sweet idleness of a few gifted days.

We are here, though. And now? now, there is an American saying that I really find appropriate: when life gives you lemons… make a lemonade! That is, when life puts up hurdles along your path, turn them into opportunity, squeeze out the best, just as you would do with a lemon. Isn’t it genius? This will definitely be my motto in the coming months.

Let’s talk about this lemonade, more than recipe a trick to find an immediate refreshment, made bright with the brilliant shades of yellow and turned on by the light note of fresh ginger.

And if I could rewind the tape, this would be what I would live again…

50′s Party

I think I have obsessed till exhaustion friends and relatives to the third degree of kinship with my desire of having a proper celebration of my 30th birthday. I’ve always admitted to have a soft spot for my birthdays, and consequently for all the bells and whistles, including celebrations.

Then the chance to celebrate my 30th birthday with a very dear friend who was going to be 40… it was the perfect opportunity to set up a ‘50s style garden party, with the proper music, atmosphere, dresses and makeup, and especially almost all my friends dressed up as pin-ups, Fonzie, Guys and Dolls and Grease! I have wonderful memories of that evening, mixed with colourful straws, bright lights and rockabilly notes!

Paris

I skipped Paris, you will not find photos of Paris. I was so smart and bright to check my documents just one hour before my departure, just to discover that my identity card was expired 3 weeks before!

So, when life gives you lemons… make a lemonade! I carved out unexpectedly 4 days of old-fashioned holidays, the kind of holidays I used to have when I was a child, made of swimming pool, sofa and TV in the dim light of a fresh living room, a new book and short trips in the surroundings with friends.

London

London, eventually. London, again. My holidays in London! Do I sound repetitive? I was beside myself with trepidation, 10 days to spend with Sarka: it was a year since we started planning what to do, what to eat, what to cook and photograph. We enjoyed that days together with Beth, Joslin and Zita.

We have explored every London tube line and colour, from north to south, from east to west, we took advantage of the multicultural choice offered by the city I love the most in the world eating Lebanese, sushi, noodles, and above all we enjoyed ourselves in the kitchen with a glass of wine (they) and a cup of green tea (I). But I didn’t know that there was a surprise waiting for me… a proper English afternoon tea at the Ritz.

We decided to spend the afternoon shopping for the perfect outfit or the fancy accessory that could give you that bit of extra confidence to not feel completely alien in that muffled and far away from everyday life scenery. Then we entered with a beating heart the gleaming lobby of the Ritz. After the second ma’am and lady all my fears disappeared and I felt again a princess, even though only for a few hours. After that dreamy experience crammed with laughter we ran home, but one of my shoes decided to leave a dream, and I almost left my sole. I tried to be a modern Cinderella and leave my slipper on the stairs at the Ritz, but it did not work!

What do the foodies do when they have a free morning? they go to the market! The Borrough Market, twinned with La Boqueria in Barcelona, is one of my favorite places on earth: everything is so fresh, pulsating with life, colours and scents. If you’re lucky enough you could meet Jamie Oliver here, how can I not love this place?

I read Carolina‘s post about Neil’s Yard and I did not want to miss it, a hidden courtyard in London that you discover following a narrow back alley, an explosion of colours.

Portobello Market, Notting Hill. Do I need to say more? I know the film by heart, pauses, accents and looks included. Every time I come to London I like to walk along Portobello Road, because, as Hugh Grant in Notting Hill says…

Notting Hill, not a bad place to be. There’s the market on weekdays, selling every fruit and vegetable known to man. The tattoo parlour, with a guy outside who got drunk and now can’t remember why he chose ‘I Love Ken’. The racial hair-dressers where everyone comes out looking like the Cookie Monster, whether they like it or not. Then suddenly it’s the weekend, and from break of day, hundreds of stalls appears out of nowhere, filling Portobello Road right up to Notting Hill Gate and thousands of people buy millions of antiques, some genuine… and some not so genuine.

… and at the very beginning of the Portobello Market is impossible not to stop at the Hummingbird Bakery, attracted by the sparkle of the windows that makes it look like a jewelry store. Cupcake with rhubarb and custard, or a diamond ring? I assure you that the choice is difficult, and that cupcake was really good!

Fifteen London. Our pilgrimage on Jamie’s footsteps brought us, after Borrough Market, to the Fifteen, one of his restaurants that is definitely more than a place to eat (well), but also a foundation to help young people from 18 to 24 years, to teach them a job and make them discover a passion.

One of the main reasons that brought me to London, along with friendship and love for England and Pimm’s, was the Food Blogger Connect 2011, the first European conference dedicated to the world of foodbloggers. The first time I was there, during June 2010, it opened up a new and exciting world to me and I began to dream a little ‘bigger’, because my dreams and my plans were intertwined with those of other foodblogger friends.

This year, Food Bloggers Connect has been again a major source of inspiration and courage. I had the opportunity to meet and listen with admiration really interesting people who generously told us about their beginnings and the secrets of their work: among many others, Jaden Hair, Babette Bepaj, Fiona Beckett, Jemma Watts and her, the one I was expecting with trepidation, Béatrice Peltre and her Food Photography workshop.

The workshop with Beatrice was surreal, Alice through the looking-glass effect. I was physically on the set of one of her beautiful pictures, and she did everything with measured gestures, with experience, yet remaining a simple and smiling person, willing to explain every millimetric movement of red currant berries in the composition of her shot.

What I will keep in my heart after the London experience are all those we’ll do, we’ll see, we’ll go, we can, whispered in a low voice during late nights in front of the PC with a cup of green tea with Sari, shouted with Beth and Zita on the subway to cover the buzz of other people or scribbled down on a sheet of paper with Emiko during the most relevant and inspiring speeches at Food Bloggers Connect. We can.

Stuttgart

I left London in the morning, bathed in a thin drizzle, well aware that I’ll be back soon because my favourite city and I have still a lot of things to do together, and I flew to Stuttgart for the last stop of my holiday. Claudia was waiting for me at the airport, my little sister in Erasmus in Germany for 6 months.

We spent 3 days together, but this time, when she walked me to the airport, no tear-jerker scenes like last time (and the first time I did it all by myself on the escalator, she was quiet, I am just a too apprehensive elder sister). Why? well, I’m not less apprehensive, she was coming back home after 2 days!

My sister, who is no longer a tiny girl but an independent young woman speaking a fluent German, took me around Stuttgart and showed me all she adored of the city that welcomed her for 6 months. I especially loved the wonderful museum of modern and contemporary art: it was truly exciting to see for the first time, just a few centimetres away from my nose, some masterpieces by Gauguin, Picasso, Mirò and Kandinskji.

