Short Sushi Ideas

Here are just a couple of quick sushi ideas. 

Vegetarians, look away, Matic also made salmon sushi (not me, I don't touch dead fishies)!

We served fresh sliced cucumbers with sesame on the side, along with tofu that's been grilled in soy sauce and sesame seeds (put the seeds on the pan first, the the tofu, flip it over and pour soy sauce over everything and serve), which I pretty much make every chance I get. We also put out ginger and wasabi, of course.

For the filling, we used avocado, marinated shitake mushrooms, cucumber, egg omllet and lots of seame! Some of them were filled with salmon and cucumber.

This was the first sushi that we made ourselves, so I hope it's recognizable!

Muffins, as promised! (a.k.a. The Poof)

Here are the muffin pictures I promised to go with my basic muffin recipe. This one is some kind of spelt-banana-chocolate-pecan muffin miracle.They came out extra puffy, so excuse the deformed poofs at the top.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to say there is NO WHITE WHEAT and NO SUGAR in this recipe.


INGREDIENTS
2 cups spelt flour
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1 cup goat milk
1 tsp. bicarbonate soda
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup (roasted and chopped) pecans
4 super ripe bananas

3 eggs
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips


PROCESS
Mash up the bananas with a fork. Whisk the eggs and mix them with the bananas. Add the milk and the maple syrup and the chocolate chips. In another bowl, combine all the dry ingredients, blend them together. Then combine the wet and dry ingredients and stir them together.
Simply spoon the dough into the muffin cups (that you have prepared) and stick it in the 180 C for 20 minutes.

Mother of Mini Cakes

I am finally reunited with my darling mother and in our total bliss, we bought adorably cute cake molds and decided to try them out. This is what happened:

Buckwheat Lemon-Poppy Mini Cakes

INGREDIENTS
4 tablespoons poppy seeds
Juice of 2 lemons
1/2 cup brown (preferably molasses) sugar
2 vanilla sugars
2 cups buckwheat flour
1/2 cup kamut flour
1/2 cup goat milk
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate soda (so it gets fluffy!)

PROCESS
This is all very much like making muffin dough, except without the muffin tops.
If you know what I mean...


Whisk together the eggs and sugars and then add the milk. Combine the rest of the ingredients in another bowl. Then mix them all together and scoop the batter into the cake molds. Bake for 25min at 180 C.

Once baked, you will most likely have to cut off the bottoms of the cakes, so that they will lay flat on your plate, because it can always get poofy.


This recipe is naturally dedicated to mom herself, the woman who taught me how to bake in the first place. Whenever I turn on the oven, I'm home.

Vegetable Kingdom

Cooking song:

I Believe To My Soul- Ray Charles

My friend Elena and I got together on a lazy Saturday, rolled up our sleeves and made a full luxury lunch (whatever that means!), using the vegetables and fruits from my seasonal, ecological basket that gets delivered to my house every week. Since I had an excess of apples, we mainly played with the apples and even invented Apple/Vegetable Soup. But trust me, it's not as crazy as it sounds. The whole time I'm thinking: I believe, yes, I believe these recipes are going to work! It was all pretty improvised, so these recipes are going to be a little bit vague...

The menu was as follows:

Green Salad with Mixed Seed Dressing

Apple soup

Zucchini Casserole

Spelt Boobie Pie

Green Salad

Everyone can make salad. The special thing about this one is that it's topped with sizzling hot seeds that have been roasted, just to the point when they start jumping around on the pan. I like to use sesame, pumpkin, and sunflower seeds. Then I simply pour some olive oil and some freshly squeezed lemon juice over it and that's it!

Apple Soup

INGREDIENTS

5 super ripe apples

Fennel

Leek

3 potatoes

1 carrot

1 onion

PROCESS

Really just chop these things up, and boil them in boiling water for about 20 to 30 minutes. Then simply puree all the ingredients so that you get a smooth, creamy consistency. As for spices, use organic vegetable mix, sweet paprika, and a lot of salt.

Be sure to decorate with pumpkin seeds, it really looks like a springtime flower when served in nice big soup plates.

Zucchini Casserole

INGREDIENTS

Scallion

Leek

Zucchini

Cherry Tomatoes

Potatoes

Feta cheese

3 eggs

Here goes:

Thinly slice the potatoes and distribute them in two layers at the bottom of your baking dish. You then grate about four sizable zucchini and chop up the scallions. You layer each in a baking dish. Then comes a layer of chopped tomatoes, and then the zucchini, again grated. As you're layering, throw in some feta sqares and leek every now and then. Sprinkle the top with Parmesan. Soak the whole Casserole in three eggs and let the veggies soak them up before you pop it in the oven for half an hour at 180 C.

Marzipan Pudding (Vegan, GF)

This my own little invention, great to go along with cakes or even as a single dessert.  I always improvise this little recipe, so please excuse my general directions, but I truly don't know the specifics. The trick is to just keep tasting and mixing until it feels right to you (or until it disappears)!