On the plane back home, I brought with me a notebook, trying to give an order and a priority to the hundreds of thoughts and projects that still occupy my mind, and once home I started to check the list step by step. First, make a refreshing lemonade, because it’s important  to make the most out of these lemons!

Second, give you the opportunity to subscribe to my blog feed via e-mail, as to give you a good morning every time I publish a post with a mini email alert in your inbox. Do you like the idea? So just sign up in the top right sidebar of the blog.

Now, I think I have said all I wanted to tell you, so… let’s start with enthusiasm the new Juls’ Kitchen season!

Speaking about lemonade…

• I love this lemonade made by Claudia from Il Gatto Goloso: we both adore red striped paper straws!
• how not to mention Heidi Swanson from 101 Cookbooks, my favourite blogger at the moment for her honest and true approach to food, life and photography, and her blackberry limeade.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Ginger lemonade to start again

You can say whatever you want, you can say that turning on the oven in summer is a sacrilege, that this is the season of ice cream and cold drinks at sunset on a terrace by the sea, with golden sand on your feet. But just consider for a while the everyday life, the reality of those who still get up every day, leave an already scorching bed and go to the office.

Add that the office does not have air conditioning and that your faithful partner is a bottle of jasmine green tea, light and refreshing. You don’t have a problem in finding a car park, because it is everyday granted, though under a merciless sun in a desert and tree-less countryside square. Considered all the elements, do you want to deprive a poor girl of one of the few comforts left?

If I could, I would really choose a life of beach laziness, fresh linen shirts and salads made of tomatoes from the garden, but my holidays are still a bit far, although I can finally see them on the horizon. Therefore, undaunted, I carry on with my habits, and one of them is to turn on the oven and make the muffins for breakfast, to start a new day on a positive and healthy note.

Let me present you once again a Marco Bianchi‘s recipe: it called for a cake mould, but I preferred to bake it into mini muffin moulds, more practical to serve for breakfast or even to bring to the office wrapped in a napkin, a sweet partner to my bottle of green tea!

As you can see, it is a gluten-free recipe, made just with buckwheat flour, which has a rustic interesting flavour, a true and genuine one that reminds me of toasted hazelnuts… if you want to make a totally gluten-free recipe, just make sure to use a suitable baking powder, I found it easily in the supermarket.

BUCKWHEAT FLOUR MUFFINS

Recipe from I magnifici 20, a Marco Bianchi‘s book

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of plain light yoghurt
• 3 cups of buckwheat flour
• 2 cups of sugar cane
• 2 egg whites
• 1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil
• 3 teaspoons of baking powder
• grated zest of 1 organic lemon
• honey
• blueberry jam, raspberry jam (optional)

Directions

1. Pour a cup of plain yoghurt in a bowl, you can use the yoghurt jar as measuring cup for the other ingredients that you are going to add.
2. Combine the flour, the sugar and the baking powder to the yoghurt. Whip the egg whites until stiff, then fold them into the flour, then stir in the lemon zest and 1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil.
3. Spoon the mixture into a loaf pan lined with parchment paper and bake in preheated oven to 180°C for 35 to 40 minutes. As I told you, I used mini muffin moulds lined with paper cups, therefore I baked them just for about 20 minutes.
4. Let them cool and garnish as desired with jam, honey or chocolate spread.

Have a good weekend everyone, enjoy this wonderful summer, the sea, the beach, the mountains, the lake, the city, your little town or even just your home, as I will do!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Buckwheat flour breakfast muffins

You should be interested also in:

1. The Italian breakfast, spelt flour and cocoa ring cake. Guest post for Kulsum of Journey Kitchen
2. Buckwheat flour and bacon pancakes
3. Poppy seed buckwheat cake with fresh red currants for my 30th birthday

It’s tea-time, a few minutes of quiet in the mid-afternoon since I can remember, a break from my homework to be spent with mum, grandma and Claudia. Often an elbow was leaning on my books, the Greek translation or the marketing manual, while the other was struggling to have space on a colourful place-mat between a cup of tea and some biscuits. Those minutes have always been precious, to spend some time together and talk and comment on our day so far. But the tea-time has a meaningful sense even when I’m alone, just my cup of tea and me, following the drawings of the sun on the kitchen floor, to clear up my mind and recharge myself with new energy, dreaming about what would have happened if…

…what would have happened if she had pursued her dream and had turned the tea-time, the moment that she preferred in the day, into her life, to live a never ending tea-time, to stop the clock at that moment when the kettle whistles, your eyes go through the many teas on the shelf to find a suitable flavour for your mood and the cake looks inviting on the table.

Follow me in this story written for La Ciliegina and her contest E’ sempre l’ora del tè, along with a recipe for a sweet and fresh lemon cake and a cup of fruity tea.

IT’S MY CUP OF TEA

Giulia had thought about it for a long time, had weighed up the pros and cons. Job security on the one hand, on the other one risk and adventure: every time she poured the tea into her favourite cup, sometimes amber, sometimes dark and deep, sometimes a transparent and refreshing green, she depicted her dream with vivid colours. A tea room in the neighbouring town, the days spent baking cakes and biscuits to be served in the afternoon, a selection of tea to travel around the world sitting comfortably in an armchair.

Then one afternoon, clutching her cup of steaming tea, she got lost in the wisps of steam rising from the cup, she felt nursed by them, she felt good and safe, and she made ​​her decision. Many days, banks, checks and sleepless nights later, she hung proudly her wooden shop sign over the glass door of her tea room and went back inside into the smell of butter, sugar and vanilla, waiting for the bell above the door to ring as the first customer would step inside. That silver tinkling was not late to come and in the following days it was a symphony of bells.

It worked: she was offering simple things, good for your soul. A quiet, friendly, unpretentious place, where everyone could feel at home, with armchairs of all shapes and sizes, colourful chairs, small tables scattered on a wooden floor that creaked gently under each step. Her tea room was the ideal place for those who wanted to read a book in a peaceful scene, talk for hours with a friend, work on the beloved project or just find themselves, clutching a cup of steaming tea, just as had happened in that afternoon when she had made ​​the decision that changed her life.

She was proud of her glass jars full of cookies: chocolate, lemon, dried fruit and oriental scents, or simple shortbreads for those who wanted to rediscover the taste of childhood in a bite. On the counter there were four or five cakes of the day, they changed in colour, fruit and frosting with the seasons. But there was one cake that was there everyday, being it sunny or rainy, the white chocolate and lemon cake, the one she had served to the first person who stepped into her tea room and, in the very same day, into her life.

Every day, before opening the shop in the afternoon and starting the dance of cakes, cookies and clinking china cups, she treated herself with a cup of tea and a slice of cake, often the lemon and white chocolate cake, to live again the excitement of those black eyes who smiled at her ordering that lemon cake and kept smiling at her every day since then. Chasing her dream and finding the courage to turn it into reality, she had received a gift far more precious than she had dared to hope.

This Giulia’s favourite recipe, a lemon and white chocolate pound cake. In winter, garnished with caramelised oranges or cinnamon pears, it is the perfect match of a cup of steaming tea. During the summer, topped with the most beautiful seasonal red fruit, goes perfectly with a glass of iced tea. It has a very strong citrus hint, softened by the presence of the white chocolate in the dough: the mascarpone and red fruit frosting is attractive and fashionable, but I do assure you the cake is worth a try even on its own, with a dusting of icing sugar.

POUND CAKE WITH LEMON & WHITE CHOCOLATE

The recipe is the well known pound cake and, therefore, weigh the eggs with their shells and use the same weight of flour, sugar and fat. In this case, the fat component is given by the butter and the white chocolate. I have also slightly reduced the amount of sugar not to have an excessively sweet cake. Choose organic lemons in order to use their peel light-heartedly.

Cake ingredients:

• 4 medium eggs, at room temperature (about 260 g)
• 200 g caster sugar
• 100 g white chocolate, melted
• 150 g butter, melted
• 3 organic lemons, grated peel and squeezed juice
• 250 g plain flour
• about 8 g of baking powder

Frosting ingredients:

• 250 g mascarpone cheese
• 100 ml cream, whipped
• grated peel of 1 lemon
• 2 tablespoons icing sugar
• strawberries and cherries
• mint leaves

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C, melt the white chocolate in a double boiler and the butter on a very low heat or in the microwave.
2. Beat the eggs and the sugar until the mixture becomes light and fluffy. Pour in the melted butter and white chocolate and whip the batter.
3. Add the flour, the baking powder, the sieved lemon juice and the lemon peel. Stir until everything is evenly mixed.
4. Pour into a rectangular cake tin, previously greased and floured. Bake for about 1 hour until golden and dry in the centre (use a toothpick to check). Let it cool down completely before unmould.
5. Make the frosting: whisk the mascarpone cheese with the whipped cream, 2 tablespoons of icing sugar and the finely grated zest of a lemon. Spread the mascarpone frosting over the cake, then decorate with plenty of strawberries and cherries and a few mint leaves. Serve immediately or store the cake in a cool place until ready to serve it.

The tea. I chose my favourite tea of the moment, bought in London at Greenwich market. It is Wilkins and Edwards’ Notting Hill, a black tea flavoured with mango, passion fruit, orange and marigold. I love it steaming hot and black, without adding any sugar, or cold with a slice of lemon. It is strong, energizing and fruity, a perfect match with a slice of this pound cake.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Lemon & White chocolate cake

You should be interested also in:

1. Lilac muffins: when white chocolate meets Hibiscus tea
2. Chocolate & banana muffins + rum! Forever Nigella #2 “Seduced by Chocolate”
3. Buckwheat cake with chocolate

Today is the 5th Global Day of Slow Living and, to start with the right step, this post comes a little later than the usual time. I am a woman of her word, so let it be a slow day. A slow living day gives you the chance to regain your time, your natural rhythm, your spaces. A slow day makes you appreciate the small joys of life, those moments you usually take for granted but that make a difference. A slow day is a quality day.

So let’s start with a mea culpa. For some months now I do not know what a slow day is. I got the bad habit of making at least two things together. I answer to an e-mail while reading an article I am interested in. I attend my hydrobike class while thinking about my upcoming post or, still worst, about what I’ll be cooking in the next month. I watch the TV while reading a magazine, or while updating my blog, or maybe even while cooking something.

This frenzy is due to the moment: I am optimistic and I can feel positive vibes in the air. You have just one life to live and this beautiful and frenzy moment is to be lived moment by moment. But there is always the other side of the coin to be considered. There are precious moments that should be savoured pure, without outer intrusions. Today we will put more commas than usual in our sentences, we need a break once in a while!

Here it is an exercise to do to regain calm and tranquility, to give breath to your breathless mind: this is a pannacotta made with agar agar powder, in 4 layers. As a recipe in itself it is really simple, once you become familiar with agar agar, but it calls for patience and slowness. The four layers, to be neat and precise, want you to deal with the recipe in a slow mood.

You pour a little amount of cream, then you wait for it to get firm, to support the second layer. The exercise is right here: you wait, you take it easy, you sit down and relax. It is strictly forbidden to do something else at the same time, strictly forbidden to check e-mails and texts, FORBIDDEN! You can leaf through a magazine, calmly, reading and feeling the paper under your fingers.

Eventually, you should feel relaxed and satisfied and you could savour, spoon after spoon, a little glass of lemon & honey pannacotta as a reward for your slow day!

Recipe for 8 pots (100 ml each)

Pannacotta ingredients:

• 500 ml cream
• 50 g caster sugar
• 2 tsp powdered agar agar
• 1 vanilla pod split open

Pour the cream and the sugar in a small saucepan. Add the vanilla bean and warm on low heat until it start to simmer gently. Add in the agar agar powder and whisk to dissolve it. Let it simmer for a minute and remove from the heat.

Lemon jelly ingredients:

• 150 ml lemon juice (the strained juice of about 2 small lemons)
• 100 ml water
• 2 tbsp caster sugar
• 1 heaping tsp powdered agar agar
• peel of 1 lemon

Squeeze two lemons to have 150 ml of filtered juice. Add 100 ml of water and place over low heat with 2 tbs of sugar and the peel of a lemon. As soon as it gets to the boil, add the agar agar powder and whisk to dissolve. Let it boil for one minute and remove from the heat.

To serve:

• acacia honey
• toasted pine nuts

Pour the pannacotta in small glasses or pots in a layer of about 1 cm. Let cool a few minutes: when the pannacotta is set – it will need just a few minutes with agar agar – pour over the liquid acacia honey with a spoon in a layer of about 5 mm. Pour over again some pannacotta, making a layer of about 1 cm and let it cool again, so that it will get firm.