INGREDIENTS

Almonds

Hazelnuts

Wallnuts

AKACIJEV Honey

Dark chocolate powder or hot cocoa powder

Dates (soaked overnight)

Hazelnut Milk

Rice Milk

PROCESS

Mix all the nuts in a mixer, slowly adding the nut and rice milk for consistency. Add chocolate poweder by the spoonfulls and see how it goes. When you're happy with it, scoop it out and miix up the dates (that have been soaked over night, pitted and cut up into little pieces). Keep adding chocolate powder, nut milk and coconut oil to get the right consistency all along. Then layer both mixtures on top of one another in some sort of dish. For the final touch, add a layer of chocolate powder, mixed with honey and coconut oil, with which you should completely cover the pudding.

You can feel free to use different kinds of nut milks, whichever suits you taste.

Keep the pudding in the refrigerator. Let it cool and harden and before serving. It should last at least a week in there, but, of course, it won't stay uneaten for that long.

Pudding song:

Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay- Otis Redding 

Two Birthday Cakes

Matic's Flower Cake

Please excuse the lousy picture (I was not at home), but I went to my boyfriend's family's house, where his sister, mother, and I made him a spectacular birthday cake. Scientifically, I think what happened is that brotherly, motherly and romantic love combined into a delicious goo of adoration, with then baked in the oven at 180 C and then presented itself as a manifestation of good wishes and all good things in general, which we then ate, while grinning like the cheshire cat in Alice.

That, with all the drama, is how birthdays are made.

INGREDIENTS

The dough:

150 g coconut oil

150 g brown sugar

4 eggs

4 spoons of dark cocoa powder

200 g ground almonds (you can also use walnuts, if you like)

The filling:

100 g ground almonds

100 g brown molasses sugar

1 dcl water

100 g coconut oil

The decorations:

200 g dark chocolate

100 g butter

Almond slices

The dough:

Whisk together the egg yolks, sugar, and melted coconut oil. When smooth, stir in the chocolate powder and almonds. Be careful to keep the mass fluffy! Be sure to be stirring very gently and slowly, especially in the last step.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg whites into kind of a solid cream. The ultimate egg white test goes like this: turn the bowl over. If the egg whites you have been dutifully whisking start sliding down and onto your kitchen counter, you have much more whisking to do! But, if the egg whites stay in the bowl exactly like they were, like a solid cloud, then you can give yourself a pat on the back for yet another job well done.

When the egg whites are ready, slowly stir them into the first mix with a soft spatula, making sure to very gentle.

Bake at 180 C for 1 hour.

When the dough has cooled off, cut in in half and spread the filling on the both pieces. Then close up the cake and spread the chocolate glaze all over the top. Then decorate.

The filling:

Bring the water to a boil and then mix in the sugar. You should get a little foam on top and the smell of caramel should be filling the kitchen. Then stir in the almonds.

In another skillet, heat up the almonds (so they release their delicious aroma) and pour orange extract and/or orange liqueur over them, along with the coconut oil.

Then pour this mass into the water skillet and stir under low heat, until fully combined. Pretend you are spreading Nutella as you moisten the dough with the marzipan filling.

The decorations:

Make the classic chocolate glaze, using a double skillet. You simply melt the chocolate with the butter and let it cool a little. That is all.

What we did to decorate, though, besides for covering the whole cake in luscious chocolate, was a little trick that just happened to turn out very cute. We put tons of little chocolate lumps onto a baking sheet and let it harden the the fridge. We then arranged them onto the glazed cake, with enough spaces in between to arrange the almond slices around them, to make the cake look like field of flowers.

Luka's Buckwheat Cake

Luka is my cousin, whose house I went to, to make him a celebratory birthday cake. You will thus once again have to excuse the pictures, taken with my ipod, but at least a happy Luka is recognizable on them! This is really all the documentation I have of the event...

I have even have a reputation within the family as the Birthday Cake Maker.

What? Someone is celebrating? No fear, the Cake Maker is here!

Luka likes it creamy and fruity, so even though this cake is not my style, he was happy.

The dough:

7 eggs (no joke.)

140 g buckwheat flour

200 g brown molasses sugar

Rum, rum extract, or rum sugar

The filling:

Non-dairy whipped cream

Peach compote

Cherry compote

The decorations:

Almonds

Fresh strawberries

Non-dairy whipped cream

Cake song:
Build Me Up Buttercup- The Foundations

Polenta Fun: TV Dinner for One

Total cooking time: 10 min



For some reason, this little dinner always puts me in a good mood. Just make some polenta, let it cool, cut it up and grill it on low heat. Put on some homemade pesto (or store bought, if you're a busy person, like moi) and thin slices of hard goat cheese. Let the cheese melt a bit and serve yourself!


I usually eat it with some oven baked veggies, just whatever I have at hand on a bed of rocket salad.

Cooking song:
Anyone Else But You- The Moldy Peaches