Now pour over the lemon jelly and make a layer of about 5mm. Wait a minute and decorate with slightly toasted pine nuts. If the jelly or the pannacotta are already set and you can’t pour them into the glasses, no worries! Just bring them back to the heat and they will get liquid again, ready to be poured in your favourite pots. Let your honey and lemon pannacotta pots rest for an hour and enjoy!

Notes to the ingredients. I tried with 3 different kinds of honey: acacia, eucalyptus and lavender wildflowers. Acacia is the best for texture – fluid and malleable – and flavour, as it matches well with the citrus jelly without adding too much sweetness. Try with the honey you prefer. I’d be curious to test chestnut honey, liquid such as acacia but with a bitter note that would make this pannacotta perhaps even more interesting.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Lemon & Honey Pannacotta

You should be interested also in:

1. Lemon & White chocolate cake
2. My recipe for happiness: compote fruit and lemon curd mousse
3. DB Challenge: Biscuit Joconde Imprime and an Entremets dessert

This has been a real challenge, a double, triple challenge. The first time the pattern was perfect, elegant, a real designer masterpiece! But the filling was definitely too liquid, so the external biscuit mould got soggy in a few hours, loosing its perfect and regular shape. Beside this, I decides to use two different fillings in the same time, a brandy & vanilla Bavarian cream in the bottom and a coffee and cardamom Bavarian cream on the top. Giulia, aren’t there too many flavours in the same time? But my answer was nothing else but disdainful: Mum, com’on! I’m a foodblogger, I have to experiment, I took the oath over the sacred Nigella’s book! Silenced, she went away shaking her head.

I kept on adding elements and ingredients. A layer of whipped cream, spread on the top, to cover the soggy biscuit and the way too liquid Bavarian cream. Uhm, what else? Got it! I need something fanciful to capture the eye and conceal the flaws. I melted some sugar to make a hazelnut brittle, like an elegant stained glass. My idea was to decorate with refinement the top of the Entremet, diverting the attention from the melting bottom. As soon as I brought it to the table, my guests asked: what are them? broken glasses?? We need a spoon to serve the dessert? Mmh, sweet, but, which is the main flavour here? Total failure! My mistake? Exaggeration! So I decided to keep it simple with my second attempt and the result was definitely a huge success!

It’s like the perfect evening. You can stir up all the best ingredients, like up-to-date music, expensive wine, a fancy venue, extravagant dresses and VIP people, but you are likely to fail, when you lose control. So choose just a few simple ingredients, true friends, hearty food, a birthday to celebrate and an elegant yet simple dessert and you’ll have the perfect evening! To tell the truth, my second attempt was the birthday cake of my friend Antonella, we celebrated her special day in a cosy osteria in the Florence centre, just the few of us, and it was one of the best evenings ever! So – note to self – keep it simple, and you are likely to succeed!

The January 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Astheroshe of the blog Accro. She chose to challenge everyone to make a Biscuit Joconde Imprime to wrap around an Entremets dessert. I’ll leave Astheroshe the task to explain what a Joconde Imprime and a Entremets are:

A joconde imprime (French Baking term) is a decorative design baked into a light sponge cake providing an elegant finish to desserts / tarts / entremets / formed in ring molds. A joconde batter is used because it bakes into a moist, flexible cake. The cake batter may be tinted or marbleized for a further decorative effect. This Joconde/spongecake requires attentive baking so that it remains flexible to easily conform to the molds. If under baked it will stick to the baking mat. It over baked it will dry out and crack. Once cooled, the sponge may be cut into strips to line any shape ring mold. Entremets (French baking term) – an ornate dessert with many different layers of cake and pastry creams in a mold, usually served cold.

The other task was to find a filling for the Entremets. On my second attempt I decided to use a basic version of the Bavarian cream I had already posted, made interesting and fresh just with the adding of the lemon juice. The result of the experiment was a silky and dense cream with a distinctive citrus flavour, a perfect marriage to the nutty Biscuit Joconde.

Joconde Sponge

Ingredients:

• 85 g almond flour/meal - *You can also use hazelnut flour, just omit the butter –> I used hazelnut flour!
• 75 g icing sugar
• 25 g cake flour *See note below
• 3 large eggs
• 3 large egg whites
• 10 g white granulated sugar or caster sugar
• 30 g unsalted butter, melted

*Note: How to make cake flour: here

In a clean mixing bowl whip the egg whites and white granulated sugar to firm, glossy peeks.

Reserve in a separate clean bowl to use later. Sift almond flour, confectioner’s sugar, cake flour. (This can be done into your dirty egg white bowl).

On medium speed, add the eggs a little at a time. Mix well after each addition. Mix until smooth and light. (If using a stand mixer use blade attachment. If hand held a whisk attachment is fine, or by hand.).

Fold in one third reserved whipped egg whites to almond mixture to lighten the batter. Fold in remaining whipped egg whites. Do not over mix. Fold in melted butter. Reserve batter to be used later.

Patterned Joconde-Décor Paste

Ingredients:

• 200 g unsalted butter, softened
• 200 g icing sugar
• 7 large egg whites
• 220 g cake flour
• Food coloring gel, paste or liquid

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy (use stand mixer with blade, hand held mixer, or by hand). Gradually add egg whites. Beat continuously. Fold in sifted flour. Tint batter with colouring to desired colour, if not making cocoa variation.

Preparing the Joconde – How to make the pattern

Spread a thin even layer of décor paste approximately 1/4 inch (5 millimeter) thick onto silicone baking mat with a spatula, or flat knife. Place mat on an upside down baking sheet. The upside down sheet makes spreading easier with no lip from the pan. Pattern the décor paste – Here is where you can be creative.

Make horizontal /vertical lines (you can use a knife, spatula, cake/pastry comb). Squiggles with your fingers, zig zags, wood grains. Be creative whatever you have at home to make a design can be used. Or use a piping bag. Pipe letters, or polka dots, or a piped design. If you do not have a piping bag. Fill a ziplock bag and snip off corner for a homemade version of one. Slide the baking sheet with paste into the freezer.

Freeze hard. Approx 15 minutes. Remove from freezer. Quickly pour the Joconde batter over the design. Spread evenly to completely cover the pattern of the Décor paste. Bake at 475ºF /250ºC until the joconde bounces back when slightly pressed, approx. 15 minutes. You can bake it as is on the upside down pan. Yes, it is a very quick bake, so watch carefully. Cool. Do not leave too long, or you will have difficulty removing it from mat. Flip cooled cake on to a powdered sugared parchment paper. Remove silpat. Cake should be right side up, and pattern showing! (The powdered sugar helps the cake from sticking when cutting.)

Preparing the Joconde for Molding

Trim the cake of any dark crispy edges. You should have a nice rectangle shape. Decide how thick you want your “Joconde wrapper”. Traditionally, it is ½ the height of your mold. This is done so more layers of the plated dessert can be shown. However, you can make it the full height.

Once your height is measured, then you can cut the cake into equal strips, of height and length. (Use a very sharp paring knife and ruler.) Make sure your strips are cut cleanly and ends are cut perfectly straight. Press the cake strips inside of the mould, decorative side facing out.

Once wrapped inside the mold, overlap your ends slightly. You want your Joconde to fit very tightly pressed up to the sides of the mold. Then gently push and press the ends to meet together to make a seamless cake. The cake is very flexible so you can push it into place. You can use more than one piece to “wrap “your mould, if one cut piece is not long enough. The mould is done, and ready to fill.

Making Bavarian Cream filling

Ingredients:

• gelatine, 4 sheets
• milk, 400 ml
• egg yolks, 3
• caster sugar, 100 g
• organic lemon, 1
• cream, 500 ml

Draw gelatine sheets into cold water.

Crack eggs open and place egg yolks in a mixing bowl (you know what to do with white eggs, don’t you?). Add sugar and whisk eggs with a wooden spoon until you have a light cream.

Add the lemon peel to the milk and bring the milk to the boil. Remove the lemon rind and pour it little by little over egg mixture, sieving it through a colander and stirring continuously. Add the juice of one lemon and stir to mix. Place on low flame and bring to simmer, stirring. As soon as it start to simmer, remove the mixture from the heat and add the squeezed gelatine, stir until it is dissolved thoroughly.

Sieve again the mixture and set aside to cool completely. When it is cold, whip the cream until firm and fold it into the egg mixture.

Fill the Joconde mould and put in the fridge for at least three hours.

To cover the , use Italian Meringue from this recipe.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

DB Challenge: Biscuit Joconde Imprime and an Entremets dessert

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1. Dobos Torte, the 127-year-old Hungarian dessert
2. DB Challenge: crostata with 2 fillings {chocolate & tahini and chestnut pastry cream}
3. The Tuscan pine nut cake – a recipe with a story

Once in a while I feel like Greece, I feel one of those cravings deeply rooted in your stomach that makes you leaf through a written and bookmarked guide, daydreaming. How many times have I been to Greece? Well, let’s see, not counting that time when I came close to it but then I gave up because I couldn’t find a travel mate… more or less… never! Yes, I reckon it sounds a bit weird, but Your Honour and members of the Jury, this love has its good reasons, and if you grant me a little time I can explain you my good reasons!

First of all, I studied Ancient Greek at high school for 5 years. There was the aorist, the perfect and all those hypothetical periods not easy to understand, the Rocci dictionary that made me lose sleep, sense and diopters, irregular verbs and the metric… but along with these terrible threats there were poetry, drama, myth, beauty, culture, humor, deep passions, timeless art and philosophy. This caused a spark of curiosity that crept into my heart and into my head, I became curious to finally see and live that land that had so influenced my teenage years.

This is the noble, dignified and dignifying reason. Then there’s another one… I just feel like Toula Portokalos, but really so much! For those who do not remember Toula, she is the star of My Big fat Greek wedding.

I have seen and seen again the movie, hundreds of times, I know the lines by heart, I laugh to tears and I am touched like a stupid when he says “I love you” “Why?… Why do you love me?” “Because I came alive when I met you“. Ian Miller where are you? I’m just like Toula since I was a chubby little girl with important eyebrows, I used to look at my classmates and their white sandwiches without the crust… I went through that phase too (I was going through a phase up until…now. I was ‘frump girl), with grey-sh sweaters, fuzzy hair, glasses and braces… and then a parade, a dizzying succession of family meals during which you need a wide-angle to make the group photo, and here I am, single at the age of 30, single since an immemorial time, with a large and loud family that keeps asking me when I will finally find a good Greek.. ehm Tuscan man just like all my friends, cousins and relatives, already happily married!

I keep on stumbling, wrapping myself into the telephone wires, serving coffee to the wrong person waiting for Ian Miller to come… Ian Miller or his representative, someone interesting, fun, someone who makes me laugh! One thing is certain, even now I laugh a lot, and I do dream the same!

So you have to take me as I am, with this passion for Greece made up of cookbooks, romantic hopes built on a film, Sirtaki cd played endlessly until someone comes to unplug the stereo, detailed but never realized travel itineraries. I have a mental image that makes me feel good, a little white house on a background of a deep blue sea, a fig tree and a goat, a sun-faded red beach-robe, a straw hat and a kitchen full of Mediterranean flavors.

When I want to get in that kitchen, Tessa Kiros’s cookbooks are my passport. Days ago, captured by the umpteenth craving of Greece, I opened Tessa’s last book, Food from many Greek kitchens, and I focused on a phrase that tasted good:

This is my friend Annette’s recipe. She is very good with dessert, I love the pureness of this pie. Syrup Greek sweets are always served with a glass of cold water. Greeks have always loved making an outing to a café or zaharoplasteio (confectioneries) to have a sweet.

I do not know why this passage hit me so much, but soon after I was stirring the custard of this Galaktoboureko, a milk phyllo pastry pie.

Ingredients:

• butter, 120 g melted to golden
• phyllo sheets, 12 at least 30 x 38 cm in size

Syrup

• sugar, 280 g
• lemon peel, 1 long strip

Filling

• sugar, 225 g
• fine semolina, 75 g
• cornflour, 20 g
• whole eggs, 2
• egg yolks, 4
• milk, 1,5 litres
• vanilla extract, 2 teaspoons
• a nice grating of fresh nutmeg

To make the syrup, put the sugar and lemon peel in a small saucepan and add 185 ml of water. Put over a medium heat and stir until the sugar dissolves. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and cool. Preheat the oven to 175°C.

For the filling, put the sugar, semolina and cornflour in the bowl of an electric mixer. Add all the eggs and beat until thick and pale. Heat the milk, vanilla and nutmeg in a large saucepan to just below boiling. Add a ladleful to the eggs and mix in. Add another ladleful, mix, and continue until all the milk has been added. Scrape back into the pot and return it to the heat on low f 5 to 10 minutes, whisking often until it is very thick and nothing sticks to the bottom. When it’s thickened and is just at the point before boiling, remove from the heat.

Have the phyllo sheets ready, covered by a tea towel to prevent them drying out. Brush the base and sides of a 22 x 30 oven proof dish with butter. Lay 1 sheet of phyllo on your work surface and brush with butter. Cover with another sheet, brush it with butter and continue in this way until you have a stack of 6 sheets. Lift them up and fit into the buttered dish, covering the base and sides. Press them gently into the corner of the dish to make a nest for the filling. Pour the filling on top and smooth the surface.

Make another stack of 6 buttered phyllo sheets. Lift this onto the pie, covering the filling. Press the two overhanging layers of phyllo together, trimming these to a couple of centimetres. Ross these edges over on themselves to seal the filling in. Using a sharp knife, gently score the top pastry into 12 pieces, only cutting through the top sheet or two of phyllo. Flick a little cold water here and there, to prevent the phyllo curling.

Bake until crisp and golden, rest for a couple of minutes the pour the syrup over the top, covering all the pie. Now leave for at least 1 hour before serving to allow the syrup to settle as the pie cools.

Syrup Greek sweets are always served with a glass of cold water. Greeks have always loved making an outing to a café or zaharoplasteio (confectionaries) to have a sweet.

Aren’t you feeling already better? Don’t you feel on a Greek island? I confess that while I’m writing this post I am listening to the Athenians cd, with Zorba the Greek playing sly. The guide is here at hand, the sweet memory of this simple and pure dessert, as Tessa says, just like the milk and the lemon, still lingers in my mouth and in my head… maybe this will be the good year, what do you think? for what? for a holiday in Greece! or Ian Miller, who knows?

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Galaktoboureko – a Greek phyllo custard pie and my love for Greece!

You should be interested also in:

1. My Greek dinner: rice pudding
2. DB Challenge: Biscuit Joconde Imprime and an Entremets dessert
3. My Canelés de Bordeaux and my Carnival fancy dresses

Over the past two weekends I gave complete freedom to my culinary vein to put aside a good supply of recipes to deal peacefully with the upcoming summer, as it promises to be not only terribly hot but also very busy: I cooked meat, desserts, pasta… but then, again, it happens all the times! You make a recipe and you fall in love. A texture, a smell or a memory and she creeps into your heart, asking for attention, she wants the front page the next morning. I tried to take time, to convince her that it is not kind for the latest addition to outdo the older recipes, waiting patiently in line for days, with photos ready and a story in my mind. But she has the enthusiasm of youth on her side, and she definitely won!

On my quest to discover new flours (at least for me), I bought at NaturaSì shop a stone-ground corn flour from organic farm, a deep, intense and joyful yellow flour. On Cavoletto’s book there is a recipe for a polenta cake with raspberries: my first intention was to make it step by step without any change, but then I met Tiffany berries at the supermarket!

I decided to improvise and let the yellow guide me… yellow as the school bus from which I could see the blond head of Claudia when I walked her to the bus stop to go to kindergarten, yellow as the yellow cab in New York that one day I’ll stop with a whistle, charged with bags after a day of shopping, yellow as the solar plexus chakra, the fire that burns inside and shines like a jewel, the individual willpower, charisma and effectiveness, yellow as Aunt Theresa’s limoncello*, always present in our freezer.

So I created a corn cake with limoncello, with a rustic texture given by corn flour but so deliciously scented thanks to the addition of limoncello. A scent that fills the kitchen while cooking, but gives its best when the cake is cold and a bite explodes in your mouth with all its aromas.

* Limoncello is a lemon liqueur produced in Southern Italy, made from lemon rinds, alcohol, water, and sugar. It is bright yellow in color, sweet and lemony, but not sour since it contains no lemon juice.

Ingredients:

• butter, 225 gr
• caster sugar, 225 gr
• corn flour, 175 gr
• eggs, 4
• limoncello, 100 ml
• flour 00, 60 gr
• baking powder, 2 teaspoons
• limon thyme, a few sprigs
  
• more butter and corn flour to butter and flour the mould
  

Beat softened butter with sugar. Add eggs one at a time, then corn flour, plain flours and baking powder sifted together. Add the lemon thyme leaves and about 100 ml of limoncello.

Grease a round baking pan of 24 cm in diameter, sprinkle corn flour and remove excess. Pour the batter into the cake tin and bake in preheated oven to 190°C for 40 minutes. Let it cool down completely before serving. Dust with icing sugar.

Extra tip. For adults, not for little children: you may drizzle the cake with extra limoncello when serving: although I am a former teetotal, I assure you it is really, really, *really* delicious!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Corn cake with limoncello: yellow raised to the second power

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I know, I know that the compote fruit at first sight is not so poetic, and indeed can refer to a natural remedy against a peculiar physical situation, since often we end up eating cooked fruit when we’re not exactly in sparkling form. But I love compote fruit. That’s it, simple as an apple thinly sliced and cooked over low heat just with a little  bit of water, with anything else added. Or you can apply some variation on apple compote: sugar – white or cane sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, cardamom (my favorite flavor to the apple), lemon and other fruit added, raisins or pine nuts… an infinite range of combinations that can turn a sad  and withered apple into a joyful cup of pleasure.

Take one evening a bit down in the dumps, a dinner not too tasty, when you’re willing to cook something good and sweet but you do not want to throw to the winds all the efforts of a week of dieting… What’s better than a compote of fruit, eaten warm cuddled up on the couch, holding the roundness of a soothing cup, perhaps a bit chipped, but beloved and known as a membr of the family, tasting on your tongue the sweetness of velvety fruit, in your nose ovewhelming spices and in your eyes the amber fruit. This is one of my recipes for happiness, something that puts me in harmony with the world and makes me smile back at the end of the day!

I found this way of cooking the fruit into the May issue of Saveurs, it is a recipe from the book Nature by Ducasse, dedicated to natural cuisine. Beside the compote of fruit, a delicate mousse with a special touch, given by the lemon curd, for which I followed the recipe well established and quite perfect, that you can find here.

Ingredients for compote of fruit:

• strawberries
• ripe red plums
  
• peaches in syrup
  
• extra virgin olive oil, 1 tablespoon
• honey, 1 tablespoon
• vanilla, 1 pod split open
  
• thime, 1 sprig

Rinse strawberries and remove the stalk, if they are small leave them whole, otherwise cut them in half. Rinse plums and cut into slices. Drain and slice the peaches in syrup. Heat the honey in a pan with a tablespoon of olive oil, then add the fruit, the vanilla pod and thyme spring. Let simmer for a few minutes until all the juice is absorbed and the fruit starts to caramelize. Put aside and let cool.

Ingredients for lemon curd mousse:

• lemon curd, 250 gr (use all the lemon curd you want, I love the mousse very lemony and citrus, so I added a bit more lemon curd!)
  
• cream to whip, 500 ml
• egg whites, 2
• icing sugar, 2 tablespoons
• caster sugar, 2 tablespoons
• lemon juice, a few drops
  

Whip cream until stiff and when it is firm fold in powdered sugar. Whip egg whites until stiff adding a tablespoon of lemon juice, for at least 7-8 minutes. When they are firm and form soft peaks, add 2 tablespoons of sugar and keep on whipping until they are glossy and firm. Mix whipped cream, whipped egg whites and lemon curd very gently, until you obtain a velvety and smooth mousse.

Making little cups:

• fruit compote
  
• lemon curd mousse
  
• meringues

Cover the bottom of the cups with lemon curd mousse, add a few tablespoons of cooked fruit and crumble meringues over fruit.

Verdict. You know I love lemon curd, but the lemon curd mousse is a sensational discovery. You can still find the freshness of lemon curd, but everything is tempered by the richness of the cream, which creates a velvety mousse where to sink a spoon after another until you see the end. The fruit compote with vanilla and thyme is fragrant and goes perfectly with the mousse. The final touch of crumbled meringues adds a crunchy sensation to the fruit. With a recipe like this, possibly eaten in a sunny lawn with a few friends, I challenge you to not let rise again a smile on your lips!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

My recipe for happiness: compote fruit and lemon curd mousse

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1. Lemon Curd and Red Scarlet Jam Tart
2. Jamie Oliver’s Clementine Curd
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These are my father’s favorite ones, along with granola bars and a kind of muffins I made at the very beginning of my blogging activity, made with orange and chocolate. Why these? Because, in his own words, they are good, sweet, fragrant with lemon and are exceptionally soft and smooth. Besides that, candied lemon zest is the perfect complement, along with a golden and citrus syrup (ok, I added a few notes of color!). I love them a lot as well, but for a matter of color matching.

Let’s have a few steps back to high school time for a moment… ok, maybe more than a few steps. I have never studied History of Arts  in a proper way, but it was one of my favorite subjects. I have mixed memories, but some of them remained vivid, especially those related to one of my favorite artists, Michelangelo. I like the way he paints bodies with a plastic style, as if sculpted. I love especially his use of colors, resolute, brilliant and vivid, based on the principle of complementary contrast.

Red and green, blue and orange, yellow and purple. The colors do not melt or fade into one another, but they are intertwined, creating a shimmering effect of bright colors, full of energy, an explosion! I remember the dress of a female figure in the Sistine Chapel, yellow and purple: it was really beautiful. Since then I love the juxtaposition of these two colors and when I found these cutie purple paper cups I couldn’t help but look for a yellow recipe, the most yellow I could find, to recreate once again this wonderful contrast of complementary colors. That is how the presentation of these cupcakes with lemon syrup was born, recipe taken with some changes (mainly the removal of orange) from the cookbook Cupcakes – small luxuries for the palate.

Ingredients for 36 tiny cupcakes:

• cold butter, 125 gr diced
• granulated sugar, 230 gr
• grated lemon rind, 4 tablespoons
• eggs, 3
• milk, 125 ml
• self rising flour, 185 gr

Lemon syrup:

• sugar, 230 gr
• lemon rind thinly sliced
  

Preheat oven to 180°C. Add diced cold butter, sugar and grated lemon rind in a saucepan and stir over low heat until the sugar melts, then transfer everything into a large bowl. Fold in eggs, milk and flour and whisk just to mix with electric whips.
Spoon the mixture into muffin molds lined with paper cups and bake for 15 minutes until a toothpick stuck in center comes out clean, then let them cool on a rack.

To make lemon syrup, combine 200ml of water and sugar in a saucepan and warm over low heat, stirring, until the sugar melts. Add the lemon zest and let simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally until the liquid becomes syrupy and golden.

Decorate each tiny cake with zest and a few spoonfuls of syrup.

P.S. ready for a surprise? Saturday there will be a Mad Hatter Tea Party at me with many friends and sweet treats .. Sunday I’ll publish the photos!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Lemon syrup cupcakes, Michelangelo’s style

You should be interested also in:

1. My recipe for happiness: compote fruit and lemon curd mousse
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Oh how nice indeed! this is one of the few competitions where I have been absolutely on time! Now I’m gonna tell you a little about this  initiative held by Genny. The Torta della bontà – Cake of Goodness -  is a contest that is a poem, a chance to give free rein to fantasy and desire for good, but above all a way to be better people, because all cakes will be made by Albertone for his Angle of goodness, to raise funds for the Association La vita è un dono, for the research on the propionic acidemia.

The goal is to make a birthday cake. Now, usually at home we blow out candles on a soft sponge cake, stuffed with cream and chocolate, frosted and decorated. But for this initiative I wanted something more, I wanted my OWN birthday cake, a cake that – at first sight -  could be defined without any reasonable doubt Giulia’s birthday cake!

I wanted a cake with a bit of the Mediterranean and a bit of England inside, otherwise I wouldn’t be happy! In my mind, in fact, I would celebrate my birthday in British-style – what about an high tea? with a slice of this tart, which contains in itself two very different souls, both alive into myself. Representing my English Miss (I do not measn a beauty queen!) side, a jam of wild strawberries (red scarlet, to call a spade) and a classic of Her Majesty, lemon curd. Featuring the Mediterranean sun, organic lemons from Sorrento, which contributed to make the most delicious lemon curd ever tasted!

Pate Sucrée ingredients - from Michel Roux recipe

• flour, 250 gr - I needed 300 gr of flour, maybe my eggs were large…
• butter, 100 gr diced and softened
• confectioner sugar, 100 gr sifted
• salt, 1 pinch
• eggs, 2 at room temperature

Lemon Curd ingredients - from Carol Tennant’s recipe, Book of Preserves, Women’s Institute

• golden caster sugar, 325 gr
• juice and zest of 4 lemons
• unsalted butter, 125 gr cut into small pieces
• eggs, 4 lightly beaten

Other ingredients:

• Wild strawberries jam, at least 200 gr – I used an original English jam bought in Rome with my foodies friends

Making sucrée. Pour the flour on a work surface of marble, make a well in the centre and add diced and softend butter, confectioner sugar and salt and work them with your fingertips. Work in the flour slowly, working the dough until it gets a crumbly consistency.

Make a fountain again with flour crumbs and add the eggs, knead with your fingers until the mixture begins to blend and get together. At this point knead the dough as it was bread dough until it becomes smooth.

Make a dough ball, wrap it in cling film and let rest in refrigerator for about 2 hours before using it.

Make lemon curd. Instead of grating the lemon peel, peel it with a sharp knife and then tie lemon peel together with a string to form a bundle. Thus making, the lemon curd remains more velvetyand soft. Put the sugar, juice, butter cut into small pieces and beaten eggs into a large heatproof bowl on top of a pan of simmering water. Add the bunch of lemon peel as well.The bottom of the bowl mustn’t touch the water. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon until the mixture is thick and coats the back of the spoon. I had to stir for at least 20 minutes. Remove the bunch of lemon peel (do not lick it, it  burns!) and let it cool.

Final assembly. Roll out the dough into a sheet of approximately 3 mm thick. I needed only half of my pastry, because I used a rectangular pan, narrow and long (beautiful, can I say it? Beautiful, bought in Rome at Peroni). Grease and flour the mold, then line with the dough and make it adhere to the bottom and edges.

Prick with a fork the sucrée pastry and let it cool again in the fridge for 20 minutes. Cover it with a sheet of baking paper and some weights (I used dried pulses) and bake it in a preheated oven to 180°C for 10 minutes. Remove weights and paper and bake for another 5 minutes.

Spread generously wild strawberries jam on the bottom of the tart, then fill it up with lemon curd. Put in oven for another 20 minutes, then remove it and let it cool completely.

And we end up singing …

A very merry
Unbirthday to you,
To you, A very merry
Unbirthday to you,
To you,
It’s great to
Drink to someone ,
And I guess that
You will do,
A very merry
Unbirthday to you!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Lemon Curd and Red Scarlet Jam Tart

You should be interested also in:

1. My recipe for happiness: compote fruit and lemon curd mousse
2. Jamie Oliver’s Clementine Curd
3. Lemon & White chocolate cake

Here I am after a great weekend at the seaside with my friends in Liguria. Once more I’ve had the proof that simplicity is fundamental and amazing! Whatsoever context you are examinig, you only need a few ingredients to make the recipe work. Fists quality ingredients, a simple and essential recipe, a pinch of magic… and the result could really leave you without words! This is true for Saturday’s fish recipes, for our weekend spent in between food, laughs, pictures and friends… and  for this marmalade recipe, made just with sugar, lemons and vanilla.

You can find this recipe into Falling Cloudberries, A world of family recipe, a Tessa Kiros recipe book, one of the most amazing cook book I have ever found. It is organized into chapters – Finland, Greece, Cyprus, South Africa, Italy – according to the country a recipe belongs to: you can browse through memories, recipes and people in a wonderful trip throughout time and space. This recipe comes from the Italian section.

Ingredients:

• organic lemons, 6
• sugar, 1.25 kg
• vanilla pod, 1 split in a half

Choose organic lemons, with a thin peel. Rinse them well, remove top and bottom of each lemon and slice them thinly. Remove all seeds and divide lemon slices into four parts. Put lemon into a large and shallow pan and pour in 1,25 lt of water. Bring to the boil and let it simmer for about 45 minutes, stirring frequently, until lemon slices get soft.

Add sugar and a vanilla pod split in a half. Let it simmer for about 45 more minutes: you can add more water if needed. To test if it ready, put a few drops of marmalade on a plate and bend it: if it won’t run but it will remain quite firm and jelly, it’s ready. Let it cool down for a little while before you test it, and don’t let the sugar get too brown!

You can eat all your marmelade at once, or you can make an attempt to save it for some months! Use sterilized jars (wash them into boiling water) and pour marmalade inside. Close them tight, put them into a large pot (use a table cloth to separate them) and cover them with water. Bring it to the boil and let it simmer for 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and let the jars cool completely into the water. You can store your marmalade in your cupboard for months and months, and when you’ll open the jar it will be as fresh as just made!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Lemon & Vanilla Marmalade

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My aim today was to make a first course: choose a traditional recipe and make something new out of it. I decided to choose as starting point the most classic meat sauce, changing somthing on the way! First of all, the kind of meat: not veal nor pork, rabbit instead – white, light, Tuscan. Then, the cooking method: I decided to to use tomato as in the usual meat sauce. Finally, I cut rabbit with a sharp knife by hands, to have a rough and rustic sauce. My idea was to create a sauce similar for taste and look to a traditional meat dish we really appreciate in my family, pot roasted rabbit.

To give a special taste to this recipe, you need special ingredients to enrich the dish with deep taste and freshness… have a look in the following picture!

The dish would have been totally different without this excellent Garofalo pasta, an organic lemon and a good quality lard.

::::: PASTA WITH RABBIT MEAT SAUCE, LARD AND LEMON PEEL :::::

Ingredients:

• rabbit, 1/2
• rabbit liver, about 100 gr
• carrot, 1 medium
• celery, 1 stalk
• scallion, 1
• sage, about 10 leaves
• rosmary, 1 sprig
• extra virgin olive oil
• white wine, about 100 ml
• salt and pepper
• organic lemon
• lard

Bone the rabbit. I’m not able to bone anything, but armed with patience, meat scissors and a sharp knife I removed al the meat from the bone. Pay attention not to leave untrustworthy little bones hides into the meat. I obtained about 400 gr of rabbit meat and diced it thinly. Keep the liver entire: if your rabbit is without liver, you can buy it separately.

Chop carrot, scallion and celery thinly. Cover the bottom of a non stick pan with extra virgin olive oil and add the chopped vegetables, sage leaves and a sprig of rosmary. Rinse cut rabbit meat and liver under running water and put it into the pan, without draining it completely. You can turn on the fire just now. Season with salt and pepper.

After about 25 minutes, when the rabbit meat will be white and amost cooked, add white wine and let it evaporate, keeping on stirring and trying to crumble liver with a wooden spoon. After 10 more minutes – when the rabbit will be golden and the liver crumbled – the sause is ready.

Cook pasta in a largo potwith boiling salted water, according to packaging instructions. When it is cooked, drain well and season with rabbit sauce. Divide seasoned pasta into serving dishes, slice lard thinly and lay one slice over each dish, so that the heat of the pasta will melt it down. Grate lemon peel over the pasta and eat immediatly: it will give a fresh, gentel and unusual hint to the dish.  Give it a try!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Pasta with rabbit meat sauce, lard and lemon peel

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1. My big fat Italian meat sauce
2. Grandma Menna’s Kitchen: pot roasted rabbit
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